the bad feeling years

For once it felt quite Christmassy at work. A three-day power cut left us huddled together in the staff room by torchlight, bundled up against the cold. All very cosy in its way, although for some reason I was also reminded of that scene in The Exorcist where they go into Linda Blair’s room with their coats on and shine a torch on her, and the words help me appear on her body. Well, Christmas, The Exorcist - both have a religious basis. And both are largely about possessions.

Now the lights are back on, the words help me become more appropriate. Suddenly, it’s manic. Phoenix has gone crazy. It’s not like being wired up to a machine, it’s more like being connected to the nervous system of an hysterical maniac. Everything you happen to sell more than one of is assumed to be a runaway Christmas bestseller, so you get boxes of it a couple of days later. At least this will be useful to know if I ever do write a book…

I also went to Sam’s for the first time since it was done up (though done over might be the more appropriate phrase). Yes, they’ve splashed out thousands (apparently) on matt black walls, a lot of slightly Gothic chandeliers, and a carpet that just screams: cheap rented accomodation. It’s more like they’ve stripped the place back to uncover an earlier club from, say, the early eighties. Indifference wafted over me like dry ice as the new sound system brought out to perfection the dull thud in every song.

Only the company rescued the evening. I talked to Rhys, visiting from Wales, who I managed to offend a month or so ago by refusing to argue with him about the merits of 24 on my blog. Yes, I upset him by not arguing with him; I won’t make that mistake again. I thought we had resolved the situation, but now he is taunting me further on his own blog by blatantly celebrating things with which he knows I have a problem. Like The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics. A song whose message is that if you need to tell someone something, do it during their 'living years', because although their dead years are more numerous, they are not quite so easy to contact then.

Don’t start me off, Rhys.

more crazy adventures of mat

Mat is working on a big important job that should make him quite a bit of money: a 3D visualization of a house. Yesterday morning he was admiring its progress on the computer screen. We agreed that it looked good. That it seemed to be going well. Almost surprisingly well. Still... ‘Perhaps it could do with a few more trees’, Mat mused. I left the house predicting that by the time I returned later that night the house on the screen would be completely obscured by palm trees, lianas, and giant prehistoric ferns and Mat would be sat in exactly the same spot screaming: ‘I KNOW WHAT IT NEEDS! A TIGER!’

It didn’t happen, but it would have been quite in keeping with his general behaviour. At one point this week I posed the philosophical question: ‘When Mat’s working alone in the house - does he make a sound?’ The answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. He is constantly talking nonsense to himself, composing little ditties, howling and shrieking. I think this is a positive sign. It means he isn’t depressed, which is a good thing. For him, at least.

But there is a price to pay for these continued good spirits. Nothing can stop Mat now… except microscopic germs. These (conveniently invisible) creatures are all over the kitchen, he claims. Now he doesn’t let me touch the bin, and continues to frown on me using the dustpan and brush on both the kitchen floor and the kitchen work surfaces. Germs, I ask you! I have no problem believing in elves and gremlins, but germs? They don’t even have legs, according to Mat’s vague description. Or eyes. Ridiculous. All the same, it’s probably just as well he doesn’t know about me using the toilet brush to clean the saucepans.

demons

We went to Christmas lighting-up day in Brentwood. ‘Enjoy living in Brentwood’, commanded the banners; others wished us, or condemned us to, ‘a Brentwood Christmas’. Depressed reindeer paced in a small enclosure on the High Street, inspiring Amanda to buy venison sausages. ‘Crazy bears’ were advertised, a terrifying prospect apparently aimed at small children. Struck by the title of a pamphlet on the Christian stall - ‘How Can I Resist Evil?’ - I helped myself to one, only to discover a price label on the back. Too late to do anything about it by that stage - I’d already been glared at - and in any case, the pamphlet offered me a readymade excuse: I just couldn’t resist.

Well, after you’ve seen psychotic grizzlies ripping the heads off four-year olds, nothing seems to matter anymore.

Still, the least I could do was read the thing. It was disappointing. I’d expected the titular question to be rhetorical (‘How can I resist evil? It’s so much fun!’) and instead here I was being told that the devil is real. The closest the pamphlet gets to identifying him is when, describing Christians being transferred from ‘the dominion of darkness’ into ‘the kingdom of light’, the author uses the curious analogy of Gazza’s £5.5 million transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to Lazio in 1992. Thus equating the Prince of Darkness with Terry Venables. Now I know very little about football, but that seems unfair.

Jimmy Carr, who we went to see that very evening in Southend, would make a far better candidate. Horns would work well with his weird wax mask of a face, plus his act features some Christian-baiting and a lot of what you might call morally questionable material. On the other hand, his initials are J.C. and, like God, he's omnipresent, at least on post-watershed TV. I remain as confused as ever. Still, he made us laugh, though the best joke of the evening by far was the poster advertising an upcoming appearance at the Cliffs Pavilion by Steven Seagal ‘with his band Thunderbox’. ‘Thunderbox’ is apparently a slang term for the toilet in some households, though presumably not Seagal’s. Of course, no-one would dare tell him. Although if they did, perhaps he could incorporate the concept further into his act by changing his name to Brick Shithouse. It's just a thought.