Journal, Diary, & Blogging / Quarterly Summary 2
“That’s what life is. Just a bunch of moments. Most of them are lousy, but once in a while you get a good one.”
- Molly (Lesley Ann Warren), Life Stinks
The second quarter of 2009 has not been so maniacally twisted as the first. However it has still been punctuated by some moments of excellence and absurdity.
1) Publication
The writing has been flowing as of late, and ideas have come to me in abundance. Flash Fire 500, who previously published my story Dead Chinese Girls, also accepted The Hit from me. Check it out, along with a host of other flash fiction pieces, at flashfire500.blogspot.com. After this acceptance I then uploaded the cringeworthy tale Most Embarrassing Moment to Badhap.com, a site dedicated to the reciting of the most uncomfortable moments of life. It was the longest story they had ever accepted, and the administrators had to reconfigure their site to fit the whole thing on. After this, I sent a piece to writers-bloc.net, a website featuring writing about writing. The article- How Not to Win a Writing Competition- was accepted but, for some reason, has not been uploaded yet… Following this, I wrote Human Nature- my first foray into political blogging- in an insomnia-laiden frenzy, and it was very quickly accepted into the Manchester Evening News letters page. The blog, about how the Government could take inspiration from the Catholic Church, went down a treat- although they for some reason cut out the part where I compared PM Gordon Brown to the sex-crazed lunatic ancient emperor, Caligula. But I can’t complain.
2) Wisdom Teeth
I now don’t have any. During the first extraction, my dentist made an incision into the gum at the base of the tooth and levered it straight out. It was two-thirds the diameter of a fifty-pence coin. It’s in a bank bag in my drawer. I would advise you to get the operation as soon as you feel discomfort, before the tooth grows. Then the rest of your teeth don’t get slammed together over time, as mine seem to have. The second tooth was not as easy to remove, and the dentist had to drill the shit out of the tooth and the back of the jawbone in order to extract it. I didn’t get a souvenir that time.
3) Beer Walk
The Saddleworth Round Table Beer Walk is held annually in Oldham in early summer. The walk is a fundraising event where punters can sample beer from all over the world, supplied by a variety of pubs all over Saddleworth. On this, my third Beer Walk, I joined 4 other mates in dressing as soldiers and Toby came down from Salford as Robin Hood.
Whilst steadily drinking our way round the route we bumped into various nurses, female airline pilots (although they could have been flight attendants- their outfits were a bit vague) plus policewomen, Pinhead from Hellraiser, two people dressed as giant ears raising money for Deaf Awareness, pretty much the entire cast of the Mr. Men, various cross dressers, Indiana Jones, a gang of Scousers in tracksuits and outrageous afros, a woman dressed a giant bell (who was just asking to have penis jokes hurled at her) and- while absolutely steaming- I bumped into some of my colleagues impersonating pirates. I have no recollection of what I said to them, but they seemed kind of bemused by my prattle. The Matt Tuckey Award for Best Outfit, however, went to the two men dressed in padded fat-suits with tweed jackets, constantly munching on a seemingly endless supply of cakes from their rucksacks. One man, his combover shedding immense amounts of fake dandruff, carried a doll under his arm. Ontop of a hill I found him shaving the plastic off the doll’s head with a cutthroat razor.
Later on during the walk I realised that the giant plastic machine gun I’d bought- complete with vibration and firing sound effects- came with a laser sighting. I found something so (now inexplicably) funny about all this that I laughed until I vomited all over a nearby wall.
I would advise that people do not drink alcohol to the extent that I did. Especially not after having two dental operations resulting in a gaping wound at the back of your mouth. This will only result in pain.
4) Whisky tasting
My first experience of a whisky-tasting event was in Lees Labour club in Oldham. Sponsored by Stanley Ogden Butchers, who supplied some damned good steak sandwiches, the night was an opportunity to sample six fine whiskies from the world-famous distillery regions of Scotland. Headed up by a very knowledgeable old geezer in a kilt, the event began with a single malt called Dufton. During the drinking, Geezer described the history of whisky- starting with how the Irish discovered the techniques for distilling alcohol (or ‘alco-wol’, as Geezer pronounced it, causing us to stifle a laughing fit). The Scottish bagpipes, he said, was also an originally Irish invention.
On the comment card supplied by the organisers, I described Dufton as ‘nice’ and ‘warm’. Geezer described it as a ‘singleton’. Following it was Auckentoshan (which I considered ‘delicate’), Laphroig (Geezer’s assumption: ‘unpopular’, mine: ‘fierce’), The Glenlivet (‘rich, sharp and oaken’ came to my mind), Glen Farclas (Geezer described this as a ‘session malt’- the night certainly ended up as a session) and the night came to a close with something called ‘Mortglag’, or something. I must have spelled this wrong as Google doesn’t recognise it as a whisky- it only offered me the Roman Economic Journal, which was all in Latin. It gets weirder still. On the comment card, next to this unpronounceable and seemingly untraceable whisky, I wrote: ‘Duff town. Strong as piss.’ As to what any of this means, your guess is as good as mine.
5) Manic Scribbling
Anyone who has got on my bus recently and looked over my shoulder may have had an unnerving bus ride. There has been a flurry of ideas running through my mind, resulting in a lot of scrawling into a blank 2008 diary in a form of block caps that only I can read, followed by some fiction and a lot of time sat at this Goddamn desk. So this summary will be short. Did I even need to include this point?
6) Achievements
To conclude, let’s look back at the last Quarterly Summary blog. At the end of the last quarter I set myself the following tasks:
Find a decent woman (I know a few…)
Go to more house music clubs (I saw Robin S perform Show Me Love live in Tokyo Project, if that counts…)
Get published again (tick)
Become a more skilled martial artist (getting there, so yes I have)
Take over (I’m not Tony Montana just yet, but I am moving to the Civic Centre, Oldham Council’s headquarters building. So who knows what possibilities lie ahead.)
I think for the next quarter the targets should stay the same.
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Argh! You have so many fascinating stories here, but only barely alluded to! What happened with the people dressed as ears? How much did you drink on your Beer Walk, and what hijinks ensued? Cross-dressers are such crowd pleasers, but you give them only two words!
We want the details! More, more MORE! Take each story and bathe in it! Tell us the details, not just that it happened! WHAT happened?
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The quote at the beginning was a perfect way to allude to the mood of this blog. I loved how it hinted to what I could expect. I think you could strengthen the end by referring to it slightly again somehow even if it was indirectly. I felt there were parts that made me cringe (tooth extraction, vomiting) but that is raw life. There were parts I could relate to that I wished you would have expanded on…an artists private random scribblings in their book…hopes for the future. Overall, I found it unique and interesting and really different than some other things I have come across.
There was so much to like about this blog. Starting from the stream of conscience introduction. I am glad to hear that the writer is getting things published. I especially liked the details of the beer walk and the man with the fake dandruff. This part reminded me of the surreal aspects of life, and favored that genre of writing, which has become the fad lately. As blogs go i found nothing to fix. It was all clear to me. Beginning with the celebration of your achievements to the telling of the rest of the escapades. I enjoyed a look your rather busy life.
If only my life was as interesting as yours!
Inspired and very funny. More please.
I actually like this even though I do not usually like real life stories. This was down to earth and I understood it. I have had my wisdom teeth out and have tasted whisky and can relate that what makes it appealing to me. usually a blog will say crazy things that noone else does but I could relate>(sorry said it again). Very nice job.
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