Thoughts

Some thoughts this week that you may have heard before.

1. Sometimes I think the world is a sea of shit, in which drift only a few scattered good souls; other times it seems like a room crowded with good people, but with a few shits who really stink the place out...

2. There is so much self-promotion around these days, but little thought about whether you have a self worth promoting.

3. I am not the first to point this out, but Avram Grant looks like Baron von Greenback from Danger Mouse. Seriously, look:


left: Avram Grant being interviewed by Lee Dixon; right: Baron von Greenback gives a press conference.

Both command legions of EVIL.

Tagged

April is the cruelest month, breeding admin out of the dead Inland Revenue -- I have therefore been hibernating away from blogworld under a pile of nagging letters and forms, stirring only occasionally in order to issue a paper-ruffling fart, or to complain about the noise or temperature. I had retreated from the blogosphere to hide under a growing pile of arts management task-tedium and programming ennui.

That was until that scurrilous vagabond and angel of the night, Tom Chivers, tagged me. Tagged me with a horrible blogger lergie -- “a lergie, Jim” -- that I now have to inoculate myself against with six bits of personal information. Bah. Here are the rules:

Rules of Tagging:

Post these rules on your blog [well, easy enough…]
Write six random things about yourself in a blog post [oh, crap…]
Tag six people of your own [hell is other people]
Stick in a link for each person tagged [sigh]
Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog [but then they’ll hate me even more…]
Let the tagger know your entry is up [oh, I will do… oh yes, I will do that… he will pay…]

So, here you are:

ONE
I was arrested once in my late teens, but only spent one night in jail. Luckily, no one pressed charges. The offence was small and twatty.

TWO
I support Spurs, which I am starting to feel is too much of an awkward insight into my personality.

THREE
I was nearly expelled from school twice, but didn’t know this until two years after I left, when I got drunk with an old English teacher at her house party.

FOUR
There are only two people in this world who I would murder, given the opportunity.

FIVE
I sweat too much when I eat curry.

SIX
The first time I was ever on a plane was when I was 22 -- the pilot let me sit in the cockpit. It was ace.

And I tag:

Todd Swift
Chris Gribble
Luke Wright
Joe Dunthorne
George Szirtes
Jimmy Homunculus

… and now begone, Dear Reader -- Curiosa shall return to its entropic ice cave, to living off the carcasses of abandoned baby seals and hunching at night over a single dwindling flame …

Readings, readings, readings...

Borek limbers up for another reading...

This week, I are been mostly doing... this:

IN SHORT:

Event: Donjong Heights, London Launch Party and Reading.
DATE: WEDS 12TH MARCH
Time: 7:00pm doors, 7:30/8:00pm start.
Venue: The Gramaphone, 60-62 Commercial Street, E1 6LT.

Presenting Ben Borek's critically acclaimed Donjong Heights, a quirky, at times hilarious, at times moving, rip-roaring novel in verse set in a South London tower block.

Toby Litt dubbed Donjong Heights 'a truly fantastic, wholly unexpected, London book' (Time Out) and chose it as one of his Christmas Reads for Radio4's Open Book. Visit www.eggboxpublishing.com to find out more.



A BIT MORE INFORMATION:

London Word Festival invites you to join the celebrations at this sound-enhanced reading of Donjong Heights, the hit novel in verse by exciting new poet Ben Borek.

Joining Ben to launch Donjong Heights is Norwich-based words/music collective Stop Sharpening Your Knives (www.stopsharpeningyourknives.co.uk):

"A remarkable gathering of emerging poets"
– Lavinia Greenlaw

"Individualistic, anarchic, dissident, argumentative, fun. I wish I'd written some of these myself"
– Hugo Williams

This evening will feature music from...

the fantastic Charly Helen:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=106801727

the charmingly talented The Middle Ones:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=48354533

the wondrous Gabriel Norland:
http://www.myspace.com/djsfromouterspace
http://www.myspace.com/finkin
http://www.theratfinks.co.uk/

and readings from: Jack Underwood, Sam Riviere, Tim Cockburn, Mat Gregory, Agi Lehoczky and maybe Nathan Hamilton.

Copies of both Donjong Heights (£10) and the SSYK anthology (£4) will be on sale. And you will buy them.

Here is the venue:
http://www.thegramaphone.co.uk/

And this is how to get there:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=533766&y=181625&z=0&sv=E1+6LT&st=2&pc=E1+6LT&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf

Or stick this in Google Maps:
60-62 Commercial Street E1 6LT

For more info about LWF:

http://www.londonwordfestival.com

To buy tickets in advance (a mere £3, to cover venue):

http://www.wegottickets.com/f/216

And here is a facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8539069842&ref=nf

Hopefully see you there. Thanks for listening. Enjoy.

New York 1

You can hear it in my accent when I talk

Today was my birthday. But enough about that. I am feeling ill. But enough about that also. No, rather, this: as regular visitors who like working out averages will have noticed, I have left a larger gap than even my own already large average period of time left between blog posts. Regular readers will also have noticed that I regularly start blog posts with an apology for gaps in between blogging and that the reason given is normally that I've 'been busy'. Anyway (I also say 'anyway' redundantly too much -- and 'also'), what's the reason this time?

Well, I've been busy. But, also, this time, I've been busy on holiday! On holiday in New York (friends will know I've been keeping this quiet). And a smashing place it is too. I'm here for two weeks and, while this is largely a vacation (as they say here in New York), I have also been learning plenty at the TOC08 conference (more -- quite a lot more -- about this soon, when I get round to writing up my notes. Why didn't I just blog direct? Well, it made it quite hard to concentrate and my laptop is having battery problems...). It has all been quite an experience and I'll have something by way of a coherent and interesting summary to post about it soon, after some processing and cross-referencing time. Once my brain stops hurting, and once I stop coughing and sneezing all over the place.

Anyway, also on my birthday (which I don't like to mention), a little present from Tom Chivers: he has here revealed himself as a man of virtue, reason, and a highly developed critical acumen, by picking one Mr. Ben Borek as a literary star of 2008. He also, among others, picked some guy called Joe Dunthorne, whoever the hell he is. Never heard of him... he wrote something about Submarines, I think... he looks a bit fishy to me... kind of like a more stylish, better looking worzel gummidge...

And, as we're on the subject of people who look like other people, I realised today that Leonard Nimoy looks a little bit like Bruce Willis. This struck me as I regarded a photo of the former, while thinking of the latter (for my own, private, reasons...), on the New York subway...

Left: Bruce Willis in Star Trek fancy dress; Right: Leonard Nimoy in a hat.

Seriously, look at them: stick a bowl cut and some pointy ears on Bruce, or shave Leonard's head...

Yeah? You see it now? Well, at the very least they share the same look of slightly vacant, moody constipation...

Poem: Lunatics

‘Just look at this’,
you insist -- we’re both up now
to witness the bathtub
catch luminous, pale blue.

We’re packed and ready for the move
as our cul de sac
sleeps on, detached
from what had to happen here.

The window is closed
to less than half a moon;
we are surprised
at how much light gets through.

Poetry: Diversifying

Borek: diversifying

The life of your average poet can be difficult financially. It is prudent to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket; to look for other means of gainful employment, or to look out for gaps elsewhere, in other markets, to augment your income streams before diversifying your investment portfolio (or something). Running courses, teaching, working in schools -- all of these help one to earn a crust when book sales don't provide enough and advances are almost completely non-existent. For the majority, writing poetry alone isn't going to make you rich. Not yet anyway -- not these days. So, think part-time work. Think steady arts admin jobs in slightly bad faith. Think writing on the side. Think pensions. Think investment. Think nest eggs.

Take our very own Ben Borek as a proud example. Borek -- recent recipient of a Society of Authors grant to help him with his next work -- rather than fritter or throw all his grant money away on something ridiculous like books, booze, or hookers, has instead used it to open his very own Polish supermarket. Called 'Borek', it is a thrilling and well-stocked purveyor of wholesome wholesale. It has fine lines of jackets, jumpers, sickly-looking caged animals and scarves. More worrying is the perhaps ill-advised line of beachwear -- but these are early days for Ben's career in retail. He is sure to go far.

And Ben isn't the only one at it. Not only individual rising poetry stars of the near future are concerned for their long term financial security, some of the bigger players are also branching out. On a recent jaunt around Norwich city centre, I spotted evidence that Faber and Faber too -- which supports a pretty healthy poetry list, to say the least -- is concerned by what is likely to be one of the worst years generally for book sales. They have wisely extended their business into the construction and roofing trade. Good move, guys...

Poem: Find

What used to be a bird
Lies, with a wing-tucked head,
Bashfully ruined in snow.

It is reluctant to speak
On our night of fine ideas.
“It comes to this”, it might have said,
Another time, if we'd have listened,
Less full of ourselves and song.

Good News

At the risk of appearing to have a one-track mind, here is a little bit more information about the phenomena that is Donjong Heights...

We've gone and sold out again, and demand still seems to be slowly increasing. This is a little strange and suggests to me, like oddly shaped vegetables often do, that the world has gone mad. Not that people wanting to buy copies of Donjong is in any way deranged or demonic (it is in fact very sensible). It's just that, as a publisher of poetry, I'm really not used to it.

It has actually turned my thinking on its head. I used to sit and wonder, each night (well, some nights), just why it was that people seemed so ready to send us their manuscripts and yet so reluctant to buy our books... 'why is this, Lord?' I pleaded. 'Why do they not understand?' I used to sit and hope and pray that, one day, the Poets Out There would realise that, if they all just bought a decent number of good poetry books regularly, and in the right way, then there would be plenty of money in it to go round.

Now, instead, each morning I check orders and inquiries, nervous that more will arrive and I will have to let down people who are eager for a piece of the Donjong Heights Egg Box action. 'Apologies, but we've run out of stock again... we won't have any more copies until early January... please pre-order now to avoid disappointment...' I witter, I worry... 'Why won't they stop buying it?!'... I exclaim, I weep...

But how joyous it is to have people so keen to buy our books! Good people. Sensible people with taste. God bless them, every one.

So, this is causing something of a paradigm shift in my well-maintained and scrupulously defended Bleak World View. You watch... the next time I get on a train, it'll arrive on time and the people on it will all be pleasant and tolerable. Everyone will start recycling regularly and the ice caps will start to re-freeze. It is all very unsettling and causes sleepless nights and worry. I mean, if things like this keep on happening, what will I have left to complain about? How will I get by, with only good news? What will keep me angry; keep me busy...

And there is more! It is my very great pleasure to inform both of you that Ben Borek has been awarded a £2000 grant by the Society of Authors to help him with the completion of his second book. It is a further shock to the system. This is, if I'm not very much mistaken, one of those rare times where an award has been given, without question, to someone who really, really deserves it... bloody hell.

To top it all off, Spurs have won their last two games and are in the semi-final of the League Cup. This is just bonkers and will not last. I can be sure of this much at least.

NEWS FLASH

eggcellent news

Donjong Heights chosen by Toby Litt as one of his Christmas Fiction Picks for 2007 (alongside Don Delillo and A. L. Kennedy) on Radio4's Open Book.

Listen to the programme here.

This is splendid. Eggstremely good news. We are eggstatic... eggcetera...

Spotty itinerant

beetling about

Breathing space. But only briefly, before a busy few days off out and about again. What's more, I will be taking lengthy train journeys (one to and from Wales, for a board meeting) so expect to return about mid next week with fresh tales of frustration and woe. Dreary and unrepentant announcements of delays; loud twats on 'phones in the quiet zone; a generally cacophonous aviary of buzzes, whistles, beeps and mobile drivel: the mere prospect makes me feel ill...

Brief Donjong Heights update: there will be a few readings in Feb/March sometime in London and Norwich, we think, so you will be able to get your copies signed by Borek's own newly gold-dusted pen-hand soon (stay tuned). Ben will also be hitting the airwaves, appearing on BBC Radio3's The Verb in February. This is both splendid and tremendous. After a rigorous and protracted tussle over contract riders with the BBC, a free prawn mayonnaise sandwich has been promised to the author in return for his presence on the show. Definitely prawn - we aren't being fucked about with shrimp. However, demands for peeled grapes and shaved kiwis (the fruit) have been met with stony silence. We're holding out. He has also been nicely reviewed here.

The next print run will be back from the printers next Tuesday (they tell us, anyway...) so we'll finally be able to fulfill the advance orders we've had through and get them out into the world again. If you're hanging on for yours, you'll have to be quick as it probably won't be long before they all go again... should have printed more than I have, but forgot to.

In breaking news: I have recently turned spotty. It is like being a teenager all over again. No spots to speak of for nigh on a decade and now, all of a sudden, three all at once. Big bastards too -- they took some shifting. It is the post-three-month-long-event-system-overload taking hold, I think: New Writing Season is now over and the body has had enough. Well, my pores seem to have anyway. Normally I just get shirty with friends and pick needless fights, but now spots too. Perhaps as a karmic penance for said predilection. However, it was a good run of workshops and people seem to have got a lot out of it, which feels good (I'm sure you care). Highlights: playing on the harpsichord in the gallery at The King of Hearts and happy customers. Lowlights: running out of coffee and whining punters.

I have also recently discovered from the River Nene Evil Veg Emporium that brussel sprouts look like this. That is: alien and foul. I'm not sure what I expected, but this was a surprise. Why was I not told this before? And what was I thinking? Perhaps that they grew individually like virulent fungus on the big forearms of afflicted farmers? These farmers might then have had to twist them off each week, one by one, and keep them in a box; their misery only slightly alleviated by the bonus afforded by so hoarding them and then being able to sell them to a rash and crazed public, eager for vegetal flatulence at Christmas. Something like this.

Donjong Heights Reviewed

truly fantastic, says Toby Litt

Ben Borek's Donjong Heights was reviewed in this week's TimeOut: London. For those who missed it, here is Toby Litt's review, quoted in full (yes, I'm prepared to type the whole thing out in full for you good, good people -- I'm a little sad, I'll admit). It is a great review. It demonstrates excellent powers of discernment and extremely good taste on the part of its author, I think:

'The Onegin Stanza'. It sounds like a title that Robert Ludlum would have rejected at first draft. In fact, it's a particularly exacting verse form -- one with 14 lines (just like a sonnet), eight or nine syllables in each (more like a hymn) and a complex rhyme scheme intermixing couplets, quatrains and sestets. In other words, it's a bit of a headmasher. Hard enough, you'd think, to write a single obedient stanza. But to bash out a whole novel? Pushkin managed it, supremely, in the eponymous 'Eugene Onegin'. Twenty years ago, Vikram Seth had a very decent stab in 'The Golden Gate'. And now Ben Borek, a recent graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA, has taken the form and done it right and proper.

Here's the first of those stanzas: 'South London has its reputation:/No tube, a multitude of guns,/And hence this Johnsonesque quotation:/"When Peckham tires one simply runs/On up to Hoxton and carouses/In trendy nouveau-cool warehouses/And listens to Electro Funk/Affecting toned down retro-punk."/Don't get me wrong, it's no Soweto/Down South, it's not all crack and pillage --/Just take a look at Dulwich Village --/But for the common man it's Netto/Not Conran, tea not mochaccino/And Asda jeans, not Valentino.'

Donjong Heights is a tower block in south London. Within it dwells our hero, an unnamed young man who has been told by his doctor, one William Wyatt, that he is definitely going to die. His heart is rapidly slowing down, and cannot be stopped from stopping. And so, before he shuffles off, our hero decides to have a big party (Christmas is handily coming) and invite all the weirdest and wonderfullest residents of Donjong Heights.

Critics often maunder on about promise, forgetting that anyone who merits being called 'promising' in such a crowded scene has already achieved quite a lot. Equipped with the kind of verbal chutzpah that Paul Muldoon half-inched from Auden, and Auden nabbed from Byron, Ben Borek has a contemporary flow all his own. At one point he protests 'I know that I'm no Martin Amis', but there's something of 'London Fields' in Borek's mix of the demotic and the hieratic. This is a truly fantastic, and wholly unexpected, London book.

Toby Litt, TimeOut 5/6 stars

Dear goodly readers, if that wasn't enough good news, then I can also tell you that we have more copies arriving from the printers soon! Next week, in fact, so buy your copies now through the Egg Box website, before they all disappear again...

The Charms of Another

Dear blog, I have neglected you again of late and I am sorry. It's not you, it's me. I've... well, you see, I have found another. Another whose charms are temporarily greater. I have strayed and now have a Facebook profile. It is with this new outlet for my narcissistic need to declare myself to all as if they really care that I have been playing, carefree and newly joyful. And in the meantime I have left you, left you stranded and all alone in the world...

Don't get me wrong, I've thought about you. I've thought about you a lot. It's just, well... you know how it is. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to stay up all night playing Scrabulous with them. And apparently this obsession, no... this... this dalliance... apparently it only normally lasts about nine weeks. Nine weeks in the flush of youthful Facebook love. Then I'll probably settle down, so I've been told, into a comfortable Facebook middle age in which I just use it to slightly augment my real world social life. So, you know, hang in there... I'll be back more regularly now, I'm pretty sure. No, sorry, I haven't written anything new or interesting to show you either. It's just been one of those periods.

But hey, thanks for publicising Ben's book for me in the meantime. That was really great of you. Did I tell you: it's sold out! Yes, already. Don't worry, I've scheduled a re-print. Oh but look, now you're crying... I'm sorry. I'll try not to spend too much time with the other pages. But hey, it's not like it means anything and, you know, it's not like I've been mucking about with that grubby Myspace either. Well, not yet.. woah, now, don't get angry. No, no... that's not fair, you... I didn't... now, look, it's a free country... look, you don't own me, OK? Yeah, I'll try to keep in touch more from now on, alright? Oh yeah? Well, too bad, that's just the best I can do, so deal with it.

Donjong Heights: The Borek Has Landed!

My, what a fine jacket

O come all ye faithful...

Rejoice, rejoice, for Egg Box's latest release, Donjong Heights, is here! And this one is a gorgeous illustrated hardback. If we do say so ourselves, it is unlikely you'll find a more enjoyable book of poetry this year, or one for a better price.

Donjong Heights is a, by turns, hilarious and moving mock heroic verse novella from Ben Borek. Written in Onegin stanzas, after Pushkin, it is set in a tower block in South East London and follows one young man's quest to host a jolly Christmas party on what might be his last day on earth.

The cast contains a wonderful array of eccentric characters and will have you laughing and crying all over your turkey, sherry and brussel sprouts -- it is the perfect Christmas offering.

Ben Borek was born in Camberwell in 1980 and graduated with distinction from the UEA Creative Writing MA in 2004. He is an immensely talented young poet who already demonstrates an impressive command of form and a pretty large dose of wit. Remember: you saw him here first.

This is a chance for all you jolly faithful to buy your copy now, direct from us in our store, before word gets out and they all disappear. Our store is the best outlet for us and it is a snip at only £7.99 (with free P&P to all UK orders). A bargain at twice the price. That's cutting our own throats.

Or browse and then order from your nearest bookshop, preferably Waterstones.

As a last resort, it is available through Amazon (but we -- author and publisher alike -- earn a lot less from these sales!)

As Ben is currently in hiding in Poland, there are no readings scheduled until well into the New Year. This is for his own as well as public safety: his last reading gave a priest third degree burns, caused the collapse of a building in Ipswich and resulted in the death of a bullock along with three inattentive front row audience members. So, if you want more Borek before then, you'll have to get yourself a copy fast.

With slightly premature season's greetings,

Egg Box Publishing

Something has hatched... Something is hatching...
www.eggboxpublishing.com

The Silence of the Long Distance Blogger

'scuse me sir, you've had yer fun, now ...

Hi all. Well, I've been away for a while again. Away from my blog, that is -- I've still been sat in front of the computer occasionally, but I wasn't blogging. No, I wasn't doing that either, you filthy monsters. I have been taking some time making a few important decisions. These are decisions which I still haven't made -- they're quite difficult ones. And I will leave them in vague and general terms for now -- until I decide. Instead I will procrastinate here and blog to remind myself to make some decisions soon.

I have also been sulking. Sulking and disillusioned. Disillusioned because, dear readers, of this:

******

[received Sep 25th]
Hello,

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that content in your blog:

curiosahamiltona.blogspot.com

allegedly infringes upon the copyrights of others. The content in question
is located in the following posts:

http://curiosahamiltona.blogspot.com/2007/08/amazing-amazing-science_26.html

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying
information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling
Effects, and we will send you the link of this notice. We do this in
accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for
online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement.
Please see http://www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=254 for more
information about the DMCA, and see
http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html for the process that Blogger
requires in order to make a DMCA complaint.

We are asking that you please remove the allegedly infringing content in
your blog. If you do not do this within the next 3 days (by 9/28/07), we
will be forced to remove the posts in question. If we did not do so, we
would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its
merits.

We can reinstate this content into your blog upon receipt of a counter
notification pursuant to sections 512(g)(2) and (3) of
the DMCA. For more information about the requirements of a counter
notification and a link to a sample counter notification, see
http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html#counter.

Please note that repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in
further remedial action taken against your Blogger account.

If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain
your own legal counsel. If you have any other questions about this
notification, please let us know.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

******

Can you believe it?! I couldn't. Apologies to those of you who didn't read the original post -- none of this will make much sense to you. Anyway, I replied with this:

******

[sent Oct 2]

Hi there --

I am yet to receive the link to the specific complaint (with contact details removed) about the content on my blog that is supposed to be infringing copyright. Perhaps it came through as spam and has been deleted? As the nature of the post was essentially parodic, and I think I attributed all quoted material to their original sources, I am keen to read this complaint before I make a decision about whether to officially contest it -- or perhaps it would be possible to simply alter the content, or attribute a source, so it is no longer infringing copyright?

Obviously, I understand that you may have to remove it in the meantime to protect yourselves; this is rather unfortunate, however, as it's basically a malicious complaint designed to defend the work of what are, in my opinion, con artists and quack scientists exploiting the placebo effect to sell dodgy merchandise.

Many thanks,
Nathan
Norwich, UK

******

I then received this in reply:

******

[received Oct 5]
Hello,

As mentioned in our previous email, we work with a third party to post
DMCA notices we receive. The notice we received because of the content on
your site can be found here (once the notice has been posted):

http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=4233

We have had to remove the content mentioned in the complaint from your
blog. If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright

infringement, regardless of its merits.

Thanks for your understanding.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

******

It still has not appeared, so I haven't been able to view the specific complaint. Please feel free to check it yourselves and let me know if you see it appear any time soon (I may forget to check). In the meantime I have sent these two emails:

******

[sent Oct 20]
1.
Hello again,

Since you removed the post in question, there appear to be problems with the adwords and google ads functions etc on my blog -- I wonder if you could help sort this out, or let me know why/how to fix it?

Ta,

N

2.
Also, this notice is still not available -- so, I am still unable to see what the specific complaint was in order to contest it ...

Ta again,
N

******

Now, my beef here isn't with Blogger -- they have to protect themselves -- it's more to do with the fact of who they are forced into the position of protecting. It just goes to show that the internet is far from the free and wonderfully anti-establishment place that so many have it cracked up to be.

It also raises a few questions: 1. Why on earth would these people care about a minor blogger in Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK? Unless they are more than a little paranoid and pretty small-scale themselves. 2. Just who are these laws designed to protect? 3. Isn't 'Chilling Effects' a rather silly name? 4. When is my blog going to be properly fixed so I can make my millions from google ads?

As I said, the whole process has left me feeling disillusioned and my blog violated -- as you can see, they have forcibly removed the post and they have left the place in a bit of a mess. I wish they'd tidied up after themselves, I really do.

Madness, I tell you. And all very, very odd and sinister, if you ask me. I post all this here as an education and a warning... I am now imagining a courtroom scene... 'You can't handle the truth!', I bellow... oh yes...

******

Just this moment received this [23:00 on Monday evening]:

Hello Nathan,

Chilling Effects has been experiencing a high volume of legal complaints
lately and therefore the process is taking longer than usual. Please allow
up to a few weeks for the complaint that we received to be uploaded at
this link.

Thank you for your patience in this regard.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

******

A high volume of legal complaints recently? Somebody out there is getting all litigious in the blogosphere... you have been warned, intrepid webbers...

The Bloody Trains I

signaling problems at Ipswich

Apologies for the silence (to the bizarrely increasing number of you out there): I have been on holiday in the South of France and then Dublin. And a lovely time it was too. We pedallo-ed down a deep, sheer gorge cut by bright blue water, ate cheese, drank fine wine, swam, took long walks along streams and by waterfalls, ate more cheese, slept, drank really good coffee and champagne, spoke French, caught up with old and much-missed friends, drove around spectacular hillsides, put the world to rights into long balmy nights under clearer skies full of familiar stars ...

But I am now back and I am ill. I have caught a cold from a Frenchman. Or it could have been an Irishman. No, I think it was a Frenchman. If feels like a French cold -- slightly phlegmy and located mainly at the back of the throat. This isn't quite the perfect homecoming I'd hoped for. After my break I expected to rush back, fully rested and newly upbeat and triumph -- just like Lewis did at the weekend. Instead, I have immediately hit a brick wall of physical limitation. Sometimes I really wish that my brain, along with being jacked-up to a computer to help with data storage and retrieval, could be transplanted into a never-tiring robotic host, rather than this cranky and unreliable bundle of flesh and bone I'm lumbered with. Other times this seems a bad idea.

As a result of this illness perhaps, a concept I am coming more and more familiar with is being time poor (and yet not feeling rich enough to justify it). Certainly I am earning more than I have before -- but that wasn't hard. It's just that there are so many things to do, or get done, or to see or go to, or things that one wants to do but can't ... Fine, if I was a high-flying lawyer I'd expect time poverty as a natural side-effect of employment. But working in the literary arts? Is the current time-sacrifice really worth the resultant wage packet? I keep thinking. Often it is a 'yes', but lately less so. Perhaps I just need to downshift a bit somehow. But then I need to earn what I do to pay the bills I have. And, then again, is there really a problem? I think perhaps instead I need an assistant or something. Yes, that's it: I need staff. What they'd do I don't know, and I couldn't pay them a bean, but certainly some sort of delegation is needed without loss of earnings. Hmmm. Well, that's currently impossible. Oh well. No, I probably just need more holidays, more often, and for longer. And no illness.

This is all by way of setting up a further complaint: After a full week taking planes between different countries (via Ryan Air) and cars, trains and buses to places within them -- each of them more or less punctual and all of them faster than their equivalents in the Eastern Region -- a word or two about just how appalling and third world the service offered by One Railways in this region, I think. Four hours it took from Stansted to Norwich on two bus replacement services. Four hours. Then, the very next day we were delayed for an hour outside Ipswich, due to unspecified 'severe signaling problems' on our way to a friend's reading in London -- all but five minutes of which we missed as a result. Ongoing engineering works they cite as the reason, while charging us stupid amounts of money.

When we asked on the 'phone if these ongoing engineering works would result in a high speed service between Norwich and London, or anywhere else in the country for that matter, this side of hell freezing we were met with sustained and almost hysterical laughter. For a full two minutes the lady on the 'phone laughed, then: 'We can only hope', she said. What's so damn funny? No, we can do a little more than hope, I think. We can, for example, spend the money extorted through the inflated fares to build something useful, can't we? Yes? Why is it so difficult to put together a decent rail service in Norfolk? Need I point out that the region is fucking flat?! No mountains to drill through or build over. A dearth of huge lakes to circumnavigate. No bloody sea to tunnel under. No, it's perfect rail-laying terrain. And yet it's taking them years ... and years to do what? Replace the current service with exactly the same useless one?! ... I would have said, if she wasn't just the person who sold the tickets. So, thanks to One Railways, now my holiday is over, I'm already stressed and full of resentment for the region and the nation as a whole. It took one day, one hour and thirty five minutes after landing at Stansted.

But, if we had a high-speed link to London, Norwich would lose all of its characteristic charm, people say. Rubbish. If that supposed characteristic charm or idiosyncratic whatever actually amounted to anything it'd happily survive a few high-speed train links to Other Places. Seriously, if I could point to one thing that might be holding the whole region back it would be the trains. How much time do we spend on them, going nowhere, when that time could be spent on other, more useful things? How difficult does it make arranging others to visit the region? How long is spent traveling to and from meetings? And how much money does that time equate to?

But then I think to myself:



... and suddenly I don't mind so much. This actually brought a tear to my eye. Moved by shadow puppetry, eh? I am growing weak in my infirmity, I think. No, I just need more holidays, more often. Yes, that is my new month's resolution.