Ken

Yesterday I bumped into Ken Livingstone.

My girlfriend and I had decided to take advantage of the sunny weather and got the bus up to Angel to peruse Chapel Street market and eat at Wagamamas.

There was a throng of journalists and camera crews around the Angel centre, and as we edged clearer, we spotted Ken, a few metres away from us. He looked quite healthy and tanned, and not a lizard-like as I'd imagine. He was surrounded by posh French people (we checked later; it was the mayor of Paris, lending his support and selling pirated Gerard Depardieu videos).

There were lots of Ken people who kept on badgering me as to whether I was going to vote for Ken. I kept on saying "no" and they left me alone. It only occured to me later that they seemed to be shooting themselves in the foot by only talking to people who said that they would be voting for Ken, and not the people who they actually needed to convince; the people who said that they wouldn't vote for him.

Apparently, after we left, Ken was hounded by a group of Boris supporters. Violence failed to break out.

Other than that excitement, it was a lovely day. London is transformed by sunshine, and my cynicism about the city evaporated as we walked down Upper Street. By the time we had walked halfway down Holloway Road, with alkies sitting on every bench and throngs of fat mums with prams blocking every shop door, my cynicism had been at least partly restored. I know that I'm supposed to think of Angel as some bourgeois ghetto and Holloway Road as a proper working class area full of restorative "character" but I'd still rather spend a sunny afternoon in Angel, even if it is all coffee shops and overpriced kitchen accessory outlets.

Halfway down Upper Street we bumped into an old friend of mine from university who I hadn't seen in a couple of years. He's now managing an Argentine/English electro band. Nice.

I ended up buying loads of Manga DVDs in a charity shop (£2 each, a bargain). Over recent weeks I've been obsessively watching Naruto and pretending that it's helping me to learn Japanese. All that has really happened is that I'm constantly craving ramen noodles.

As for my book, nothing new is happening. There's been little communication from the publisher and the agents I've spoken to have all said that it's highly unlikely that a new publisher will republish the novel. I've been in talks with the administrator of The Friday Project about buying a couple of hundred copies of my book, but it's like getting blood out of a stone.

Here's a photo of Uncle Ken, in all his pixellated glory:

6:07 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

new pages

Hello. Still no new book deal. Pah.

Some new pages:

The history of the universe.

Schroedinger's cat.

11:47 AM - 2 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

I will need a new book deal

For the last couple of months rumours have been circulating that my publishers The Friday Project were in trouble. This was confirmed a few weeks ago when I got an email from Clare, the head honcho there, saying that they were going into liquidation. There was some hope as the company wasn’t simply disappearing, but was getting taken over by a bigger publisher, and that some of the books would be taken up by the new publisher.

Various forums have been full of animated and angry posters, bemoaning the fact that their book deals have vanished in a puff of smoke and that they are owed money. Hopeful, I bit my tongue and kept my head down.

This evening I got an email from Scott Pack, the commercial director of The Friday Project, confirming that the company had gone into liquidation and that my book was not one of the few to be taken on by the new publisher (whoever they might be. I still don’t know). I was informed that the rights of the book now revert to me, so I can pitch it to another publisher or publish it myself (which I don’t intend to do). In the meantime I’ve got to sort out the money they owe me and make sure I get hold of the remaining stock of the book as soon as possible.

I’m sure the blogosphere will be bristling with angry authors and frustrated freelancers, but I can’t really be arsed with getting too angry. I am bitterly disappointed, but at this stage not too surprised by the current turn of events. The Friday Project had a lot of potential but it was mismanaged on a collosal level. All the people involved are very nice, but I can’t help but think that they screwed up quite badly, making huge losses in their first year. What’s puzzling is that I spoke to them only about 4 months ago and they were animatedly discussing plans for relaunching A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep. As for the book... I may try pitching it to another publisher. It sold quite well, reviews were good and word-of-mouth has been excellent. With a decent new cover, a bit of re-jigging and some decent promotion, it could end up selling well. But having seen how publishers work, I’m not entirely sure I want to put myself through all that again. Another dream flickers away. Oh well.

I’ve emailed the administrator of the liquidated Friday Project about getting hold of stock, so there’s not much else I can do at the moment.

Oh, and if you happen to be involved in publishing and fancy getting hold of my book and publishing it, drop me a line at themanwhofellasleep at hotmail.com

Bah. I am very pissed off.

11:46 AM - 18 Comments - 7 Kudos - Add Comment

mugging heroics, boozy caravan

Yesterday was a busy day.

It started with me tackling a mugger, which is something I haven't ever done before. I left the house about midday, and heard loads of shouting from across the road. I peered around and saw a teenage mugger, pinned to the floor by two builders. Loads of people were out on the street so I asked what had happened. Apparently, three kids had been mugged for their mobiles, but as the mugging was happening, a van passed by and builders got out and chased after the muggers, getting the phones back, before one of the muggers ("IC3 male, wearing baby blue bandana over his face" – to quote the police") ran off. They managed to pin the other one down but he was screaming his head off that he couldn't breathe and that they should get off him. I wandered by, bemused, before talking to the three kids to make sure that they were ok. They sounded a bit shocked, but not too traumatised. One of them complained that he wasn't come to Muswell Hill again as it was the second time he'd been mugged here. Then, for some reason the builders took pity on the mugger and got off him. He sprinted off, but I was in his way, so I barged into him as someone else grabbed him from behind. I ended up on my side in the street, but aside from a grazed hand, I am intact. People sat on him for a while as his pleas became more and more pathetic: "I didn't do it! It was my mate, not me!" "Look, you've got the phones back, please drop the charges!". At one point he kicked off his shoes and screamed "Please! I won't run away." But he'd already scarpered once, so everyone ignored him.

It was quite depressing really. He was so young and obviously hadn't thought of the possibility of getting caught when he'd decided to go for a Saturday afternoon "shopping" in Muswell Hill. The police arrived and took down everyone's details. The builders disappeared as soon as the police were on the scene. Much like Batman does, but with shaven heads and cockney accents. Before he was taken into the back of the van, the mugger began sobbing for the police to call his mum. I felt sorry for him for about 10 seconds. There was a strange disparity between his willingness to relieve 12-year-old kids of their phones and his terror at being arrested. The police hung around for a while, getting names and addresses, as half the street milled around, tutting and swapping their versions of events.

After that, I wandered over to my mum's place. My sister, brother-in-law, nephews and nieces are over from Germany, so I spent a couple of hours being screamed at by very young children who were only placated by chocolate.

Then the girlfriend and I set off for Barrio North, a bar on Essex Road. A load of people from my messageboard were getting together for someone's birthday, and there were special guests all the way from California and South London. The novelty of the bar is that there's a caravan inside that you can rent. It sounded like a crap idea, but it was quite nice in the end. Anyway, everyone got drunk, nachos were eaten, photos were taken and everyone had a good time. I woke up today hungover, but was forced to play football in Alexandra Park with my six-year-old nephew. It drizzled as I capered around a muddy field in shellsuit trousers and a hoodie. I ache quite a lot, but Spurs won 4-0 today and I'm full of Udon noodles, so I'm not complaining.

In other news, strange things seem to be going on at my publishers. It doesn't sound good, but I'm waiting for further information before I accept the worst case scenario and all the bad things that entails for my book. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Here's a picture:

12:18 AM - 8 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

creating a monster

I've been a busy bee recently, with lots of proper work and a possible creative project on the side. The last year or so I've done quite a bit of work but it's all been quite dull, and I've felt like I was neglecting my website and generally becoming a boring sod. In some ways this is inevitable as I am a bit of a boring sod.

About a week ago I decided to create a new page for my website. Rather cynically, I decided to create something that I thought would get lots of hits. So, knowing that most men (and some women) like looking at porn, I decided to make a porn themed page. But since I am an enlightened soul, I thought that if people are going to look at porn, they should be educated at the same time. So I decided to create a page in which pornstars tell you random facts and trivia. I figured that the best way of doing it would be to create about 100 pictures and then the user could refresh the page to see a different one. So, I spent a couple of evenings searching the web for pornstar photos (oh, the things I'm forced to do) and desperately trying to find interesting, verifiable facts (not so easy). Yesterday morning I put the page up on my website.

It's here. I should point out that although there's no nudity, the page isn't safe for work. So there.

I then emailed a mate of mine and asked him to post a link to the page on Sensible Erection, which is a link blog that features a) porn and b) interesting websites. I know that once something is posted on SE, if it's any good, other blogs around the world will pick up on it. Somehow I underestimated how popular it would be. Yesterday, the page got 12,000 hits, most of them coming from a Belgian blog, with a few coming from what appears to be a website in Hungary.

Hopefully, a small proportion of the people who click on the page will explore the rest of the website, and then buy my book, but I'm not that hopeful. Still, it's an interesting experiment.

9:37 AM - 9 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Are you watching, Phil Daniels?

Yesterday was spent in the pub with my mate Sam, watching Spurs beat Chelsea 2-1 in the Carling Cup Final. It was a great match, although I spent the last 25 minutes biting my nails and shouting at a large television screen. Well done to all the little Hotspurs. Even Pascal Chimbonda, who has shaved off his beard and looks quite odd.

My girlfriend now refuses to watch Spurs games with me, because I get too wound up and shouty, but she followed the match on the internet, and told me how she cried when they showed a teary Robbie Keane after the game. That's what Robbie Keane does to women. He makes them cry.

Before watching the highlights on ITV, we settled down to watch No Country for Old Men, who was stunningly average. Nicely shot, beautifully acted, but with a plot that abandoned story for casual nihilism about half way through. And it has the most abrupt, pretentious ending ever. As the credits rolled, the girlfriend looked at me and we both shrugged, as if to say "Well, that was ok, but I can't see what all the fuss was about." Also, for the record, it's NOT a dark comedy. Whenever the Coen Brothers make a film, it's called a dark comedy. No Country For Old Men is at times a thriller, at times a drama, but at no point whatsoever is it a comedy, dark, medium, light, or anything else. Still, it was better than 30 Days of Night, which is possibly the worst vampire film ever set in Alaska.

We awoke this morning to see that No Country... had won the Best Film Oscar. There's no teaching some people.

Today I found an excellent, heart-warming review of my book: http://www.eurotrippen.com/2008/02/21/the-man-who-fell-asleep-a-love-story/

Now I'm going to cook dinner and prepare to watch University Challenge.

8:27 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

33

Last week it was my birthday. I had a quiet day. My girlfriend was working outside of London and I was working from home. I surfed the net and stared into the distance with muted resignation. I got phone calls from around the world. In the evening I went to dinner with my family.

I'm 33. The same age as Jesus. Although Christians maintain that he's 2008 years old.

The weekend after my birthday I met up with a load of friends in an Islington pub and got merry but not drunk. I'm a sensible young man.

Last week I bought some black Adidas Samba trainers. They make me feel like less of a middle-aged accountant. I am not middle-aged, and I'm not an accountant, so I shouldn't feel like one. I need to buy a coat that doesn't make me look like a lawyer. I am not, after all, a lawyer.

Today I charity-shopped in Crouch End and found another Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It was £1. Well done me.

Now I'm smoking at home, failing to sleep.

8:04 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

33

Last week it was my birthday. I had a quiet day. My girlfriend was working outside of London and I was working from home. I surfed the net and stared into the distance with muted resignation. I got phone calls from around the world. In the evening I went to dinner with my family.

I'm 33. The same age as Jesus. Although Christians maintain that he's 2008 years old.

The weekend after my birthday I met up with a load of friends in an Islington pub and got merry but not drunk. I'm a sensible young man.

Last week I bought some black Adidas Samba trainers. They make me feel like less of a middle-aged accountant. I am not middle-aged, and I'm not an accountant, so I shouldn't feel like one. I need to buy a coat that doesn't make me look like a lawyer. I am not, after all, a lawyer.

Today I charity-shopped in Crouch End and found another Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It was £1. Well done me.

Now I'm smoking at home, failing to sleep.

8:04 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

beadle

I was out having a drink with friends on Wednesday night when someone got a text telling them that Jeremy Beadle had died.

I suggested that at least one tabloid would have the headline "Beadle's Not About". They all laughed, much in the same way that people laughed when Edison invented sound. The Sun didn't let me down though, using the headline the next day.

So, who is laughing now? Not Jeremy Beadle.

Actually, there was a great comment on the BBC Have Your Say page about him, saying something along the lines of "At least I've heard of Jeremy Beadle. I'd never even heard of Heath Ledger until a week ago".

Here's a picture. It's a composite picture of myself using lots of different photos:

8:45 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Whoosh

Whoosh! What's that sound you hear? It's the sound of my book rocketing to a giddy 365 in the Amazon UK chart. Yes, 365. It's cosmic meaning is clear. My book is about a YEAR in the life of themanwhofellasleep, and a year is 365 days long. The meaning couldn't be clearer: I am in alignment with the universe.

Russell Brand and your Booky Wook, I have you in my sights. Although not very clearly. And you could escape me any time you wanted.

On a less thrilling note, the sun has totally failed to appear today. I should sue.

8:14 AM - 10 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Spurs 5 - Arsenal 1

We'll probably lose in the final, but I don't really care.

And I've just seen that Heath Ledger is dead. At 28. A waste.

2:09 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

goat

I am back from Sweden, alive and well and moderately sane. I didn't see much of the place besides the Alan Patridge-style hotel and the inside of a large office. I did try snoos though, which are wads of tobacco that you stuff inside your mouth at the top of your gums. It's more socially acceptable than smoking, even if you have to spit the stuff out into a tin. I thought I should learn some Swedish, but everyone there speaks perfect English, so I limited myself to "tack" which means thank-you.

Saturday was spent shopping in Wood Green in the pissing rain. Wood Green really is an extraordinary place. On the bus journey there and in two hours perusing cheap jeans and bags of vegetables I only heard English spoken once (in TK Maxx). What amazes me is the speed in which Wood Green has become the north London United Nations. Five years ago Wood Green was the way it has been throughout my life, mostly black, Greek and Turkish, with a smattering of hassidic Jews from Stamford Hill. Now I hear languages whose origins I can't even begin to guess (and lots of Polish) and I'm genuinely surprised when I hear someone speaking English. It's amazing how quickly the area has changed. My girlfriend overheard a black guy scowling and muttering "Why can't the foreigners just fuck off".

We ended up in the market place and in a flash of middle-class faux exoticism I bought a load of goat meat. Tonight we made a goat curry that was frankly, not very nice. It wasn't a disaster, but I wouldn't serve it to anyone I wanted to impress. Still, now I can tick goat off the list of animals I have eaten. Six down, 418 to go.

There is a spot on my neck. It is covered with a plaster.

12:48 PM - 5 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

football, sweden
Category: Sports

Oh, the agony of being a Spurs fan. We dominated against Arsenal from start to finish and missed a hatful of chances. At 1-0 up with 15 minutes to go, I really began to think we might beat Arsenal, but they got a jammy goal (Walcott bearing down on goal, Lee tackles him and the ball bounces over the keeper and into the net). From then on, I feared we might lose. And Jermaine Defoe missed a sitter - if he carries on playing like that, Villa are welcome to him. Still, 1-1 and we might just win at home. But I'm not counting on it.

Ramos dropped Paul Robinson and put Radek Cerny in goal. I have to say, I was relieved. Cerny isn't a great keeper by any means, but Robinson has been a calamity recently. Goalkeepers should be measured not by how many great saves they make, but on how few mistakes they make, and on those terms Robinson is a miserable failure. He's been bad for a year or so now, but in recent weeks he's been abominable. It's a shame, because he was terrific in his first season at Spurs and he's very well liked. But I just can't see him having a future at Spurs.

I'm still shaking. Watching Spurs is terrible for my health. And now I won't sleep for a good few hours. At some point I will tell my mum that Spurs deserved to win and she will say: "Oh, you always say that," so for the benefit of my mum, here's an extract from the Sky Sports match tracker:

"Arsenal are finding it awfully difficult to carve out opportunities against Tottenham's defence. Ramos' side are working extremely hard and are very organised."

"Spurs deserve a win really, but they would definitelty take this result."

and from the BBC:

"Full-time in the match, half-time in the tie. Tottenham can count themselves very unlucky not to be taking a lead back to White Hart Lane."

and from Football 365:

"Spurs may have taken 1-1 before the game but they did more than enough to win the game and will be frustrated especially given the nature of Walcott's equaliser."

Next week I'm going to Sweden for work. I leave Monday and get back to London about midnight on Thursday. I've never gone away for anything work related and I can't say that I'm particularly looking forward to it. Being a freelancer, I work 9-5 and don't feel owned. My soul is still my own. At 5pm I can switch off my work brain (and my phone) and relax. So it will be very strange having to eat, drink and sleep work for 4 days. It will be nice to see a bit of Sweden, but somewhere deep inside me, I feel very uncomfortable about being in work-mode after 5pm. Perhaps it's because I like to tell myself that I'm a writer (an artist! Moi!) first and foremost, and not a drone worker. But everyone has to do their drone work from time to time. Hopefully I will not gnaw off my foot, as I sometimes do in times of stress.

There's an interview with me in this month's All The Rage: http://www.alltherage.org.uk/

You can download the PDF of the magazine here: http://www.alltherage.org.uk/alltherage-2008-01.pdf

1:57 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

BB

I remember a quote from Germaine Greer about Big Brother (this was a good few years ago, before she briefly appeared on the celeb version). She said something along the lines of "Big Brother isn't the end of Western Civilization. It IS Western civilization."

To criticise Big Brother at the moment is to be seen as some kind of elitist snob who thinks that television should be educational, that young ladies should be tucked into bed by 9pm and that our cities are overrun by chav thugs. Basically, you are perceived as a Daily Express reader consumed by impotent rage. And although I am consumed by impotent rage, I have never read the Daily Express. And I think that it's possible to criticise Big Brother without coming across as someone who has lost all faith in modern culture.

I watched a bit of the early series of BB, but as time has passed I've stopped watching. With every series, the contestants got vainer, stupider and the show became more cynical. When the show first started, it was marketed as a kind of sociological experiment to see how different people coped when cooped up together. But as time passed the show dropped the pretence of being a social experiment and came clean that it was simply about getting a lot of freaks in a house, pitting them against each other and then watching them explode or disintegrate in the pages of Heat magazine. And apparently a lot of people enjoy this. I'm not one of them, mainly because it's been many series since there was anyone on BB that I could identify with in any way. I accept that the producers of BB aren't interested in appealing to me. I'm 33, male, middle-class and university educated, but without a huge deal of disposable income. I don't regularly buy a new mobile phone and I'm not desperate to lose weight. I rarely buy a tabloid paper. Big Brother couldn't give a flying fuck what I think, so why should they care whether or not I can identify with a load of girls who all have boob jobs and whose aims in life are to get a football boyfriend and pose topless in Zoo. I think the low point of recent seasons was the victory of Brian in the last series. As far as I could see, his sole talent in life was being stupider than anyone else on earth. I guess we get the culture we deserve.

Anyway, last night my girlfriend wanted to watch the Celeb Hijack version of the show, and I watched alongside her. The idea of the show was quite interesting. Rather than having open auditions for fame-hungry whores, they scoured the nation for young people who were talented. Some were politicians, some were musicians, some were sportspeople. So far so good.  They introduced the first contestant, a 20-year-old Scottish politician. He seemed nice enough, if a bit ginger. Amazingly for a BB contestant, he was quite articulate and could think on his feet. And as further contestants were introduced, things seemed quite promising. I was looking forward to seeing how everyone interacted. But I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Because nowadays it's not enough to merely see how people interact. No, it's not entertainment unless there's embarrassment and humiliation. So celebrity fatman Matt Lucas was on hand to control the housemates. His first act was to take control of the Scottish politician via an earpiece and make him act like a bit of a twat. I left the room. When I got back a brother-and-sister circus act was being introduced. Again, I was impressed by their dedication and talent. But as soon as they entered the house and Matt Lucas stepped in, I had to leave the room. In the end I turned off the telly. It was like watching a dinner party full of fairly interesting guests, only for one bloke to jump on the table, get his cock out, fart and shout "Look at me! Look at me!" I might watch some more of the series. I thought that the contestants showed some promise, but I don't think I can bear any more "celebrities" enlarging their egos and bank balances at the expense of a load of kids who are more talented than they are.

The most interesting part of the small amount of the show that I watched was the contestants entering the house. If I found myself in the strange position of feeling some empathy for the contestants, the same couldn't be said for the crowds outside the house. They didn't want to see talented people who might be able to string a sentence together. They wanted to see a series of incredibly thick people with delusions of grandeur and fake tits. They wanted topless men who whooped and gurned as the crowd clapped along. There appeared to be a general aura of distrust and contempt as a number of hard-working, reasonably talented people walked into the BB house without pausing to work the crowd or high-five a grinning idiot with a handmade sign.

7:40 AM - 8 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Murakami charity

It's 2008 and it's very cold in north London. Today we were promised an inch of snow and the inevitable breakdown of all of the country's infrastructure, but so far it hasn't happened.

My non-smoking has turned into occasional smoking, but that's ok. I don't want to be a smoker and I don't want to be a non-smoker. I merely want to be someone who can have a cigarette when he wants one, but can also go a week without smoking if he wants to. It's ambitious, I know, but what is a man without ambition? Me.

At the moment, my routine involves a lot of working from home, which is quite dull. To make sure I don't go insane, I try to get out every day. Most days this involves walking up to Muswell Hill and doing the rounds of all the charity shops. I feel quite self-conscious going into the same shops every other day. The staff must think I'm homeless or something. Or maybe that I just love charity. Personally, I've always been more of a fan of faith and hope.

Talking of charity shops, over the last year or so I've set myself a challenge. The challenge is to get as many Haruki Murakami books as possible without actually paying full price for them. It's been a successful challenge so far, and like all great quests, it has required patience and tenacity. Things started well with the purchase of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in the North London Hospice in Muswell Hill for £1.50 about this time last year. Then all went quiet for a bit, but I managed to find an American copy of Norwegian Wood (it has a wacky colour cover instead of the minimalist white covers that the UK publisher uses) in a charity shop opposite Whiteleys in Bayswater for £1. Some months later I found a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase in the otherwise crap Oxfam in Muswell Hill. £1.50. For a few months nothing happened, but then I won the Normblog short story competition and the prize was a selection of books, so as well as getting a couple of graphic novels I asked for Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Then, in Crouch End I saw another copy of Norwegian Wood for £1.50. Despite already owning it, I couldn't resist (don't worry. It has gone to a good cause). Then, last week in a proper second-hand Oxfam bookshop in Highgate I picked up Kafka on the Shore for £2.99. A bit pricey but it's a thick book, suitable not only for reading but also as a paperweight or bookstop. And finally, last week I found Sputnik Sweetheart, which was the first Murakami book I read (courtesy the local library) in Sue Ryder in Muswell Hill for £1.25.

The quest, like all good things, must come to an end. But not yet.

Talking of books, my own novel continues to hover around the 1000 mark on the Amazon sales rank, which is good. I discovered this page, which shows all the books on Amazon published by The Friday Project. More importantly, it ranks them all in terms of current sales, and at the moment TheManWhoFellAsleep is sitting proudly at number 3 out of 54 books, which is pretty good considering a) it came out ages ago and b) it came out before Scott Pack joined the Friday Project. For a brief moment yesterday it was number 2 in the chart, which made me swoon like a Victorian lady.

5:47 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment