Hello! Back!

I really can't get into this whole "new spaces" thing: is it just me or is it really user unfriendly? Anyway we're a dying breed now with myspace which is way too backwards for me. I like my blog on show, thankyou very much, and I can't do it. Yes! I am that thick!

 

Had a well nice time on my hols with the delectable Captain Paranoia (aka Other BFKels) and her famille. They take proper care of me when I'm there, although I may have chilled a bit too much because now I just want to lie about watching my Firefly boxset 24-7. I love Jane. Jane rules.

 

Perhaps my favourite part of the week was going with Kel to sort out her new classroom (a comprehensive-school teacher, all sensible is she) and being absolutely no help at all after I found the piles of old exercise books in the cupboard. While she heaved and moved and organised, I hunkered down with some choice offerings from the bottom sets of the first two years. Highlights included limericks:

 

“There once was a man from Cork

Who went for a walk

He didn’t go far

Because he got lost

And that was the man from Cork”.

 

Hmmm, perhaps missing the point? And my favourite:

 

“There once was an old man from china (sic)

Who wasn’t a very good climber

He slipped on a rock

And snapped off his cock

And now he’s got a vagina”.

 

Brilliant work there from an eleven year-old who actually handed this in as homework. The best bit, however, was what the teacher had written under it in red pen by way of marking:

 

Remember capital letters for place names

 

Are you kidding?? If I’d ever handed that in I would have got twenty rosaries and a healthy go on the flagellator.

I stopped laughing when I found the workbooks belonging to the Special Needs class (oh, alright, I initially thought they’d be funny…). They had been made to fill out exercise sheets about Macbeth, things like, “Macbeth is a …..””Banquo is a …..”. I mean, come on, these kids could barely write their names on the front, it’s no wonder they all go home and smoke crack. “Macbeth is a ….” is pretty conceptual when you think about it, and I’m sure they can’t have been reading the text (hell, I can’t even understand some of it), so what’s the point? Teach them to read first! But oh no, there’s a curriculum and by God, it must be obeyed, even if that means spending a year teaching tiny details from a five hundred year old play to kids who would be better off doing something actually interesting to them. Surely it can’t harm to get them to do creative journalism using magazines as reference points or something? I dunno. Even more depressing was the story Kel told me about a fellow teacher who followed the curriculum activity plans and asked a new year seven class to write down a childhood memory for homework. All well and good until a foster parent rang in livid to ask that their child could do something else as their early life had been so horrendous that the only things he could think of to write about were his father’s heroin addiction and his mother’s suicide. It makes you wonder who exactly the curriculum is aimed at. (Here’s a clue: they get lifts to school in 4x4s and have names like Jocasta and Tarquin.)

 

Anyway, that’s my rant, I had a happy holiday and I only got angry the once.

 

The reason for my crappy updating is that I’ve been working like a beaver (no, not with my tongue sticking out and in a flap – eugh) on the book which I want want want to be out before Christmas. Kels did the editing (ripped my comma usage to shit, and quite rightly, it’s cack) so it’s waiting to go to press. Exciting! Hopefully I’ll be able to update a bit more when it’s all out there and stuff.

 

In case you don’t live up North, I was on TV talking about my student debt t’other day, too. How horrendous? It was for a documentary and I had my flat turned into a film set, only realising as it was broadcast that my massive Red Dwarf collection was fully on show. Sad, sad, sad. The family were so excited that The Mam had to ring round and prepae them for the shock they were in for when we remembered that I’d done a piece to camera about my total debts. Humiliation was complete when they showed a bit of me reading Mad Magazine wearing a bottle-green trackie top which looked as though I’d had a pillow stuffed up my front. My TV career is over, I think. Still, I got to have a woman recognise me in Asda the next day which was pretty exciting. (She was probably wondering how I could afford food.)

 

Right, I have one last piece of news: BFEmma is fucking off to Korea for a year. Yes, home of the dog-snack and er, the war that M*A*S*H* was set in. I think. Anyway, it’s South Korea (I just typed that as “career” durrrrrrrrrr) so she’ll be safe from Commies and mental dictators. Well, Intermezzo is full of them, so she’ll away from us at least. She’s teaching English with the lovely Rachel to small children (God help them – the kids, that is) and their travelly blog is available through the link your right. Give them your support and I’ll be happy. I’m off now to apply face and remove hair in preparation for their leaving party tonight, and to get down the back of the sofa to see if I can afford to buy them drinks. The buggers are getting paid enough, they should be buying me them. ;-)

 

Oh God, a smiley. Time to go.

 

Laters.

xx

 

 

 

I'm going to briefly say something about what's going on with the family before I get to everything else.

As you will know if you read The Mam’s space, my Aunty Dreda died on Sunday and although I can’t really add anything better than what she’s said, I just want to say how fantastic she was, and how I hope that people will be able to look back on my life in seventy years and say the same of me.

 

Anyway, some good news to go with the sad, as always seems to happen. I got approval from the publishers for a graphic novelisation of Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth, so after my next project (an A-Z of Corporate Bollocks) I’ll be starting on that. We were going to reprint the novel, but it’s frankly a bit dry, so I’m going to sex it up a bit and play on the socio-political stuff, the gore, and generally all the stuff that shocked the Victorian audience at the time. Frankly, I’m like a pig in shit. So if you are reading this and you are an artist who’s up for a challenge (big project, mind – full commitment needed at high quality) then leave a comment or email with samples. Yay!

 

Other news…. Red Phone Book launch is on at Intermezzo in Newcastle if you fancy seeing me try to work a room. Quite frankly, the thought fills me with mingled delight and horror. I’m not sure that anyone we invite will actually turn up, so it could be a disaster. Well, at least I get to buy a new dress. No, hang on, that’s a nightmare. Bollocks.

 

I have also taken the pictures for portraitday, and as requested, Cap’n B, Armand was along for the ride. He even got a dish of his favourite treat as a reward. Now, if only I could remove enough of his insides so that I could fit my baccy tin in….

 

Yes, so this week I have dyed my hair orange/red/purple by mistake, realised that just thinking about Burlesque isn’t enough then seen the price of corsetry, spent a whole afternoon in Mezzo doing work (reading Comics International is work!), and taken some self-portraits with a stuffed armadillo. Oh, and been solidly miserable blah blah. Hopefully I’ll get so bored of it that I’ll just realise that tuna mayonnaise sandwiches, Westwood-bashing and Ray Bradbury keep me on this Earth for a reason.

 

That would be nice.

 

Laters.

xx

Er, what's going on with spaces?

 

I'm still alive after my birthday, but for the past three days have slept approx 20 out of my allocated 24 hours so I can prove that being old is rubbish. Think I might be ill, but more likely the new stuff the doctor gave me.

 

No news then, as I'm sleeping more than I'm awake. Birthday was a bit wierd: over by midnight but not through anyone's fault. Family, work and holidays ruin my birthday every year.

 

God, too tired even to write this. Sorry guys.

 

Laters.

xx

 

 

LATER: Woken up a bit.

 

It's no secret that I am a habitual taker of self portraits, to the point of vanity, insanity and pornography (CC is a bad influence).  But there is a reason for it, although it's taken me a long time to fully realise it. One of my favourite sites has always been SelfPortraitDay, and I stuck a picture of myself on it about a year and a half ago just to participate. I never thought anything about it, but the more I go on there, the more I marvel at the different ways that people choose to represent themselves. Some define themselves through inanimate objects, some choose to include others as counterrpoints to some supposed vanity. Others again have no problem with vanity at all and let it all hang out. I think my favourites are the unusual ones where the subject has thought carefully about their portrait and executed it in a way that really lets you in on a bit of themselves. These pictures are not always expertly executed in arty black and white on expensive cameras; they can often be quick phone shots or ancient polaroids. It isn't in the setup of the shot that we see them - it is in the selection of the shot.

Personally, my original picture was the one on the pc that didn't make me look like a troll, and when I tried to select something more "interesting" tonight, it was as hard a task as ever. When you are too worried about looking good, you lose some of what makes your image your image. So your nose isn't symmetrical and your mouth's a drawn line. Some of the most interesting portraits in history are of people who weren't "pretty" because their looks tell you about them and not their grooming regime. The Mam and me were discussing Gertrude Stein today. There's one. And compare contemporary pictures of Bridget Bardot to those taken when she was a sex symbol. Which really tell you about the person?

With this in mind I am going to spend tomorrow trying to take a picture that I think sums me up, and if that's vanity, then I don't care. At least it's vanity of the soul and not of the groin. It will probably be a picture of me in a deerstalker and a 70s ball dress with a fag in my mouth: but why deny my nature, after all? Someone who thinks they know me once presumed that I sit around all day in my pyjamas simply because that's what I used to do when they were around. Ask anyone who lived with me at university and they'll tell you all about the nights wearing spangly items because boredom made us get the old Chess album out and belt out a few Barbara Dickson numbers. An interesting lesson in absorbing your personality from those around you, I think. Hey, I own a bag fashioned as a highly realistic armadillo, after all. But I wouldn't ever use it when in normal society, like down Tynemouth on a Sunday night. That's just for me, my friends, and anyone who knows the real me.

Reckon it has to go on the picture.

 

Laters.

xx