hanks in pants

Three, maybe four years ago my friends and I - our name was legion and we are many, if you like - decided to spend Christmas in our flat, and aim out going to see our families. There were fifteen of us on Christmas day, all chipping in money for drinks and food, which were both bountiful, and with one of us - thank you Meade - doing the cooking.
Over the seasonal period our over indulgence led to most of us sat on our collective arses eating and drinking our way towards cardiac arrests and watching ALL the Christmas fayre tee-vee had to offer, which mainly consisted of old Tom Hanks movies designed for the young, or the female or the stupid, or in some cases all three.
It would appear that Tom Hanks has it written into some draconian contract somewhere that every single one of his movies has to feature at least one scene of him in pants. So it was that in Turner and Hooch Hanks wrestles with a dog in pants. (Hanks, not the dog, that would be weird). In Big, he is seen strolling around in nothing but pants. Ever watched Castaway ? End to end loincloth. I've never watched it all the way through but I'll bet money Sleepless in Seattle features a 'heartwarming' scene whereby Hanks vacuously reprimands his young son while one or the other are in pants. Saving Private Ryan only ever led to the phrase 'Hanks in Pants with Tanks' and as for Apollo 13, I really can't comment, mainly because we got bored and put on some music.
It's a hell of a game, look out for it, and every time Hanks strolls onto the screen in his pants for seemingly no apparent reason - The Burbs - please do award yourself a point. Go on, you deserve it.

"you, madam, need some discipline"

I have things to do, but being a procrastinator of almost epic magnificence I'm finding excuses to put off doing them all.
Like writing this piffle for example.
My apathy always reaches new dizzy lows in the winter, as the darkness begins to surround us a little more tightly in the mornings and the evenings and the weather mutates into one long wet, bone numbing day. At least that's the excuse I'm giving, that's what I'm telling myself as I flick through endless channels of even more endless vapidity without lifting my head from the arm of the sofa. Free Willy ? Yeah, I'll watch ten minutes of that until the One Hundred Greatest Pop Songs starts on TMF. Reckon I can get a good hour of that in before it's time for the Antiques Roadshow. And I'll eat at some point. I guess.
Meanwhile, here are the things I ought to be doing;
(a) Cleaning out the goldfish. They have taken to swimming against the glass of their bowl and occasionally flicking the surface with their tails trying to alert me to the squalor of their faintly orange tinted water. I know it's cruel. I know that the edges of that tank should not be furred up with algae. I know I should be able to see them through the glass and the murk. I know all this and I will do it.
Later.
Once I've done this.
(b) Get dressed. It's four thirty in the afternoon. I'm still in my night attire and while on someone else that phrase may sound sexy and alluring - "I'm only wearing a very thin, very short nightdress," - that, I can assure you, is not the case with me. Until someone makes a fetish film called 'Chicks in Oversized Tee-shirts and Knee High Socks with Bad Hair' that is. Then I'm your girl.
(c) Eat. Unless I can reach it from a prone position on the sofa, it's not going in my mouth. I've discovered I can slide a bowl of Maltesers towards my groping hand using my foot - thank you, dance classes, I knew you weren't in vain - and I can look pitifully at whoever comes into the room.
"Are you going to the kitchen ?" I ask in a lost little girl voice, "if you are can you please bring me in an apple/sandwich/full roast dinner with all the trimmings ?"
(d) Finish the short story I started a week ago. Deadlines are my nemesis. They come steaming towards you, blundering past everything else you've put off doing for weeks, announcing themselves in a thunderous voice that you were meant to have taken notice of five weeks previously. If a deadline had a voice it would sound like Brian Blessed. This is true.

A high achieving friend told me once that procrastination was just another word for laziness. I don't agree, and the moment I'm out of my vegetative state of inertia I'll argue the point with her, but not just yet. Five more minutes.

Committing Piscine Genocide

I know, I know, I'm unstoppable. But you know how it is when you have an uneventful Sunday night of doing very little in a warm place, wrapped up snug and womblike in front of a movie until you think, I'll just chip off to bed with Catch bastard 22, the book which never ends, and in doing so you take off your clothes and hang them on a clothes rail which lurches unexpectedly and fatally to the left, tilting over in horrific slow motion and smashing into your goldfish bowl which splinters open like a cracked nut with a terrific smash, spilling out a cascade of water and the audible fleshy thump of two piscine bodies hitting the floor where they flop about for a bit and then lie still while all around them is water, water everywhere and you, frozen barefoot in just your underwear can't move for the broken glass and can only watch them flail while water spreads out towards you like slow moving lava in a dark shadow and by the time, five minutes later you get round to picking them up by their tails and the bloody things are still alive and squirm in your hand so you squeal like a girl and shove them in a bucket of water while for the next three quarters of a cocking hour you are on your hands and knees for all the wrong reasons mopping up stale water and then you think to yourself 'Bollocks to this it's half past twelve, I'm going to get a beer.'

You know those kinds of nights ?

I fucking do.

small town blues

A little while back Philip J and I were discussing Small Town Mentality Syndrome. Having grown up in a city the size of a monopoly board I am well versed in the mechanics of gossip and rumour and the constant vigilance of the small townee. On more than one occasion as a teenager I'd arrive home to find that my parents knew more about what I'd been up to that night than was entirely comfortable, particularly as my good times revolved around spar cider, poppers and french kissing the local youth round the back of the cathedral.
Don't get me wrong, I like to gossip as much as the next lass, but there is something sinister and almost bleak about being the subject of the bitchery and snipery that sustains the Small Town Mentality.I'm known for my terrible judgement of both people and situations and therefore found myself against the better judgement of every single person I knew, on a flight to Asia to marry a total idiot. My friends tried to stop me. The regulars in the pub I was running tried to stop me. My own mother offered me money to not go. But I knew what I was doing, I was in love.

So when, four weeks and many tears later I arrived unwed back in Brighton, tanned and skinnier than when I'd left but feeling like a catastrophic failure and abysmally alone, it came as no surprise at all to find that everyone knew. Everyone. Even complete strangers came up to me in the pub;
"Ah, we knew it wouldn't work out. He was no good for you. We all thought so. Boys a fool if he doesn't want you etc"
"Who are you ?"
"Ah. We saw your picture in the shop there."

"What ?"
Turns out my flatmate Simon had put a poster up of me in the town centre with the words;
'LOST. A friend and a flatmate, last seen running away to Thailand with her head in the clouds'
because he knew, like everyone else it seemed, that it was never going to work out. Just like everyone had said. A few people had joked about taking bets on how long it would be before I came home - at least I think they were joking. The point being that the fact that it hadn't worked out made for very good story indeed, especially when you consider that the boy involved flew back to England before me threatening to kill a man I'd once had a fling with. Oh, how that paid off in gossip gold. It's all there, broken hearts, shotgun weddings, bikinis, threats to kill, if it didn't sound so fictional I'd write a book about it.

Back to the conversation. Philip had made a good point in that when you live in a small town with not much happening except the events of other people's lives you tend to get 'a running commentary' on your activities from others.
In this case I was meeting a friend who had moved away from Brighton recently and was only in town for the afternoon. We had about an hour and a half together before she had to go, which was time enough for a pint. Sitting in the beer garden I hadn't even taken my jacket off when I was hit with the question bullets flying out of her face.
" You're not going to tell about this man you've met than?"

"Which one ?"

"I hear you haven't written anything for a while because you've been drinking too much."

"Pardon ?"

"Is it true that you're getting dressed up as Led Zeppelin on the night of the tribute concert and performing the entirety of 'Physical Graffiti' in your kitchen and that you and Lisa have fallen out because you both wanted to be Jimmy Page?"
"That's not strictly true, no -"

"You still not sleeping I hear ?"
"Jesus - "

"Someone told me you were some kind of ultra vixen with a torture dungeon in your basement and a cache of weapons in the loft."
"Yeah, I suppose."

Turns out she was being fed this information through the many and various mouths of my acquaintances, and as she no longer lived in town she had specifically asked that any news was reported back to her with the speed and inaccuracy of a tabloid reporter. Which I could have been annoyed about. I could have pulled her up and told her that if she wanted to know about what I was doing all she had to do was ask and I'd tell her. But after years of living in a tiny, snub-nosed town I have developed the ability to shrug off all my gossip and laugh in the face of all the scandalous rumours. Particularly the one currently doing the rounds about me at the moment. I'm sure you'll hear about it soon. Just not from me.

that van stank to high heaven though.

I have a wonderful image in my head, a static slice of frozen time.
Cornwall, a few years ago. Nine of us had miraculously managed to get a weekend off our various bar jobs and hired a mini-bus to drive down there for an experimental exodus out of Brighton. It was, and remains still, one of the happiest journeys I've taken so far - 'the devil fools with the best laid plans' Neil Young once sang but we were safe because we hadn't made any. Not one. Hence the first night was spent with nine of us sleeping upright and drunk in the van parked on Perranporth beach. The image in my head is that of us, windswept and tired, on the seafront down at St Ives on a brisk May morning the day we were due to leave. Alex John is looking pale and unhappy because a seagull had stolen her ice-cream and she had a bilious hangover from the local scrumpy. Tina is still drunk, and wrapped up in a bright pink blanket. Jon and Odge are to my left, discussing Fifty Cent with Gordon, who looks stilted and worn because he cricked his neck sleeping in the van on the first night. From here, stood on the beach I can see Amy and Burg writing their names in the sand. Finch is to my right, with a pasty, ignoring the fact that the temperature within it is close to that of molten lava.
It was here that I can remember feeling happy - happy in that content, this is bliss way - and hoping it was a moment I would never forget. We've banned ourselves from discussing that holiday now - particularly in the presence of anyone who wasn't there - because the stories and anecdotes are numerous and the in-jokes so inverted that they may as well be mythical, and anyone listening to us ramble on about it generally starts shifting in their seat, then their eyes develop a glassy sheen, then their jaws slacken and a runner of drool swings from their lower lip as they enter an advanced catatonic state.
Alright, it's not that boring. But like all the best things, you had to be there.

aka 'big stupid nobchops'

If you're going to give yourself an alias - the sort of cool, razor-edged, law-breaking moniker used mainly by rappers and hustlers, always, always choose something which makes you sound, well, cool, razor-edged and law-breaking.
For instance, no-one is going to question the credentials of the Grym Reaper, Dr Doom or Ol' Dirty Bastard.
And you'd have to be an maniac to pick a fight with someone calling themselves Ghost Face Killah.
So in my childish way, it really made me laugh when, on Saturday afternoon as I headed off to the pub I saw that someone calling themselves Big Daddy G had tagged themselves all over the walls of one of Brighton's junctions. What made it funny, at least to me in some puerile way, was that someone had added '-ay' at the end of ‘ Big Daddy G’.
Ah, the comedy.

such a load of old bono, all of it.

The other night Alan and I were having late drinks in the pub and we overhead a table having a ‘Ten Bands we Must see before we Die’ conversation, which led us, in our meandering, drunken way, on to a conversation of ‘Ten Bands we’d rather Die then See’.
I’d forgotten all about it until last week when I received this message from Al;

Alan - Oasis, Hard-Fi, Fatboy Slim, The Kooks, Arctic Monkeys, U2, Calvin Harris, Maroon 5, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Hard-Fi again (Cos I hate them so much)...

Which led me to respond;

Daisy - u2, sting, sting and u2 in concert , sting, bono and simply red live with jamie cullum, genesis, phil collins, mike and mechanics, razorlight, steely dan, ub40, fallout boy, my chemical romance, ub40 guest appearing at a lenny kravitz concert.
*deep breath*
akkon the ringtone menace, jack penate, sean kingston, katie melua, dave stewart solo with jamie cullum on the pia-pia-pia-no, collins on drums, and bono on vocals. it’s a super group.super shit that is.

and m-people, which I have just thought of. Bunch of insipid, lukewarm arse.

(thanks to Alan for making me laugh so much about it though.)

insomnia's revenge - the awakening

It's four-thirty in the morning the night before the day I'm going to post this, or the morning of, if you're a bit of a pedant.
I've just been downstairs to make a cup of tea and stare glazed around the kitchen cursing my restlessness when I found myself drawn against my will to the flat black pools of the windows which overlook the garden.
I've said it before and will happily keep saying it until someone physically restrains me, there is something sinister about the middle of the night. On Sunday I woke up at three o'clock in the morning, paddling against the restraint of my covers and wondering why I could only see things in black and white.
" I'm colour-blind!" I screamed inwardly "I can only see in monochrome!"
A know plenty of people who get 'face at the window' syndrome - anyone who has watched a horror film from the eighties or early nineties will have some measure of this - when all you see is the spectre of your reflection peering back at you and somewhere out there, in the dark and the depths of the night the killer is prowling, stalking, knife glinting in hand, your eyes wander restlessly over the - ah Jesus! there he is, pressed flat against the glass.
The looming face at the porthole of your fears.
I spent at least five of my teenage years in a state of painful anxiety after being told by a 'psychic' that I was going to start seeing ghosts and that the first one would appear to me over my shoulder in my reflection. Thanks for that. I was a staggeringly insecure adolescent - as if there is any other kind - and would have happily spent hours staring into hostile mirrors and mentally pulling my image apart. Catching my own reflection became a terrifying ordeal, not only having to contend with the unhappy symmetry of my features but potentially the wispy face of a phantom hovering about the place, suggesting ways I could improve my hair. Whether I believe in ghosts or not, her words always, always come back to haunt me in these dark times, these alone-in-the-bowels-of-the-night times, when all I see out of the exposed kitchen windows is my own pale face, nervous and wide eyed, not just because of the roaming killer about to slam himself up against the glass but because the faces of the dead are about to loom up in the behind me as well.
It’s not as if I encourage meddling with the afterlife, I’m going to be seeing enough of it when I’m dead.

i'll (not) get these in.

"Life moves pretty fast, " said Ferris Bueller, later to be sampled on the Gravediggaz Niggamortis album, "you don't stop to look around every once in a while, you miss it."

Ferris has obviously never spent a week in my company when I'm off the sauce, when time slows to a lame crawl and the only thing you're likely to miss if you don't stop to look around is my cells dying. A craving, like gossip, is hard to ignore, particularly if you regard the twin evils of smoking and drinking as I do, which is like fond old pals instead of for what they are. One, a hysterical displacement activity and insidious poison, the other an emotion sating, speech slurring social activity.
When I tried to give up smoking back in June it was as though someone had told me I could no longer breathe. I'd sit huddled in pubs with my friends, insanely jealous as they wafted smoke about the place and made roll-ups with nimble dextrous fingers, occasionally glancing at me and saying with sincerity,
"I'm really proud of you, Daisy, you're doing really well."
Well fuck well and fuck you. Fuck all of you, you giddy, laughing, smoking bitches. Those were my actual thoughts, and the beer didn't help because aside from narrowing my already shrinking willpower to that of a gnat, one without the other just didn't seem right.
I fell off that wagon so spectacularly you could have called it a stunt dive. One of those with men carrying panes of glass across a suspiciously empty street, stacks of boxes piled up in alleyways, cranes carrying dynamite toppling over onto firework factories, that kind of thing. So I'm determined not to do that this time. It's only day three, and I'm already discovering that eerie clarity of thought in which objects, perspective and people take on vivid new dimensions which - in my blurred and booze fugged mind - I'd previously never noticed. I don't look as though I've had my hair styled by Ken Dodd as I walk into work. I've found out that I do understand Catch-22, it's just a huge tome, and will be quite laborious. I've fed my goldfish every day instead of just when I remembered, and now they are no longer trying to propel themselves over the rim of their bowl. I discovered I still have a child-like enthusiasm for many things, instead of the dried-up cynical approach I'm familiar with.

I don't advocate abstinence - I don't advocate anything, I'd be a fool to try, especially since the last time -
"What's that noise ?"
"It's bloody Daisy advocating the merits of Paul McCartney. Let's get out of here."
- but I have to say, from my sanctimonious, smug little cocoon of sobriety I'm feeling pretty good. Especially when all those around me are suffering with hangovers. Drink up, losers.

Next week : I'll be back at Threshers, doing the weekly shop.

bushes on mushes

This is my third rewrite in recounting the events of my weekend, so surreal and magnificent as it was. If, upon reaching the end of this post you still feel adrift in a sea of implausibility I can only hold my hands up and say;
"Hey. It's how it happened."
Friday saw the return to Brighton of my friends Sam and Sam, the bi-titled couple who for reasons known best to themselves moved to Bristol over a year ago. The reason for their return was twofold - the World Beard and Moustache Championships were being held at the Brighton Centre on Saturday and Sam and Mitton's Marriage of Friendship at which I, as best (wo)man was to oversee the joining together in some kind of matrimony of these two best friends.

With me so far ? Good.

Friday saw much fun and drinking and the playing of the Minder theme tune in odge's pub, with me trying to usher everyone into dancing to Come on Eileen with me - it didn't happen. The next day dawned bright and sunny which was a shame as the light lanced my parched eyeballs and throbbing head at precisely eight thirty that morning and then stubbornly refused to leave, like an uninvited drunk guest, forcing me up and into a shower which needled my delicate self and left me wet and tingling. Truly, I was suffering, and I only had a few short hours to compose my self before donning my wedding outfit (pinstriped funsuit and tie, trilby, moustache, sunglasses. I looked like a cross-dressing blues brother. I looked like John Belushi in drag. John Belushi in drag after death. You get the point.)
Hoisting my sorry self in a taxi and across town, we finally entered the Brighton Centre a good hour and a pint later and by the powers of all that is hirsute and holy it was quite literally indescribable.
No, it really was, trust me, I've tried. Even photographs don't do it justice, I can only urge you to go and see the spectacle for yourselves and consider the dedication and devotion of each and every man to his facial accessory, and instead of wondering 'Why ?' just think 'Aces'. After all as the song says;
'Every girl loves a fella with a bush upon his mush'.
At least I think that's what it said. Certainly works in my mind.
At this point I'd like to steal wholesale an image which Sam conjured up for us in the pub later, that of Tony Hewittson and his portrait on the stairs. As you enter the Centre there are two staircases - one to the left and one to the right - I, like most right handed people consistently turned right upon entering the building and in doing so we found ourselves confronted each time by a portrait of Tony Hewittson on the stairs. Who he was or what he did I don't know but the artist has captured Tony in a suit, at a desk, on a phone. As Sam said later,
"When I die, I went a portrait of me riding a stallion into the vast depths of hell holding a flaming sword in one hand and a human head in the other. I don't want it to look as though I'm trying to get through to the marketing department."
It's a fair point. Perhaps the Brighton Centre would like to take this into account.
After being touched up by some very frisky gents in uniform - I said put your arm around me for a photo, not go for my tits - and marvelling at one very dapper gent (Number 17 in the Full Beard category) who pulled the chair out for his good lady wife and stood when she stood, was seated when she sat etc, I remarked on how it was a shame manners didn't exist like that any more. Mitton wrinkled her nose,
"It'd piss you off after a while, Daize. You'd end up bobbing up and down all night just to see how long it would take for his patience to snap."
Touché. And indeed, 'Tasche.
The wedding took place on the floor of or local pub's beer garden owing to lack of vacant beaches and was witnessed by myself and Gracie, a stout dog-pig with one of those wrinkled, flabby faces you can't fail to find distinctly unappealing. Then it was shots all round and a magnificent tumble from Lisa 'It's been a while' Mitton on the way home.
Their wedding night was spent with me in the kitchen arguing over whether or no Rod Stewart has ever been hot. (Answer: NO).

Me ? Drinking problem ? Nah, I don't have a problem with it.

Update: I’ve been asked to mention the tequila fuelled band which was formed following the wedding ceremony called Dog for a Witness in which I’m the lead singer. Looks like I’ll have to put my electro project Laser Love Guns to one side for a while.