life on mars

An extract from Shooting Stars, a comedy, written 2004

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Erica: Sometimes I wake up and I think that maybe I’m not actually human. I look human, but I’m not sure. Do you ever think that?

Lee Er - no.

Erica: My mum and dad aren’t very human. They just sit at home and watch telly all day. Like something isn’t working quite right. I’m not saying I’m a machine, but maybe they come from somewhere else. Like Sirius.

Lee: Sirius?

Erica: It’s a star. Quite a close one.

Lee: You think you come from Sirius.

Erica: There’s more aliens than people realise. Once you know what to look for you can spot them a mile away. They’re the ones in the shop who have no feelings. They have a way of treating people which is totally non-human. I’m not one of them. I think most of them come from the death star. Because I do care a little bit. But all the same. No-one understands my feelings. Ever. Which makes me think that maybe I am one of them. An alien. But a friendly alien. From somewhere like Sirius. I can’t be precise. It’s more an intuition than a fact. (Lee fidgets) You can watch the football again when I go.

Lee: What’s this got to do with Joey?

Erica: I’m trying to find someone. Someone who makes me feel like a human. I’m sure there’s one out there somewhere. I go out and search. Sometimes I think they could be a footballer. I thought it might be Joey. You were right about him. There’s something different.

Lee: You think Joey’s an alien?

Erica: In the end I decided he wasn’t. I read that article and all it talked about was all that sentimental stuff about your dad dying, and what a nice boy he is and how plucky, and I decided he was much too human to be an alien.

Lee: You decided.

Erica: We could have been two independent life-forms colliding by some kind of freaky chance in this little corner of the universe. That’s what I’m looking for. But we’re not. He’s just another footballer picking up another girl he fancied. That’s why we’re incompatible. You can tell him that.

Lee: I don’t know what to say.

Erica: Good.

secret shoreditch garden

email

Was sent the following last week, with the message that it's "very fletcherian". Judge for yourself.

Just Once - Anne Sexton

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.

encircled

In Rotherhithe station you hear water as you wait.
Dripping. Seeping. Projecting a self. You cannot
See it. You peer into the tunnel, suspended
Beneath the inscrutable flow. Southwards lurks
Daylight. A train rumbles. Stuns the water’s whisper.

If you want me to stay, he sung, danced and feinted,
Cocking a snook at th’ invisible cradle which
Crowded the room, chattering its teeth, like water.

anaesthetic

These days, my friend informs me, they’re reluctant to give you a general anaesthetic. He knows someone who had their eyeball removed under local. Hospital becomes a fully fledged David Lynch experience. To which you are invited to bring your own soundtrack. Clients can bring a favourite CD to play during the course of the operation. Get the numbed-out surround sound experience. Our only concern is…what happens if the surgeon hates your choice of music. S/he is into Mozart and you bring Motorhead. Or visa versa. This could provoke two responses. Either s/he rushes to get it over with. Or it provokes unforced errors - an evaluated side-effect of aberrant music being inflicted in the workplace over an extended period of time. Perhaps safer to keep it quiet and enjoy the experience in the cauterised silence of a hospital hum.

jose mourinho is a miserable icon

Mourinho has a job, a good job. He manages a football team. They’re doing well, very well. Everywhere he goes, he does well. He’s a very successful man. He makes a lot of money, has a lovely family, lives in a smart home, does a healthy degree of international travel, is good looking, widely admired – he has a lot going for him.

However, every time you see Mourinho, these days, he looks miserable. Like he doesn’t want to be there. When he first came to England, he used to smile and joke a bit. Nowadays, he scowls, he frets, he is quite clearly unhappy.

As such, he is a modern icon. Who does like their job? Of all the people I have known who have had a regular job, how many have enjoyed it? That includes myself in the dim, distant days of graft. All over this city, people go to work every day, make good money, do things that might be amazing or might be banal, and it makes no difference. They might be at the top of the tree or they might be collecting acorns, they still come home with a Mourinho scowl. People come from all over the world to this city in order to acquire a Mourinho scowl.

It’s another string to his bow.

Jose Mourinho is a miserable icon.

so what exactly is the strategy?

"The strategy is to win."

Tony Snow, White House press secretary, quoted Guardian

the nigerian and the uruguayan

The Nigerian works in a factory in Harlseden. I met him in a pub in Peckham. He doesn't support any particular team but he knows his football (he's got a team in Nigeria from somewhere near Port Harcourt). We chatted away merrily as you like through the second half, him noting the way Shevchenko made space for Drogba, complimenting Iniesta, noting that the Brazilians, like the Africans, play for fun more than money. Unlike the English. His name's Manu.

I don't know the Uruguayan's name but he knows his Britpop even though he doesn't rate it. Unfortunately for those who don't speak it, the article's in Spanish, but he says that Oasis and all the rest are derivative and somewhat maudling, and harks back to the halcyon days of the Sex Pistols, the Beta Band, the Jam and Steve Harley. He calls Tony Blair a hijo de puta as well as coming up with one of my favourite words of the week: toyotizado. Not exactly sure what it means but it still makes sense.

burnley road

It was 1995, towards the end of. The whole year had been rootless. Moving along the 2 bus route, from Tulse Hill to Crystal Palace to Brixton and back again. Burnley Road is just past Stockwell, heading for Brixton. I was looking through Loot. The pressure was on. I needed somewhere to live, to be settled, and I needed it soon. I was still signing on, so it was going to have to be somewhere that took DSS. Burnley Road is a typical London street – white stucco pillars, part of a faded commuter belt, been through decades of decay, probably only now on the point of regeneration. I rang the bell and it sounded like a civilised party was taking place inside. A middle aged woman came to the door. A young man carrying a glass of wine came down the stairs, followed by another woman. The woman who opened the door owned the place. She was genial. She offered me a glass of wine. She was apologetic. She had no problem with DSS, but the room had just gone. To the man walking down the stairs. Everyone seemed very happy; and very sorry for my misfortune in being one viewing too late. I didn’t stay for a glass of wine. Next week I discovered Trinity Square, future home to blinding Barry and the poisonous fridge. Since then have been past Burnley road a thousand times and more, but never walked down it once.

autumn

Strange how two people can magnetise for so long despite being so different.

Does one reed bend to the other’s breeze or is it the other way round?

Or perhaps both are harmonically rippling the will of an untraceable compass needle.

2 suns set in green park

overheard at frieze art fair

Man

(Enquiring about large scale black and white picture)

How much is that one over there?

Woman

(Manning stall)

How much is it?

Man
More or less?

Woman

Well... About two hundred -

Man

(contemplating a purchase)

Is that all ?!

Woman

(Taken aback)

To some people that's quite a lot of money -

Man

Do you think so?

Woman

Well yes. Two hundred thousand -

Man

(no longer contemplating a purchase)

Two hundred thousand ?

Woman

Pounds.

The man opts not to get his cheque book out

rare televisual immersion

The TV and I have fewer and fewer encounters nowadays. This is all down to circumstances, no doubt. Tonight, at Alice's house, we sit down to watch Merrick in Prime Suspect. I missed Alice being funny the other day. Merrick mumbles beautifully. He looks younger than the last time I saw him. He's a plausible copper, in the shiny new police station. The action cuts to a hospital. The nurse comes into shot. It's Glenda. It looks like she's not coming back, then towards the end she touchingly hands over the dead man's effects to his daughter. In the adverts, Alice says that's what's his name from Blakes Junction 7. The last time I saw him he was wearing a chef's outfit. The pub quiz player turns up as he's bound to do. Alice says she got the schoolteacher's name wrong once, called him Ricky. For years the TV is like a distant land, where things happen in a parallel universe. Then you grow up and it's like going to the pub.

ljubljana

untitled

As though to affirm the destruction of the concept the neighbour on the other side has begun to play play music with a repetitive beat every time Peckham and I collide.

friends

Every now and again you realise that the only thing that keeps you sane is the communication offered you by your friends. Their insistence on you fulfilling your obligation to remain your self, no matter how tempting it may be to become someone else.

texan panhandle

Reading Cormac McCarthy, Micah P in the background, feeling some kind of evil stab, in the bath.

micah p

Micah P wears a solid looking baseball hat low over his eyes. He wields his guitar like a chainsaw. He smokes as he plays, fingers never leaving the fret.

When I first heard Micah P I imagined him a long haired goth. Out of joint in Texas. Wearing black dresses over black jeans with scarlet nail varnish. Emaciated, as torn apart as his voice. Barely able to walk.

Micah P doesn’t look anything like that. He looks someone who comes from Texas.

I probably thought he looked like that because of the circumstances under which we bonded. I was leaning against a radiator in the middle of the night crying my eyes out. Something in the tone of his voice made me feel as though he might have behaved in a similar fashion, in a trailer someplace like Abilene, Van Horn or Anthony. A trailer which felt like the way his songs sounded which was also the way I was feeling at the time.

During the gig Micah P chatted to the audience quite a bit. He had some wry one liners. Someone called out for him to play a song called Patience, and he said into the mike, ‘I just might if you have any’. Later he looked at the crowd of Londoners and told us it was like a miracle the way things had changed. Only two and half years ago, he was living off a woman, with his life ‘not going... not going anywhere good at all.’

At the end of his last song, Patience, Micah P basically gives up singing and starts howling. His gravely voice sounds like it’s had enough of having to put feelings into words. There are more expressive ways of doing it. He chops down mike stands with his chainsaw. It doesn’t feel like an act. It feels like the sound of someone who’s been there.

luddite(s)

First the Lumiere went, the prettiest interior in London, a graceful low-slung cieling shielding a massive screen which played films that Leicester Square wouldn't want to know.

The Metro changed its name, had a refit with fine cream coloured leather seats, then disappeared off the planet with barely a goodbye.

The Lux came, saw, failed to conquer, and was sawn off at the knees.

The Swiss centre was a poor excuse for a cinema, four bite sized screens sandwiched next to one another. However, it also showed the films Leicester Square wouldn't take; and it was accessed by a lift.

Now they're going to re-vamp the NFT. The big screen at the NFT is still a comfortable place to watch a film in. They don't sell popcorn. There are no trailers or ads. The cinema gives you a hand-out with information on the film you're watching. Sometimes there won't be anything on there you'll want to see in months, but when there is, there's nowhere better to watch a film in London. Who knows what kind of audience-friendly developments will be put in place when they re-vamp it to ensure that our viewing experience is enhanced.

the asssessor

I'm standing in the bath and the phone rings.

But that's 45 minutes later.

The assessor arrives. He looks like someone's idea of an extra in a British gangster flick. He has a shaven head with sports sunglasses locked on like horns. He's fifty something, strong, purposeful.

The assessor says it won't take a moment. He walks through the flat, footstep by footstep. At first I think he's testing out the floorboards. He writes something on the back of an envelope. He doesn't talk to me. I realise he's measuring the space.

The space of the flat.

It takes five minutes, then he leaves.

I run a bath.

I got there twenty minutes before the assessor.

I was just trying to get the old laptop to go on-line. The BBC homepage came up as 15th March. Israeli commandos had stormed a Palestinian jail. Ballack had agreed to join Chelsea. It refused to refresh. I called my wife up to ask her if she knew why it wasn't working but she wasn't there.

The assessor came and left.

I had a pitta bread. Took a fearsome pleasure from eating off a brown plate, using a knife. The bath was running. I figured I might never get the chance again. To use the bath. It's a good bath. And I needed one.

Later I'd leave with two pairs of shoes in a plastic bag and one yellow llama made of salt. Retreat is a slow process.

The phone rang. I was in the bath. I stood up. Water dripped off me. It was my wife, phoning me back. She told me there was something wrong with the connection. Later I thought that didn't make sense. As the laptop had gone on-line. It was Explorer that wasn't working. But I didn't think that at the time. I was too worried she was going to realise I was in the bath. Worried that she'd hear a drip hit the water. She sensed something was up. She asked me if I was ok and I said I'm fine. Trying to conceal the steam. The towels. My wet skin. On the end of a line.

lula

The first time Lula and I came across one another he was campaigning for the presidency (again) and I was in Asuncion. Staying in a hotel with a view of nothing, with a group of Yankee tourists who were casting aspersions about what might be happening in that hotel room, as I was rooming with Matt, the only gay American in the Southern Cone, or so it seemed. We’d been to see the bottle dancing trick, and I’d broken a flip flop on the paving stones, hobbling barefoot, and now Lula was on the telly getting beaten in the 94 election.

The next morning we walked down past a smart government building to the river. Just around the corner was a slum. We walked through it to get to the riverfront. I’d seen slums in Latin America before, but out of reach, on the tops of hills, on the edge of cities you passed through in a bus. This one was right in the centre. Smoke windowed government Mercedes drove through it dragging jetskis behind them. As we left we saw a pair of sisters leaving the slum to go to school. Not a hair was out of place. Their uniforms were impeccable. They looked like they could have come out of the government building only they didn’t.

Lula wore blue denim in that election. He looked like the antithesis of corruption. He had a messy beard and seemed to have no grasp of the idea of media. He’s been a political prisoner and a Union leader and a radical. It was a surprise he was even in the race. It was less of a surprise Color won, and Lula lost. It was about the fifteenth time Lula had run for president. He always lost.

In 2002, Lula won. I can’t remember where I was. It was the first of many remarkable left-wing victories on the continent. Two years later, I went with Steve and Moises to the place where Lula was born. It doesn’t exist anymore. There’s some palm trees in a field in the middle of nowhere. His cousin took us. I don’t know if it’s his real cousin or if Lula’s the kind of guy who has a thousand cousins. He seemed real enough. He got us up at dawn and we drove from Garanhuans into the bush for hours. We saw the crossroads where Lula caught a bus to Sao Paulo, we met people tending the fields nearby who’d never heard of England. Why should they. We met an old man who said he knew Lula as a kid. Lula’s cousin had flinty eyes and a wide brimmed hat. Places don’t say much, but they can reveal the determination it might take to get out of them. Lula had a lot of that.

So Lula had made it. He’d changed he style. He now wears dapper suits and brazen ties. He looks comfortable. He plays the part. Was this some kind of pact? If so, it’s probably what you have to do to get elected these days. Save the jeans for the photo-op. A reminder of roots you’ve left behind. This weekend gone Lula went for re-election. He’s tainted by corruption slurs. Maybe they’re true, maybe it’s dirty tricks. He anticipated winning at a canter, first past the post with more than fifty percent. He didn’t. He’s got to go to the second round. Lula’s sweating again. Politics is a slippery business. He’s still fighting. We’ll see if he makes it. Or if it’s time to put the suits away.

the raincoat man

When H and I were looking for a place to live after Chelsham Road we trawled around South London, the areas we knew best. In the end we were interviewed for a place by a stout landlord, and lived on South Lambeth Road for six months. Neither of us ever really got used to the noise of traffic. I believe The Focus Group took place whilst we were there: I have a memory of the cast coming round. We bought the orange futon. It wasn’t a perfect place but it got us used to the neighbourhood – Bar Estrella, Rebatos, Di Lieto’s, things that would be staples for years to come.

When we were looking for somewhere we saw some grim places, as you do when you’re on the lower tier of the rental ladder. There was one place round the back of Oval we went to see which looked like it was designed for hamsters not humans. I remember someone else turned up. He might have looked at the flat with us, I can’t recall. What I do recall was his demeanour. He seemed like someone whose whole world had imploded. Then he told us as much. He’d split up from his wife, had to move out of his house, and now he was reduced to trawling round after work trying to find a shoebox to live in. I may have felt sorry for him, I may have not, but I do remember feeling relieved when he went his separate way. Some people seem ill-starred, and he was one of them.