2011 – Last Thoughts

ITEM: I was recently surprised to discover that orgasm headache is an actual medical condition. No, seriously, it is – click on the link. I shared this information with Miss P last night, who opined, ‘It’s nature’s way of telling you to wank less.’ I wasn’t entirely sure if she was making a generalisation or directing the comment at me personally, and bearing in mind the advice of an editor I once worked with (‘Don’t ask the question unless you really want to know the answer’), decided not to seek clarification.

ITEM: Little things amuse me, and so I was inordinately pleased to discover a headline which, thanks to the vagaries of electronic communication, read ‘Thatcher government planned to evacuate Liver…’, but at the same time slightly peeved that, in their wisdom, our urban planners don’t appear to have named a town Bowelpool, or even Bowelhampton, which the innuendo minded will find even more endearing.

ITEM: I had a strange dream a couple of nights’ back. Bon Jovi were playing Shipdham Community Centre, and a woman I know online was coming down to see them and had asked if she could stay overnight round mine. My friend L was also staying, and as I have only the one bed there was some concern as to sleeping arrangements. Normally, being the perfect gentleman, I would let the ladies share the bed and go doss down on my couch, but L is gay and thought it would be more appropriate to share with me, while the other woman had principles that baulked at two people of the opposite sex sharing a bed if they weren’t married. And so we ended up with a heated debate, which is when Jon Bon Jovi turned up to stay the night. I woke up then, and so have no idea how it all ended, but I suspect L discovered she wasn’t quite as gay as she thought, the other woman abandoned her principles and I ended up sleeping in the bath tub.

ITEM: As somebody with an interest in modern art and who likes to keep his finger on the pulse, I was delighted to discover a link on Facebook to The Great Wall of Vagina.

Only it’s entirely derivative. Back in the 80s some friends and I staged a couple of art shows at the St Gregory’s Arts Centre in Norwich. I wasn’t an artist, but I did write a lot of poems and produce collages to accompany them, and I had concepts that the other, artistically gifted, people could turn into reality (I’m particularly proud of a rendition of Lichtenstein’s Whaam for which we used a model aeroplane kit to give a 3D effect, with the plane coming out of the canvas, though unfortunately it had a tendency to fall off every other day, and so was constantly getting glued back in place).

One exhibit was The Book of the Goddess, which was a massive tome we’d painted up in bright colours and added mystic symbols to, then scooped out the middle and used plasticine to mount a rubber vagina inside (a sex toy Miss P had given me as a present – don’t ask). Word obviously got round, and although Book was in a corner of the exhibition marked ‘Adults Only’, one afternoon there was a procession of school children, each of whom walked up to it, flipped open the cover and stared, then walked off looking very puzzled.

And now I’m wondering if this Jamie McCartney guy was one of them.

ITEM: T’other day on Facebook, Simon Strantzas posted ‘I think awards turn writers crazy’, and I broke cover long enough to click Like. It seems to me that for some people getting an award has come to assume a greater importance than producing a body of work worthy of one.

I understand that writers are proud to be considered for an award (even if I often feel that the people drawing up nominations are even more clueless than I am), and yes, certainly you should tell the world about it, shout from the rooftops if you can’t get online, but when that pushes over into actively soliciting votes instead of simply pointing people at the poll and hoping that they judge your work the best, then I find it repugnant and won’t vote for anyone who uses such practices, regardless of any merit.

The only profession in which canvassing and getting the vote out is de rigueur is politics, and I’d really like to think that writers and publishers are a bit better than that, have more dignity and self-respect.

ITEM: I’ll be announcing my own Pete Awards in the near future, both here and over on the Case Notes blog. I just need to finish off all the books I’ve started in 2011, and then figure out who is eligible and who is the best. I’m hoping to come up with enough categories that I can give an award to just about everybody, and regardless of all the sanctimonious crapola in the previous ITEM, if anybody wants to brown nose or offer me inducements then go for it.

ITEM: I shall be staying up to see in the New Year, though I’m not sure if it counts as I rarely go to bed before midnight anyway. I shall phone The Imaginary Girlfriend and Miss P to wish them the best, and text a couple of other people if I remember. I shall crack open a box of cherry brandy chocolate liquers and toast 2012 with De Kuyper cherry brandy (I have a sweet tooth). I shall watch DOA: Dead Or Alive, though I may not get any further than the beach volleyball match as it gets silly after that, and enjoy a Kylie DVD of my choice.

And tomorrow, given all this unbridled hedonism, I shall probably have a headache.

Happy New Year to all my readers, and may you both get whatever you wish for in 2012 (particularly if you wish to be mates with a fat guy in Norfolk who just won the Euromillions Lottery).