I’m Still Standing (just …)

In which The Author catches up

In case my regular readers have been wondering, I’m still about. Just about …

Instead of reinvigorating me as usual, that last trip to London has left me feeling remarkably down and antisocial. I’ve been to the library exactly four times in the past two weeks, just catching up online and not bothering to stay long.

I’ve been to the pub just once, last Wednesday afternoon, and I only called in to buy my draw ticket and have a quick can of Coke. I’ve even been avoiding the park. This weekend it was full of rides and stalls, and I daresay the odd jazz band as well (see my other blog The Carnival is Over). It would have been a particularly unwelcoming environment for someone who doesn’t enjoy the sound of screaming kids and what seems to pass for music these days.

Instead, I’ve stayed at home and read books instead. I finished Ben Aaronovitch’s latest novel Foxglove Summer within a few days of buying it, so I’ve returned to the start of the series and I’m currently re-reading Rivers of London.

I noticed a fair number of typos and mistakes while I was reading Foxglove Summer, so I made a comment about that fact on Twitter. Within a few minutes I had a reply from a senior executive at Orion Publishing, asking whether I was reading the hardback. Apparently there’d been a glaring error there. I don’t know if I’d found the same mistake, or a different one. It doesn’t matter, because her next Tweet invited me to send in anything I found.

I ended up re-reading the book in minute detail, and sending them seven pages of corrections, comments and suggestions. I thought my cheeky approach might allow me to dip a toe in their pool of freelance help. I posted it on Thursday and so far I haven’t heard anything from them. I know people are on holiday, and there are lot of book festivals at this time of year, but I thought I might have had some feedback by now.

The What The Papers Say crowd are starting to gather in Aberdare Library as I type this. They’re the old folk who used to read the tabloids in the day centre a couple of minutes’ walk away. Then the day centre decided it couldn’t afford the papers any more (see A Nice Little Earner).

Instead of going there, they all come here and discuss the issues of the day under the misapprehension that they’re competing with a TV tuned to Crap in the Attic and with the volume set to 11.

It’s quite dispiriting to have to listen to their intellectual discussions. Since nearly all the papers on offer in the library back the Tories and/or UKIP, the world-view of their readers dovetails perfectly with their right-wing, xenophobic, racist, pro-Cameron editorial agenda. Then again, as I pointed in No Future a few years ago, the Welsh working class are among the most right-wing people I’ve ever encountered anyway. It’s a chicken and egg situation – do the punters get their opinions wholesale from the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, or do they simply like to read a paper which reinforces their own prejudices? (Answers on a postcard, please, to Dr Ayo Banji, Lecturer in ‘Language, Power and Ideology’, formerly of Cardiff University.)

I’m definitely going to put my house on the market in the next couple of months. I can’t afford to do the jobs that need doing, and the longer I leave them the worse things will get. I need to cash in my only asset and get the fuck out of Aberdare as soon as possible, before I end up killing myself (or killing somebody else, which is arguably worse). I don’t know where I’ll go yet, but with a bit of cash in the bank I’ll at least have a cushion while I find somewhere new and something new to do.

There were some lighter moments over the weekend. Saturday was enlivened by Radio 4’s broadcast of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, starring John Hurt as the incorrigible journalist, boozer, gambler, womanizer and saloon bar philosopher. Amazingly, it went out in the 2.30 drama slot, albeit with a well-placed warning of ‘Very strong language from the start.’ Considering that Jeff’s first line is ‘Shit!’ and his second is ‘Fuck!’, I think that was probably a fair comment. I can’t wait to hear the comments about it when Feedback comes back on the air next month.

In the evening I watched the Rutles film All You Need Is Cash for the umpteenth time. It gets better every time. I found an audio commentary by Eric Idle hidden in the menu, so I listened to that while watching the movie. I hadn’t realised that the much-missed Ollie Halsall not only played the guitar solos, but also sang Dirk McQuigley’s parts and featured as ‘Leppo’ in the Hamburg photo. Talking about Ollie’s involvement with the project, Mr Idle simply says that Ollie enjoyed himself too much. That’s a nice way of saying that he had a long drug habit which finally finished him off.

Colin R. was in Aberdare a couple of weeks ago, and asked me how many posts I write. At the time I was averaging about three a week. Now it’s down to one at best. There isn’t much to write about when you’re too fed up to go out and too pissed off to talk to people.

Having said that, I’ve started a subsidiary blog called O’Gorman’s Unfamiliar Quotations. It’s a compilation of wit and wisdom drawn from books, TV shows, films and radio programmes, and odd snippets from other sources. It’ll grow in time, as and when I come across something worth sharing.

As for this blog – don’t hold your breath until next time.

It’s Not Complicated

In which The Author changes his relationship status

This morning I did something I should have done months ago. I’ve been putting it off, mainly because I couldn’t be bothered with trying to log in via Aberdare Library’s pisspoor wifi and changing my password. This morning, after the latest junk email pinged into my inbox, I decided to go through with it. The latest bout of depression and/or self-loathing forced my hand, and I had no real choice in the matter.

I deleted my Plenty of Fish profile.

It might surprise you to learn that I even had a Plenty of Fish profile. Me – dating online! I know, it’s fucking farcical, isn’t it? Bear in mind that I’ve been out of the dating game for so long that I don’t know the rules any more.

I’m not even interested in the fucking game, to be perfectly frank. A couple of months ago, Gareth L. and I were chatting over a pint, and he said something like, ‘You’re never going to meet your sort of woman in a shitty town like Aberdare. You need to go to Cardiff.’

I replied that I wasn’t looking for anyone any more. (This was before Emma’s name came up in conversation, of course! After all, I’ve already met the only woman whom I was remotely interested in spending the rest of my life with, and she fucked off back to Australia fourteen years ago.)

I’ve had my fair share of fucked-up so-called ‘girlfriends’ and near misses in the last few years. Go through the backlist from summer 2009 to about the end of 2012, and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve dabbled with computer dating before, though. I even struck out on Bondage.com. If I wasn’t going to meet my next girlfriend there, I wasn’t going to meet her anywhere, was I?

I’ve even had robots and agents (in The Matrix sense of the word) trying to hook up with me, as I related in Computer Love. After getting my fingers burnt too many times, I decided a long time ago that it was safer to stay out of harm’s way.

As I told you in Half My Age Plus Seven, I got invited to go speed dating in Cardiff by Hannah a few months ago, and very firmly threw cold water on that suggestion. Hannah might have decided to go on her own. I haven’t seen her for a month or so, so I don’t know.

Signing up for Plenty of Fish was a last ditch attempt to meet someone new, a couple of years ago when I was still interested in playing the game. I uploaded a photo, got halfway through filling in my profile, and lost interest pretty much as soon as I started getting daily emails with ‘my latest matches’.

I don’t think there was a single photo I found appealing. I’m sure they’re very nice people, but when you’re just shy of your fiftieth birthday you don’t want to be reminded of the fact by a daily gallery of ropey forty-something Valleys women – usually with at least a few kids in tow – looking for a sugar daddy. Most of them looked like the sort of women who always turn up at ‘live band nights’ and use the Kings of Leon’s best-known song as the excuse to shout ‘sex’ to try and shock everyone. I’ve met hundreds of women like them over the last twenty years or so of pubgoing.

If they weren’t the women I already know, they were usually the equivalent from the neighbouring valleys. Given that virtually all public transport in the valleys closes down after 6 p.m. on a weekday, travelling outside a very small area becomes an extremely expensive pastime. I’m fucked (no pun intended) if I’m getting a taxi home from Caerphilly or some equally Goddessforsaken place at chucking out time.

Oddly enough, women joining these dating sites usually get in free. The same racket is operated by nightclubs which let girls in free, in the hope that a plethora of totty will draw in hordes of male punters – who, naturally, have to pay through the fucking nose. If I had spotted someone who took my fancy, I’d have to pay for ‘full membership’ (exactly the same scam as I reported in From Russia With Love and its sequel). At least phone apps like Tindr and Grindr (I’m told) allow you to just skip through the mugshots and weed out the horrors without paying up.

There might well be plenty more fish in the sea, as that old cliché has it. But I’m not interested in fishing any more. My profile has been deleted as of about two hours ago. It’s a long drawn-out process to delete it, involving a complicated procedure of signing in, answering some questions, and then endlessly verifying that yes, I do want to delete my fucking profile, otherwise I wouldn’t have accessed this particular fucking menu in the first place!

Oddly enough, the dropdown menu to give your reason for leaving Plenty of Fish doesn’t include the option I’m NOT FUCKING INTERESTED ANY MORE.

I can’t imagine why.