Long Live the New Flesh

Monday, 20th January 1997

How our perception of language is shaped by society and advertising! To think, there is probably a foreign tongue in which "Pay nothing until Spring" translates as "Live freely forever", which is a pretty bold offer for a mobile phone company. As was the famous case with the slogan "Pepsi makes you come alive" which translated back from the Japanese became "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead", why are people ever surprised by war....

Spent Saturday lying in a darkened room, sporadically throwing up. You?

Remember: when in doubt, mumble.

Say Something Else

Thursday, 16th January 1997

The pay-me girl's had enough of the beeps so she takes a drive into the country. Although she's got herself rosy cheeks, she didn't leave enough money to pay the rent; the landlord says she'll be out in a week (what a shame - she was just getting cosy) and now she's eating chocolate to induce sleep.

The peeping tom's got a very nice view, across the street at the exhibitionist. These townies, they never speak to you, just stick together so they never get lonely. Feeling left, feeling quite light-headed - have to sit down and have some sugary tea.

But in a chemical world - in a CHEMICAL world - it's very, very, very cheap.

"And I don't know about you, but they're putting the holes in."
"Yes?"
"Yes."
"Until you can see right through."

Brass Buttons

Wednesday, 15th January 1997

Definitely a good way to wind down, as I discovered the other night. Whilst sifting through the tons of cack I'd brought with me in the move, I thought I'd put on Gram Parson's "Return of the Grievous Angel" which I'd recently seen mentioned in Nick Hornby's book "High Fidelity" in the character's top five best side-one-track-ones. It didn't do anything for me until I stumbled upon a balloon animals kit I received in my stocking one year (1995) and still had about a dozen balloons left, and DISCO! A strange, daft, melancholic witch's brew of calm and centredness filled the room and stirred me with it; the Southern brooding voice of the late GP duetted with the squeak and pop of bendy rubber balloons... niiice.

There was a rush of people at the Uxbridge Station ticket barriers today. One man stayed in line. One man pushed in. One man went with the flow. Guess who got out first.

Oh and Jez - your temp's back (Sarah, was it?), she's working in finance.

And remember, if you can't say anything nice about anyone, drop me an e-mail.

My Unifying Theory of 1997

Tuesday, 14th January 1997

WARNING: Deep and heavy. Do not approach lightly.

So here's the momentary universe argument again. It states that all past, present and future occupies the same physical space, and therefore there IS no past, present or future, just this infinitely capable NOW. Within the physical universe, there are an infinite number of virtual universes which occupy the same space, and that every moment we enter a new one. THAT suggests that all the other momentary universes still exist, one on top of the other. We do not realise this because our consciousness shows us only one path through what we call "time".

If we accept that there are an infinite number of universes one on top of the other, it is safe to conclude that there should also be an even more innumerable different universes sharing the same moment, that for every different possibility starting from Day One, and from every possibility on from that, that place exists too.

Now let's talk about you. Between your birth and now, there have been dozens (for some maybe more) of moments when you touched on your own demise, the thousands of times you didn't make it across the road, the hundreds of times you didn't come out of the coma, the brushes with death that you didn't survive.

So how come you're still here? In these moments of extreme peril, your conscious is jogged from one universe to another; we've all felt that strange lurching feeling associated with vertigo, the pull of the earth from a tall building, the tide of the traffic, and we've all pulled ourselves back. That feeling is the jump your conscious makes as you are closer than normal to the brink. Sometimes the jump is late, sometimes you do get hurt, but you jump and you pull through.

Not everybody jumps at the same time. And some potentially fatal errors we don't jump from, we can't because we didn't know what would happen. And then in our reality we do die. But if the conscious is strong enough to survive a million different deaths by jumping between associated universes, then there's more than a slim chance that reincarnation could be the answer.

Choose life? There is no choice.

A Bit Part In Your Life

Monday, 13th January 1997

Merry Monday one and all, and how was your weekend?

How did the party at the New Offices go? I must say I was impressed by the range of sausage rolls and savoury eggs available. Who brought the popular mid-twenty-something VH-1 highlights of their CD collection? And wot's the goss?

Shocked to discover this morning that I had been e-mailed by my mother, with the simple yet eerie message: "MUMMY'S SURFING". You can run, but you can't hide.

Odd coincidence; going through some boxes at home over the weekend, I discovered Kevin Keegan's autograph on a dinner menu from the 1982 Annual Sports Awards dinner. Didn't know I had that. And now he's been spotted in Florida. Or somewhere. No, sorry, I still can't bring myself to give a toss about football.

Clique Wique

Friday, 10th January 1997

"Desmond has a barrel in the market place, Molly is the singer in a band, Desmond says to Molly 'Girl I like your face' and Molly says this as she takes him by the hand:'O-bla-di, o-bla-da, life goes on, bra, la-la how the life goes on."

Paul McCartney wrote that. Give me a grand and it's yours.

Liam Gallagher's doing his bit to keep drugs off the street - he's buying them all! I love that joke.

Why didn't anyone (cept Chris) mail me back with a suggestion for an award? There must be someone you want to embarrass!

Youth Culture Killed My Dog

Thursday, 9th January 1997

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's... Thursday!

So, it's the Pharma Balimo Christmas Do, and our director Billy "Monkhouse" Johnson steps up to the mike with a handful of gold envelopes for the company award ceremony. Who would YOU like to have seen nominated for WHAT?

Best Hair? Lonest Running Cold? Outstanding Tits? This is a Democracy - vote or die!

If you don't like it, go back to Russia.

Anyone for a sing-song?

He's Getting Rather Old But He's A Good Mouse

Wednesday, 8th January 1997

Evita, right, incredibly moving throughout, brilliant movie however many times you watch it, the last fifteen minutes being particularly poignant, and what happens last night during the end? This bloody pair of two-hats burst into the cinema, stand right in front of A and I and start scanning the seats for their mates, knifing the atmosphere in the podge! Then they leave, and we're just waiting for Madge to pop her clogs when some R-sole's mobile phone rings with a twee "Fleur de Lys" tune. By now there's bits of atmosphere growing cold all over the auditorium, people are saying to each other "so, what, did she die then?" and frankly I can complain about ANYTHING.

Twenty-four million people watched the last ever episode of Only Fools & Horses over Christmas giving it the UK's largest ever TV audience. And yet I still managed to miss it.

I'd love to stay and talk but it's time for my aubergine. Oops! There go my shoes...

Zig-a-zig-arrrrse

Tuesday, 7th January 1997

Don't the Spice Girls look like they should be fighting crime perpetrated by costumed villains?

Having successfully predicted the arrival of the UK's latest pop phenoms two years in advance, these are my new pop forecasts;

• Geri, Mel C, Mel D, Mel E and Trevor will be given their own TV show and cartoon slot by the year 2000.
• Keith Prodigy and Rusty Lee Spice Girl will marry briefly in 1998. Their Malibu wedding is marred by the couple unfortunately locking tongue-studs shortly after the ceremony, ending in casualty.
• Backflip is kicked out of the UK Millenial Women's Olympic Gymnastic team for being a bloke.
• The blonde one gets her GCSEs and becomes an apprentice hairdresser in Lowestoft.
• Geri (37) gets her old job back to make a brief guest appearance as a dolly bird on the Turkish TV game show hit "Come Into My Shop And Buy A Carpet".
• Victoria reveals through her friends that she was in fact born without a tongue.
• After five years of success and three albums, the Spice Girls sadly tell the press and millions of tearful boys that they are in fact splitting up. Record sales for Irish girl group Girlzarea go through the roof.

Place your bets.

Mel B

Politically Incorrectable

Monday, 6th January 1997

A very happy birthday to Caroline, who is nineteen today! May you return many happy... um, things. Do excuse my lack of perspicacity, I downed a bottle of Mezcal on the train and I'm still picking bits of hallucinogenic worm out of my teeth. The walls are not melting, the room is not spinning, but everything seems to be subdividing into tiny cubes which spin round to reveal a differently textured surface before reassembling into the original shape, and this is happening about fifty times a minute.
-
Did you know that if all the girls in Essex were laid end to end, no-one would be the least bit surprised? Thank you Dorothy Parker.
-
And remember;
Money be tight, and time may fly,
Laughs few and far between,
Friendships flicker, sputter and die,
The world seems cruel and mean
The downward spirals never end
Except in sorrow and failure.
Cheer up, and don't go round the bend:
At least you've got genitalia!

Love y'all.

Tomorrow Never Knows Nuthin'

Friday, 3rd January 1997

Today will be a day like any other.

So how were your respective festive seasons? Did you have a ravenous, hedonistic binge (mentioning no names), or did you opt for a soothing, vegetative state of being? Was the whole thing wasted on you, not as fun as it used to be, do you feel on the brink of becoming a different person? Or was it a celebration of your wholeness, karmic aura intensifying la-di-da balls pond road arse pants what am I blethering on about?

Oh yeah, did you have a nice Christmas? Or should I have asked that yesterday? Or did I already? Did you, though?

Next week will be no different.

2.1.97

Thursday, 2nd January 1997

Lovely, thanks. And yours?

Walk with me, and let us leave momentary footsteps in this crisp, fresh mantle of virgin time. Feel the leaves of an old year crunch under your feet, snapping the twigs of the past. See the denuded trees covered in whole new days, the lake frosted and iced with the promise of exciting beginnings; hear the rush of water somewhere underground from the river of forever. The wind is bright, bracing, brilliant, blowing iced cobwebs from yesterday's houses. Everything is cold and still, holding in its warmth: because everything is waiting to be born.

Happy New Year.

Wahey!

Tuesday, 24th December 1996

Morning, you boozy snoggers! Top craic at the Christmas Party or what? I'm still a tad peshed, the line above this one took me five minutes to type.

Need more coffee.

For those of you who stayed over: HOW much for a sausage? And the staff - what a miserable bahnch of cahnts, not a Merry Christmas from any of them!

But what a great night, A & I haven't got that airsoled in ages. And I haven't seen so many unexpected tongue sarnies since the last student May Ball. Much comedy goings-on. And I'm very flattered you liked the poem - shucks, you guys!

Keep taking the Resolve.

(Hangover's started just now - I feel like a pig has shat in my head)

Dearly Departed

Monday, 23rd December 1996

"Dis place (aah-aaaah) is 'comin' like a ghost town...."

On a quick visit downstairs at Pharma House I was disturbed to hear a lonely breeze carrying the sound of distant churchbells. No movement, save for the intermittent tumbleweed rolling alone to who-knows-where. I found Old Man Hudson sitting in his rocker, in his battered straw hat and faded yankee uniform chewing on cheap baccy, swearing and spitting at his dusty monitor.

"All the young folk's've up'n'gone," he rasped through his bathtub whiskey. "Just ain't thuh same 'round these parts."

He offered me his bottle; I politely declined, saying I'd just been.

-

HOW'S the new offices, oh brave adventurers?
Are all the tales that we heard about true?
Do they have swivel chairs, desks for the asking?
Plenty of coffee, no need for a queue?
Tell of facilities; bright, new and sparkling,
Cubicles smelling of fresh alpine air.
Water dispensers that bubble divinely,
And sandwiches, sandwiches, never a care.
Tell of computers that work ever faultlessly,
Crashless, and seamless, and faster than sound.
Our blond IS chaps, and that young Robin Dawson,
All blue-arsed fly-like in their rushing around.
Do you miss us, oh our fearless departadours,
Busy as anything, this must be true.
Think of us back here in old Pharma House, fellows;
Sat on our arses with shag all to do.

Permanently Yours

Friday, 20th December 1996

I've recently had some good news and now that all the red tape's been well and truly wrapped up into little bows and sent to the starving in Somalia, I can confirm that, after seven months of temping at Pharma Balimo, and oooh, some six years on and off of being a "Kelly Girl":

I have been offered and has accepted a permanent position of employment!

This is large Maris Pipers for little old me, I've never had a proper job before. So say "hello!" and "huzzah!" and "brandy and coke, B?" to your new Graphic Designer!

I th'nk y'.

B, GD CRG, PB Int Ltd

No-one Knows My Plan

Thursday, 19th December 1996

With the vim and vigour which I pursued the translation of a song lyric from the original Portuguese, I now MUST know to which story this lyric pertains:

"They're like the people chained up in the cave
In the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy."

WHAT allegory? WHICH Greek guy? These questions demand answers!

Here's today's sport section:

--- --- ---
--- -X- ---
--- --- ---

G

Let the games commence!

Morning of the Living Dead

Wednesday, 4th December 1996

Don't look so resigned to your fate, all veneer of alertness over a blockboard body of sleep, brain humming quietly to itself like an old fridge. What was it you dreamt last night, that should have such power over your daydreams in the waking hours?

Think of a warm bed, a hot drink, a comforting breeze on a summer's night, a fluffy blanket, a cushioned cot, a safe, dark place of peaceful colourlessness and knowing little; the sleep before life, the gentle lull before the storm of light and cold. Whatever gets you through the day, it's okay.

This Light Is Here To Keep You Warm

Tuesday, 3rd December 1996

Great night last night folks! Triffic food, brilliant craic, and rigourous tariff auditing all in one evening.

Comedy highlights included:

- Jon's first Peking Duck roll - mmm, precariously floppy!
- Dan whispering "I've got a uniform at home" into my ear
- The frozen birthday cake (it's still defrosting, folks!)
- Steve's Miraculous Eternal Smile
- and many more, available from Ronco on double LP...

*
The best thing about chinese food is that if someone can't finish their dish, it's open season for the food hunting enthusiast. I thoroughly recommend that Cantonese sizzling sliced steak.
*
Oh yes, and sorry there was no chap cum on the menu.

World Leader Pretend

Monday, 2nd December 1996

Happy Birthday to Gary "Moscow on the" Hudson, who turns thirty in the year 2000. Message: minimise your Windows.

Danny Allegro update (like anyone's interested): for anyone who can remember what's going on in the story, who should be highlighted in the next chapter?
1) Danny Allegro - the protagonist
2) King Movie - the junkie
3) Sheel - the dying girl
4) Tom - the landlord
5) The Girl with the Dan Dare Eyebrows
I'm really keen to write another bit, you see, but being shy and of low self-esteem require words of encouragement from my peer group.

And remember: if you can't stand the heat, sit down.