Author: Paul

I got home yesterday to find I had a letter waiting for me. A letter sealed in an envelope addressed to me, by myself. It’s the first in the latest crop of rejection letters. I sent out ten and one has come back so far and it hasn’t got to me as much as I thought it would. It pisses me off because I want someone to recognise what it is I’m writing about and the fact that it could probably do very well thank you very much but I just get the standard ‘good luck in the future’ letter. I understand that it is hard getting published, and I appreciate that not everyone will think it’s worthwhile but I do, and I’m looking for someone who does too. I appreciate every single person who has taken the time to read it and thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your patience and time but unfortunately this next bit is a struggle I have to take alone.

Last night I made a little promo video for one of my songs.

It’s not my first attempt at making a video, I’ve done it with a couple of bands previously, it was just weird going it alone.
You can see the result below.

I was recently told by a friend that if you want people to listen to your music then it’s a lot more accessible to them if there is a video to accompany it, it doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just something to compliment the song. That’s what I’ve gone for anyway, or what I’ve attempted. Apparently it makes me look French, I don’t think that can ever be considered a bad thing.

The song is called Kitchen Messiah and it’s my attempt to reason a few things through the wonderful medium of song, I guess in a way it’s a tribute to my OCD.

I won’t say anymore because you might take it to mean something else, and that’s the wonder of music, it means different things to different people.

I keep imaging a time in the near future when I own my own place. It’s something I have thought a lot about, even as a child. I managed to go insane with my brothers being gone for a week, how could I cope living on my own? Well I managed it at University, I ended up in a block of flats with nobody I knew and I think that sent me a bit crazy as well. As much as I say I need my own space I also need a level of conversation and understanding.

It’s weird to think of myself as being grown up. Yesterday when we were at a family wedding I noticed there were a new generation sliding about on their knees and screaming and that it wasn’t us anymore. To them we must seem like adults, in the same league as their parents (despite the fifteen year age gap between us) which is a weird thing to come to terms with. The funny thing is that we were still throwing table decorations at each other, still putting Love Hearts in each others drinks and laughing at puerile jokes. I think my brothers bring this out in me more than anyone else can, that’s one of the many things I love about them, I can get lost in our childhood. I see it when my dad and uncle meet up, it’s the same connection and it’s lovely to hold for a while but the fact is we are adults, and we will eventually need to leave our swinging bachelor pad.

Until then, I think I’ll always be a child.

It’s half ten. I’m lying on my bed trying to negotiate my way around the sunburn I obtained yesterday by lying in the garden for four hours reading Kerouac.

I’ve been to my cousins wedding which was lovely. Got to spend some good time with my mental family. Got compared to Woody Allen. Kate made friends with my little cousin and spent the evening answering awkward questions.

I threw my TV away this morning. The coils had gone in it and it made watching anything a bit triply which was fun for a while but hard to focus on so I’ve got rid of it in the hope it will stop me procrastinating from work. I’ve just heard the closing ceremony of the Olympics is amazing and that I’m missing out but I’ll get onto that at some point.

I don’t really want to get up and go to work tomorrow. That’s not usually my attitude. I’m going to have to do something about it.

Last week I posted one of my entries for the Dazed & Confused lyric based short story competition. If you missed that bit of fried gold click here. Here is my second entry based on a Bowie lyric.

It was the third weekend of the month which meant we were all skint and smoking roll ups outside the Legion Social Club, hidden at the top of the high street round the back of the church. The reason we were there was two-fold. At least one of us was banned from each of the pubs along the high street and the Legion served up a pint for cheaper than anywhere else, it cost me more money to open the fridge door. The Legion was a lot more reserved than most of the watering holes available elsewhere and our presence had earned us a nickname – The Young Dudes.

I walked in first, chucking my dog end down and catching it under my brogue as I stepped up to the door, behind me in formation were Freddy, Rex and Lucy, who were possibly my only friends in the world. I didn’t stop moving until I got to the bar and greeted the barmaid with the same greeting I gave her every time I led the way.
‘Alright Wendy, how’s things?’
I don’t really want to go into how I became a member of the Legion and yet managed to escape fighting in the war, you can just draw your own conclusion and judge me for it, most people do.
‘Yeah, can’t complain Billy boy, got some M&S men’s shirts doing the rounds if you’re interested, back of a lorry, you know the drill’.
‘Nah, sorry Wendy, got no money and no need, I spend the working week in overalls, thanks though’.
Wendy got our drinks. We always ordered the same and it was always the four of us, that was just how it was. I handed the exact change over to Wendy, we took our respective pint glasses and headed for the table in the corner that was always available to us when we arrived, as though they were expecting it.
‘What are we doing for your birthday then Billy?’
‘Nothing’ I said, ‘I don’t want anymore birthdays, this will probably be my last one’.
‘Don’t start with all that bollocks again, there’s nothing wrong with having no direction at 25’
‘Yes there is Rex, it’s pathetic, when my old man was twenty five he had two kids, a mortgage and was second in command at the factory, what have I got?’
‘We are a different generation, what happened with that job on the paper?’
‘They want someone with smarts, like a degree and all that shit’
‘University of life mate’ said Freddy, raising his glass to me. I lifted my pint to drink but couldn’t help staring straight down it like the barrel of a gun, and then beyond it at his funky little boat race, which glistened from his burrows of acne, it made me a bit sick.

Suddenly the television blurted to life, it wasn’t something I had ever noticed before, and it cut the usual hum of old voices like scissors to puppet strings. It meant something big was happening. I was reminded of school, and how a big old set would be wheeled in on an aluminium frame to show us a documentary on osmosis, to keep us dumb and spellbound for a little while longer, to stop us progressing. The television man was illuminated by fires, there were shadows and people running back and forth behind him carrying blunt objects, smashing up pig cars, it was all a bit Lord of the Flies. There were mentions of a protest descending into riots, but it wasn’t reasoned and casual, they were blaming the youth, saying we were juvenile delinquent wrecks.
The rest of the Legion sat low in their chairs with goggle eyes and dropped jaws, they couldn’t believe the disrespect of it all, and for some reason they thought that we were involved.
‘You’re lucky I’m not thirty years younger’ one of them shouted, ‘I’d punch your lights out’.
They didn’t mean any harm, we were all they knew of youth, we carried the news, it was sad in a way. We were drawn to be with them, to sit in there, and it wasn’t all down to the cheap beer, there was an essential Britishness, which you just don’t get anywhere else, it’s reasoned and it’s wisdom and we knew it.

I finished my pint and ordered Lucy up to the bar, I refused to be left dry. Lucy was more one of the boys than any of us, she could kick like a mule and drink like a fish, and often combined the two as a night wound down. It was beneficial, it showed that I didn’t have no hope with birds, because I had a mate who was one.

We kept drinking until the concrete walls started to fold in on me, and I got freaked out. It often seemed to be that way, I’d drink to a point that a lot of the mindless chatter in my head would stop and then I could get to the crux of the problem with my life, I hated it and I wanted out.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to University, well at all times I wish I could go back to my University experience because it was brilliant (a statement backed up by my obsession with it in my writing). What I mean is that I still want to learn. There are some people you meet who come from a completely different range, and have a completely different set of skills, different knowledge and I would love to take the time to learn it all.

I think as a rule people get stuck in what they know, mostly through circumstance but occasionally through laziness and these are the people who need to think. I encounter so many people who laugh at their own ignorance on a diverse number of subjects and I wonder how that feels. If I don’t understand something then I am desperate to learn it.

That’s why I’m so proud of my friend Jade who sent me a message last night to say that if things don’t go her way in the next year she is going to go back to university to study Museum Studies. What an incredible back-up to have, I’m really pleased that she could be picking up the education relay again.

I was talking to my learned and (at least) bi lingual friend yesterday about the access to learning available to us now and he turned me on to a couple of resources. You would probably do best to check his blog here. In it he talks about the power of Collaborative Online Learning and it is an avenue I will definitely consider once everything else settles down.

What I’m trying to say is that there is nothing wrong with being hungry for knowledge, and I hope it continues inside us all so our brains don’t turn to slop.

I’m well on the way to having my first album together. This is quite an exciting prospect for me. If anyone has any tips on how and where to get it heard my ears are wide open, the plan is to put it up on Bandcamp as a download and let you all have your wicked way with it.

In my head it will be half acoustic and half electric with a clear split down the middle but that has changed about fifty times since I started work on it. All I know is that I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to listen to the tracks I’ve put up on Soundcloud and Tumblr and you’ll be the first to know when it’s done.

I still live at home. You might think that’s bongus at twenty-five but I have a number of very good reasons. Unfortunately I also have a number of gripes about being the mother of my household, being the only one to take action about anything ever and just being mugged over in general. Case in point: I got home on Friday (with my beautiful girlfriend) and was ready to make us a delicious meal before cracking on with my letters to agents. As I made my way into the kitchen I noticed that the doorway was covered in ants, they were everywhere, crawling across the tiles of the kitchen, up the walls, it was fucking disgusting.
‘Dad’ I called out, ‘we’ve got ants’.
‘Oh yeah, I know, just hoover them up’. I then noticed our vacuum cleaner sat in the hall ready for the next invasion.
‘Dad, that’s not the answer’ I said.
‘Well what do you expect me to do about it’.
That’s the point when my head literally exploded and I’ve thought about it a lot. I expect him to take some responsibility, it’s a constant clash between us, I love my old man more than anything but I wish he had a little more drive and initiative sometimes. It’s bad enough that neither of my brothers have a lot of savvy (or can’t be bothered) but I expected a bit more from my dad.

This is where I realise that I’m moaning on like an old wife, but that’s what it feels like, and that’s what I’ve become. Somebody had to step up and unfortunately I was preconditioned for the role. Since I was very little I’ve been the sensible one, the tidy one, the reliable one, and it has split in two directions. It has developed a kind of OCD personality where I can’t stand mess being left, and it also means that when I let go I really let go. It doesn’t happen very often because my conscious self is also wary about making a mess of myself but when it does it manages it on a big scale. The first incident that comes to mind was a leaving party in Southend where I walked through an automatic door, fell down some stairs, went missing for about twenty minutes and then fell backwards off a wall. I’m a catastrophe. My point is if you get pushed far enough one way you end up swinging with more force back the other.