Category: Essays

I’m nursing a big black coffee.
You thought I was going to say something else.
You’re sick.
Last night I drunk too much J&B and it’s taken me a couple of hours to get back into my own head. I really want to watch the Olympics opening ceremony because I’m defending McCartney to the max right now and I haven’t even seen his performance. I don’t like the way people describe him as being ‘wheeled out’ for national events. There’s a reason for it. He’s a living legend. I don’t use that word lightly in the way that a lot of people will get drunk and describe their friends as being legends, I mean it.

The Beatles are the most important band of all time, that cannot be swayed. Their music is still better than the pulp being churned out today. They changed everything. Paul McCartney has earned his place at these events because with John, George and Ringo he wrote some of the most important songs of modern times. I don’t understand the mentality of people towards older musicians at all. These people should be treasured and embraced, we should walk in their footsteps but instead they’re belittled for it. RESPECT YOUR ELDERS. That’s one of the few occasions where America have it right about something, they cherish their legacy of musicians and I don’t see why people should feel any different about the surviving Beatles or the Stones or anyone else. They shaped the way we are, the way a lot of us grew up, the music we listen to, it runs deep and it should be adored.

Last night I watched Midnight In Paris and I have to first say that it did not disappoint. People give Allen a hard time for his portrayal of female characters, for making them subservient to the men, for not casting enough attention to them, but I don’t think that’s the case with this film in particular. Rachel McAdams, Marion Cottilard and Kathy Bates were all brilliant, and strong, well written and developed. The film got me thinking about Paris and its history and it’s draw and I’m very much looking forward to returning there next month with my petite amie.

I’ve loved Paris since my parents took me when I was eleven, and it wasn’t just the draw of Mickey and co, I loved the people of Paris, I liked how they shrugged and how they always seemed to be smoking, and how beautiful the women were.

I returned a couple of times in my teens sans mes parents and realised that without the restraints of family time I was in one of the most beautiful (if not the most (I don’t know, I haven’t visited them all)) cities in the world and had free reign. I loved the Metro and the record stores, coffee shops, architecture, history. It’s a place Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Orwell have all written about and adored and lived and there’s that draw constantly. It’s where Wilde, Morrison and Piaf came to rest, and the beauty and poetry and bohemian nature, and nothing can compete with that. I can’t think of anywhere else I have visited that stays as easily on my heart, Paris is not disposable, you carry it. It is a moveable feast as Hemingway famously said.

Take me now, and don’t return me until I have a typewritten and bound manuscript under my arm. To write a novel in Paris is one of my aims.

While I appreciate the fact that The Only Way In Essex (or TOWIE as people insist on calling it) has brought a lot of people out of the gutter of wearing sportswear and taught them how to slick their hair over with the soaked appeal of the ‘wet look’ I can’t help but wonder where it’s heading.

I tried watching The Only Way Is Essex last night to see what all the fuss is about and once I’d come round from the estuary English coma it knocked me into I realised that the whole thing is about lifestyle, it completely echoes efforts across the pond like The Hills (I think that’s what it was called, it was on T4 on a Sunday when I was too hungover to change channel). The whole thing is very corporate and idealised and it’s just not how the majority of people are able to live their lives. It reminded me of the credit card yuppies of the eighties and nineties who just charged everything to their card to make them seem like a big shot when really they were serving as a clerk or assistant somewhere.

I think what people need to recognise is two fold; if you are from Essex you want to avoid this stereotype as much as possible, the characters are single dimensioned jokes and it’s all quite embarrassing, you are your own person, not Arj (or is it Arge?). If you aren’t from Essex then you need to appreciate that the majority (as in anyone who isn’t funded by ITV) doesn’t live like that in Essex, or even in Billericay, or Brentwood, there are good honest hardworking intelligent people trying to do what they can and be who they can be and not got caught up in this latest parade.

Saying that I do enjoy the disgusting bastardisation of the English language, it gets me totes emosh.

There are two initials that seem to follow me, they have done since my teens, since I was introduced to Catcher In The Rye at the sweet age of sixteen, this initials are J.D.

I am currently re-re-re-reading For Esmé; With Love & Squalor and I had forgotten how true an artist Salinger really is. It’s easy to just skim over the details when reading a novel but the way Salinger does it is like nothing else, I’m biased I suppose, I’ve been an advocate for practically a decade. I think what I like about reading his stuff is that it showed me that not all books are about bold adventures, or larger than life characters, there is something beautiful in the description of the tasks of the every day and the humdrum conversations we all have, if you harness that you can pull it apart and that’s what he seems to do so well, any of his work is a pleasure to get lost in, and it relit my love of reading at an age when I guess a lot of other people are getting turned off.

His reach extends beyond literature and his influence can be felt in any of Wes Anderson’s films; the flawed character, the questionable psyche, the endless smoking, it’s all there and it’s a wonderful compliment to a man who turned so far from the limelight that it’s hard to martyr him now.

For the best part of a year I’ve been attending an improvised comedy workshop. Tonight is our second show and to put it in the words of the little girl in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation I am ‘shitting rocks’. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Five minutes before I ‘perform’, be that in a band, playing acoustic, giving a speech, improv, whatever, I take myself away for five minutes to make sure the Fear isn’t going to rise. This stems from a gig I did for a friend where I ended up puking before we were due onstage. Since then it’s become a ritual to go and hide for five minutes in the toilet. Earlier today it was best described by my partner in crime Jocasta as my ‘Eminem bit’.

That aside though, improv has done a lot for me. I’m not quite so overwhelmed or scared by groups of people or looking like a dick because every week for two hours I do my best to make people laugh by looking like a dick. It’s only when you manage to knock that self-conscious feeling aside that you can happily act like a dick and I think people appreciate that.

I’ve also met some awesome people, it’s a strange mix that turn up for the workshop but it feels like we are all going somewhere (but this is a topic I’ve spoken about before). The important thing to remember is that I trust these guys now, they sort of get me (as much as human beings can ever begin to understand each other) and we have a laugh (often at each others expense).

Improv will also forever be associated with my friend Danny, who I lost in November of last year. He dragged me to that first session without telling me anything about it, including the fact we had ten weeks before our first show, I will never forgive him for that, but that’s the reason I still turn up week after week, to show that there was more to it than just wanting to spend time with him, I was learning a lot more about what I was capable of, what I was comfortable with and it’s made me all the better for the experience.

I think every once in a while it’s good to throw yourself into a metaphorical ice bath like that.

I’d like to begin this post with a disclaimer, I am not pointing a finger at anyone in particular. If you’re annoyed by what I’ve said then you need to think about why and maybe reconsider the way you conduct yourself.

In the four years that I have been working I have noticed a very casual attitude to the concepts of stress and depression. It seems perfectly acceptable to threaten to get signed off by a doctor if you don’t get your way and I have issues with that.

I’ve suffered with bouts of depression for over a decade and know it is not a subject to be taken lightly. I am therefore disgusted that anyone would have the audacity to cry wolf on such grounds. Getting signed off from work with stress or depression is not a get out of jail free card, it is not an extra holiday, it is a serious matter that people clearly aren’t educated about properly. The idea of someone threatening to get signed off seriously upsets me, because it makes the very poison that curdles inside me when i trough seem like it is a joke.

The fact of the matter is that it’s something that I am working through, and will continue to work through. I was offered to be signed off and didn’t take the bait because that just means what I’m fighting has won an extra bit of ground, it’s interrupted my flow. Although when it is bad I can spend days in bed I try to hold these off to weekends if necessary, the thought of being off work due to my problems is not an idea I would entertain. I have also been offered (and refused) anti-depressants. My reason for never doping myself up in this way is exactly the same, it means you can’t handle it on your own, and want all of your senses closed off. From what I know of anti-d’s they can be more dangerous than the depression itself. I’d much rather slowly face my demons than hide from them.

Thank you for reading.