Monday, August 07, 2006

Feline wrestlers and Viennese bears

Both readers of this weblog will be relieved to hear that I'm contemplating relinquishing my post as senior writer and handing over the reins to my two trusty assistants, Kentucky Wildcat and The Man With Many Aliases. There are two reasons for this. Less important is that these two brahmamachines appear to have launched a coup d'histoire, so I will abdicate gracefully and make it a bloodless coup. (Although possibly the Crunchy Granola Suite Boogier's role in the coup might be on the wane, as he has sent Emma and I a joint-email informing us that he has taken a vow of web silence. I hope he is joking, because we have all been enjoying his contributions, even if one or two readers have had to pack in their jobs and go part-time to give themselves enough time to read them. The problem seems to be that Emma has let him know that the Web Administrator has asked her to ask him to shorten his postings, because of congestion on the superhighway. He seems rather put out about this, but fingers crossed he will continue to post, more concisely, rather than letting his talent go to waste).

The more pressing reason for my proposed withdrawal from the role of chief diarist is because I will need to devote the time to construction of my first novel. This plan has been brewing since I was introduced last year to the works of John Irving, and watching Walk The Line at the weekend has further sharpened my interest. (If you can't see what the movie has to do with it, read on). Having read The Hotel New Hampshire and A Widow For One Year, I'm now midway through The World According To Garp, and it has just struck me that I'm actually just reading the same (excellent) book for the third time. It's such a simple recipe. One just writes 500 pages about oneself, in which nothing happens other than that the main character (ie oneself) gets dragged into a few bizarre, and occasionally shocking, events. One spends a bit of time in New York, in New England, on Long Island, and in Vienna. One spends part of the time in schools and hotels. One plays squash (if this aspect can't drag my champion assistant blogger back from his self-imposed exile, then nothing will) and one wrestles, preferably with bears. One becomes semi-involved in a rape. One spends time with continental prostitutes. Several of one's nearest and dearest die in shocking circumstances. But, most importantly, one writes a novel, about oneself, in which nothing happens (apart from ... , see above), in which the main character is given, and takes, many opportunities to deny that the novel is autobiograpical and that it is about anything. So anyway, I've just got to write a novel about myself writing a novel about myself writing a novel about myself etc., and obviously I've got to create a few distinguishing features to sprinkle among the bears, wrestlers and prostitutes to give credence to the many claims the book contains that it isn't about me (or indeed anything, which in my case it probably won't be), and I think the obvious one is to create an alternative persona for myself. So, and this is where Johnny Cash comes in, I think that the alter ego can become so proud of his ability to sing familiar words to previously unheard melodies that he creates a stage persona for himself. This, obviously, involves a cat, rather than a bear. The cat has to be - yes, you've guessed it - Sebastian (see my entry in Meet The Gang, and Sebastian/Sid's appearance in the current photo gallery). So basically the hero of the book comes on stage with Sebastian lying around his/my neck, asleep but still digging his claws into his/my shoulders. And his/my signature tune runs thus:-

"You wonder why I always dress in cat,
Why you always see Sebastian on my neck.
And why does my appearance seem to have a feline tone?
Well, there's a reason for the cat that I have on.

I wear him for the poor and beaten down,
Living on the hopeless, hungry side of town (Moulton Paddocks);
I wear him for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime
But is there because he's a victim of the times (ie not Richard Sims, because he hasn't started to pay for his crimes yet - but he will, just as soon as the vice squad catch up with him) ... ".

So, anyway, that's a start on my novel. But, as you've probably worked out, it's just a start and nothing more, and a pretty poor start at that. So I'm going to need to spend as much time on the project as I can. And if anyone can give me some help with details on wrestling, squash, bears, prostitutes or Vienna, please speak up. What would be perfect would be if someone has wrestled a bear in a squash court in Vienna as a warm-up exercise for holding a conversation with a prostitute. Richard Sims is about the only person I can think of who might have done just that, but he's still alive, so he probably hasn't.

Enough of that, and on to project number two, which is maintaining my ever more flimsy pretence of being a racehorse trainer. Hopefully I will be able to give some credence to this facade this week by sending out SIX runnners. The eliminator permitting, Lady Suffragette will run at Yarmouth on Wednesday, By Storm and Limit Down will run there on Thursday afternoon before Chilly Cracker resumes at Folkestone in the evening, and then Brief Goodbye (Newmarket) and Rem Time (Lingfield) will both run on Saturday. That's rather a daunting thought: a month's worth of runners in four days. We are likely to have Frankie Pickard on Lady Suffragette, Kirsty Milczarek on By Storm, Micky Fenton on Chilly Cracker and Brief Goodbye, with the riders of Limit Down and Rem Time yet to be engaged. Tagdh O'Shea was kind enough to give us some help on Saturday morning and I hope I will be able to reward him with some support shortly, but that will probably have to wait until next week.

And in the meantime, 'til things are brighter, I'm the man in cat.

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