Dejection? A load!

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was onto something when he wrote:

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear"

for this is exactly how I felt on the 281 to Tolworth at 4 o' clock on the second to last day of 2008... Ok, so he was suffering from protracted Opium withdrawal but I drink too much coffee and, if I have a beer at lunchtime as I did today, go all moody!

We are (or should be) partners in torment!

Hazlitt also mentions that Coleridge used to waffle an awful lot- which I do, too, in spades and I'm going to stop now for the year... right here!

P.S. New Year's resolutions:

1) Start being an arsehole to my University friends as a fair few of them have accused me of being too nice on 30,000 separate occasions.

2) Start being less crotchety with other friends and family members.

3) Do more writing that isn't just blog writing i.e. the 2,500 word essay that is due in on the 8th of January

Right then, roll on 2009!!!

My unedifying bildungsroman

... I was also given a copy of Graham Parker's 'Carp-fishing on Valium' for Christmas (hint: the title of the book is a hyperlink but I am having trouble making it look like one). A rock musician who toured with Dylan in the 80s, Parker grew up very close to where my parents now live and went to school with my Dad. Although he sent birthday wishes this year, he rarely answers my letters and the book is, primarily, of interest to me as a kind of bildungsroman, only one set not in a city or a northern mining town but the very military/commuter hinterlands of the habitable with which I am so familiar. At last a book that mentions such obscenities as Farnborough, Camberley, Aldershot and the Basingstoke Canal without so much as (the literary equivalent of) a blush.

Although, as I hasten to point out to that infinitesimally small community of the interested, I was not actually born in Aldershot, (the first few years of my life were set all of ten miles away in 'proper' Hampshire, with a garden that overlooked fields) I am probably as South-west Surrey as anyone else around here. Still, I seem to spend every spare moment subverting this stifling non-identity and will probably continue to do so onto death. Perhaps this is why I feel such a degree of common ground with the central character in Parker's book: Brian may be a coke-addled, rock 'n' rolling also-ran but, at heart, he is one of the disenfranchised children of the overspill, just like Parker and I. Brian attempts to find his salvation in music and drugs. Parker goes with a similar method, as well as adding further emancipation with his escape to the U.S.A where he is now resident...

I... well I haven't done such a good job of escaping... yet! My life in South London isn't particularly fulfilling; that it is an area of South London that encompasses Surrey's former County Town doesn't help matters much either. I have often tried to trace the origins of my dissatisfaction with every little thing within 50 miles but, so far, have very few answers. My Mum may have been born in North London and, briefly, lived in the Midlands but she settled in Guildford and my Dad, as I have hinted already, is from nearby Woking... it's in my blood.

Sometimes I pretend it is the small portion of Irish Catholic in me. I had a subtly different faith background from a fair few of my contemporaries- going the whole hog, too: first communion, guild of St. Stephen, confirmation- and, when I got to 18, was so enamoured of all things Irish that I pushed off and lived there for a few months. I can't help regarding all this last as a symptom of my discontent and not a cause, however.

In the end, I am forced to conclude it is not such an uncommon a malady, although it may manifest itself in others in different ways. The teenagers loitering around by the canal with cans are as maladjusted as I am, I just seek airy-fairier ways to express my feelings on the matter.

Some of us get out! Some of us don't! ... And it's not just round here, it's all over the country! Again, there are places where it is more acceptable, even romantic, to express dissatisfaction with one's formative circumstances and others, like Surrey, where it is difficult to seem more than the whiny little shit you are! In these places, like Graham, the best method is to go off and be judged by the merits of your own output (his critically acclaimed album 'Squeezing out Sparks' is a little-known gem from the 70s that eclipses all of Costello's stuff put together and could give the present mockney 'indie' brigade a run for their money. My favourite example of his work is off the following album: 'The Up Escalator' however, a song called 'Empty Lives'... hint, this title is also a hyperlink).

If I, like GP, had toured with Dylan, I guess I would stop getting so hung up about Surbiton, Aldershot and my supposed 'cultural Catholicism'. I'm off to see him (Dylan, that is) at the O2 in April so I guess that's a start...

My brand new Suburb-Busting-Anti-Fox-Ultrasonic-Ray-Gun™

Well, I'm sure that you are all dying to know what I was given for Christmas...

The uninspiring answer is: lots of jaw-aching, almost absurdly boring books (one on Victorian PMs and another on correct grammar usage... I kid you not, unfortunately!) Importantly though, I negotiated a truce with a good friend which guaranteed neither party would present the other with a gift on the day, thereby staving off the demons of both enmity and poverty and sparing a big scene at his flat when I turned up empty-handed.

The trouble is- and I'm beginning to empathise with the leaders of tin-pot regimes round the world- he did not respect the terms of the treaty. Luckily, I received word of the planned breach the day before (a direct call from the man himself stating, in no uncertain terms, that he had bought me a present and I was to get him one, too) total disaster was therefore avoided, although, unfortunately, not poverty. 'Tis the season to be out of pocket.

Boy, what a present though!

It is not something I have described on the blog for fear of reprisals but for the last few months I have been frequently chased and generally intimidated by a horrible gang. The severe dropping off of posts in recent weeks may be attributed to my despair at my inability even to walk home at night without molestation by these awful, awful fiends! That they are of the species Vulpes vulpes (or fox) should be of no concern to the general reader.

My friend, aware of my midnight tribulations- usually suffered when struggling back from his flat in town, after all- generously provided me with a big, fat WMD that is, ostensibly, to be used to dissuade unwelcome animals from attempting to use two of their five senses ever again! I am staying with my parents at the moment and, unfortunately, didn't bring the thing with me so you'll have to rely on my slightly hazy post-Christmas recollection of the device for the moment... Trust me that I am not exaggerating when I say that it is a chunky pistol which both fires a laser and emits the kind of supersonic screech that forces good guys to the floor in superhero movies. One of the unintended bonuses of this gadget is that you get to pretend you are Lex Luthor on your walk home!

After just one such late-night sojourn (and on that same Christmas night, no less) my politics have shifted completely. Holding the thing, I began to agree with Tony Martin and the general philosophy of the NRA. Man has a right to self-defence... at least against these bastard foxes! The town variety aren't even scared of human beings anymore- until they realise you are packing heat, that is!

It is my theory, furthermore, that they are on the move! For the moment, they are massing in the council estates and cul-de-sacs of the suburbs but this will not content them! First they attack our bins but it will not be long before they EAT an entire human being! We must ready ourselves!

So take a leaf out of my friend's book and get your loved ones some sort of anti-fox blasting protection today and set about reclaiming suburbia from this vicious pestilence!!!

Merry Christmas!

Tuesday, Ring Road, Supermarket...

Ok, I have been holding out but here, at last, is my update:

I am conducting a clandestine love affair with a little place called Roehampton Vale. If you've ever had the misfortune to pass through the- er- location, you will understand how absurd that sounds. It is little more than a widening in the road with Putney Vale cemetery on the one side and a 24-Hour ASDA and one of the campuses of my esteemed University on the other. I have an appointment there every Tuesday morning at 11.30 AM which, due to a deficiency on the part of my alarm (not loud enough!) I invariably miss. I think Iris Murdoch said something along the lines of: some places in London are necessary and some contingent; well, the latter part of that is certainly true of Greater London from Tolworth on in. To paraphrase Radiohead, it is all ring roads and supermarkets...

A propos of my pathetic life, I have been trying to come up with an apologetic explaining my passion for the place and, so far, I have found very few answers. The university sports field is certainly expansive and picturesque and, I think, borders Wimbledon Common but this, in itself, is not enough. The university building beside the field is very ugly, the worst example of 70s Polytechnic architecture; meanwhile, the busy sliproad and the noise of traffic blots out any possibility of enjoying all that open space...

In all honesty, I think it is the Supermarket. Ever since Ireland, when I used to go to one on a Sunday morning and read all the music magazines in the cafeteria, I have harboured a perverse affection for them. When I came to know of Ginsberg's poem, 'A Supermarket in California' this strange passion only intensified.

Besides the Supermarket, I guess I just enjoy my Tuesday morning outing. Even a few buildings beside a by-pass is a change of scene for me and it also presents a chance to catch up on my reading: The Benn Diaries or Alan Clark's Diaries or any of the other boring tomes I have been lugging around for roughly a decade.

If I ever become a famous writer, I hope they blue plaque that ASDA; something along the lines of:

"Here Hampton sat on a plastic chair and enjoyed many a Cup of Tea, pondering the futility of his existence".

I will take great posthumous joy watching my disciples struggle out to that place, only to become completely disillusioned in my work when they see the sort of situations that inspired me!

Ha Ha Ha.

Ghost of a performance

One of those weird, wintry interludes occurred yesterday when my family and I took a trip to Arundel for, what turned out to be, a private performance of a one-man adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol', in a crypt of room- the only audience members. I felt like I was an aristocrat being given an intimate viewing of the show before the thronging masses descended upon the place; only, in the back of my mind, I realised there were no such throngs and it was all a little pathetic, really. Things took on an ever more ridiculous aspect as we sat eating our complimentary mince pies in the empty theatre during the interval and then were awarded first, second and third prize in the raffle respectively...

For me, the worst part of all this was- owing perhaps to an excess of paper- the lavatory failed to fulfil its function and flush for me; not what you really want in the absence of others to blame. Usually, as Heidegger advises, I rely on the anonymity of the crowd in such situations (and there have been many). God, I wouldn't wish my bowels on my worst enemy!

Pining for the dim expanses (I cannot dance, drink or pull anymore)

I am tired today and I ache; almost, although not quite, too tired to add these few lines and update the blog. Do I hear a sound as of a clapping of many hands in a spontaneous round of applause somewhere far away? No, I thought not. I remain a martyr for my public to the last though, like a well-loved Hollywood veteran with a terminal disease who stops to sign an autograph for a small child... Well, almost...

As I no longer drink to any level worth recording, it seems somehow absurd to report that I have spent most of the day recovering from a hangover. Well, they are the symptoms of a hangover at any rate: head-ache, fatigue and general disillusionment. On the evidence, I am inclined to believe that, after however many years of hard hedonism, my body shuts down on instinct after a night out; consumption of intoxicating liquor no longer an essential ingredient in the process.

My suitably melodramtic conclusion: the best years of my life are already over!

When I was eighteen: young, free and living in Killarney, I had some truly epic nights, a golden haze of beer, foreign tourists and soft-rock covers. Although they still play some of those songs here in Kingston, it is not the same...

In England, it seems, everybody has got something to prove: from the muscle-men with their tight T-Shirts, to the girls who make every conceivable effort to trip over your feet while you wait in line just so they can accost you, to the dancers, the drinkers, even the dj. Over in Ireland it was not like that and I miss it.

More importantly, I miss myself back then: fewer inhibitions, considerations, more spontaneity. On the other hand, I did suffer some of the most immense, immobilising and all-encompassing hangovers I have ever known and, casting my mind back, they make this headache shrink to the level of a tender head massage... Out there, I would literally roll into work half-drunk and then sleep it off by the lake, later in the afternoon!

One of my favourite poems of all time gets to the heart of such sentiments much sooner than I do and with a total absence of the self-indulgent moaning that is prevalent here. It is taken from the chorus of a longer piece, The Bacchae by Euripides and I first saw it cited in a book by Bertrand Russell (a book I have been reading since I first came to Kingston in 2005 and still am nowhere near finishing, to the point where I have been forced to adopt a radical new skimming technique known by the technical term of Missing-every-chapter-that-you-can't-understand-immediately ...)

Anyway, to paraphrase Larkin, here be the verse:

Will they ever come to me, ever again,
The long long dances,
On through the dark till the dim stars wane?
Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the stream
Of wind in my hair? Shall our white feet gleam
In the dim expanses?

Well, possibly! Not in the dim expanses of Kingston-upon-Thames, at any rate...