Holidays

The twins have gone off for the day so there’s not much ‘action’ to speak of. I didn’t venture to ask where they were going. I prefer not to know. All I can assume is that tourists in some Welsh hotspot are suffering the ‘hokey cokey blues’ today. Our thoughts should be with them.

To be honest, I welcome the break. After yesterday’s outbreak of birdy flu, we all came home and enjoyed a quiet dinner. I say ‘quiet’ but the reality was much louder than that. Glasses were shattered, headaches induced, and neighbours annoyed to the point of threats. But it does bring me nicely onto the subject of today’s post. I’ve decided to talk about my holiday plans for this year.

The Chipster doesn’t ‘do’ holidays. In fact, you could say that I rarely get beyond Bangor unless it’s work related and involves getting naked for notes of a large denomination. You might remember that I went to America earlier this year, but my experiences there should give you a good indication of why I don’t go chasing the sun. I’m also extremely careful about my skin. Though I might not be as tanned as other thonglateers, I proud to say that I have better complexion down below which is where it counts in my line of business. There’s nothing worse than a stripper with a wrinkled kneecap.

This year, I’ve been giving serious thought to spending a few days down at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. To begin with: it’s in Wales, so I wouldn’t need any extra booster shots before going and there’d be no problems with my trying to understand foreign laws relating to the wearing of thongs in public. They’d take me as I am and there’d me no words said about it. Secondly, I might also find an agent or publisher willing to take a gamble on a man light in the loins and heavy in his verbiage.

However, I’m a bit dubious about the whole ‘literary’ scene. These bookish types don’t strike me as being my kind of people and they might not take a man and his thong seriously. My last week, when not working around birdy flu, has been spent going over the draft to Big Chip Dale’s first novel. I thought it time to see what damage I’d done to the English language, but I only got half-way before desperation set it. I just don’t know if I have it in me to get to the end of all 96,000 words. The fact that it makes me smile amounts to nothing when it comes to asking the opinion of people who judge things by themes, narratives, and depressing endings involving lakes, little girls, and a dog called ‘Scamp’.

Perhaps I’m just not confident enough to be a real writer. I look good up on stage and can handle any situation that arises. But sit me down in front of a typewriter and I become a bag of undiluted worry. Many are the times I’ve had to deal with overexcited grandmothers wanting to wipe down my sweaty buttocks with their soiled underwear, but ask me to defend my use of a semi-colon and I go to pieces.

So, if it’s not the Hay festival, it’s probably Romania for the Chipster… Romania…

Gabby wants me to go visit her family and the time’s approaching when I’ll have to admit that I’d prefer to not travel into Eastern Europe. My dislike of holidays began when I was part of a cultural exchange programme a few years ago. The Iron Curtain may have come down but male stripping didn’t go down too well with those ex-KGB types. I was warned never to return and since then I’ve vowed never to travel anywhere in the old Soviet Union. I don’t know if Romania still have me on their books but I’m not willing to risk it.

So, this is how I’m spending my afternoon. Making holiday plans and getting nowhere.

Which, when I think about it, might be as good a holiday destination as any…

'Twas A Thumb

First of all: that picture was clearly of my thumb.

Secondly: it is now pink again.

And thirdly: I’m sorry if it’s been quiet around here today. I’ve been busy out-Archering Lord Jeffrey. Not only am I a handsome devil in a thong, I’m a literary rival to the great craftsman himself.

I woke up with the sunshine lighting the fine golden skin of my naked torso and I felt inspired to do something artistic. With barely a word to Gabby who was busy gutting a chicken in the kitche, I set off early for the coffee shop where I spent the morning writing ‘the novel’. I’ve also bought myself a black roll-necked thong to make me look the part and with the laptop open before me, I did the whole Ernest Hemingway thing: nouns, verbs, a few adjectives. Wonderful!

I soared past 20,000 words. Already I see it as bearing some similarities to Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’, only set in the modern day and with more gratuitous nudity. I’ve also considered titles: ‘The Name of the Pose’ being the best I’ve come up with so far.

After three hours and a dozen cups of coffee, I felt even more like Ernest and fancied trying my hand at a little bull fighting but, lacking a little bull, ended up just chasing a Labrador around the market. That was marvellous too.

Writing is the loneliest business. It’s nothing like stripping, where you get the most immediate feedback. It also wore me out mentally and I had to unwind with an afternoon spent working on a new routine at the dance studio. I use the best studio in town and work with the best in the business. Terry, my choreographer, looks like John Terry but moves like Grace Kelly. He also knows more about the art of undressing than any man alive. He was trainer to the great Ernie Hackinshaw, aka The Swing King. It was Terry who invented the invented the rhythmic hip thrust where a dancer swings his undercarriage like a pendulum. He’s done for genitals what Lionel Blair did for tap dancing.

The new routine is based on the phrases of the moon and, as I imagine you can guess, involves the stripping in mystical patterns. It’s a bit like Old Moore’s Almanack but with more buttocks.

I’ll try to pop by and update you some more tomorrow but I’m attending my weekly class where Mrs. Rust has promised to introduce us to Shakespeare. And before you say it: I’ve already heard all the jokes about my shaking my spear during the lesson.

This is what I do and I'm doing it

I thought this morning’s lesson went rather well. I submitted my homework (which I’ll post here as soon as I’m done with this) and we read some more poems, some of which even rhymed. I was really delighted by the whole episode.

During a chance conversation during our break, Mrs. Rust mentioned that any of us with a ‘yen to write for a living’ must buy either The Writer’s Handbook or The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. And like the conscientious student I’m so desperately trying to be, I immediately nipped out to my local Waterstones and bought myself a copy of each. I’ve been locked up in my den since then, giving them a full and proper examination.

And my conclusion?

What a crock it all is!

Let’s be clear on this. There’s nothing I enjoy doing more in this world than writing. There’s nothing I’ve love more than to earn a living by making people laugh with my vaguely incompetent mutterings. But let’s also be clear: I’m not a man to be treated like a petulant child. I don’t want to be mocked, mimicked, patronised, or consoled. I don’t want somebody to take my dreams and package them between two bright yellow covers and tell me that all my ambitions can be realised if I unlock this prize with a £15 donation to the cause.

In other words: I’m pretty sure if there’s a certain way to become a writer, this isn’t it.

And, besides, what does it mean to be a writer? I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently. Reading other blogs have helped me come to the conclusion that I am already a writer. I write every day, sometimes for hours on end. I would like money for my pains, but the whole reason I do this is because I love putting words on the page. I like the way they sound, the ways they sometimes jar. I love the patterns I can make. I like how they sound on the ear, sometimes sad and sometimes funny. I don't know what it is to be a writer beyond doing this. This is what I do and I’m doing it.

So, perhaps what people mean when they say they dream of being a writer is that they dream of the writer’s life. Which, I might add, is probably all that it is: a dream. The considerable number of people I know who claim they want to write, find an amazing number of reasons why they don’t. They realise, I suppose, that the reality of writing involves hard work at some point in their day. And who wants to be stuck alone for hours on end, many of which are spent reflecting on your own inabilities to do your job well?

The solution to hard work is to buy a book that solves your problems. These books placate us all by making the path to publication sound so reasonable. The delusions begin with their descriptions of agents. Yet reading between the lines, it’s a matter of ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’. Agents attract bad writers like gadflies are attracted to... Well, perhaps the simile doesn’t quite work. My point is this: is there any way to get an agent to notice you other than stripping off and parading up and down outside their offices? No, I mean it. Is there any other way? When I tried the stripping off route (on seven different occasions with five different agents) I was arrested three times, groped twice, and in every other instance told that ‘we only deal with established writers’. This is the only reason I can see that 'Chip Dale's Guide To Thongdom' has still not made it to the shelves of hardbacks.

Yet I hardly blame them. I don't blame agents and I don't blame publishers. I blame The Writer’s Handbook. I blame The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. I blame every creative writing workshop. I blame the industry that has formed around the many millions of people who found that their PCs came with a keyboard. I blame the people who confuse typing with writing.

And I suppose in the end I also blame myself for thinking that I’m any different.

As Mrs Rust said to me at the end of this morning’s coffee break: ‘You know, Chip. It would probably be better for you if you stayed as a stripper.’

I nearly told her that this is what I love to do and I really don't want to stop doing it