I've just heard the sad news that Norman Mailer has died. A controversial figure, hated by some, loved by others, he wrote the book I always pick out at my favourite: 'Harlot's Ghost'.
I'm too exhausted to write on this today because I could write pages. Vonnegut and Mailer lost in the same year... Literature and the world of literature gets duller by the day, and we'll soon only be left with all the straight-laced writers full of their own worthiness.
A heavy schedule of live performances has left me worn out and don’t know if I have it in me to write much this weekend. Today I slept until noon, a whole eleven hours, after sleeping about as much yesterday. The long run up to Christmas is the busiest time for any man of the thong and the Chipster is busier than any. Monday night I was at the Rhyl Social Club, Tuesday back to Bangor for the Green Dragon Tavern. On Wednesday I danced at the Pink Flamingo, Thursday was the Duke of York pub in Holyhead, and last night I was back for my usual gig at the Green Dragon. If I include the proof reading I struggled through at the beginning of the week, I begin to see that I’ve barely had a moment’s rest. So, if I go silent until Monday, you know why.
If anybody is thinking of hiring me to dance, you should get your offers in early. I've got very few open slots (oh, please!) between now and the New Year. This year there will be an added incentive. With every strip I'll be including a free poetry reading of a selection from Auden, Stevens, and Yeats while oiling my buttocks with pineapple oil.
I tried to get to a computer yesterday but the fates conspired against me. Sometimes blogging has to come second when life becomes too complicated. First there was the problem with the train which had got stuck on the way back from Manchester. I’d gone there for another modelling session with my favourite catalogue. This time it was for next year’s Spring/Summer underwear collection, which made for a day light in thongs but heavy in the fleece-lined Y-fronts for men with bladder control issues. It made me realise, yet again, that I’m really modelling for the wrong people.
I finally got home around nine o’clock to find a scene reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof outside the flat. A horse and cart was parked in the road and the cart was piled high with my belongings. I barely recognised the woman in the shawl and headscarf coming out from the flats with a bundle of my clothes in her arms.
‘That’s the lot,’ said Gabby, filling the last remaining space on the cart with a fistful of my best thongs. ‘Chip ready?’
‘Ready for what?’ I asked. ‘Do you want me to sing about being a rich man?’
She didn’t understand my allusion. ‘We must move. It here soon.’
‘What’s here?’
‘The flood!’
She leapt up on the cart and took the reigns in her hand and a whip in the other. Without a pause, she cracked the latter and dragged the former and the cart turned a neat one hundred and eighty degrees in the middle of the road before it started to head towards the main road and higher ground.
I could only jog behind.
‘Gabby, I think you’ve got a little confused,’ I suggested as the night air cracked to the sound of the whip.
‘Sky News,’ she shouted. ‘Jeremy Thompson say we be all under water.’
‘Did he?’ I asked, having not seen or heard a word of news all day. You might wonder about my not asking for more information but I will always believe what Jeremy Thompson has to say.
‘Tidal surge,’ was the last thing I heard Gabby shout as she got an extra bit of speed from the horse. I could only grab onto the back of the cart and pull myself up next to the washing machine.
We travelled for nearly three hours before Gabby gave the horse a rest. By then, we were on the border to England, a good few hundred feet above sea level, and I was frozen to the tumble dryer.
‘How much further do you think we need to go?’ I asked, as Gabby appeared at the back of the cart.
‘We wait here, tonight,’ she said, taking a bearing from the stars.
‘I’m freezing,’ I chattered.
‘Better than being in water,’ she replied, uncaring.
Somewhere around three o’clock in the morning, a police car arrived and asked Gabby why she’d chopped down the ‘Welcome to Wales’ sign and was now burning it on the hard shoulder.
‘Chip cold. We build fire,’ she explained. She turned and smiled at the policeman. ‘You want hot dog?’ she asked, holding out a stick with something hot and sizzling on the end. The meat was tough. I hadn’t dare ask her where she’d got it.
‘No thank you, ma’am. But do you think you could explain what you’re doing here?’
‘We avoid flood.’
‘Flood?’ asked the officer.
‘The tidal surge,’ I explained, sitting at the side of the road and wrapped in the dressing gown I’d recovered from the pile of my belongings.
‘You mean the tidal surge that is currently moving down the east coast?’
I didn’t think I could have got colder but I did.
‘That’s the one,’ said Gabby, brazen in her ignorance. ‘We got to move. Get to high ground.’
I got home this morning at five o’clock, frozen and demoralised. Gabby doesn’t know chagrin, though she’s now more fully cognisant on the difference between ‘east’ and ‘west’ . She marched up the flat with a defiant swagger. ‘This good practice for next time,’ was all she would say. This afternoon will be interesting. There’s a cart to unload and a horse that needs returning to whoever she took it from.
All of which is why I didn’t blog yesterday. I hope you understand…
‘But they will think it’s porno!’ said the publisher.
‘But it’s my name!’
‘Then you’ll have to use a pseudonym.’
‘Like hell I will,’ I replied. ‘I’ve waited years for a chance to see my name in a book shop. I’m not going to hide behind Margaret Flippyhackle or John T. Moustache. What’s wrong with Chip Dale?’
‘Porno…’ said the publisher, stuffing my finished manuscript into her bag. ‘I would imagine that some shops would even refuse to stock it with a name like that.’
She was about to stand up but I couldn’t leave the meeting without resolving the issue.
‘Chipendale Monroe,’ I suggested as a compromise.
‘Sounds like an American president. And a bad Democratic one at that…’
‘Chip Pearl?’
‘A brand of toothpaste.’
‘Chip Waters.’
‘Too much like a bluesman from the old Mississippi.’ She sat back down. ‘You need to go for a radically new name. Something that sounds unique yet bland. Sean Marvin.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘How about Matthew Robbberts. We’ll play on the mystery of why your surname has three ‘r’s in it.’
She was clearly not thinking creatively. ‘Norbert Huskins,’ I said, believing I was onto a winner. ‘A novel by Norbert Huskins. That has a certain charm to it, don’t you think?’
‘Norbert? You don’t look like a Norbert.’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I look like a Chip, which is oddly what I am.’
‘Look Chip, my dear, I understand your frustration. But we can’t be selling you with the name Chip Dale. Nobody will take you seriously with a name like that. It’s going to be hard enough to sell a nine hundred page novel set against the backdrop of the Belgian kipper industry.’
‘Archibald Clinker. Stanley Krinkle. Arthur P. Mucklebeer. Ernst Gunst. Terrence Wriggle. Norman Clutterbuck Jnr…’ I fell sobbing to the table. ‘What about Hector Sparrow?’
The publisher looked at me with a tear in her eye. ‘Poor Chip. Something as simple as a name and you fall to pieces.’
She was right. It hadn’t been the weeks of polishing, proof reading, and corrections that had broken me. It was the fact that I’d dreamed of seeing Chip Dale’s name stuck between those of Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens. I sobbed for a while, muttering the occasional name which sprang to mind, but after a while, I looked up and found that the other chair was empty. I paid for my meal and walked miserably from the coffee shop. I headed to the station for my train back to Bangor. I’ve got a few months of searching for a new name, a new identity, but I know it won’t be easy. Gabby wants me to take a Romanian name but I’ve started to compile the list though, as you can see, I’ve not got very far. Henry Brusque. Victor Kripple. Saul Bellow. Simon Onions. John Updike. Randolph Mercy. Philip Roth… Philip Roth? Not bad...
The crackle of small arms fire came from the direction of the allotment shed. I ducked. Gabby winced.
The trouble began when Gabby had uttered a few words of complaint about the quality of the cheap Chinese rockets she’d picked up in town. Compared to the Romanian fireworks that had arrived last week, the Red Star Dragon Super Burst Astro Rocket had been a rather tame addition to the night’s display. She’d decided to remedy the problem by tying four of the rockets together. The result had been as unpredictable as I’d predicted.
The bundle of rockets had begun to bounce around the garden, first taking out the chicken coop and eventually punching a hole through the side of the shed and igniting Gabby’s cache of .44 ammo.
The shed burned through the night, with the sound of the occasional bullet still making us hit the ground. At one point, a fire engine arrived but we managed to get them to leave us alone by claiming the shed was actually a bonfire, to which, by that time, it bore a great resemblance.
Not that any of this put Gabby off the job at hand. The Romanian fireworks were still set off with spectacular results, and the Romanian Strategic Cruise Roman Candle was fired towards Birmingham. It blazed into the sky, narrowly missing a jumbo, which must have been at 30,000 feet. I’m waiting to hear reports of it landing.
This morning’s clean-up hasn’t even begun. Gabby is still in bed, disappointed that November the 5th has passed for another year and I’m trying to find reasons to write. You might sense that I’m rather low today. Perhaps it’s the weather that shrinks a man’s spirit. My thong hangs limply, and my fingers have barely the energy to jump from one key to the other. However, I will see what I can do. I now have only 15 pages left to proofread...
Another day of silence from CD Central. I've spent the day down in the bunker, well away from Gabby who has been wiring up the garden with high explosives. We're setting them off in ten minutes, so this might be my last report.
Residents of Manchester can at least rest easy. The Roman Candle has been turned away from you. It's now pointing towards Birmingham, which I think you'll all agree, is a much more suitable target. If you notice that Birmingham has gone missing in the next few days, you'll know why. Not that I expect anybody to actually miss Birmingham. Horrible place. Got terribly lost outside New Street Station.
As you can see, it’s a brief post tonight. I've been proofreading the draft of a novel all day and it's nearly finished me off. I have twenty pages to finish tonight and then it's done. I'll be back tomorrow at full strength. Assuming we get through the night.
Okay, Gabby's begun the pre-ignition sequence...
Damn. Seems like she's launched them already.
She's now running around shouting 'The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!'
Hello fellow Thonglateers, Chipsterites, and Devotees of Big Chip Dale. I’ve been silent for good reason: I’ve been struck by a strange melancholy that has left me feeling unhappy with the state of the world. I don’t mean you, of course. You’re all right. Salt of the earth, and all that. I mean the others. Them over there. They’re always doing that, hardly ever stop it, and rarely look like they’re going to give it up for something more reasonable.
I mean what’s wrong with the world? What is wrong with people? What is wrong with Pakistan? What’s going on in Burma? And why do the Spice Girls insist on reforming? Christmas approaches and I’m staring into its headlights like a small rabbit with its foot trapped in a manhole cover. Run, Chipster run! Before it’s too late!
Only it is too late. Cliff Richard’s back. He’s bringing out an album to menace all of us over Yuletide. I suppose a man won’t be able to walk around his local Woolworth’s without having Cliff injected into the base of his brain. There some tune will fester before breaking out as a canker on the lips, the size of a tennis ball. A man won’t be able to go five feet without whistling it, hating himself for his very susceptibility to catchy middle-of-the-road songs. Damn this musically blessed brain and whistle-tastic lips.
I don’t know who said it – I suppose it some witty type with wisdom dropping from them like dandruff – but ‘hell is other people’. I don’t know what they meant by that unless the other people were Cliff and the Spices. Or perhaps Jamie or Britney or Paris. Ah, Paris. We’ll always have Paris. I mean it. We’re stuck with her for the rest of our lives.
What’s wrong with the world? What is wrong with me?
I’m just sour. I see that Madeley got a puff from The Guardian. And his blog was visited by Stephen Fry. All in the same week. Good luck to him. I wish the man well. I really do. Only the blogging highlight of my month was to welcome my first visitor from Nepal. Interesting. They searched for the phrase ‘thonging’. I don’t know what it means but it was a highlight...
October's highlight...
[sob]
[sigh]
I wonder what November has in store... I wonder...
Wow! What a party! We’re just back from the Welsh Amateur Thong Awards, sponsored by PouchSoft. I must say that I’ve never had such a fun time. Gabby is such a great dancer. I was spinning her round the floor all night and I don’t think her hip popped out on more than twice. And, even when it did, it only took a couple of smacks with a tyre iron to get in back in there and we’d be off again, tripping the light fantastic.
I was there in my role as President of the British Thong Society, and I presented two awards to upcoming strippers. It's great to see young Thonglateers following the footsteps of the great Chipster himself. And what's even better, I ended the night with my hands full!
The young chav neighbour is currently parked outside the flat and is cleaning out his car while listening to music. Drum and bass music pushed through speakers the size of refrigerators and a sub-woofer bigger than the engine.
Is there any way I can make him stop that's legal, doesn't involve Gabby and her knife, and that won’t require my having to go through the courts? I can’t write. I can’t think. I can barely breathe. It’s the sort of dull throbbing noise that disrupts the body’s natural rhythms. And, before you ask, he's not the sort of person who responds to friendly requests.
Until he goes quiet, I will have to be quiet. This is driving me crazy!
Gabby informed me last night that she’d liked to see more of the world.
‘I grow tired of UK,’ she said, clearly remaining at heart as much the roving vagabond as the day I found her sleeping in the doorway to Timothy Whites all those years ago. ‘Gabby wants adventure, to see old ruins, drive through mystical landscapes, be attacked by local bandits and return fire from back of Land Rover.’
‘So why not have a weekend in Pembroke?’ I suggested. It wasn't that I'm against these exotic holidays but I do fear for the size of carbon footprint Gabby’s wanderings would leave on the planet.
‘I want to go abroad,’ she said with a thick pout.
‘England?’
‘Abroad abroad.’ Now she stamped her foot and a bayonet slipped out of her trouser leg.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘you want a holiday. Where would like to go?’
A sheepish look developed over in her quarter of the room. I could see that things were not wholly unplanned. There have been plenty of midnight phone calls between the Cheeky sisters and I thought I could detect the influence of the slightly more hair-brained Monica in this unexpected turn of events.
‘I been in contact with the Iranian Tourist Board,’ said Gabby. ‘They tell me Iran is exciting country full of fun activities.’
You can imagine my surprise.
‘Fun activities?’ I asked. ‘Such as what?’
‘They tell me I would be very welcome. They like athletic young women who enjoy rough and tumble, likes to throw stones, climb cranes.’
I cradled my head in my hands, my hands on my elbows, and, most reassuring of all, elbows on my thong. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘do you really think Iran is a country for you?’ I thought about that for a moment and decided to start again. ‘Of all the places in the world, don’t you think Iran is a bit dangerous, even for commandos who’ve had the best that Romania has to offer in combat training?’
She jumped up from the sofa and picked up her laptop, which she dumped before me. The screen was already loaded and I was looking at the website for the Iranian Tourist Board, complete with personal welcome from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
‘You know,’ I said after a few moments of careful consideration. ‘I’m not sure this website is entirely legitimate.’
‘It real,’ screamed Gabby. ‘It say so. It say Iranian Tourist Board.’
I waved down her complaint. ‘It’s not that I would every doubt the words of a man like Ahmadinejad but don’t you think it odd that the Iranian Tourist Board would have a website with the tag, “There’s More to Iran Than Missiles”? If you ask me, this isn’t entirely official.’
She snatched the laptop away from me. ‘But Gabby want to play stoning game with people.’
‘The stoning game is not a game,’ I said. ‘And that’s it, as far as I’m concerned. We’re not going to Iran. Don’t you get enough kicks torturing the innocent in your duties as a traffic warden?’
‘No,’ she said, simply. ‘No I do not.’
Half an hour later she comes crawling back, tapping on the door to my den.
‘Chippy,’ she said, her voice trailing sincerity like a slug trails slime.
‘Yes, Gabby,’ I sighed. ‘What is it now? Can’t you see that I’m busy curing these thongs with my mallet?’
‘I don’t want to go to Iran for holiday.’
‘I’m glad you see sense. Horrible place.’
‘We stay in UK instead.’
‘Fine idea.’
‘We got for week in Newcastle.’
The mallet hit my finger and I cursed a foul word. ‘Newcastle?’ I pushed the pile of new thongs aside and grabbed my own laptop. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘perhaps Iran isn’t that bad an idea. What did you say the address of the Iranian Tourist Board is again?’
