Guest post

Hey everyone,

I've written a guest post about tuition fees for my Dad's blog. You can read it here:

http://alan-beddow.blogspot.com/2010/12/guest-post-from-my-student-son-luke.html

Some things to worry about....

So, the new government has announced cuts in many areas. It's a recession; cuts are a necessary unpleasantness, and unsurprisingly nobody wants to be on the receiving end. The Socialist Worker Party has been putting up posters imploring people to protest against the cuts, but what's the alternative? Spending at the same rate in spite of our huge national debt?

So what am I worried about? At the moment, two things. The cuts to arts organizations, and the possibility of unlimited tuition fees at universities. If these changes come into place it will be too late to affect my degree, and despite the possibility that I might choose to return to university for a Masters, it's not for myself that I worry.

I have an uneasy feeling that, in a higher education culture which increasingly values business skills and employability over more traditional academic traits, it is the Arts and Humanities over which the sword of Damocles hangs poised, particularly the more purely academic subjects. Why study Literature when Media offers more employability options?

And combined with the cuts to funding for the arts, it offers the possibility of a particularly bleak future. A future where higher education costs at least twenty-one thousand pounds, and the more prestigious institutions cost much more. Where the already rich can afford the education it takes to make their way into politics and big business. In this distopia, no arts would ever be banned. They would merely die out with a whimper, financially unviable.

Obviously I don't believe things would really get this bad, but the arts which require a lot of funding, such as film, music, and most of the visual arts, could suffer badly. Obviously pop music (which I use in the broadest possible sense, to mean anything other than Classical and perhaps the more high-brow forms of jazz) will survive and probably even thrive. It is at once a multi million pound industry and a modern day equivelant to folk music, the music of the people. As ever, some of it will be very good, and some of it will be very bad. Street art could also do very well, and the often anti-authoritarian dialogue it presents will be particularly suited to the tough times ahead.

Where does literature fit into this? On the one hand the materials are relatively cheap, as are the books which must fuel the engine of any writer, and while publishing can still be relatively expensive, the advent of home printers and the internet make it easier than ever for your work to reach a wider audience. However, there is not much money in poetry, the short story or even the more literary novel, the changes in university funding mean that it will become increasingly difficult for people to study literature. The accessibility of electronic self publishing is also has its less attractive points. The internet is a big place, with no quality control, and obscurity is the curse of the blogger.

The arts have some difficult times ahead, and I think what literature needs is to learn from the unsigned band and the street artist. We need to develop a DIY culture which encourages good quality work, links to the great conversation of long dead poets, dramatist, authors, journalists and philosophers, but is also ready to experiment and carry that conversation forward into new directions. Of course, how we achieve this is another question...

This is the hour.

Greetings true believers (to quote Stan Lee).

It's been a while since my last post. I'd like to say that I've been too busy working on a secret project, but that would be untrue. The truth is that after moving house I was infected with a summer lethargy. But now I'm back, hopefully for more regular posts, and possibly one or two sister-blogs which I have in the mental pipeline.

For now though, gentle reader, let me take you back one week. After an evenings work I am in The Stile, my unbelievably local local, drinking a couple of beers and playing a bit of pool. Vicky is working behind the bar. In the other room aging musos bash out some covers on acoustic guitars. Sunday night is open mic night.

Fast forward to the end of the night, Faye, Tony and I are drinking in the front bar. Vicky is still working, and talking to one of the bearded muscians. I am beckoned. We discuss my being a bass player, and by the end of the conversation I have agreed to book the next sunday off work and come along to the open mic. The harmonica player stands in the doorway and has a nosebleed.

So, here I am. Due to arive at the pub in under an hour for half a pint of dutch courage. Unfortunately my summer lethargy extended into what I jokingly call my practice routine. I've been working to make up for it this week but for some reason I can only remember three songs well enough to feel nearly comfortable playing them in public. And one of those is seven minutes long and requires a saxophonist.

I thought it wise to prepare myself for public humiliation. Friday was Faye's Twenty-first. Sort of. It was also kareoke night at the style. If I can do that in front of people, I'm sure I can fumble my may through Eight Days a Week and Sweet Home Chicago.

Apologise for the weird typography. Blogger seems to have no problem switching to bold or italics, but doesn't appear to like changing back again.

Tea break over. Toodle pip.

Official Launch

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am glad to announce the official launch of the new BCU literary magazine, Paper Tiger. Thanks to everyone who submitted or was involved at the planning stages.

Read it, hot off the virtual presses at www.apapertiger.tk

Email any submissions for future issues to apapertiger@live.co.uk

Sweet Home Wolverhampton

For the past week and a half I've been settling into the new house and something almost resembling adulthood. I write this having just returned from Asda with freshly purchased draining board and cutlery draw trays.

Since my last post I've done a few things which I feel now qualify me to describe the local area: I've made several trips to Asda, seen the park on an event day, and, crucially, I've visited the pub. The area in question is, roughly speaking, Whitmore Reans (which even, sort of, has its own online newspaper). Our road, Fawdry Street, is one of several roads in the area which don't really lead anywhere, which is perhaps why the pub at the end of the road seems to be doing so well. It's the sort of pub which looks like it could be one of the main settings in a soap, and like almost all pubs in Wolverhampton it's linked to the Banks brewery. The conversation comes in a clattering of Polish and Yam Yam. The Banks and the curry are good, the current guest ale, Boondogle, tastes like vinegar. There is a bowling green at the back, half of the clientele look as if their preferred method of transport is a chopper or a truck, and Fridays and Saturdays are karaoke nights. Like a pub should be, it provides an interesting cross section of the community.

The nearest main road is the Stavely road, which has a few shops. This is our main conduit to Asda. In the other direction is a building with a sign painted on the side which reads 'Jazz's Barbers', in big, blue letters, accompanied a picture of a man who from a distance looks like Charlie Patton, but as you get closer, looks increasingly like a dodgy eighties hairdresser's model.

We visited the local park at the time of the Wolverhampton City Fair, which seemed to mainly involve people firing cannons, driving motorbikes or monster trucks, and setting themselves on fire.

Visit the Black Country, heart of the Wild West Midlands (or have I just been playing too much Red Dead Redemption)

Familiar Things in Unfamiliar Places.

I am no longer nearly homeless. As of yesterday I have been a resident of Fawdry Street, Wolverhampton. Vicky and I still have a little unpacking to do, but now my books are on a shelf (albeit a rather disorganized one, and having to compete for space with a myriad of DVDs and Xbox games) and I've had a cup of tea, it's starting to feel like home. And until the arrival of Faye (one of Vicky's forensics buddies) some time in August, and Hannah and Chris in early September, we have the house to ourselves.

So, here we sit awaiting the full time results of the Ghana vs Uruguay match. Vicky tests the internet with some heavy duty Call of Duty, and I contemplate a productive summer of writing and editing.

In the meantime though, we have more mundane things to worry about, like working out what's wrong with the washing machine door, the alarming rate of gas consumption, how to live on almost no money, and a living room carpet so filthy that it warrants foot washing of biblical proportions. Where's the messiah when you need him...

We've decided to wear slippers for the foreseeable future.

Homeless...

...Sort of. As of Monday evening, I will be crashing on my nan's sofa until I can move into me and Vicky's (and some others who will be joining later) student pad in Wolverhampton. Which is, I admit, quite a trek from Perry Barr, but it's far better if you want a decent ale. In the meantime my life is a flurry of books in boxes and mattresses on floors as I slowly dismantle the last ten years or so of my life.

Bring on the Black Country.

What happens when a rolling stone looses momentum?

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now, so apologies if the details are a little sketchy. Hopefully Google will help me fill them in.

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to keep up with the election, I was reading the Guardian. I found an article about a Burmese musician who fuses traditional Burmese music with hip hop. He uses music as a way of protesting against the military government in Burma, to the extent that nine out of twelve songs on his most recent album were banned, including one where the only lyrics translate as 'Hey, how are you?'

I wish him the best of luck, but neither he nor the plight of the Burmese people are the main purpose of this post. The musician, Thxa Soe, came into contact with hip hop while studying in Britain. He chose hip hop because 'there's not much freedom in rock'. This statement surprised me. I had always thought of rock as one of the freesest forms of music. I mean, nothing says freedom like the opening riff of Hendrix's version of All Along the Watchtower, does it? Then I started to wonder, has rock music perhaps gone stale?

When rock started in the late sixties and early seventies it was an explosion of new sounds. As it started to get more pompous and 'prog', there was freedom for the artists to experiment, even if it was at the expense of listenable records. Meanwhile, less experimental rock bands started slip into their own cliches.

The rule book has been re-written a few times since, with movements like punk and britpop, but again once something works well it becomes a formula. A few years ago indie rock and pop looked like it was going to start a new revolution, but what we ended up with was a ream of Libertines and Franz Ferdinand soundalikes. And now, commercial pop looks set to reign supreme again, albeit with a newly indiefied aesthetic.

On the other hand, there are, and always have been a few stand out bands out there doing something different. In the 80s we had the Cure and the Smiths. Now try this, or this. In all honesty, I think all types of music have both great innovators and stale cliches. In hip hop, how many 'bitches and hoes' types are there to every thing like this?

Incidentally, I've been listening to a lot of American alternative stuff in the past few years. Which includes a good deal of folky stuff.

Actually, lets make THIS happen.

I've stayed largely quiet during the run up to the election. This is not due to any desire to stay out of the politics, although I am aware that other people are doing a better job of writing about it then I would have done. It's simply because I've been too busy with assignments and what-not to find the time. I have something none election-related which I've wanted to blog about for a week or so now, but that will have to wait. For today, I just wanted to pop on that I've been following the election via The Guardian, and they've managed to get me quite excited about the possibilities of a hung Parliament and the electoral reform which could follow. And the possibility of a liberal leaning government for the first time in my lifetime (New Labour clearly don't count).

Now though, on Election Eve, I can't escape nagging worries that the Conservatives will sneak a majority, or that Labour will somehow hold on to power. If that happens all this excitement will be for nothing, and the disappointment could even harm the Liberal cause (and that of all the smaller parties who struggle to get a look in under the current system) next time round, reinforcing the 'wasted vote' myth. So now I'm here, flying a garish orange flag and urging all of you to:

Vote Lib Dem

Especially if you live in Warwick or Lemington Spa (not that I have any vested interest).

Quick Notice (let's make this happen)

Tomorrow, at 1pm, there is an open meeting about an English Department Literary Magazine in B609. If you are an English student at BCU you may have gotten a text about it. I fully intend to be there, and suggest anyone with an intrest does the same.

Towards the end of last academic year myself and another student, Alex Kent, attempted to get a literary magazine started. Due to a large dose of naivity, this dwindled to a couple of pages in the student union magazine, Spaghetti Junction. We never thought of suggesting it to the department and our knowledge of publising things like this was minimal. We received no submissions, and the page quickly starved to death.

I only hope that with the department backing us, and a fuller pannel of people working on it, this time will be different. We have a great Creative Writing course at BCU and the people on it deserve a place to showcase their work. Come on everbody, lets make this happen.

Some Complaints and a Challenge.

Wolverhampton is probably not in the running to be the next European city of culture. It's not a complete cultural wasteland, it has a pretty good art gallery , a decent theatre and some good live music venues. The local Waterstone's however is really letting the side down.

I've talked before about the Waterstone's in Birmingham. There are two of them in the city centre, the one in the beautiful old bank building and the one that's near the Pavilions, which has a larger than usual selection of poetry, drama, philosophy etc.

The Waterstone's in Wolverhampton on the other hand is a different matter, although this possibly says more about smaller Waterstone's stores than it does about Wolves. I went in looking for Waverley by Sir Walter Scott, which is on my reading list for Romantic Century. They didn't have it. In fact they didn't have anything at all by Walter Scott; the 'classics section' was only given one small section of shelves, and at least three of those were entirely taken up by Dickens. I like Dickens, but he could have some room for everyone else.

Of course, being me, I decided to explore the rest of the shop. It had no Scott, and no Byron, but it had four different books 'by' Jordan. I think that about sums up the situation. This shop had no room for one of the most famous poets ever, but could find room for the novels of a woman whose biggest claim to fame is having cartoon knockers, and whose only discernible talent is showing them off.

You may be wondering why I put the word 'by' in inverted comas like that. I once read (I think mainly out of morbid curiosity) an interview with Jordan in the Metro, in which she revealed her... method for writing novels. Basically, she comes up with the idea for a plot and then the novel is ghost written. To me this seems to be a similar process to celebrity endorsed perfumes or clothing lines, where you know that they had very little input and are more or less just a brand.

If Katie Price wants to defend herself from this statement, I suggest she gets in touch, and she can do so by way of a short story competition. All in favor say 'aye'.

Review: 'Confessions of an English Opium Eater'

Some of you may be wondering why I chose to call this blog 'Undertheinfluence'. Well, my intention was to emphasis the fact that as aspiring (or, to put it in a way which sounds less up-my-own-arse, 'wannabe') writer, I will always be unavoidably influenced in one way or another by whatever I happen to be reading at the time (and everything else I've ever read). In that spirit I've decided that it would be a good idea to stick the occasional book review up here. 'Occasionally' meaning whenever I finish reading a book, which is nowhere near as often as it should be. I'll also do a poetry review every month, in keeping with my earlier pledge to read a collection every month.

The first book I'll be reviewing is Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which seems appropriate given the name of the blog. I had to read this for my 'Romantic Century (B)' module at uni, but (if you're reading Ian) it could also sit nicely on the 'Life Writing' reading list. At eighty-eight pages it is more properly a journalistic essay than a book, and was initially published in two parts in the London Review in 1821. Despite it's short length though the book is full of interesting episodes which give a rich picture of life in early 19th century Britain. For example, we are told that Manchester factory workers would often spend their wages on opium because 'the lowness of the wages... would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits'. Times have clearly changed. I've never tried to buy heroin, but I imagine it would cost me a fair bit more than a pint.

De Quincey's descriptions of being essentially homeless in London and Wales are intriguingly juxtaposed with episodes where he is mixing with young aristocrats at Eton, and the hallucinogenic Opium-dream sequences build layer upon layer of hypnotic detail. What is really interesting about this work though is de Quincey's style of writing which is capable of both wit and seriousness. For a confessional autobiography he doesn't actually give the reader much detail about his life in the period when he was taking opium, partly because of his decision to remain anonymous. This lack of background information does not seem to matter though as de Quincey guides the reader through a whirlwind off different associations, often addressing them directly.

I once saw a review of Trainspotting which described it as 'the voice of punk grown elequent', but this heroin story gives us a voice which is truly elegant.

The Joys of Wikipedia

I'm sure that anyone who is in anyway involved in the university system is used to being told how wikipedia is at it's best too simple and at it's worse too apocryphal to be used as a source of academic information. This is probably true, but I feel that it somehow misses the point. Wikipedia is not there to replace academic journals, it is there as a repository of interesting (or sometimes not so interesting) information for the general reader. This function, it fulfills magnificently. And if it is occasionally inaccurate it is worth remembering that for every ill-informed mistake or malignant lie that is posted there are hundreds of informative articles, and a horde of researches wait to swoop down like eagles to correct the inconsistencies.

Wikipedia is also very good for finding interesting things which you weren't even looking for. For example, a few weeks ago I was looking at the Wikipedia entry on Samuel Taylor Coleridge as research for my Life Writing assignment. My tutor, the much-praised Mr Ian Marchant, actually encourages this sort of behaviour, taking the view that for a creative module, it is far more important to be interesting than to be accurate (as long as we are still aiming for some sort of truth). This not only led to my discovery of the man from Porlock which became the focus of my project (Coleridge's excuse for Kublah Khan being 'unfinished' was that he was interrupted halfway through by a visitor from Porlock which, in short, made him lose his mojo), it also led me to a less relevant but arguably more interesting discovery. I got distracted. forgetting for a moment that both Xanadu and 'The sacred river Alph' are both entirely fictional, or at least mythical, I decided to look up the real Kublai Khan and see if he had tried to build 'a stately pleasure dome'. He hadn't. A map on this page caught my attention though, and below that map was a name. That name was Rabban Bar Sauma.

It turns out that there had been a christian tradition in China and Mongolia as far back as the 7th century. This in itself was unexpected and fascinating, but then I discovered that Christianity was also a strong force in ancient Mongolia which it seems was much more cosmopolitan than might be expected. Rabban Bar Sauma was a christian monk, born somewhere near modern Beijing, which was then part of the Mongolian empire. Sometime in what wikipedia vaguely calls his 'middle age', he decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his student, Raban Marcos. Because of Military unrest in the middle east (some things never change) they never made it to Jerusalem, but ended up in Baghdad, where they met the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox church. They carried out some diplomatic work for the Patriarch, failed to return home because of more military unrest, and when the Patriarch died, Marcos was elected as his replacement.

The story did not end here (although judging by the length of this post it might have been better for my readership if it had). Marcos then appointed Bar Sauma to make a diplomatic journey westwards. By this point he was in his late sixties. On this journey he met the Byzantine emperor, witnessed an eruption of Mount Etna, failed to meet the pope (who had died not long before he arrived in Rome) but negotiated with his cardinals, met several European kings, including Edward I of England, returned to Rome and met the new pope, (who allowed him to celebrate his own Eastern Eucharist on Palm Sunday in the Vatican). He then returned to Baghdad bearing gifts for his former student from the new Pope as a sign of inter-church good will, and spent the remainder of his life there writing down his adventures.

I know it's unfashionable to stick a moral on a story, but I feel a post this long needs something to justify it. Something along the lines of 'you're never too old to start an adventure' seems appropriate. It also makes me wonder how big the gulf was between far eastern Christianity (which would have been effected by contact with Buddhism and other oriental philosophies) and the western forms of Christianity we are used to. Maybe Wikipedia can tell me.

Banjo man

Today as I got to work, there was a man sitting on a wall in the car park playing the banjo. I don't know who he was or where he came from, but he was a youngish man, and didn't look homeless, and he certainly wasn't a busker. Our carpark is not a public throughway, and there really is no reason for any one to go through it other than to get to the back entrance of the odeon. People don't even walk past it close enough to have noticed the banjo player. He was, as a friend of mine pointed out, playing only for the music itself.

Personally I think there is something really special in that. As I passed the man, we exchanged a glance and a nod. That was my way of saying 'I like hearing you play the banjo as I get to work on this sunny, start-of-spring day'. It put me in a good mood for my shift, which is also helpful. About fifteen minutes into my shift, the next time someone had to go to the car park, he was gone. I wouldn't be surprised if the managment had moved him along. I'm not even sure I'd blame them for doing so, it's part of their job to keep an eye on things like that after all.

Personally though, I would have been tempted to employ him to play there everyday.

My Own Personal Porlock.

When it comes to historical fiction writers differ greatly in their methods. Some research their subject and period meticulously, others prefer to trust their imaginations and, well, make it all up. Both methods are perfectly valid, although the latter relies on at least some prior knowledge and common sense. Generally I would probably fall slap bang in the middle of the two extremes, but recently, as I was working on a biographical piece on Samuel Taylor Coleridge for uni, I thought I should put a little bit more effort into research.

I was pleasantly surprised to find it actually quite interesting. Coleridge wasn't the most active of the Romantic Poets. He didn't elope to Switzerland with a young mistress, like Shelley, or have sex with almost everybody and then die in the Greek war of independence, like Byron. Hell, even Wordsworth visited revolutionary France and fathered an illegitimate child before he took to writing about daffodils. Coleridge on the other hand seemed to have spent the majority of his life talking or reading philosophy. Yes, he was addicted to opium, but so it seems was everyone else. Why then did I choose to write about him? I suppose mainly because Kublah Khan is one of my favorite poems.

Anyway, a week or so ago I was sat in the branch of Costa inside Waterstones on New Street, Birmingham. Bookshops are of course my natural habitat, and this particular one is situated in an old bank building, which makes it particularly interesting. I was quite happy, drinking my latte and making notes on William Hazlitt's My First Acquaintance with the Poets, sad as it is I could have spent the whole day in this manner. I felt like a 'real' writer. Added to that, I was actually finding some useful information, with in a couple of hours I felt as if, if I could just sit at my laptop, my work would just splurge fully formed onto the keyboard. Unfortunately it was not to be. I had to go to work.

I work at the Odeon, again on New Street. After spending the morning in the aforementioned manner, doing screen checks on the deeply irritating Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeekual comes as something as a culture shock. But more irritatingly, it meant I had to wait before I could start my work, and when I did the moment had gone, and it my splurge was, pardon the disturbing imagery, constipated. There's probably a moral in this story somewhere, but what it is remains ambiguous.

The Lost Art of Reading Poetry.

It's the 21st century. Nobody reads poetry anymore. This claim is probably debatable, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who do read poetry for pleasure, but I suspect they are few and far between. How many of you do? How many of you even know someone who does?

It seems to me that the only people who read poetry (or at least serious poetry, discounting overly twee, sentimental or purely humorous verse, although all those things I'm sure have there place) are either students of literature or people who are moderately serious about writing it, and it is usually only the later who read it for pleasure. Again, this is probably an over simplification, but one which, without doing any research, I would be willing to bet has large measure of truth.

I fall into both of the above categories and I will freely admit that I probably don't read enough poetry. This is a fault on my part.

Why don't people read poetry anymore? For some people the enjoyment of poetry is destroyed by having it dissected in front of them at school. Unlike dissecting frogs, there is no morbid fascination in the dissection of poetry. Only dry skeletal structures of metre and rhyme. For the aspiring poet these things are important, for the lay reader the effect (unless they are interested in the technical side) the effect is something similar to watching a magician who tells you 'I am now going to pull a rabbit from this hidden compartment in the top of my hat'. It could also be that people see poetry as being either overly twee or sentimental (as mentioned above) or pretentious and inaccessible. Or at the very worst both.

I'll be honest, there is a lot of crap out there. Especially on the Internet, where there is often little or no quality control (including on my now abandoned Myspace page). But there is also a lot of really really good stuff out there. Even on the Internet.

From this day forth I vow to read one collection of poems every month. It's not a lot, but it's a quantity I can fit around my uni reading lists, assignments and working. And, fully aware that most of my readers are likely to be students on my course and I may be preaching to the converted, I urge you all to go away having read this and read a poem. Just one. If your lucky, or look in the right places you'll find something which makes you think, which makes you say 'yes that's exactly how that feels/looks' or even just 'It doesn't matter what it means, those words in that order sound beautiful to me'.

In the end, that's what it's all about.


P.S. If you find anything good, send it my way.

Another Travelin' Story (or 'How Curriosity Almost Killed the Luke')

I'm sure that if anyone actually reads this they will be keen to point out that I haven't technically written any travelling stories on here (that is, if they care enough to make such allegations). This is, admittedly, true. The title actually refers to the fact that the events of this blog happened in a train station, while I was listening to Another Travelin' Song by Bright Eyes.

As I mentioned before, I was at a train station. To be more specific, I was at Wolverhampton train station, on my way to my girlfriend's halls of residence after a nine hour shift at work (at a cinema, in case you were wondering). It was around twenty to eleven. I was walking through the station's foyer area. It is much the same as the foyer area in many mid-sized modern stations. There are ticket booths, automatic ticket machines which give you a discount if you choose to travel with Virgin, a small branch of WH Smith's and a linoleum floor, patterned in nondescript shades of yellow and reddish-pink.

On this floor was a yellow cone to warn those passing through that it was wet, which incidentally, it wasn't. I barely noticed the cone as I walked past, more concerned with what I might eat when I get in than the possibility that I might slip and die at the train station. I had almost reached the red automatic doors when I heard a clattering noise. Not the train-like clatter of drums coming from my headphones, but the clatter of something falling over. I turned to see the wet floor sign sliding ironically across the linoleum. A quick look suggested the smirking young man with the gelled black hair was the most likely suspect. Minor distraction over, I turned back towards the doors.

'Yeah, I kicked it!'

This voice did not belong to the smirking youth. Again, I turned my head, this time to see a large, goatee-bearded, skin-headed man somewhere between his late thirties and mid forties. He looks as if he would probably play rugby with gorillas if rugby wasn't a posh nancy-boy's game, an prefers instead the more manly game of football hooliganism. Apparently he mistook my mild curiosity for disapproval. Smirk-boy is walking beside him, now struggling to stop himself from laughing.

Still not really interested, and at this stage not even entirely sure he was talking to me, I passed through the automatic doors. At this point he shouted again, and with the instinct of someone who has been shouted at many times (thanks to my years as a teenage rocker in Kingstanding) I knew instinctively that I was the intended target. The tone was threatening, but the actual words were obscured by my headphones. This, as I'm sure my tutor will point out, was a schoolboy error for an aspiring writer. Observation is the key to everything. If I was going to play heavily with poetic licence I would say that the words in the song at this point were 'I'll kick and scream or kneel and plead/ I'll fight like hell to hide that I've given up', but in truth I can't remember. It seems I've sacrificed part of a half decent anecdote to listen to a song which I wasn't even paying that much attention too. I digress.

I looked back at the man and made a shrugging gesture. One which I hoped would convey 'I don't really care if you kicked the cone, I just wanted to know what the noise was', but which I fear may have translated as 'you wanna go, I'm ready for you'.

I walked away from the train station with a vague feeling that I was being followed, but as far as I am aware the man and his smirking companion were actually just crossing the road behind me to get into one of the waiting black cabs.

Then I went to Asda, and saw Ainsley Harriot buying some things. Which will hopefully add some celebrity glitz to what has turned out to be a slightly rambling blog.

A Confession...

Hello, my name is Luke, and I have an addiction. I’m not an alcoholic (although they do say admitting it is the hardest part). I’m not, to the best of my knowledge, addicted to sex or drugs, and while I will confess to a minor addiction to Rock and Roll, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. My addiction began probably before I turned two, and as of yet shows no sign of abating. Ladies and gentlemen, I am addicted to words. My rate of consumption is difficult to determine, due to the pressures of university life I currently get through a novel almost every week, in addition to plays, poems, magazine articles, films, television programmes, adverts, song lyrics and countless conversations. What’s worse is that I’ve now started dealing. I suppose everyone deals here and there, but I’d very much like to make a living out of it (yes, this is going to be one of those ‘struggling/aspiring/wannabe writer’ blogs, apologies to those of you who were hoping for something a little more ‘trainspotting’).

Where does this addiction come from? I don’t know. What I do know is that I just love words. All sorts of words. Words which crack and slap and spit. Words which you sound like other words. Words which you can pick apart one syllable at a time. Words which you can roll around your mouth as you say them (of which ‘bollock’ is an unfortunately literal-sounding example). Words which mean more than one thing. And I love what happens when you string words together to make a story or a poem. The way they can be made to pierce the heart or tickle the funny bone. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think that sometimes ten well chosen words can say more than a thousand pictures (no offence to any visual artists out there). Anyway, that’s what this blog is about. Not necessarily individual words themselves, but my attempts to become a better (and with any luck, better known) writer, and about anything which pops into my head to write about. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it interesting, and not as pretentious as it has the potential to be (feel free to let me know if it’s heading in that direction). Here’s to a better blog next time, not because I think this one is bad, but because improvement is the way forward.