Challenge Accepted

It has recently been pointed out to me that it is nearly two years since I last updated my blog. So, taking inspiration from the prolific the ubiquitous lol, here is my latest post.

Oh how much has changed in the last two years! I have learned how to add links (see above) - so that readers who find themselves bored of whimsical prose about the failures of a writer of prosaic whimsy can go and read something more interesting. I am still hungover and debt-ridden and failing to write a novel - so no need to change the tagline (at least until the Western economy finishes tanking and we are all debt-free and scavenging in bins to feed our families). I have added a photograph of me in my monkey-tail beard phase. I have discovered a pillow arrangement that allows you to write comfortably in bed.

The soft comforts of the Golden Triangle in Norwich continue to embrace me. I nearly left when Katy and I broke up for the final time (not the time bitterly recorded in Haiku below) in February this year. Here is a poem I wrote and rewrote obsessively over the two years that we battled the inevitable.

You are the city, but this city's not for me.

You're the cobblestones beneath the fallen leaves,

You're the late September sun and February freeze,

You're "A Guinness and a Stella please,"

In pubs from Unthank Road to Prince of Wales

Under Christmas lights, through January sales.

You are the city, but this city's not for me.

You're every sunset viewed from Mousehold Heath,

You're second-hand shopping down Magdalene Street,

You're breathless up Kett's Hill and kissing underneath

The Catholic Cathedral gate

After drinking in the Temple Bar til late.

You are the city, but this city's not for me.

No more tripping down the corridors of Waverney,

Demolished now, replaced by some monstrosity.

Our friends all gone - you're all that's left for me.

My City - You're Chapelfield and Eaton Park,

You're all wrapped up for lakeside traipsing after dark.

You are the city.

You are the city.

You are the city.

But you are gone and now the city's all I see

And litter lies among the fallen leaves

And belching traffic fouls the summer breeze

And these days it's: "Just a Guinness please,"

In the Eaton Cottage or the Temple Bar.

You were once, will be, forever are

My city, but this city's not for me.

Of course, it would probably have been a more truthful poem if I had actually left Norwich in a fit of violent passion determined to wreak vengeance on a world that allows for such heartbreak. In truth, I just quietly and (I like to think) patriotically carried on doing exactly what I'd been doing for the last four years. I will explore the theme of veracity a little further in my next post.

The First Law of Motion - a Review

Spoiler Alert! Do not read this until you have read the book. Available from her website.


I may be the wrong person to recommend this book. I don’t read a lot of novels – maybe half a dozen a year and they tend to have more spaceships and aliens in them than K.R. Moorhead’s debut. I also don’t know any literary theory after Aristotle, so I’ll have to assume that nothing much has changed in that field since those days. Anyhow, I can’t find my copy of The Poetics anywhere (and, annoyingly, have nobody to blame but myself unless – as I secretly hope – one of my flatmates has developed an overnight interest in post-Socratic philosophy and scurried it away) so I’ll have to wing it. In my favour, I do read a lot of reviews, so I know how this is supposed to work: You start off on a seemingly unrelated note and then effortlessly segue into a discussion of plot, character, style and morality in your chosen book.

There is a moment of cogent reflection in Yeats’ hallucinatory poem The Second Coming, in which he observes that ‘...the best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity...’ These lines could be read as dividing Humanity into two categories (the best and the worst) and inscribing each with a quality one would wish for the other, but my preferred reading is the psychological interpretation: A human being at her best lacks all conviction and at her worst is full of passionate intensity. The unnamed protagonist of ‘The First Law of Motion’ certainly exhibits both these qualities. At times, she allows her passions to be her guide, as when she breaks into the Stranger’s house. At others she specifically chooses to abandon conviction, as when she ruminates on Newton’s first law:

...I’m not charmed, I’m not fooled, I’m just here. Which law of motion is that? A stationary object will remain stationary until a force is acted upon it... or something like that. That’s me. The stationary object. I’m sick of trying to be the force, because apparently the object doesn’t necessarily move in the direction you want it to. From now on I’m passive. I’ll let life act upon me. All my actions will be reactions.

The protagonist comes to this decision late in the book and as a result is raped and robbed in an Atlantic City casino – a clear indication from the author that the ‘stationary object’ philosophy does not lead to desirable ends. However, it is when the protagonist follows her passions that she commits her most immoral acts: the stalking of CP Shorter and the delivery of her neglected cat’s putrid corpse to his friend’s apartment. At first glance, it seems that in the universe of TFLofM, action leads to immorality and inaction to punishment.

That said, the question arises of whether the anti-heroine of TFLofM’s actions can be considered immoral at all. A moral agent must be capable of making rational decisions. When faced with choices, the protagonist frequently chooses an option that is not in her best interests. She doesn’t take her prescription meds because they make her “cloudy”, but she describes the panic attacks as “lurking in my head and my gut. Like worms waiting to devour me.” On two occasions, the worms succeed.

The characters the protagonist encounters, she sees as surfaces defined by their environment: “Train Station Boy”, “Fire Escape Boy”, “Couch Boy” and of course “The Stranger on a Train” with whom she becomes obsessed. He becomes the object of her fantasies – by turns erotic and prosaic. The actions most suggestive of her encroaching insanity grow out of her refusal to allow herself to talk to the object of her fantasies; preferring instead to watch him from the bench opposite his house and then break in when he is out:

Imposing myself on his space. Leaving traces of my DNA to mingle with traces of his. Attempting to forge a connection? Or just avoiding what I really should be doing? Which is to say, waiting to bump into him again and then starting a conversation. A normal, everyday, chit-chat kind of conversation. Like a normal everyday person might do.

Whilst in the Stranger’s house, the protagonist makes a telling non sequitur in her poetic analysis of the morphology of ‘Shorter’:

Shorter. Not the superlative. That would be “shortest.” The most short.
No. It’s the comparative. More short.
You can’t expect anyone to be the most. But they can be more.
I can be more.

Morphologically, ‘Shorter’ is indeed a comparative adjective but, semantically, it means to have less height. That she looks at a word and derives a personal ambition from its grammatical structure not its meaning is perhaps symptomatic of a deeper malaise: Her analysis of the world around her is flawed by her own interpretation. She has friends and relations who care for her (especially, Jay and her mother) but seen through the prism of her own self-absorption this love becomes distorted, mixed up (like the metaphors in this sentence) with the false comforts of drugs and unfulfilling (and disturbingly violent) sex.

Moorhead presents in prose the dichotomy of action versus inaction. A confrontation that I feel derives more naturally from Yeats than Newton, although I love the metaphor of human experience as force or stationary object. The character that best represents the ‘stationary object’ philosophy is also the novel’s moral centre: Daniel. Until the novel’s final sequence, the reader encounters him only in flashbacks where his imperfect sanity serves as a counterpoint to the heroine’s self-loathing. Their ceremony of innocence is drowned in the blood-dimmed tide of the protagonist’s madness.

There’s plenty more to be said about Moorhead’s engaging style. The beautiful duality of thought and speech and the mutually destructive relationship between the protagonist and her friend Kat deserve essays of their own. I’ll leave that to those more qualified.

Swine Flu

I've been laid up in bed all day, so I've decided to take up my blog again. Apologies to my four loyal followers who have no doubt been checking every day for five months to see if a new post has appeared. No real progress on... well, on anything really. I've been writing a few haiku this week commemorating (commiserating?)the end of my relationship with Katy. She doesn't know its over yet because she has been on a bender for the last week and I figure it better to tell her when she is sober and to her face. I don't think she will be too sad: I don't seem to mean much to her anymore. I guess we stretched things out longer than would have been natural. Anyway, here are some of my break-up haiku (my spellcheck informs me that this is the correct plural - who knew?)

Sleep evades me now.
Will Autumn sunshine suffice
to warm my mattress?

I'm sorry I was
angostura bitterness
in your sweet pink gin.

Hats and jewelery
and your rain-proof anorak
await collection.

Your Mercurial
landscape covers the damp patch
on my party wall.

Ignoring our past,
I crossed a road to see a
spider's frosted web.

Must learn not to love
a lie or a liar's way
of living her life.

Perhaps now I can
grow that massive trucker 'tache
I've always dreamed of.

Word Count: 143

Started from scratch for the third time this year with an idea that's been nagging at me for a fortnight or so. Wrote a few notes then decided to bake some gingerbread instead. Also found this poem I wrote for Katy when she was in America and wasted some time polishing it. Here it is (Don't worry its only short.)

Who would want someone to miss?
I wish that you were here with me
So we could misbehave -
Go raving drinking dancing. Do all
The small things: Play Slippery Ann;
Compare the spans of hands, the length
And strength of nails. Devote a morning
To yawning down cups of tea
(green and white respectively).

It doesn't have a title yet, so suggestions are more than welcome blog followers.

The World's Best Yorkies

The Yorkshire puddings Katy, Chris and I made for our roast yesterday were the best I've ever seen. So we have photographed them and posted them on Facebook and also here on my blog. The secret's in the batter mix but will we ever hit that perfect ratio again?

Regular followers will know that this is the first photograph I have posted. I thought it would be difficult but actually it was dead easy so I might do it more in future.

No Excuses.

No excuses for not writing some more of my novel this week. I have two days off in a row. I've finished my epic bee poem (see below) and I'm completely brassic so I can't go out on the piss/top up my online poker account. Clearly the perfect time to write. (Though the procrastinator in me notices that the world championship snooker tournament is on...)

Word Count Unchanged

Alright, I have finally moved into the new house and sorted out the internet. The word count on the novel is as ever unchanged, but I have made lots of progress on my epic poem of war and suffering: The Bee's Sneeze. Just a few more stanzas to go. Read it here first.