An Extract from ‘The Mezzanine’

Here’s my favourite passage from Nicholson Baker’s ‘The Mezzanine’, which is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read.

And this was when I realised abruptly that as of that minute (impossible to say exactly which minute), I had finished with whatever large-scale growth I was going to have as a human being, and that I was now permanently arrested at an intermediate stage of personal development. I did not move or flinch or make any outward sign. In fact, once the first shock of raw surprise had passed, the feeling was not unpleasant. I was set: I was the kind of person who said “actually” too much. I was the sort of person who stood in a subway car thinking about buttering toast – buttering raisin toast, even;: when the high, crisp scrape of the butter knife is muted by occasional contact with the soft, heat blimped forms of the raisins, and when if you cut across a raisin, it will sometimes fall right out, still intact though dented, as you lift the slice. I was the sort of person whose biggest discoveries were likely to be tricks to applying toiletries while fully dressed. I was a man, but I was not nearly the magnitude of man I had hoped I might be.

And the Clocks Go Back

I’ve just been looking back at things I’ve written in the past. Some of them I quite like, and some are embarrassing. Some are on this blog, some are e-mails and messages to people I’ve known and people I’ve loved and people I was merely very, very fond of.

It’s been good.

It’s nice when, for once, even if it’s only an accounting trick, a childish illusion, you get your time again. You can spend an hour looking back and lose no time at all. For sixty minutes, you live twice. Cats get nine whole lives, we get a magic hour which is snatched back six months later.

It’s fun, though, to pretend.

2019

The badgers organised.

I’m the only one left.

I haven’t seen a human face for nine weeks.

Only one fate awaits.

And they earned it, bless ‘em.

Here I go.

Wish me luck.

Adios.

The One Where Everything Ends

I took a wrong turn on my way home from work on Monday. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. I found myself outside a warehouse in the pouring rain. I don’t know what compelled me to open that door…

The door closes with a click, and silence, a hard, oppressive silence, settles over the space. There is no breeze in here, not a breath of air stirring. In the far corner of the room, a single stage light illuminates a brown leather sofa. Four claps ring out. They should echo – the walls are completely bare – but they don’t, they just sort of hang in the air. A reminder that nothing is truly finite, that everything leaves a trace of itself somewhere.

My walk is halting, my breathing shallow. With no warning, countless bulbs spring to life at once. Light floods the enormous space, and just ahead a figure lies prostrate on the ground.

I’ll be there for you…

The faint refrain seems to come from above, but has no discernible source. I walk over to the figure. Each second takes a lifetime, each breath and step a punitive weight of thought.

…when the rain starts to pour…

Floods. Torrents. The walls collapse. All is swirling blackness and cold, so very, very cold.

I break the surface, gasping, coughing, blinking. The lights are flickering, and soon go out altogeether.

I’ll be there for you…

If this place had a ceiling, I’d be there by now. I look up and see stars. Millions. More than I’ve ever seen before. Each one a pinprick imperfection in the fabric of time.

The water has stopped rising. There is nothing. Only the stars and canned laughter.

…like I’ve been there before…

I could be happy here.

I could stay.

It hasn’t been my day, my week, my month, or even my year, but……………

Getting The Rounds In With Galloway

First things first: thanks to The New Statesman for watching this poison, so I didn’t have to.

Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100 per cent true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don’t constitute rape. At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it. And somebody has to say this.

Let’s take woman A. Woman A met Julian Assange, invited him back to her flat, gave him dinner, went to bed with him, had consensual sex with him. Claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know.

I mean not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion. Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you’re already in the sex game with them.

It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said, “do you mind if I do it again?”. It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning. . .

I don’t believe either of those women, I don’t believe either of these stories.

Now… let me tell you about the time I went to the pub with George Galloway.

Once upon a time, I met George Galloway in a boozer for a few pints, as you do. “Would you like some lager?” I asked him. “Oh yes,” he replied. The z-list celeb circuit can be hard, and I felt good to be doing someone a good turn who may otherwise have been reduced to a second stint in the Big Brother House, a fate surely worse than death.

I walked up to the bar. “I would like 38 pints of lager,” I said to the esteemed barkeep.

“Nigh on twoscore of my finest carbonated fermentations?” he spluttered.

“Quite,” I replied. “My friend George Galloway and I are fair parched.” I slapped my debit card down on the bar.

“One for me, and 37 for you, George,” I said. How generous I am sometimes. He didn’t look as happy as someone about to get some free booze should have.

“You’d better drink them all up, too. I’ll make sure you do. After all, you did say you wanted lager, didn’t you George? I didn’t ask how many you wanted and now I expect you to drink as many as I choose to force you to drink. That’s how these things work.”

Even taken at its worst, and even if the allegations made subsequently were 100% true, and even though the pub CCTV caught the action in wonderful grainy black and white, what I did doesn’t constitute drowning. At least not drowning as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it. And somebody has to say this.

George met me, accompanied me to the pub, agreed to have some lager. Claimed he didn’t consent to being force-fed 37 pints of the stuff, but how was I to know that until he was being given the kiss of life by the pub chef? This is something which can happen, you know.

I mean, not everybody needs to be asked prior to each drink. Some people believe that when you go to the pub with somebody, agree to a pint or forty, you’re already in the drinking game with them.

It might have been really bad manners not to have paused between each pint I forcibly poured down his throat and said, “Do you mind if I do it again?” It might be really sordid and bad pub etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not drowning or you bankrupt the term drowning of all meaning…

The Question

The question is not, “Is Thatcher dead?”
The question is, “Why isn’t Thatcherism dead?”

 

The answer isn’t ‘The Falklands’ – that’s too simplistic.

 

Answers on a postcard, please.

oh.

Let me tell you about the last

time

I told someone

I loved

them.

 

“I think I’ve

accidentally

fallen in love with

you”

I said.

 

(I made it

a joke

to keep the tension

at bay.

It didn’t

work)

 

“Oh,” she said,

“I didn’t know

you felt like

that.”

 

“Wh-” I began.

“I thought,”

said she

“you just enjoyed

fucking

me.”

 

“Oh.”