Words and drawings by Simon Bridgestock
Simon Bridgestock lives in Ashford where he teaches Smurfs the tabla.
Friday 30 November 2012
Thursday 29 November 2012
Conrad Nolan
CONRAD NOLAN by Christopher Hardy
In which Daniel Patterson, preparing for the publication of his first novel, receives some sage advice.
Sid, my agent, has invited me to drinks with the literary legend, Conrad Nolan. He has written fifteen novels of considerable artistic merit. Apparently. I have never read any of them. Sid thinks I will benefit from talking to one of the masters and to my surprise I am genuinely excited to meet him.
Sid and I meet in the John Snow for a cheap pint beforehand. Sid has brought a Singles Club match along; a plump, homely girl with kind eyes. She is introduced as Molly.
“I wish I’d known you were bringing someone,” I tell Sid. “I could have brought Lydia...”
“Well, it’s a foursome with Conrad.”
“So Conrad Nolan is my date?”
“If you like.”
“How do you know him anyway? You’re constantly surprising me.”
“I don’t. No, he’ll see anyone providing they buy his drinks all night. His novels don’t sell, you see. They’re far too…intelligent.”
I turn to Molly. “How long have you been doing this Internet dating thing?”
“Thirteen years,” she says.
“Not that successful so far, then?”
“You live in hope. But there are some demented people out there.”
Sid nods in agreement. “Molly here is like a breath of fresh air. I’ve done two dates so far and they’ve both been retards.”
Molly frowns. “Actually, I find that quite offensive. My brother is mentally challenged.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sid says.
“You weren’t to know.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry, I can’t go out with someone who has a retarded brother.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t sit around a dinner table with him. They make me feel a bit sick. I’m just being honest and it’s good we’ve found out now.”
She leaves in stunned silence and we are alone.
“It’s a minefield, mate,” he confides.
Conrad Nolan is sitting alone at the upstairs bar in his private members club, sipping from a large tumbler of Scotch. I recognise him from his Wikipedia photograph, in which he is striking an identical pose.
Sid introduces himself and then me and we sit in a booth and order drinks from an elderly waiter. Nolan drains his glass and leans into Sid. “I always feel that it’s beneficial in the long run to clarify the expenses situation up front.”
“Oh, right, absolutely,” Sid says. “It’s all on me.”
Nolan smiles. “Good. Now we can relax and enjoy ourselves.”
“You sound like a prostitute I hired in Berlin,” I tell him.
“Quite right. Writers are all whores. It’s best you understand that sooner rather than later.”
I laugh.
“I am quite serious,” he says.
“It really is a pleasure to meet you,” Sid says. “I’m a huge fan.”
Sid is lying. He reads less than me.
“‘All art is quite useless’. You know who said that?”
Sid nods. “Shakespeare.”
Nolan looks at him for awhile. Then, finally, “Oscar Wilde.”
“That’s who I meant,” Sid says snapping his fingers.
“That great poofter," Nolan says.
The drinks arrive. I take a gulp of the whisky.
“There are worse professions, naturally,” Nolan says. “We must all aspire to greatness else what would mankind ever achieve?”
“Quite,” I say, then stand up. “Excuse me. Must run to the men’s.”
“Yes,” Nolan says, standing as well. “I need to piss like a race horse.”
We stand side by side at the urinal in silence and the pressure causes a short delay. As soon as I manage to begin, though, Nolan let’s out a fart like a firecracker that reverberates around the tiled bathroom and then he sighs with pleasure.
“Do you know why I never wear shorts?” he suddenly asks.
“Can’t say I do.”
“When I piss in a urinal I can feel the splash back sprinkling my bare legs. With long trousers we can of course pretend that our clothing remains completely dry and clean. Everything is an illusion, my boy.”
I zip up and wash my hands. Nolan continues his business.
“So you want to be an author, do you?”
“Actually, I am an author. My first book is out next month.”
He chuckles and turns around, still putting his cock away. “You think that just because your book is being published that makes you an author?”
“Ermmm… Yes?”
“It’s taken me three decades to feel as though I have a right to a position in the literary world. And even now sometimes I am unsure.”
I nod and then abruptly he turns and locks himself in a cubicle. I run out and slide back into the booth.
“Isn’t he everything you expected him to be?” Sid says.
“And more.” I flick through the drinks menu, goggling at the prices. “Sid, how are you going to pay for this? It’s mental.”
“I sold off some of mother’s jewellery. I hid it for a few weeks first to make sure she didn’t miss it. She didn’t.”
Nolan returns from the bathroom. The waiter seems to float over. “More drinks?”
“I tried a new system with Paolo last night,” Nolan tells the waiter. “Have you a countdown function on your watch?”
“No sir, but I believe I may have one on my phone.”
“Very good. Every time you bring me a drink, set the timer for five minutes. When the alarm sounds, bring me another drink. Repeat.”
“Absolutely sir.”
I widen my eyes at Sid. He leans towards me. “There’s more jewellery hidden away somewhere,” he says.
Nolan is Oliver Reed-drunk by nine pm and the other, quieter, members pay little attention to his bellowing. I drink quickly too but in the shadow of his intoxication I remain lucid. “Are you married, boy?” he roars at me.
“Yes I am,” I say.
“You idiot. They are all sluts. Every one of them.”
I shrug. “Lydia’s not really so slutty. She does flirt with strangers occasionally, but…”
“She’ll betray you in the end. That’s why you must betray her first. Damage limitation. I married a beautiful woman when I was nineteen. Went down the shitter within two years. So I married an ugly one next. Same result but without even the temporary joy of sexual excitement. The third one was vivacious, wild, untameable. Could not have been more fun. It only took her ten months to become exactly the same as the other two. It doesn’t matter how different they are at first. They all turn into the same woman in the end. Never marry. You show me the most beautiful girl in the world, I’ll show you the man who’s tired of fucking her.”
Sid nods at me earnestly. “Is all this useful?”
“Undeniably,” I say. “You shouldn’t have sent Molly home. She’d be loving this.”
Nolan swings his massive red head to face me. “What do want from me?”
“I don’t know. How do I stop my book coming out unnoticed?”
He laughs. “You’re asking the wrong man. I know this. Luck can cause a novel to flounder but it takes talent to really sink it.”
“I’m not sure that…actually means anything.”
He gulps down another Scotch. “Do you know why I’m still in love with writing? I can hide behind my characters to give all my opinions that in real life are totally unacceptable. Under the guise of someone everyone is clearly supposed to loathe I can pour out all my misogyny and bigotries and no one can catch me out. I like to set my stories in the American West so that the women can be raped by marauding gangs and the weak are disadvantaged further and the blacks are called niggers and no one can say a damn thing about it.”
“Oh Jesus.” I bury my head in my hands.
“That is the true pleasure of writing.” He wobbles to his feet and totters to the toilets.
Sid looks at me. “He’s great, isn’t he?”
“In what way?”
Sid shrugs. “Just…his presence.”
“Pay the bill. I want to leave.”
Sid signals to the waiter. He looks downcast. “I hoped that this might be beneficial.”
“It’s depressing.”
“Why?”
I nod towards the gents’. “I’m worried you’ve shown me the future.”
Sid thinks. “You in thirty years?”
I nod.
“Wow,” Sid says. “Fifteen novels. Can you imagine?”
*
About Christopher Hardy
Christopher lives in New York and embarks on occasional creative binges alternating between writing prose and recording music.
You can read the complete Daniel Patterson story at christopherhardy.blogspot.com . Except in that Daniel is called Christopher Hardy. But it's not real. Or is it? It's confusing.
You can download his new LP for free at chrisrocks.bandcamp.com . Or just Like it on Facebook and say you have. Either way.
Wednesday 28 November 2012
Pebbles
After another shitty, rainy
Town centre day
I stopped at the corner shop
To get my fix of chocolate
“Everything is subject to quantum mechanics”
Said the man on the radio,
“Even pebbles.”
I paid for my chocolate and smiled at the man behind the counter.
“Heavy listening,” I said to him.
He made a small laugh, but said nothing
I left,
Pondering things
That I may
Or may not
Have done.
Monday 26 November 2012
No country for old blog #1
This is a slightly edited version of a post for a short-lived blog I started a few years ago. Nothing much has changed; the important thing is that I no longer work at that place...
Okay, so this isn’t a blog about walking in the countryside. It’s about being stuck in an office all day long with local radio blasting away in the factory next to said office. Which is the opposite of the original idea, but if I ever flesh out my ramblings (pun intended) and get them published elsewhere, it will all make sense. Trust me.
Through a chance internet search for jobs I found a link to a company in Chartham. The link didn’t work, but suggested that they had a vacancy, so I emailed them my C.V. I attended an interview for a job I knew nothing about, and a few days after that, it was mine. Unfortunately, my job is sitting in front of a pc all day typing numbers into spreadsheets. These spreadsheets are a lot like Lost, in that I see what they’re trying to achieve and get these glimpses of greatness, but ultimately they are messy, frustrating and rely on nonsense that could be interpreted in any number of ways. Not that I have a problem with nonsense but there’s just so much of it that I end up staring at the screen in a daze.
If my job were to make amusing observations about my co-workers, then I’d be sorted. Steve pronounces ‘punnets’ ‘pannets’, which to me sounds like ‘pallets’ and adds to my confusion as we deal with both and my job depends a lot on me not fucking up the info I’m processing. Ivan pronounces ‘ankle’ ‘uncle’ and the other day asked Steve if he had hurt his uncle. Natalya just misses out some words altogether and today asked, “Are you taking piss out of me?”
I don’t like local radio. It encapsulates everything that is wrong with the music world and having to put up with it every day is a real pain for a music lover like me. Normally I’ll be generous and say that everyone can sing, it’s just that some people don’t have a good voice, but whoever gave Mika and James Blunt a record deal is an evil cunt. That, and this bizarre Eighties revival continues apace. Music made by people who don’t remember the decade. The new retro. Style over substance. For those born at the end of the 80’s, it’s all cheap Day-Glo clothing and bad haircuts, if current fashion trends are anything to go by. To add to this, the Radiohead/Travis/Coldplay/Keane lineage continues with an evermore-diluted bloodline of whinging singers and a musical style that’s just an emotional shortcut for selling people more of the same shit. Listening to Invicta FM, you’d believe that REM and Blur only ever recorded two songs each in their entire careers. Yet Oasis slip through with lyrics about getting high and they play “There She Goes”, oblivious to its inspiration.
I get a half hour for lunch, which sucks, but apparently isn’t illegal, though certainly infringes my basic human rights. I can’t see the outside world from my desk as the windows are small, narrow and high up. At least I could look out at the bright sky this morning, until some fucker drew the blinds for no good reason.
The people (or ‘students’ as they are called in the company gumpf I got on my first day) on the factory floor get a couple of breaks during the day, which are signified by a bell going off, at which time all the workers rush out as fast as possible. All they need now is a playground and a tuck shop. It really is a bizarre sight; Pavlov would be proud.
Observing this and rewatching the fourth season of The Wire, I have concluded I still have the classroom mentality. When it gets to five o’clock, I don’t want to be there, it’s time to go. If I get stuck there beyond this time, I get agitated and angry and have no interest whatsoever in my work. But now I have to pretend to give a shit for a bit longer otherwise the people who pay me might get upset.
And that’s the great irony of all this: the best paid job of my ‘career’ thus far and I could really do without it. I just want to be out there wandering around in the fields.
Saturday 24 November 2012
Thursday 22 November 2012
Work and non work
Do you work with one of those people who never seem to do any work, and just spend their day bumming round the office doing nothing, and getting away with it? Don't you hate them?
The following flow chart may help to explain their behaviour and help you to plot the course of their day:
Special thanks to Anonymous for submitting this.
Thursday 15 November 2012
Wednesday 14 November 2012
Tuesday 13 November 2012
THE FIRST DAY OF AUTUMN
A stranger offered me his face
The other day
I don’t know
If it was a gesture of solidarity
Against the miserly autumn weather
That assailed us like we were flimsy sticks
Or, a nod
To a fellow, early morning victim
Or, if I had nearly clocked him with my umbrella
Either way,
I didn’t know what to do with his face
So I offered him mine
Complete with a half-arsed smile consolation prize
That I hoped covered all possibilities:
Hello,
Yes,
Rain, huh?
‘bye.
Friday 9 November 2012
Thursday 8 November 2012
LUNCH BREAK
Death walks about the office
With a stupid grin on his face
His monkey cohorts
Swing their arms wildly
And shriek
At the prospect of disaster
One man’s disaster
Is another man’s wake up call
As a reward
For being a good zombie
You can go outside
And scream
For an hour
Taken from the forthcoming <500 colleection "Peace Is Not Just The Absence Of War"
Wednesday 7 November 2012
SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY
“Same shit, different day”
We all joke,
Unfortunately for me
Right now that means
Paranoia
Fear
Embarrassment
Criticism
Disapproval
Persecution
Being snubbed and given
The cold shoulder
And being watched like a hawk
By someone who is a cross between a tornado
And my mum
To the point where I am made to feel
Like an idiot who was given this job by mistake
And has by sheer dumb luck
Lasted this long without being outed
Some of this may be true,
But this is happening five days a week
And all the money in the world
Is not worth
Being made to feel
Like a small piece of shit
On the bottom of someone’s shoe.
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