Cuba Is A Long Way To Go For A Drink

I have just had the shortest employment I’ve ever had in my life. I started working for a sales and marketing company off Ebrington Street, not far from where I now live in Plymouth. It seemed like a promising job, especially since I was interviewed by a beautiful woman called Fran. She sat and told me I was perfect for the job. She told me I seemed enthusiastic, really keen and a real people person. How wrong can one woman be?

The others I met, mostly men in cheap suits, are all very excited. They talk loudly and enthusiastically about everything, especially THE COMPANY, and the opportunities it presents. I try and smile like they do, but after half an hour my face starts to ache. I find my self slowly retreating into my usual half frown, half emotionless look. These guys wouldn’t last five minutes on a London Tube train. As far as I’m concerned this is just a job and one where I will get paid at the end of the month and go home moderately happy. Clock in at nine and clock out at five. Simple.

The suits adjust their ties and talk football. In comes their boss, a twenty seven year old man in a better, very expensive looking suit and broad smile. He’s not bad looking, with short brown hair and dark brown eyes. His body language is full of positive messages. He writes on a white board, lecturing the men about marketing themselves in a positive manner. I wasn’t told what these men actually do. I was taken off for another chat and told to relax and smiled at by Fran.

‘I don’t want you to worry about anything. Really. Just relax.’ Fran said and smiled in her blonde and beautiful way. She reminded me of Christina Aguilera, but nicer and sweeter.

I had left University and Plymouth nearly seven years ago and now I was back. Some months before I left London I had been listening to a self help CD, one with a title about changing your life in seven days. I listened to the soothing voice and read the accompanying book, my head on my pillow, giving my self positive messages about my self. Free the negative energy through my feet, it told me. Imagine yourself as handsome and strong, being positive.

It’s hard to believe in these sort of self help tapes or CDs. It’s as hard as believing in yourself, when your shy and see a hideous creature looking back at you from your mirror. I did my best, trying to imagine a better, more perfect me. I visualised my goals, pictured me talking to attractive women and winning them over with my wit and a perfect smile. Try not to vomit.

I have a degree in media studies, the good it has done me, and that makes me immune to bullshit. When you’re adept at taking apart film and television, you start doing it with everything, including yourself. Two good things came of my time at University and those were my friends and my love of Plymouth. Here I am again.

Fran is telling me not to worry about anything over the next two weeks, while I get slowly accustomed to their company. I’m to learn about a particular client over the next few days and I’m not to worry. They are beginning to make me worry, with all their talk of relaxing.

The next day I meet Dave and Cyrus. Dave is quite quiet, but his frame bubbles with a slow sure confidence, while Cyrus is like a second hand car dealer on speed. I notice straight away that is eyes are too close together as he greets me with a firm handshake and a radio announcer’s voice with more than a hint of a Plymouth accent. They talk about THE COMPANY and the opportunities it presents. They talk about the joys of being rich.

I chat to them and try and come across as enthusiastic- a real go getter. I nearly choke on all my positive sounding statements. I spend time with the guys, talking lots of marketing and stuff, my smile burning into my cheeks.

Later, apparently, Fran tells me that the lads seem to think I’m perfect for the job and I’ll fit in perfectly. I smile. I’ve got the job.

‘How do you feel, now that I’ve offered you the job?’ She asks, brightly, her full red lips parting.

‘Great.’

I spend the afternoon alone, my landlord and friend, Rich being at work in his actually media related job. Much later, he is phoning me and saying, ‘We are in Cuba, come for a drink.’

Bar Cuba is brightly painted bar that sits back a little on North Hill. You can watch the young male and female students pouring into the thin bar, the walls lined with chairs and small tables. Your eyes jump to the large framed picture made up of the sort of sweets you use to buy for a penny in sweet shop.

This is what being in Plymouth is all about. Sitting in relaxing bars, having a drink with your mates and watching young gorgeous girls wander in and out of your life. Sometimes, you might even talk to some of them. I’m thirty two years old, although I look older. This is too old to be afraid of girls.

I remember Cyrus and the other confident lads at THE COMPANY, and partly hope there is some secret waiting to be imparted to me, some formula they can tell me about and suddenly I’ll be all bright smiles and talking women into sleeping with me. It’s all about marketing your self, they say.

Another night, a few days later and I’m in Cuba again, this time with Rich’s workmates, enjoying a drink, talking crap. The next thing I know, I’m surrounded by beautiful blonde women. Right then, I’m thinking how great it would be to be confident like Ben, the managing director of THE COMPANY, with his bright smile and expensive suits. I imagine he has no problem with attracting women, like the guys I’m drinking with in Cuba, with their easy chat and wit.

I find my self being talked to and look round and see one of the girls talking to me. I try and ease into the conversation, but I find my self with that continuous voice inside my head, telling me that I’m going run out of conversation and she’ll be bored. Sometime later, I’m dancing after pouring several beers and shots down my throat in the desperation to get drunk. Deadening the voice in my head is the only way forward, but he’s having none of it.

I’m then dancing on a small stage upstairs, trying to look relaxed, thinking how the lads at THE COMPANY are probably doing the same sort of thing right now, but with much more style, not afraid to have a good time.

I listen to the CD again, the night before I go into work, my first proper day on the job. So far, I have learnt about another company they are supposed to be marketing, but I don’t know what the lads really do. I put on my suit again and kid myself I look like one of them, and I try and walk like them too, all cocky. All I’m missing is the cigarettes they all seem to smoke with a relaxed air.

I’m suddenly in a room filled with other guys, all suited, speaking loudly about sales and marketing, some writing facts and figures on a board. Cyrus comes in and starts a meeting. Ben is away and Cyrus, who’s climbing the ladder quickly, is in charge, even though he’s about twenty two. I suddenly feel very old. I look at the security ID with my face on it, noting the balding hair and haggard expression.

Cyrus boldly walks round the room, congratulating members of his team on their results over the last week. I start to get a strange feeling running through me. There’s suddenly something very familiar going on and I don’t like it one bit. After putting my suspicions to one side, I’m stuck with Steve, a suited wide boy with a sly smile and fast mouth. In a neutral accent he tells me all about being positive and about sales as we climb in another guy’s car and head off to Cornwall. Alarm bells are ringing. I look out into the country side that rushes past, the dance music that’s coming out of the stereo blasting at my ears. The beat is fast and suddenly, like the others in the car, I feel a strange exhilaration. Steve turns to me occasionally, as he holds a cigarette out the window and talks about his success and the BMW he’s picking up in a couple of days.

I don’t ever mention that I don’t drive.

Behind Steve sits an attractive young woman that is new like me, but she’s been there a few more days. Steve chats to her with that subtext in his voice, telling her about the BMW he’s going to pick up next week. He also mentions a family do he turned up at, only to be given the cold shoulder by his ex-wife. ‘I was called a murderer. She didn’t even let my own son take his present off me.’

Most of the suited men I’ve met all seem to have an ex-wife story, including James who starts recalling the fact that his wife took herself off his credit card a few days after she bought herself a BMW. Now, he tells us, it’s sitting somewhere in Plymouth going rusty and he can’t touch it, while his wife lives abroad in some sunny country. I imagine her having sun tan oil rubbed into her skin while she smiles.

The next thing that happens, is that I’m in another large office building filled with more suits, all interchangeable with the ones I arrived with. I look at my self in the toilet mirror and see another shark in a suit, except for the face. The face is worried and suspicious.

I’m taken to meet another top guy, in his large office over looking an industrial waste land in Cornwall. He smiles and loosens his expensive tie. He talks about selling. He echoes what everybody else I’ve met has said about marketing, the fact that you are trying to sell yourself. The product, he informs me, always sells it self.

Imagine a bomber opening its bowels and a large black bomb dropping through the sky. It lands on me. The suit before me tells me that they want me to work my way up through the company, to sell door to door, working only on commission. He tells me that I’d be great, that I’d fit right in to THE COMPANY. I have to sell my self, he tells me.

I don’t know if he can see the doubt in my face, but he persuades me to go into the field with some other representatives and give it a go. They drop me off on a housing estate, telling me I have to try and get some housewives to sign up to the telecom group they are marketing for. They tell me what to say and how to say it. They leave me there, telling me that I will fuck up and to except it.

After a few doors where men and women told me they were not interested, I ended up standing in the middle of the estate, staring at my mobile phone. I had tried to sell my self, feeling my smile stretch across my face, while my gut told me to walk away.

Suddenly a man appears from one of the houses and approaches me. ‘Are you lost?’ He asks and I smile. ‘Not at all mate,’ I tell him. It’s a lie.

I phone Fran back in Plymouth and tell her I quit. I phone Dave and tell him the same and then walk through Cornwall alone, feeling like a failure. On the train, I begin laugh about what’s happened that day and I picture the lives of these salesman in their cheap suits and their desperately excited voices. I remember the stories about their ex-wife and estranged children and smile to myself.

I keep smiling as I remember the CD I had listened to in London, the one that said I could change my life in seven days. That was back in London, just a few weeks ago, when I had a different life.

A Journey Through New York

They tell you that the porno you order in your room won’t appear on your bill when you check out, but the pornographic movies cost at least two dollars more than the family films. There’s ten dollars for one film recorded on your bill, the nice comedy you watched, and underneath, you’ve been charged nearly thirteen dollars for another movie. Subtle.

I move from hotel to hotel just because I want to see more of New York City. This is my second time in the City that doesn’t really ever get enough beauty sleep, but some how it always seems rather attractive to me. The first time I went there I spent with my neck bent, permanently looking upwards at the sky scrapers. This time I have more time to look at the streets, to take in the faces of the people round me. I sit on the subway, pretending to be just another commuter, a citizen of New York, looking at their faces, watching their expressions. I observe the fat Puerto Rican women laughing, the Italian and Jewish and whatever people crowding in and chatting or looking up at the adverts above their heads, while haggard looking figures crawl through the subway car selling batteries.

The last time I was here I was drunk in Times Square with my buddy from Pennsylvania and I got felt up by a hooker. I had hung out with the winos and scared the hell out of a crack dealer when I demanded booze from him. He must have thought I was asking for some drug he’d never heard of. The hooker followed me into a store, where my friend was buying cigarettes, and she started to ask me to go off with her somewhere. I had to talk to her, I just had to; how often do you get to chat to a New York hooker? Through my numbness, I could feel something happening below and looked down to see her cupping my crotch.

This time I had three days in New York to kill before heading to Penn, so I phoned a friend in London and asked her what I should do. ‘Go to Central Park Zoo,’ she told me. I jumped in a taxi and was dropped off on the edge of Central Park where I wandered, completely lost. I asked an oriental girl for directions. How many oriental New Yorkers must there be? She was from China and spoke no English. She showed me her map and we both took turns to spin the map around and scratch our collective heads. I walked on alone until I saw an elderly couple walking from the opposite direction. They’ve been where I’m going, I think, and ask them for directions.

‘Hello there. It’s nice to meet someone from good old England. We’re from Yorkshire.’ The old man says and pats me on the back.

We walk on towards Central Park, with the couple telling me how much they love Boston and New York, and how much cleaner these cities seem. We part at the entrance of the zoo, me with a hotdog to sustain me.

It’s true what they say about being alone in a large city. So many people- eight million, in fact and you know nobody. I sit in the hotel bar later that night, sipping a cold and lonely beer. I pass a couple of bucks across to the Hispanic barmaid. She doesn’t smile, but I turn and look out the window at the City, with its neon lights and feel a fire burn inside me.

I step out in the warm night and walk to another bar, feeling the loneliness all around and it feels great.

I spend nine days in Pennsylvania as part of a wedding party before jumping on a train with a monster hang over and heading back to New York. Somehow, part of me is not glad to be back and had got use to the laid back attitude of the people of Penn. Now I was surrounded by the honking horns of the New York cabbies and the uninterested faces of the residents of the city. The New Yorker’s collective lack of sleep seemed to have manifested it self in general moodiness. I jump in a taxi and tell the driver I want to head for the Radisson Hotel on Lexington. I don’t have an address, so this seems to make the ride almost impossible. Some how we make it, by speeding down Lexington and trying to spot the hotel.

Inside, I drag my enormous suitcase into the plush lobby across the shining floors and face the oriental man the desk who’s smiling at me.

‘Who’s the daddy?’ He asks me. Is he the daddy? I almost ask him, before looking down at my T-shirt where the phrase ‘Who’s the daddy’ is embossed.

When I get to my surprisingly nice room, I realise that I don’t have the keys to my suitcase, so have to phone the concierge to help me. I’m sure I can hear a snigger in his voice as I hang up and wait for someone to break open my case. I watch helplessly as the maintenance man breaks the lock and looks at me like I’m stupid. I tip him three dollars, the only change I have left. In the hardware store down the street, I buy a new lock and find myself being asked all sorts of questions by the old man behind the counter. He asks me about England, then tries to persuade me to buy a fantastic new kind of screw driver. Thinking about my ineptitude with the lock on the case, I almost give in to his sales pitch.

The room, at the Radisson- Lexington, is the best I’ve stayed at so far, so much better than the New Yorker, where the rooms and hallways were a little grubby. But I can’t forget the New Yorker completely because they served me an excellent New York steak at nine thirty in the evening and an equally superb breakfast and coffee at 8:30 the next morning. I loved sitting in that diner and listening to actual New Yorkers discussing their lives and their jobs before they headed off to work. I remember one woman suddenly exclaiming, “911 ruined my life!”

For me, being in Manhattan, or on Manhattan, however you want to phrase it, New York City, was a dream come true. Okay, yes, I had been there before, but this was different. I was alone for the majority of the time and when I boarded a Subway carriage, I was just another commuter. I would sit there and pretend not be in constant amazement that I was there, getting off my stop with the relaxed boredom any other passenger has. It’s true, part of me became bored in a way, probably because I didn’t have anyone to share my experience with. When you return to New York, the magic diminishes a little and you need a fresh pair of eyes from which to view it. I was to be joined by a friend in three days, but until then, I would drop by Times Square and enter the Easy Internet Café and send my Friend Cathy a few Emails.

Just the other day, she showed me a selection I had sent her while I was there, remarking how horny I must have become while being in New York. When I asked why, she showed me an email that read: ‘I’m living in the shadow of the Empire State Building and I’m horny. One erection under another huge erection.’

Maybe this was to do with spending so much time In Times Square, a place with such a sinful history. You can’t help feel dirty in a place like Times Square. There was a time when triple x movie houses and sex shops littered the whole place, much like they do in London’s Soho, but now all you see is the MTV studios and sports shops, lined up along side diners and stores filled with crap gifts aimed at gullible tourist. The phrase ‘I heart New York’ is printed on everything, along side the newly popular FDNY shirts and sweat shirts. 911 made heroes of the emergency services and rich men of the guys who own these shops filled with their cheap and tacky gifts.

At night the neon signs glow wantonly between 42^nd and 47^th street, still with as many tourists as there are in the day, coming in and out of shows or bars. You can get a lot more round this part of New York than a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, as long as you’re willing to pay a high price for it. You can see the ladies drift out about two am, dressed in ridiculously raunchy outfits, their mouths ready to open and the most vulgar statements to fall out. At night, it’s a scary and fascinating place to be. This is the place to be, right at the spot where Seventh Avenue and Broadway caress each other. Look up and the big electronic billboards smile down at you, telling you want drink or consume or what sport brand will help your performance- who knows if they mean between the sheets or on the sports field. Along the street, on the edge of the sidewalk, stalls have been set up to sell the tourists the real crap, like carved name plates and cheaply photocopied movie scripts.

Of course, I had to travel down town to the financial district where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre once stood. I walked around the hordes of other tourists, pretending and feeling that I wasn’t really one of them, their cameras pin pointed towards the large metal cross fashioned from the remains of two iron girders. Somehow, as if the site of the tragedy was pissed off with being photographed, a big cloud of dust would in engulf the crowd. Picture a monkey at a zoo pissing through the bars of its cage.

I spent a few minutes there, regretting that I had not travel up the towers on my original visit and trying to imagine this as the place I had seen on the news. I couldn’t and just looked at the spray painted writing on the surviving buildings left by the Fire Department. One reads: SEARCHED: FDNY.

I walk back towards the Subway Station, but decide to keep walking past it with the intent of travelling through the neighbours all he way back to Mid Town Manhattan. The change is amazing, as you swap grimy streets filled with run down shops with clean sidewalks filled with plush restaurants, the heady aroma of Italian and European cooking drifting out of them. It’s difficult not to step inside and just keep on heading uptown.

As you walk round around New York City and see the faces of its citizens, you realise there isn’t that much emphasis on the physical, not like there is in Los Angeles. In the City of Angels, people are constantly striving to look their best or more so, putting themselves through many cosmetic surgery operations. They believe they are defying the aging process, but all they are really doing is creating a mask, and a pretty strange one at that. In New York, you get the feeling that it’s more about financial stability and the desperate urge not to die alone, while working in a good job. They rarely have nice apartments though- their homes are usually something like a nicely decorated shoe box with a hop and skip to the bathroom and kitchen.

Of course, the rent for these places are still considerably high. This is the price you pay, quite literally, for living in Manhattan. A British woman from Liverpool, who I met as she was working in a bar on Second Avenue, told me ‘I pay $1500 a month and that’s cheap. The tenants before me were paying $2000 a month. It’s a nice place, much nicer than some. But you never see your friend’s apartments, because everybody meets up in bars or restaurants. There’s not enough room to entertain in their little homes. I have to work two jobs as well, but I don’t mind.’

So, it’s not who you are, but how much you earn, because you have to be earning a lot to be able to live in Manhattan in the first place.

I was heading through Greenwich Village after my visit to the world trade centre site, one of my favourite parts of New York City, admiring the little restaurants and the brownstone buildings when a notice caught my eye. A small shop on a sharp corner of the street advertised tarot card readings for twenty dollars. I couldn’t resist. It was probably the fact that I was in a completely different country, thousands of miles away from what I knew or anyone who knew me, that spurred me to go inside. I grabbed the door and it failed to open. I tried for another door, but that didn’t open either. Eventually, I found the tall and blonde psychic woman staring at me and beckoning me in as she stood looking dramatically bewitching in a long dark dress.

Inside the small triangular room stood a small table and two chairs facing each other. She told me to seat my self and took up her position. ‘Ten dollars for palm reading, but that will only give you a view of your personality. For Twenty dollars I’ll give you a tarot reading so you can see into your future.’

Thinking that I already knew my personality, I went for the tarot reading and watched her expertly shuffle the cards, her eyes looking down at the polished surface of the table. I studied her serious face and saw that she was probably in her forties and reminded me a little of Phoebe from friends, but with more than hint of witchcraft about her. When she looked up, her eyes seemed to pierce through me, her hand offering me the cards. ‘Shuffle please honey.’

She laid out the cards in front of me, her eyes scanning over the pictures that meant little to me. She sat upright and for a moment I thought she was going to go into a trance. I looked about the room and noticed a flight of stairs to our left. Probably her apartment, I decided.

‘You have a negative force about you. Has anyone ever told you that?’ She said bluntly, her eyes burning into mine.

I admitted to being pretty negative. It is true after all. Maybe it was the way I walked in or the fact that I couldn’t find the right door. She tells me that I need to fight and once I do, everything else will fall in place. I’ll be moving too, she informs me, looking strangely high and morose at the same time. I cannot concentrate on what she is saying too much, as my eyes keep drifting out through the windows and out into the Village where New York life is going on around me.

‘For seventy five dollars, I can go into a deep trance and find out where your negativity comes from.’ She says and looks through me. I decline and leave the shop, to travel up through the neighbourhoods, getting a real feel of life in the City.

The next day I find my self back in JFK, sitting in a small arrivals lounge watching the TV screens above my head, waiting for my friend’s flight to come in. Being not the most organised person in the world, I feared that my arrangements for her arrival in New York, were certainly to go badly. Claire should have, at seven in the morning, boarded a plane from Heathrow and I sat and prayed that somehow it would all go well. Her flight appeared on the board, informing me that the passengers were now going through customs. I felt sorry for her, knowing she would be stared at through dark sunglasses and treated abruptly.

I stood at the end of a long corridor as every now and again bodies would appear through the doors carrying luggage. Through my bleary vision I could make out a small figure waving and gradually saw Claire coming towards me, smiling brightly. We hugged, the only words I could find being, ‘Welcome to New York.’

I pointed to a yellow cab, hoping to establish that she was actually in New York. We had planned this so long ago and I wanted everything to be perfect. You’re in New York with a beautiful woman on your arm, so how can it get any better? This is the dream. This is the sort of stuff you want to write about, because you know it won’t happen again.

We walk along the street from our hotel after she’s settled and I point upwards, so she can look up and see the towering view of The Empire State Building. Inside we laugh and catch up, following massive queue around the building. An American behind us suddenly informs us that we seem to be the happiest people in the building. Later, after we are wondering round the top of the building, the wind grabbing at our hair, Claire informs me that he was taking sly photos of us and writing down everything we said.

We have our photograph taken with New York below us like all the tourists do. A neat square of greenery cut into the earth sits down below and we stare at it, resting our arms on the metal fence that stops us from throwing ourselves over the side. We smile and hug.

In the dark, back in the hotel, with the sound of the air conditioner humming, I lay there in the double bed we share, a grin still burnt into my face.

Knowing it to be a dream of Claire’s to dance on a bar like the one in Coyote Ugly, the movie, I take her to Hogs and Heifers. We take a taxi into the Meat packing district, an area of New York which contains meat storage facilities and markets. It’s as rough as it sounds, except for the parts that have now become trendy as the yuppies have moved in. The taxi crawls along to the outside of the grotty looking bar where rock music blares out from. Biker types stand outside and we sit inside, watching through the windows of the cab, trying to decide if this is such a good idea.

Now we are watching a Hollywood movie become reality. This could be the street where the young actress walks along after her first night working in the bar, nearly getting fired. Except, that was probably a soundstage and this is the real thing. Around us are warehouses, and the bar looks like it use to be one of them. It’s much smaller than the one in the film, more compact, but inside the girls, wearing jeans and bikini tops, serve beers and shots and look just as good as the actresses in the film.

Claire and I, after some discussion, go to enter the bar and get stopped for ID. He looks suspiciously at Claire after she hands over her British Driving Licence. ‘I would’ve said you weren’t older than twenty,’ he says and lets us through after strapping a band round our wrists. Rock music shakes the building as the customers crowd the bar, holding out ten and twenties, waiting for a chance to get verbally abused at the bar. It’s strange, because if you watch, you’ll see the bar girls picking up a megaphone and shouting stuff like ‘Fuck you, you mother…’ at nobody in particular. Again, Hollywood has imitated life and vice versa.

We both stand in awe, Claire’s startled face watching the girls behind the bar doing what she’s always wanted to do. They jump onto the surface of the bar, showing us their cowboy boots and begin doing some kind of line dance. ‘No pictures!’ they order and slam their heels into the well worn bar, a thousand bras hanging above their heads. It would be nice to think some of them belonged to the many famous women, like Julia Roberts, who was said to have danced on that very bar.

‘Let’s get some of you ladies up here!’ The prettier of the two women says, adjusting her cowboy hat. I turn to Claire and see her mesmerised. ‘Well, now you have to decide if you want to go home having danced on the coyote ugly bar or not.’

‘Is that a challenge?’ She asks, swigging her bottle of Bud.

‘No, just saying that it’s up to you. This is your chance.’ I say and watch her clamber on the bar and begin dancing along side two other girls. Eventually the other women climb down and Claire goes to do the same. One of the bar girls grabs the back of her jeans, pulling her back onto the bar, shouting, ‘You ain’t going anywhere sweet heart.’

I look up over the crowd and watch her dancing, looking like she’s really enjoying it. I like to think I made two of her dreams come true. Visiting New York and dancing in a coyote ugly style.

This is no longer my trip. This journey has become more than about me. This was once something we had dreamed about and now we were doing those things we had half joked about.

At JFK airport we say good bye, Claire stepping onto an escalator, disappearing.

I step onto the Subway and out in Manhattan, I merge with the crowd, disappearing into it. A man can truly vanish in such a huge place. I smile.

That night I’m watching Phone Booth. I sit there realising that it was filmed just round the corner from my hotel. I’m no longer sure what is real. And it’s great.

A New City: An Introduction

If you've read any of my books, short stories or articles, you might have noticed something about them, realized there is a general theme running through them, a search for something- someone.

People are always searching for something or someone. You'll find it in films, books and in life. Watch the news and at the moment you'll see the US government and their troops looking for Bin Laden or Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's what we humans are all about. We search, but we do not want to find, for once we find, then the search is over, and we are useless. Can you imagine if all those people who grip their versions of the bible actually found God, actually stood before him, and I'm talking before they die? What would be the point in their lives? Who is George Bush if he isn't the guy looking for Osama Bin Laden? Who is Fox Mulder if he isn't the man looking for proof of Alien existence? Who am I, if I'm not the man trying to find the perfect story to write?

Thing is, we see the perfect story to write, the almost genius words laid out on a page, but it's not ours. We walk into a book shop and look through the books, flipping through the fresh pages, smelling the waxy leaves and glance across the first paragraph. It may grip us, it may not. If we find a book that talks to us, finds us on some level and it seems as if each sentence was written for our eyes only, then we start to wish we had written those words. As a writer, you start to question why you didn't spot that perspective on life, why you could have put it that way. I myself , read the beginning of Fahrenheit 451 and kick myself, knowing I'll never write anything as poetic. But I'll try.

I hope you, if you're a writer, you'll keep trying to write that elusive thing called the perfect Novel. I remember writing my first book called Love, Regret and Murder and thinking it would be grabbed and published straight away. I had made every mistake in the HOW NOT TO WRITE... book and when I read it now, I flinch, my eyes close and my face blushes. My next book is better, but not good. It goes on, until now I feel that I'm getting a lot better. Sixteen books later and a lot of years have passed. Some I send of and some I write just for the pure hell of it. I couldn't stop if I tried.

I'm a sociable creature and like to be around people, but I also need my own world. I love that moment of sitting at your desk, your Lap top in front of you, with a new page to write. Yes, it can be daunting too, but only until you get that writing rush and soon you realise that you've been sitting and writing for hours.
There's more chance you haven't read something I've written, unless you know me or have somehow come across my writing in a bizarre way. You may be like me, you may be trying to write that perfect story, whether for Film or television or a book, or you just may be bored. If you're bored, I suggest you write something, anything, because it's a way to grips with who you are. When you see your thoughts poured out in front of you, even if they are masked by the word 'Fiction', you can see yourself reflected, a distorted, but still compelling image of yourself that few would recognise. Your deepest fears and raw hopes sit there in the minds of many characters. It's interesting that SIMS is so popular, especially when you realise that it's about being an author, being in control of those characters, giving them problem and desires and hopes.

Your world may not be want you want, but you can sit and create a new world. I have created many worlds, and a great deal of characters in them. I always want to share my worlds with other people and this makes my writing more of a giving experience. I also write non- fiction, in the form of articles and will put many here for anyone to read and comment on. I hope I do get comments, good or bad.

The City I live in has recently changed, from London to Plymouth, but I will keep writing, trying to finish my latest novel, which I guess could be called a thriller, but it's not really. It's a story about a man and some stuff that happens to him. It's 420 pages long at the moment and growing, becoming something more than I thought it would be. That's what happens sometimes when you write, it grows out of your control and the characters do things that you don't expect. My latest book has a new strand of a story that has flourished and taken over neatly bringing me towards the end. Hopefully it will be finished soon and I can talk about my progress.

Rich Little Skater Comes To London

You have to look twice at the young girls that form the bedraggled line that snakes round the entire Wembley Arena building, each one dressed in very baggy trousers or short skirt and fish net tights and T shirts that echo the punk age. They are mostly pale skinned girls with long straight hair of various colours, but mostly brown with blonde highlights. Each of them is modelled perfectly on their new idol. The hair straightening must have taken their mothers a very long time. It must have seemed even longer as their daughters probably spat out a few teenage angst statements at them every now and again.

But the girl they idolise and have come to see tonight in concert has now moved out of those teenage years and although she still only looks about fifteen, is probably a millionaire a few times over and has probably lost most of the rebellious feeling the girls are searching for in her songs. These girls that surround Wembley Arena are indeed rebels, at least they are in a-made-up-to-look- like-their-idol- kind of way. No one understands them. No one except the one they’ve come to see tonight and the millions of other young teens round the country who are at this moment driving their parents crazy. But of course Avril Lavigne understands them, it’s all in her lyrics, angrily belted out in her amazingly strong voice that comes out of her tiny frame.

You have to look twice at the girls dressed up to look much older than they are, with their sunless skin and their hair covering most of their faces, because you might believe for a second that Avril has decided to walk amongst her fans. She could do so without the slightest fuss.

The queue moves slowly, with the young girls and their parents freezing and chatting away in the night air, only a plastic plate of chips that costs two pounds to keep them warm. Gina, who is only nine years old and her Mother, Liza, have been queuing for twenty minutes and only now has Gina managed to persuade her Mother to buy her some chips.

‘It’s the only way to keep warm,’ Gina says to Liza, scoffing down the fat lumps of barely cooked potato. She looks enviously at people who have popped to Mcdonalds on the way. ‘People in macs, eating big Macs.’

Eventually the queue starts to pour into the doors of Wembley Arena where the security staff start checking tickets. One of the female staff is ignored by the young girls as they give their tickets to a younger male member of the staff. ‘I don’t mind standing here doing nothing.’ She proclaims to the entire queue.

On the wall as each of the crowd pass by is a large sign that tells everyone what equipment is not allowed into the building. This includes film cameras, glass bottles, and sound recording equipment. Much to everybody’s amusement, Gina points out the picture of the gun with a red line through it. It’s the sort of sign you expect to see in America, after all they are allowed to carry them in some states. Obviously, everyone one in the queue seems to agree, anyone carrying a gun, isn’t just going to hand it over.

Before entering the main building, the staffs starts removing the bottle tops from every body’s drinks, without any explanation. No one, not even the staff seem to have any answer as to why the bottle tops should be removed, except for ‘Security reasons’. Perhaps, someone suggests, Avril has a fear of bottle tops. Of course, plenty of drinks get spilled and there must be plenty of cleaners cursing the sticky floors of the stadium. A few men, who can hardly speak English, sell Coca Cola and Water or ice cream. The ice cream will set you back two pounds. Two pounds must have had a nice ring about it in some meeting. It makes you wonder who is racking in the money. Unlike Madonna, who charges nearly Eighty pounds for her tickets these days and makes no apologies about it, Avril’s tickets are pretty reasonable. Maybe that’s because she’s not that big a star yet. Maybe her small town Christian upbringing has taught her to be more charitable or maybe she’s rebelling against the men in suits.

By this time, the parents are being dragged to the orange plastic seats that line the Arena, while a mass of other fans have bought their tickets for the standing area. Sitting down on plastic seats seems the most appropriate and comfortable option, even those Avril will look even smaller from the stands.

Gina and Liza take their seats and stare across to the stage and realise how small she will look from there. But they point out that it’s about the atmosphere and knowing that you are in the same building as your rock God. Gina though, as she tells the story, has already met Avril Lavigne at Party in The Park. Her mother, Liza has a friend who works in showbiz and managed to get them backstage.

‘We were hanging round waiting for Avril, so we could get a photo with her.’ Gina recalls, trying to get her glo-stick glowing. ‘But she had this big woman body guard with short blond hair. She said to me and my friend “Avril isn’t ready to have photos taken, little girl. Run along with your mother”. Little Girl! She talked to us like we were four years old. But I got a photo with her. I wanted a friend to take it, but Avril reached her hand out with the camera and took it herself. She had to rush off.’

The man behind is kind enough to snap her glo-stick and it starts shinning bright green. They didn’t have blue or red left.

The young girls start screaming as the warm up band Simple Plan leap on to the stage with the energy only young teenagers have and begin rocking with their guitars. They are not unlike the other young bands suddenly appearing in British music like Busted or Mcfly. They sound pretty much the same. It’s hard to know where they hail from, but the lead singer sounds like he’s from Eastern Europe. He arranges the words in his sentences very strangely. The young Avril fans are certainly getting warmed up, practising their high pitched screams on these young adolescents. They admit that they are here to build up the atmosphere for Avril, but it doesn’t stop them giving the audience a damn good show.

The first night of her two Wembley gigs gets under way at nearly nine o’clock as she bursts onto the stage. Well, actually, her band burst onto stage, she merely appears, her long straight rock chick hair flying behind her, as she skips to her microphone, carrying her electric guitar. She expertly plays her instrument and belts out her first song. She wears black trousers and a black T-shirt, once again keeping her obvious sexual allure hidden away. It’s about the music after all. There are indeed, a few men over the age of thirty in the audience who seem to be unaccompanied. This could be worrying, but the teenage fans are too busy waving banners that say things like “we love you Avril” on them to notice.

Her voice does not falter, as she goes through her catalogue of songs from both of her albums, and neither does the rest of her talents. She sits down and plays the piano for a short set, then after a short break appears behind the drums as her band sings Blur’s Song 2.

It’s a real shame that there are no big screens to show her waving her fist in the air and stamping her foot as she leaps across the stage. She certainly is full of energy, but the people at the back of the arena cannot see her face, just her flowing locks.

She sings Naked, and tells the girls in the audience that it’s about be comfortable being yourself with that certain special someone. They scream their approval. It’s the same for her hit songs, Sk8er Boi and Complicated, which you have to really listen to as she has admitted she sometimes sings Constipated instead. Presumably she’s fed up with regurgitating her two hit songs already. So it seems she’s already rebelling against…well, herself. They call her stroppy. But, that could be an act or perhaps she once was, because you really can’t become successful without being a little stroppy. Just look at Elton John or Madonna or any other multi millionaire solo artist. They can afford to have the hump.

Her second album, Under My Skin, following on from Let Go, has shown more maturity as she has flexed her song writing and singing abilities even more. She obviously has strived to get away from her more bubble gum songs that kicked started her career and has chosen a few subjects close to her heart, like not jumping in bed with someone straight away in the song Don’t Tell Me. Very responsible, by any parent’s standards. It’s a far cry from Madonna rolling around a bed on stage, being pretend molested by two dancers. But Avril is only young yet. Let’s hope we don’t see her French kissing Madonna any time soon.

Well, the night continued with Lavigne singing Anything But Ordinary, dedicating it to the audience of young girls, Freak Out and My Happy Ending. Her voice is truly incredible. Unlike many stars, some of who have been accused of not singing live at all, she looses none of her strength, even when she skips about the stage, thrusting a fist in the air. Elton John’s recent attack on Madonna, could never be directed towards this little pop starlet, seeing that she matches him at his own game when she sits down at the piano.

While Avril entertained, it’s hard not to stare into the audience, your eyes being caught by the green and red and blue glowing lights being waved in the air in time with the music. Thousands of teenage girls scream out her lyrics- they have learned every word, while undoubtedly dancing round their bedrooms holding a hair brush to their mouths. Gina constantly waves her green glo-stick in the air, her eyes seeming to peer into the crowds of her fellow teenagers and not at the stage where her idol performs. Maybe it’s enough that they know she’s around and still singing for them, still writing everything they feel about life and growing up in this crazy world. Let’s hope they listen to her usually wise words.

The next day Liza says that Gina’s green glo- stick is still shinning brightly and she has not stopped waving it. The day after it has faded and remains a clear tube, good for not much at all. It’s easy to see that Avril Lavigne’s career won’t be so short lived and will shine on for many a year to come.