August, 2007

Clutterfuck

This is mostly a rather bad-tempered update. If I were you I'd bugger off and read something more cheerful. Let's at least start by accentuating the positive as the old song goes. Hoi! An extract from the new novel, with the handsome and longsome title The Last Will And Testament Of Seamus Todd Soldier Of The Queen, appeared in Postscripts 10 and works well enough as a stand-alone story. If you haven't already, you really do want to subscribe to Postscripts. It's a pretty extraordinary magazine http://www.pspublishing.co.uk Even though it does work on its own, this story is tied into the new novel, which has just gone off to Simon Spanton, my editor at Gollancz and to my new agent in the US. I've also sent it to Stephane Marsan, mon editeur at Bragelonne in France. And right now I’m writing another YA novel for Julia Wells, my editor at Faber (what a lot of very fine editors I have!!!). Or I would be writing if I could be allowed to concentrate on it for just a moment.

Mucho distracted by good and bad things lately.

The good: teaching at Arvon and Clarion. Two residential writing workshops with great traditions behind them. Arvon at the former home of the magnificent animistic poet Ted Hughes. A converted cotton mill in atmospheric Hebdon Bridge in North Yorkshire, spying across a theatre of weather, perched above a mysterious valley of rushing water and pagan shrines; the last valley, it is said, to fall to the Danes. That was great. Fine, stimulating students and an inspirational co-tutor in Liz Williams. A thrilling week. Good.

Then Clarion West, in Seattle, home of that coffee chain, and microwatsits, and much more importantly - Jimi Hendrix(!) (You can't say Jimi Hendrix(!) Without finishing with an exclamation mark in parenthesis.) Jimi Hendrix(!) landed in my life like a flying saucer when I was about fourteen and said: fear nothing. So it was great to be able to give a reading in his birth town and in the same building as the exhibition of his life, at the SF & F hall of Fame. Fine venue, great turn-out and a huge thank-you to the organisers and to everyone who came. Good. Meanwhile for Clarion West I was the week-3 tutor for the six week writing marathon the students there buy into. I alarmed myself by advising them that they should they take the writing seriously but not themselves. Again, fabulous students, with many names to watch for in future. More good.

The bad: got burgled. In the middle of the night some skanky skinny smack-head orc broke a window, wriggled inside our house and carted off a load of electronics to sell for the price of a shoot-up and a sandwich. Though the kids were upset to lose their nintendos etc, I don't mind the electronics going. I'm insured anyway. But while it did give me the chance to explain that there are some pretty desperate people out there, I didn't want the savages to feel too sorry for the skanks, so when they asked, fearfully, if the thieves would come back I told them that if they did I would crack the skanks' house-breaking heads with the cricket bat. Bone on willow, that lovely summer sound. I'm pretty Stalinist about certain crimes against the person, and sneaking into your house when your innocent little kids are asleep is a crime against the person as far as I'm concerned. Punishable by cricket bat.

But as I say, the insurance covers all the glittering crap they got away with, doesn't it? Well, not that easy. They took the car keys, both sets. Okay. Get insurance company to move car to safe place and fix the locks. Yes, certainly Mr Joyce, but only if you use our approved garage. What? Fuck you. Leave it there and then I'll come back to you in two days for the cost of a car instead of a set of locks. Well of course they moved it pronto, but their "approved garage" then took three weeks to fix the locks. So three weeks without family car. Then there's the property. Quizzed by a piss-midget trying to catch me out on the details. Excuse me mister piss-midget, am I in the wrong here? Four weeks later mister p-m still hasn't applied for the standard the police report, and here I am, phoning and fighting just to get what I've been paying him for over the last twenty years and thinking: what is wrong with this picture?

On it goes. Locksmith replaces locks relating to stolen house keys. Finishes his job and door handle falls off. He won't fix door handle unless given the go-ahead by insurance piss-midget. Insurance p-m tells me I'm covered for locks but not handles, which is "fair wear and tear". I tell insurance p-m watch out I have cricket bat in my hand. He says he doesn't understand. I laugh a Vincent Price laugh. You will, I tell him, you will. I put my skull against the telephone mouthpiece and tap it gently with cricket bat. Bone on willow, I tell him, bone on willow. Fair wear and tear. He hangs up.

And all this while new kitchen is installed. Now, I hate the new kitchen-remodel-your-lifestyle-routine. Hate the shopping and the sampling and the measuring and ordering, and so does Sue. Detests it, we does. But because our old kitchen was looking like something rotting and mossy and festering from a swamp we order the shiny new lifestyle showpiece from B&Q, trusting that our lives will be made perfect thenceforth. Well that's what the ads seem to suggest. I arrange for Sanguine Fitter, Stoic Plumber and Jolly Sparks to be ready on the day, all good guys, super guys actually. Then the stuff comes. Well, half of it. And the other half plain wrong. Spend incalculable hours on the phone to professional shit-catchers trying to get the order I'd paid for months ago. A B&Q delivery lorry the size of a spaceship arrives to deliver a set of taps. As it pulls away another one the size of a bigger space ship arrives to deliver a cupboard handle. Fitter suggests I log my calls to B&Q. I do so. 67 calls to various offices over four weeks. Delivery lorries arrive with packets of screws. I sign for said packet. Hour upon hour listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Beethoven’s Third or fucking Handel and your call is in a queue, please have your reference number ready. All the while gripping the cricket bat.

I'm missing a pelmet so they send me four. They've given me the incorrect sink so they replace that with two more wrong sinks. I'm short of a cornice and I get five delivered. Five cornices!!! I kid you not about this. Anyone want a cornice? Here, have a brace for nothing. On and on it goes! Ear sore from holding the hot phone to it. I seriously consider kidnapping the next delivery guy and keeping him hostage with a gun, just to get media coverage. Fitter and Plumber talk me out of it. Thank the heavens for these lovely guys, equally messed around, but who hose me down every third day. And I think; I wish I could write a novel. That must be fun, and easy work, if you can just sit and write a novel. Just tapping away at a story. And not do all this.

And then in the middle of this rubbish, utter garbage, complete clutterfuck, my lovely Dad is diagnosed with cancer. And I hate the piss-midgets and the professional shit-catchers and the slimy insurance clerks and the fat-cat directors presiding over this bilge, this utter incompetence, hate them because of the way they reduce me and manipulate me into being an angry piss-midget just like them when I should be putting my energy and my love into things and people that matter.

I told you this was gonna be grumpy. Normal service resumed as soon as possible.

Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net