Easter, Charles Perry, the New Yorker and Porno 4 Pyros

Jesus, I hate bank holidays. When you’re self-employed you want everyone else to be at work even if you’re sat at home trying to write while the kids sit next to you watching “Hop” and stuffing popcorn in their face. Get back to work, you fucking shysters!

(By the way - Easter Monday is also April Fools’ Day. Think that’s when Jesus said he’d rise again? April Fool!)

Just sent my first “proper” attempt at a radio play to the Beeb. Whether it’s any good is another matter. I’m guessing the themes might be deemed too upsetting for their delicate listeners.

It’s been a frustrating few weeks – mainly because SOME of the newspaper editors I’ve been dealing with are cowardly, cretinous creeps. Hate them ALMOST as much as I hate Hugh Grant and his sanctimonious celeb mates. SOME editors, of course, ARE decent – but apparently unable to admit that the real reason they aren’t taking stuff is because they’re all skint.

Read a great little book by Charles Perry – “Portrait of a Young Man Drowning”, about a kid from Brooklyn who rises through the ranks of the local gangs despite mental illness and an “overbearing” mother. Perry’s own life story was truly tragic and this was his only novel – well worth a read.

Speaking of New York, here’s what the “New Yorker” had to say about my (long!) short story, 10,000 hours, published by Prole Magazine (Issue 4, April 2011):

“’Ten Thousand Hours’ was a very striking story; its plot is masterfully conducted; the setting is oppressive but never stagnant, as the story ultimately has an interesting twist.”

Praise indeed. You can order a copy from Prole Books here.

Finally, this week I’ve also been working on “Bushed”, which is a perverse stream-of-consciousness text about losing myself in pop videos in Australia in 1994. So here’s one of the videos in which I may (or may not) appear...