Author: Robert Wringham

To dinner with Graeme and Louise. Graeme says he has brought me a present and he passes it to me over the table.

I say “passes,” but “hefts” would be a better word because the present is quite large and heavy. It is wrapped in carrier bags and jumbo bubble-wrap and I have no idea what it could be.

As I peel away the layers, Samara says, “Do you still not know what it is?” because she has clearly worked it out, but I have’t the foggiest. The only thing it feels like through the wrapping is one of those wooden shields you sometimes see in trophy cabinets, but I sincerely doubt I’ve excelled in a team game.

It’s my head.

Once I get over the surprise, I must say that it’s rather dashing. I should wear no glasses more often. Or perhaps I have aged horrifically since the photograph was taken.

It is not wood at all but a serious piece of metal. I dong it with my fork and it sings.

The head was part of an art installation by our friend Sven at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh last year. Graeme went to Sven’s studio sale last week, salvaged my head, and carried it home.

I pose for photographs, holding the head in front of my face. The couple at the next table find this amusing for some reason.

So the head lives in our spare room now, where it can keep visiting friends company as they sleep. “Not a wink,” is a phrase I expect to hear a little more often in our flat.

I’d gone out without a bag as usual, so as I walked home from the shops, I found myself juggling some vegetables and two “fishless fishcakes.”

I was already dreading the conversation if I bumped into someone I knew. Why do I do it to myself?

Coming through the park and rounding a corner, I spotted some kids fighting. Two boys and girl seemed to be duffing up another girl on the floor.

I knew I’d have to do something. Could I pick two of them up by the collar like a Beano dad? I wasn’t sure.

As I moved closer, I saw that the girl on the ground was laughing and someone else was saying “Rarr, look at those muscles.” It was all just fun! Fun was happening! Not gang warfare at all.

But can you imagine if I’d had to intervene in a brawl? Even without the fishless fishcakes to worry about?

A jaunt by train to see Greek Thomson’s Holmwood House.

It turns out to be undergoing major restoration work and it’s not quite what one would describe as “open,” but the volunteers on site let us in for a look around anyway. Disappointingly, nobody uses the expression, “caught with our pants down.”

We cannot see the upper floors of the house (though I glimpse of the famous dome by looking up through a scaffold) and we see the Greek fresco in the main downstairs room.

The guide who shows us around a little explains that the house was a convent for a large part of the twentieth century and that the nuns “obliterated” much of the Pagan imagery of Greek-o’s vision. The word, “obliterated,” makes me think of Friar Park, the English house restored by George Harrison, which is also sometimes said to have been “obliterated by nuns.”

Come on, nuns. Stop obliterating everything.

On the way home, we take a detour to see Moray Place, which was also designed by Thomson and where he lived for some years and eventually died. It is just around the corner from my very first Glasgow home on Marywood Square.

The urge to learn about Auld Greekie comes from my increasing awareness of how much of Glasgow was designed or built or inspired by Thomson. He sort-of built the world I live in: all of those columns and porticoes I see on my walks are his.

The new Idler hits the doormat. As well as my regular column this time, I have a feature about the FIRE movement (early retirement and whatnot with special reference to my old friends Jacob and Pete).

Art director Alice has decorated my piece with images of an exquisite young Greek reclined upon a velveteen olive-green cushion. She has focused on the right thing: pieces about early retirement too often focus on money. But money is only worth thinking about if the real prize is repose.

A moment in the column I had forgotten writing and am now fond of:

When the idler has “nothing to do,” we default to something pleasant like flipping through a book containing some nice pictures of ducks: hardly productive in the industrialist scheme, but we know otherwise.

The Greek boy is really something. If Alice intends this as a portrait of the person who wrote the piece, I am not going to hurry to correct her.

Coming in from work, Samara mentions seeing a minor altercation on the train. Apparently it involved “a woman with a scrunchie and an underbite.”

On my way to the cinema this afternoon, I find that I’m almost an hour early so I pop into a cafe with the intention of doing some light editing work from my phone. Just as I’m sitting down, I see that the person at the next table is Penny. I don’t know Penny super-well but I’m a secret admirer of her art and writing and, since we have some friends in common, I decide to say hello.

She’s very kind to indulge me (especially in a weird moment when I cite Grotbags as a queer icon) and the chat soon fills all of the time I’d wanted to burn. It is such lovely serendipity and does not require social media or anything for it to happen.

I think I come across as cool enough but when she asks what I’m up to next, I’m forced to tell her that I’m going to watch Apollo 11 on my own.

On one of my regular walks, past a row of nice old houses, I pass a sign that reads, in red text, “PRIVATE GARDEN: FOR RESIDENTS ONLY.”

The “garden” in question is not much more than a strip of lawn, shielded slightly from the main public pavement by a hedge. It’s a mere spit–a gossling–of unremarkable space.

Usually, when you see a “rule” like this, it usually tells a story. “No smoking in the nursery,” suggests that someone was once caught smoking in the nursery. There is, however, no way on Earth anybody has ever strayed into this private “garden” for any length of time.

It is not the sort of space that would be frequented by hooded youths, nor is it the sort of space one would think to walk for any length of time. There is nothing in it that could be vandalised, stolen, or infringed upon in any meaningful way.

The sign is an invitation into a unique and bizarre mind. “Private Garden! Private Garden! Don’t stray into the Private Garden!”

“It is a bloody garden, and it’s a private one at that! Private Garden! Private Garden! Thank you! Keep away!”

“Don’t touch it, don’t regard it in any way. Don’t bloody look at it and go taking your memory of the garden home with you. That memory is COPYRIGHT and thieves will be prosecuted! Residents only! Private Garden!”

I’ve been seriously thinking about taking some nice, red letraset and, under cover of darkness, adding a “trademark” ™ symbol to PRIVATE GARDEN™ on the sign.

What do you think? Shall I do it? Would that be a nice little prank to lightly mock the incivility of the sign-planter? Or would it upset someone and/or have the po-po raining down on me with their truncheons?

A housewife opens the curtains:

“Desmond! Someone has DEFACED our private garden sign with a letter-a-set!”

“I don’t know, Margaret, it looks rather snappy…”

“Desmond!! Oh, Desmond…. [*sex noises ensue*]… not the private garden, Desmond, oh!”

Meet Katia and Maurice Krafft, husband and wife volcanologists.

I chanced upon their incredible footage today while watching Into the Inferno, part of a Herzog bender I seem to be on. Have a look:

To be the Tommy and Tuppence of volcanology, eh? Not bad.

Hand in hand, on the edge of the sand…

Neil‘s overhaul (4.1?) of my website is DONE. Overhauled, overnight. Fabulous!

There was some chat about running with this header image and a smaller, neater version of the same. “I prefer the energy and the monster, fun-bucket chaos of the larger one,” I said.

Neil: FUN BUCKET CHAOS ALL THE WAY!

No bad credo for life, that.

It was also Neil’s canny choice to use the same typeface used on the cover of A Loose Egg.

Posts should now display properly on mobile phones and tablets and clever toasters.

To Super Bario, Glasgow’s retro-gaming pub, for a meeting with Neil about this very website. The site needs a minor upgrade, not least to make it look less dog’s-dinnerish when viewed on a mobile phone.

I learn during this meeting that the little expandable menu often seen on mobile websites is called a “hamburger menu.”

As if to reinforce the geekery of our technical website discussion, we play some two-player Pacman. Neil and I have long been each other’s Pac-nemeses. Who is yours?

I just about win the first Pac-off, Neil claiming the second by a far wider margin. We’d have played a best-of-thee but a queue of other players had formed behind us.

First in line is a teenager who I looks like she could be a serious retro-gamer who would take our Pac-asses to Pac-town. I ask if she’s good at the old Pac-a-lack-a-lack-dack, to which she says she’s quite good “but I’m not exactly of that generation.”

“Just be clear,” I say, “neither are we.”

“Yeah right!” she says.

Little shit.

Neil watches over her shoulder for a moment as she plays. Apparently she made a beeline for the nearest power pill. Our Pac-asses had nothing to fear. Pac-fear, I mean.

Because the machines in Super Bario are switched off at night, the hi scores are erased each night, which I always think is a shame as any reigning champ will have to reign in secret (even to him/herself, as you’d never know how good you were). The owners of the bar have now remedied this with a fix even lower-tech than Pacman itself:

Some comedians on a podcast are talking about “doing bits” in regular life.

One of them cites an example of this bit-doing: a fast food server offers to put cream on his milkshake and he says “thanks, but I’m watching my figure.”

Wow, I think, This guy has a pretty wide definition of a bit.

Happy day. The Korean version of Escape Everything! arrives in the post. It’s beautiful!

 

There’s some colour ink inside — purple — for headings, and some new ornaments in the shape of manacles and whatnot.

It’s also amusing to see snippets of original English amongst the Hangul text. It’s like when you listen to Gaelic radio and your ears prick up at something like, “Is toigh leam a bhith a ’seinn… Sega Megadrive.”

The English bits largely refer to people’s names and the titles of books and films so it builds up into a litany of cultural references. It also seems to include English concepts for which there is no Korean translation. An example that leaps off the page is “sexual opportunism.” They don’t know what they’re missing.

There’s often an asterisk next to a name or title to explain the context to the Korean reader: what The Inbetweeners is and who Mark E. Smith and Giant Haystacks might be. Those without an asterisk include Tom Waits, Jim Jarmusch and Donald Trump.

(I wish I hadn’t mentioned Trump in my book, by the way, but I wrote it before his presidency if you can imagine such a time, and I only cited him as an example of a celebrity dirtbag.)

 

Anyway. Yes. I am rather beside myself today — as an egomaniac but also as a bibliophile. I didn’t know the book would be treated so nicely. A wonderful surprise.

When we came home from Edinburgh last night, we found our across-the-hall neighbours in the process of moving out. Their cheese plant was touching our doormat.

Today is their last day and I can hear them feverishly hoovering as I write this. They explained last night that the flat is expensive and that they’re moving back in with his parents to save money. He says “moving back in” (without the “my parents” part) as if it’s a common phrase. Troublingly, I sense that it really is.

Our own landlord increased our rent this month and I wonder if the whole street hasn’t suffered a coordinated hike. The lesbian couple with a penchant for post-it notes across the street moved out yesterday too. I hope none of this has anything to do with my tendency to stand at the window with no shirt on, flexing my muscles and eating fruit.

To Edinburgh again, this time to meet with Aislinn and Reggie who are over from Belfast. Aislinn, director of horror films, is here to speak at a Film Festival panel called The Science of Scary. While Aislinn is busy, we hang out with Reggie in bars and cafes. It feels good to just talk; we’re more usually together in service of some foolhardy last-minute project. He tells us about a programme he’s making for Radio 4 about Ireland and the Surrealists.

We pop into the National Museum to escape the rain. We see my favourite sections: Auntie Viv’s battle armour and Dolly the Sheep, who is stuffed and slowly revolves on a platform. It’s what we all hope for. We spot a tourism poster displaying the Forth Bridge. As fond as I am of this fine country, “Scotland for your Holidays” sounds remarkably like “You’re Grounded, Young Man.”

Alan comes over to enlist our help in writing a short artist profile for him. We helped him with a grant application recently and he was successful, so now we’re his go-to helpers for such things. Samara understands what art funding bodies want to see, while I’m quite good with the old wordies. Alan deserves the grant money without anyone’s help though: it will let him arrange a proper archive for his thousands of beautiful photographs of Glasgow art life going back some forty years. He has lots of pictures of young Justin Currie. We hammer out Alan’s profile in just a few minutes while I drink Gladeye IPA. He comments that I’m “turning into a right bender,” though I think he means “pisshead.”

Heat wave! I spend a chunk of the day reading in the shade of a tree in a small local park. I avoid the big parks when it’s this sunny because they are crowded with families and children. Barely anyone uses the small parks between the tenements. I was in the shade of that tree for about three hours today and my only companion was a young Japanese woman who brought takeout sushi to a bench on her lunch break and then vanished after five minutes. Later, when Samara comes home, she complains that the trains were out and that she had to walk and get the tube instead. The heat had apparently melted various materials in the signalling system. Samara wears a uniform in her new job. “A lot of polyester for this weather,” she says.

I’ve been finding myself missing the old Web, pre-social media, and I’m surprised by the extent of my sadness about it. I mean who cares about the Internet?

I spend a while marvelling at the primitive loveliness of Jaron Lanier’s website and recreating the website menu I had circa 2004, based on an anatomical diagram of a fish from a biology textbook. When I find the exact fish through Google images, I feel profoundly nostalgic. I spend some time positioning the links in just the right spots, remembering and agreeing with small creative decisions I arrived at fifteen years ago: “Blog” near the snout as if it were some kind of organ; “About” near the anus.

I also dabble with Tumblr and mention to Reggie by email that I’d like to find a sense of online belonging like in the LiveJournal days. “There is no belonging on the Internet now,” he says, “Only culture war.”

Editor Tom emails to ask that I extend my latest column by a hundred words or so because the sub-editor feels it is too short. Seeing myself as a careful and nimble-fingered wordsmith, such requests grate for five or six minutes and I have to climb down from the urge to reply with something shitty like “I respectfully disagree.” I must remember that the editor really is always right, as I inevitably re-learn by re-reading the piece. He was actually being nice to say “too short” because, on re-reading the work, I realise that the argument (qualitative) is what’s lacking and not the word count (quantitative). If I fail to learn this lesson, it will be only a matter of time before I lose an important job by sending a Giles Coren-style bitch-out to the subs.

I’m reading an old Penguin (Pelican) science book called Microbes by the Million by Hugh Nicol. It dates from 1939 and I bought it for 50p at the monthly book sale in the Botanic Gardens.

Early in the book, it is mentioned that the world’s population is two-thousand million as if that were uncontrollably large. It is also mentioned that the first edition of this book was printed 50,000 times. Today, 2,000 sales is considered relatively good.

Nicol dedicates the book “To Daughter Barbara who became ‘Penguin’-Conscious at a very early age,” and, under the heading of “How to Use This Book,” he writes, “To the general reader I would say: just read it and get what you can out of it.”

To Kelvingrove Park for the annual Mela. There was some enjoyable queuing behaviour at one of the food stalls. The queue was long and in fact transected the path where non-queuing people were simply walking in the park and had to keep pushing through the queue and saying “sorry,” and “excuse me.” A man with a ponytail in front of us muttered that it wasn’t an ideal situation and that if only people would queue along the path instead of across it, all would be well. “That would require some sort of leadership or group decision-making though,” I said, to which he decided to announce the plan to the rest of the queue.

Amazingly, people actually did what he suggested and the queue willingly hooked around so that it went along instead of across the path. I was surprised to see anyone cooperate. Samara asked if he’d like to be Prime Minister.

A moment later, the food stall proprietor came out, waving his arms. He shouted “No, no, no! Across! Across! Straight!” and we all moved back to our previous position.

To Tramway to see an exhibition called “The Theatre of Robert Anton.” Anton gave puppet-based performances to audiences of no more than twelve and with the strict proviso that they remain undocumented. As it should be, no video of his performances exist. Instead, we have this travelling exhibition of some of his puppets, set designs, and scrapbooks of media coverage. The scrapbooks are lovely as they begin as local press clippings taken and treasured by a young Anton and gradually chart the growth of (if not “his success”) an international curiosity about his work. The impression we get of Anton is of a quiet but passionate artist getting on with it and not trying to court fame or too much attention. Which is probably as it should be.

Remembering my Edinburgh Fringe audience of six, I might start demanding that my audiences do not exceed twelve.

Ah, shit. Haunted my phone again:

A trip to Edinburgh to see, among other things, the Museum of Childhood at the bottom of the Royal Mile.

Our motivation for visiting is a roundabout one. We’re having our wills written up soon and we’re looking for somewhere to bequeath my Teddy Bear and Samara’s stuffed toy dog. I know this is sentimental but I can’t stand the thought of them going into a big burning bin as if they weren’t treasured for a lifetime. Apparently some people are buried with their teddy bears, which also strikes me as sad. You might be dead but the bear isn’t. And now he has to live underground with his now-aged boy or girl decomposing on him. I can’t help wanting to do better than that.

The museum was okay but not exactly the festival of fun and nostalgia I assumed it would be. Parts of it were quite dull and each dim room is connected by undecorated stairwells with little sense of continuity. Strange. I took this photograph and I now worry that my iPhone is haunted:

To an office not far from my house where I enlist an accountant to do my finances from next April. I normally prefer to do things like bookkeeping myself because it’s cheaper and gives me a feeling of competence for a short while. My wife’s visa, however, if I’m to meet my share of the minimum income requirement through self-employment, requires my finances to be rubber-stamped by a chartered accountant. I don’t really mind this and the accountant, Brian, seems like a nice person.

Brian is surprised that I’ve come to him so early in the year but not especially surprised to hear that I’m an author. I see him write “book royalties,” casually on a pad.

As a side hustle and for fun, I’ve been cataloguing books at the secret library in the Botanic Gardens. There are many old treasures there, my favourite being the book of pressed nineteenth-century seaweed.

I’ve taken a few pictures of botanists from their author photographs on dust jackets. The lad with the beard is called “The Honorable Vickery Gibbs.”

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