A Blog. Lost in transition since 2004.
Something that never took off — never became a catchphrase or entered the popular consciousness — but definitely should have:
It’s when Neil on The Inbetweeners says “I can’t do that I’m afraid” when asked to stop doing something irritating or appalling.
I haven’t been watching The Inbetweeners. I just remembered it. Because it’s good.
Spite is an underappreciated energy resource. It’s infinitely renewable.
A final act of spite, I’ve been thinking, might be to leave my organs to a local dogs’ home.
My wife — she knows about these things — tells me that would not be legal.
Could I leave my body to a cannibal?
“No,” she says.
You can legally put these things in your will if you want to, but anyone acting on such a beautiful bequest would be face criminal prosecution.
“Only technically,” I protest.
“Only actually,” she says.
Back to the drawing board then. The drawing board of spite.
Sometimes, I have an idea that will only ever amuse myself.
Overhearing the word “Argentina” this morning put me in the mood to sing “Don’t Cry for me Agentina” from Evita. It quickly became an earworm and, by the afternoon for some reason, I’d semi-consciously changed “Argentina” in the song to “Wolverhampton.”
Soon, I imagined a Wringham & Godsil live show in Wolverhampton, in which I slag off the Midlands for an hour — hopefully being booed and heckled the whole time — while Dan defends it. At the end, I tear off my suit to reveal a Wolves strip and sing my breakout song.
All I have to do to make this happen is convince Dan to come out of his well-deserved retirement from showbiz, build up enough of an audience in the Midlands for us to sell more than half a room, find a way not to throw up when debasing my body with sportswear, and learn (a) the lyrics and (b) to sing.
Other than that, it’s an obvious goer.
With Michael Cumming in The Doublet pub.
With Momus in Paris today. It’s so very strange, unsettling really, to see us together:
Sqelchy, squelchy.
“That was a fun sound,” said Samara.
I’d used my right hand to rub my left eye.
So I know exactly how to make that sound now.
Should I ever be called upon to do so.
Today saw my last-but-one phototherapy appointment at the hospital. It was my 25th session and I’m feeling crumbly.
My eczema is much better for the treatment, but it dries me out so much that I sometimes look like Jacob Marley from Scrooged. What do you mean, you don’t get that reference? It’s top-five Bill Murray. Kids today. Fine. Pictured above.
It’s hard work as eczema treatment goes. I have to vaccum the flat every day lest we become ankle-deep in flakes.
Unfortunately, I shed as fast as I can suck so it makes no difference. I’m like that cleaner from the Monsters Inc. factory who leaves a trail of slime as quickly as he mops. That a better reference for you is it? Kids. Honestly, I’ll have to start putting up signs. “Your brow must be this high to ride this ride.”
The best shedding day saw my whole back peeling off in big salty curls. For a morning I knew what it was like to have feathers.
I plucked one off deliciously, saying “thish one’s a keeper.” Any good? Goldmember. 2002. Dividing the room that one, I can tell.
“Don’t pick it,” said Samara don’t-fall-off-you’ll-spoil-the-holiday Leibowitz, “get your creeaaam.”
If I had a penny for every time I got my creeaaam…
Anyway. As I said, today was the last-but-one session. I got in the tube and was blasted with the now-familiar UV rays. Well, I say “now-familiar” but there was a lot of excitment at the hospital this week because, and I quote, “we’ve got a new bulb.”
The dematology nurses have become used to me and I can tell they’re going to miss my Singing Detective references. There’s an end-of-term vibe in the department and they keep asking me what I’m going to do next.
Well, they ask me that every time, but they usually mean in the short term. “Home to get my creeaaam,” is the only answer I can ever give them.
But they mean longer-term now. Travel plans. Career moves. That sort of thing. They’re moving on themselves because the hospital is being demolished. These appointment have been like stepping into a chapter of Swing Hammer Swing! Look, don’t make me tap the sign. Jeff Torrington didn’t die for me to have to tap the sign. This high, I said.
My first walks to the hospital looked like this:
But now they looks like… well, I haven’t taken a picture of how it looks now because it’s not very dramtic, but this shot should do the job:
My final session is on Monday, which is lucky because I’m not sure I can lose any more parts. I’m to feel like Brundlefly. No good? Oh naff orf.
And then, as I told the nurses, I fly to Paris to begin a two-month period of travel. Paris, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Zagreb, Belgrade, Athens, and (assuming they let me in) Montreal. Beat that.
I didn’t say “beat that” to the nurses. While I’m out there, they’ll be stuck here, breathing concrete dust. Mind you, I’ll be still breathing bits of myself wherever I go.
I’ll miss my little chats with the nurses. I’ll never see them again, but, if they want me they can follow the trail of feathers.
*
If you’re affected by cripsy skin, call the National Eczema Society on 020 7281 3553.
Son of Son of Sam.
A man is driven mad by the noisy murderer next door. And so on, around the the world.
We recently got new passports, which means it’s also time fors me to apply for a PRTD. A PRTD is a visa-like document to be fixed inside my passport so I can travel unhindered to Canada where I have resident status.
Why this is necessary I’ve never really understood. Why is it relevant that I’m a resident when I visit Canada? Why does my status as a resident nullify (instead of enhance) my pre-existing ability to visit the country as a tourist? I’m not trying to get away with anything and I’m not doing anything remotely wrong: I just want to visit my in-laws and cram some poutine into my horrible gob. Big deal.
The application process for a PRTD is nothing (nothing!) compared to slaloms of immigration officialdom we’ve wrangled though before, but it’s still irritating to have to do it.
They ask you to scan every page of your current passport, including blank pages. But they want to know your five-year travel history, so you have to scan your old passport as well. Given that a PRTD application is only necessary when you’ve been issued a new passport, this is a tad vexing. So we’re asked to scan every page of an expired passport (including the meaningless blank pages) and every page of a brand new passport (which consists entirely of blank pages).
I don’t mind humouring official systems if it helps them catch kingpins or terrorists, but sitting for two hours to scan the largely-blank pages of two passports for no conceivably good reason is not how I like to spend the precious sand in my lifeglass.
Next, I have to scan my wife’s new and old passports too. What joy! The whole process again. This, apparently, is to prove that I’m travelling with a Canadian citizen, which is the exemption allowing us to live in the UK without surrendering my hard won and expensive Canadian resident status. You’d think they’d just be able to look at a screen to know where on Earth one of their citizens might be and connect the dots, but apparently they need to see 120+ largely-blank pages of passport for that.
So we took care of this a couple of nights ago. It was a nuisance, but it was done and dusted.
Last night, an email arrived from Immigration Canada. I assumed it would be a receipt or perhaps the instructions on how to actually get the PRTD now that we’ve applied (which might involve mailing my passport somewhere, which wouldn’t be ideal because I’m flying to Utrecht next week). But no. It was a request to send “additional documents.”
The documents itemised in the email were not additional at all. They were asking for the passports again.
I suspect this was an AI system speaking rather than a human agent because the phrasing was a bit strange and the email had arrived very quickly by the standards of immigration authorities. Something had probably gone wrong and the AI hadn’t been able to identify that we’d sent passports, even though there were PDFs attached with the proper naming convention and everything. Bah.
Emphasis had been placed on “legibility” though, so I was worried that perhaps our scans weren’t high enough quality.
So I did the bloody things again.
Yes. I scanned every page (including every blank page) of all four passports again today. A doubly pointless waste of precious hourglass sand.
This time, I even scanned the front and back covers of the damn things. I can waste their time too, you know. And then I decided to also scan the pages of smallprint at the front and back of each passport — the print that says deeply ironic things like “Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance.” Hah!
I wanted to increase the resolution on the scanner to generate higher-quality PDF files, but the application system wouldn’t like that. You can only upload files smaller than 2MB each and a total of 3.5MB for the whole application. This is a teeny-tiny pixel budget when when you need to upload 120+ pointless and largely-empty passport pages (in addition to other documents I haven’t mentioned here).
But maybe the legibility issue (if there even is one) has nothing to do with our scanner (which is a perfectly normal consumer-grade flatbed – and what else could they possibly expect of normal people scanning their own documents at home?) but with the stamps themselves. Border officials must get tired wrists from all the important stamping they have to do, and sometimes they leave a weak and only semi-readable stamp. Well, that’s hardly our fault.
Never fear. The AI (if indeed it’s an AI) recommends uploading “entry or exit documents where passport stamps are illegible.” Which would be a sterling suggestion if there was any such fucking thing. Nobody gets an “entry or exit document” when they go on holiday. And imagine if there is such a thing: waiting at the border like a spod, holding the line up by insisting on being given a document instead of a stamp, just in case an AI (which didn’t exist five years ago — the period they’re interested in hearing about) ever requests such a thing.
You can’t call anyone to ask for clarity and the FAQ pages only tell us what we already know. So I have no idea if any of this effort — the empty-page-by-empty-page scanning of eight passports — has worked.
When I went through the process recommended by the AI to upload my “additional” documents, it asked me to enter “ONLY 1 of these 3 details: UCI number, application number, passport number.” Unfortunately, the UCI and application number fields are marked with mandatory red asterisks and there’s no field for passport number at all, so the instruction is 100% meaningless. Immigration forms are full of riddles and incompetencies like that one. I’m not being a smart alec: these apparently very-officious forms produced by the world’s biggest and most powerful national bureaucracies are full of amateurish grot like that.
Even when this process works (which it never does on the first time), it’s pointless anyway. Remember that tourists can come and go as they please, so why do I need a PRTD at all? And why isn’t there a global information retrieval system with which border guards can see the whole story of who I am on scanning my passport without any further application from me? And if we must apply for a PRTD, why are they interested in seeing so many blank passport pages? And why did I have to do it all twice?
I’ve been thinking lately about all of this. If I had my time over, I wouldn’t bother humouring the system at all. Unless you want a proper career overseas, I’d honestly suggest you don’t bother with visas or citizenship or residency status. Just go where you like as a “tourist,” work remotely for firms in your home country (or illegally in your new country if you’re bold), and when your six months have expired just go on holiday somewhere over the border (it would have been New York for me) and then come back for another six months when you’re ready. The visa hop.
Seriously, it’s all been largely pointless. My residency status in Canada allowed me to work for a year in a library there (which, frankly, I didn’t really want to do) and allowed me not to stress about visa hops (which, if approached the right way, would have been fun anyway).
If this passport-scanning episode seems absurd to you, you don’t know the half of it. You don’t know one thirtieth of it. The mountain of moose and thoroughbred horse crap we’ve tunnelled through over the years to satisfy the Canadian, Quebecois, and British governments at various junctures has been nothing shy of gargantuan.
Don’t bother. That’s my genuine suggestion to others. Just do the visa hop and get on with your life.
☕
20 minutes later:
My phone just buzzed. It was them. Immigration Canada. It gave me the fright of my life. I thought their sentinels had found this post already and they were thwacking my delicate knuckles for complaining about their systems and recommending the visa hop.
It was just a receipt for the “additional” documents. Interestingly, they didn’t send a receipt the first time. It says that “for technical reasons,” the additional documents may not be visible in my online account but not to worry, and also that I should try the “check your application status” tool at the website. I have a look at it but there’s no PRTD option in the menu.
Jesus. Buy me a coffee, someone.
Readers of New Escapologist will know about my demented commitment to recycling.
For instance, I save all of my Tetra-Pak milk cartons (which can’t be recycled in our regular home recycling bins) for five or six months and then walk them (yes, walk them) to the dump.
I did this today.
It’s a 90-minute round trip, but I enjoy the exercise and the sense of moral superiority I get from going the extra mile (or six) for recycling.
Another thing I like is how the walk becomes increasingly familiar. I’ve been doing this walk for over three years now, so probably seven or eight times.
Because I wrote about the walk in New Escapologist Issue 14, I remember a lot of the things I wrote about. For example:
I have a moment of mild anxiety when a woman is coming towards me, knowing that we must pass. I think it’s someone who worked as a barmaid in my local pub and that she probably doesn’t like to be recognised by old punters. Unsure how to behave, I decide not to say hello nor to ignore her. Instead, I will rest my face in absolute catatonia. As we’re about to pass, I realise that saliva is pooling in my mouth and I really must swallow. I gulp nervously as she passes. Then I notice that it isn’t her at all.
That spot is now “barmaid corner” despite, in reality, having nothing to do with that person whatsoever. I probably only remember the incident because I wrote about it.
The walk takes me through the grounds of a hospital:
I pass the hospital. Thoughts of coronavirus testing days and a couple of x-rays and ultrasounds flit briefly through my mind.
What I always see but didn’t mention in the original report is a plastic human spine through a ground floor window. It must be an osteopath’s office or something.
I saw the spine today and, strangely, it was being snuggled up to by a lovely golden retriever. 🎵 “Goldie and Spiney / working the whole day through / Goldie and Spiney / criminals, watch out.” 🎵
There’s a juncture where I must choose to stay on the main path and pass some shops or to walk behind the shops down a back alley where only bins dwell. If I take the former, my state of mind is public-spirited and I imagine myself walking down an Amsterdam boulevard. If I take the latter, I feel like Batman or Angel, staying out of the light for maximum brooding.
Today I took the back route but I thought of this: I choose between Netherworld and Netherlands.
Deep, Deep!
I dump my tetra-paks, a handful at a time into the correct dumpster. They fall on top of everyone else’s. I notice that most of the tetra-paks are soya or almond or coconut milk like mine, none of them dairy milk. I suppose only the most devoted of hippies bother to recycle their tetra-paks.
And this is where I noticed something truly remarkable. Oh boy. As I opened the dumpster I was confronted with several milk cartons (same brand as the ones we buy) squashed flat-as-a-pancake just like mine.
Anyone who has seen my super-flattened Tetra-Paks will remember it. I flatten them to get as many into the bag as possible, delaying my walk to the dump for a little bit longer. Nobody else does that. Or so I thought.
Who is the other person who flattens their cartons like this? It could be love. My real soul mate, sorry Samara.
The one thing that troubles me is how few of them there were: maybe 20. This person isn’t keeping them for five or six months like I do. This suggests that they drive to the dump like a muggle. You have to walk, you idiots, or your commitment doesn’t count. A trip in a car obliterates the benefit of any effort you make to recycle.
Even so, I’d love to know who else is doing this. Were they inspired by the sight of my own perfectly-flattened Tetras when they opened the dumpster six months ago?
Or were these flattened cartons, quite simply, my own perfectly-flattened Tetras from six months ago? Surely not. Surely the bin is filled and emptied more often than that.
I will never know. And that, my friends, is a tragedy.
The walk back takes exactly the same time as it took to walk out, but it always feels a shorter walk in psychogeographical minutes.
Not this time. This time, I was troubled by what I’d seen in that bin. And the walk home seemed to take ages.
Bin:
🎵 “Show us your garbage / show us your trash / if people like it / you’ll win some cash.” 🎵
I’ve been feeling a bit itchy-scratchy lately and struggling to relax.
It’s partly because of having too much to do — the ideas and the burden still moving around in my mind when I’m trying to relax — and partly because of an eczema flare that’s been going on for over a year.
Thankfully, there’s light at the end both tunnels. In the eczema department, I’ve been getting phototherapy. This involves reporting to hospital three times a week to stand in a sunbed-like tube and being blasted with UV light for about a minute.
It’s the sort of thing that seems destined to make me a superhero or give me cancer, but I’ll settle for unitchy, unscabby, elastic, unreddened, non-flayed, unsore skin. I only have five sessions left, so this standing appointment can soon be scratched (as it were) from my bloated schedule.
In terms of being too busy (a shameful state for a proud idler), the end of October sees the end of multiple projects. Then I’ll be travelling for a month or two: Utrecht, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Zagreb, Belgrade, Athens, Montreal. This is a genuine attempt to get away from it all and I’m looking forward to it. I like being out in the world with nothing to do. I’ll be with Johnston for the European cities and Samara for the Canadian one. Escaaaaape!
Until then, I’ve been resorting to my favourite ’90s telly comedy to relax: deep dives into Adam & Joe, Red Dwarf, and Lee & Herring. This is something I usually try to avoid — to consume new stuff, new culture, instead of falling back on old favourites — but I’m embarrassingly tired and, as I said, struggling to wind down. The comfort provided by Pliny and Histor and a cavernous old JMC ship seems to do the trick.
Oddly, none of these deep dives has involved actually watching full episodes of these shows. Maybe this a twenty-first century phenomenon. For Adam & Joe, I’ve been watching clips (“when I go and see Villa / my view is blocked by a concrete pillar”) and reading this (“eight quid forty-five for half an hour of stupid craaap”). For Lee & Herring… actually, for them I have been watching full episodes albeit supported by a forum watch-along.
For Red Dwarf I’ve been reading and listening to small chunks of the first two novels (did anyone remember that the toaster kills the polymorph in the book version – I had forgotten this) and watching video essays like this one on YouTube. I also watched the Bodysnatcher stuff for the first time, which really tipped me over the edge. I hope Rob Grant manages to give his new book and TV series (if they ever happen) the quiet desolation I crave. No more wacky “Doug Dwarf” boner hijinks please, Rob.
With Samara’s help (well, she basically did all of it), I’ve also made this Red Dwarf-inspired jacket, which is a sure sign of crisis. What am I, some sort of “fan”? Urgh.
The website we bought the patches from has plenty of user reviews from young people saying they bought these patches “for father’s day.” I am old.
It’s not supposed to be screen accurate and it’s not for cosplay. It’s just a Listerish look to delight the other old men in the pub. On the show, his khaki jacket is normally worn over the shirt that has these patches. I still might get one of those London Jets tee-shirts though. We’ll see how long this crisis goes on for.
I wore the jacket to our Edinburgh WIP screening of Melt It! and you can see it in this pic, albeit before the shoulder patch went on:
You know what my jacket is? It’s not fandom. It’s historic re-enactment. I’ve been described as a comedy historian a couple of times recently (by Stewart Lee and Oliver Double no less) and I have at least written some books (and now a film) in comedy history so that’s fine by me. Professional nerdery is a thing now.
Spotting one of my type in a cafe at the weekend, my wife gave me a little nudge.
“Out of my league,” I said. “But maybe not out of… our league.”
A top wingman she may be, she was having none of it. Worth a try though, eh?
We don’t mean to brag, but Mark and I met Pliny.
His beak was like that when we got there.
This was at the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive at the University of Kent.
I felt like a very special boy.
Ben Moor is a lovely, talented, warm-hearted person. Don’t take my word for it. He’s famously this.
A few days before my first proper show in 15 years, I asked Ben by email if he had any tips. He wrote back:
Breathe deeply before going on – do you have a mantra? – mine is borrowed from [American football coach] Marv Levy who used to say to his players “Where else would you rather be, than right here, right now.” It’s the last thing I say to myself before going on stage and it settles me nicely.
Also, if you think you’re talking too slowly, you’re probably talking at the right pace.
Have fun out there!
Love and peace,
Ben x
Object Number 2 in our inventory is a ticket stub.
Going to see Dreams With Sharp Teeth on 25 June 2008 was an important night out.
Full article here.
Birmingham went even better than Edinburgh. The Iceman looks phenomenal on the big screen.
Some Black Country reprobates:
With Mark Cartwright and Simon Munnery at the Edinburgh WIP screening of Melt It!
And here’s me and Mark’s debrief a few days later:
Dembina: So I was walking down the road, as the comedians say…
Me: Which road?
Dembina: The Holloway Road. It joins up with the A1.
Me: Glad I asked.
Dembina: Good heckle.
*
Dembina: What’s it called? Jewish Playboy?
Me: Playmensch.
Dembina: Nah, not…
Me: Playgoy?
Dembina: That’s it. You can have 50p for that one, not a pound.
*
The spirit of the Tunnel Club is alive in Edinburgh.
Coming up: Edinburgh (14th Aug) and Birmingham (24th Aug) WIP screenings of the Melt It! film.
These will include an unseen ~40-minute early cut of our film, which stars Jo Brand, Stewart Lee, Ronni Ancona, Robin Ince, Simon Munnery, Neil Mullarkey, and of course the Iceman and me.
Director Mark Cartwright and I will then follow the screening with a 20-30 minute (depending which version you come to) in-person talk and Q&A.
I daresay there will also be ample opportunity for a chat in the bar afterwards.
Part of the mission is to raise money to help us finish the film. The Edinburgh screening is part of the PBH Free Fringe so there’s no cost to entry. If you can afford it though, please put some money in the bucket at the end. Birmingham tickets, meanwhile, are a tenner.
Come! See what on Earth we’ve been up to, help us tie a bow on this fucker, and hear about our remarkable journey so far.
Here’s a special trailer just for these WIPs:
Spümcø‘s video for “Fuck Her Gently” by Tenacious D isn’t on YouTube, presumably because of rudeness or Satanism or both.
Or maybe the hard fuckers at YouTube don’t agree with the song’s message.
Honestly, back in 2002 this played all day long on Kerrang! and MTV. Listen to Grandpa. Platform capitalism is stupid.
So here it is. Justice for KG.
Some fan mail arrives for Mister Bob.
“I just wanted to pass on my thanks,” they write, “to Mister Bob for bringing Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black to my attention.”
To which I respond: “you’re very welcome. I will pass your message on to Mister Bob.”
I mean, he’s dead in 2024. But thanks to the magic of books, I have access to him through time.
Which is true.
*
Another recent mention of Mister Bob in real life.
Friend J is going to Portobello. “Look out for Mister Bob,” I say.
“Oh yeah,” he says, “I’m more concerned that I’ll be mistaken for him.”
*
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the book you need to buy.
I just got a rejection letter (yes, by post) for a novel I published over a year ago.
The novel is almost at the end of its life cycle. It’s been read, reviewed, reprinted, won a prize, and I’m halfway through writing the next one.
Nice going, publishers.
