Coastalblog

Melancholia time. I've started work on a new piece tonight. The working title is "Roughs for a longer text". It consists of snippets of what might be poems, what might be more a statement of intent (my reading of the semantically dodgy catch-all term "poetics"). My field is just so fucking vast . There is a weight of canon which, provides something to kick against at the smae time as being a huge set of shackles. I can write what I like, I can fight every poetic tradition that has ever existed, which may be the key to "making it new" cf Pound, tho' he was a cunt. At the same time, however, I will unconsciously reference Lee Harwood, Tom Raworth, Bill Griffiths, Roy Fisher, Brecht, Perec, Bunyan, Pynchon, Allen Fisher, Rob Sheppard, Scott Thurston, everyone I've ever read who has impacted upon me in some way. (Take a few moments here and G00gl3 a few of the names, it'll help understand, trust me). GAH! Why do I bother? The answe...

SO the staff night out is out of the way, and I didn't get too drunk and do something embarrassing. On the contrary, I was the last man standing (if swaying a little by the end). The upside to this is simple, I can stop drinking now for a while. It's odd, but there's no incentive not to drink when you have a big night out looming. I spent most of last week pissed purely to keep up the momentum. ENOUGH! It's mineral water ahoy for a week, plus there's just a last little but of excess weight to shift before I'm happy - not drinking definitely the key. All of that self-indulgent nonsense out of the way, and I'm pleased to be able to report that the Shirokuma live expreience (my mate Mark, ably supported by a combination of friends and people I've never met in my life) is nearly ready to go. As well as the surprise of one of us actually amounting to soething I have found the whole thing something of a spur to my own creativity. Call it the "I'...

Ho ho, so, at coastaltown towers today, the setting in of a small degree of delayed shock as regards the whole dead waiter thing. Situation not helped by the fact that Big Boss's thoroughly nice dad also shuffled off this mortal coil the day afterwards. Atmosphere at work = tres gloomy. Incidentally yes, I am going to the whole staff party, which seems a trifle irrelevant now. Also, stop press, enormous existential crisis in process triggered by god knows what. All hands to pump immediately. Supportive emails along the lines of "Dear Mr Coastaltown, I think we just rot in the ground too, also, having no legitimate purpose is not necessarily a bad thing. Love, regular Coastalblog admirer" required IMMEDIATELY.

An odd day yesterday. Lovely as it was to spend an entire day with the delightful Roe, and great as it was to go the Eagle and Child in the company of friends the whole shebang was somewhat overshadowed by the death of a former waiter of mine. He was found face down in his house. Now, this young man wasn't someone I knew particularly well, and he left a while ago, but a lot of my staff know him and the whole thing has cast a shadow over a lot of people. It's just plain depressing. So, for what it's worth, RIP James.

Ssshhhh, if nobody looks they won't notice that I'm MAKING FUNNY FACES BEHIND YOUR FUCKING BACKS = I really want to avoid the staff do, which is looming, at all costs, and I do mean AT ALL COSTS. I am an old man. I do not want to go drinking with teenagers. I want to go drinking with people who can hold a fucking conversation, and their drink.

So I finally dragged my arse to the cinema to see that Lord of the Rings thing that everyone keeps going on about. It was quite dull. Oh Evil is scary. Oh, we won. So I watched the sequel to Battle Royale. It was rubbish. Lost in translation is okay, if you like romantic comedies (I don't) and Bill Murray (I do). Scarlett Johansson, yes please, but I preferred her in Ghost World. Coming soon, capsule reveiws of anything. I'm into being casually dismissive at the moment.

It's Blog convention to post silly internet quizzes in once in a while, is it not? If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Dmitri Shostakovich ! I am a shy, nervous, unassuming, fidgety, and stuttery little person who began composing the same year I started music lessons of any sort. I wrote the first of my fifteen symphonies at age 18, and my second opera, "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," when I was only 26. Unfortunately, Stalin hated the opera, and put me on the Enemy Of The People List for life. I nevertheless kept composing the works I wanted to write in private; some of my vocal cycles and 15 string quartets mock the Soviet System in notes. And I somehow was NOT killed in the process! And Harry Potter(c) stole my glasses and broke them! Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test A little cheering. Apart from that it's been a bad, bad day. For reasons I'm not prepared to go into even in a blog that nobody reads. Just me and ...

IMPORTANT NOTE: all Coastalblog entries from here on in will be named after Ride songs. EQUALLY IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a lie Well, well, well, what's got into me all of a sudden? I feel stable and relaxed. I'm loving my job (which isn't to say I'm not looking for new ones, but it's astonishing what a big wedge of money will do for your outlook on things), this evening I quite possibly sewed up waiter Of The Year 2004 with a flawless performance which secured a a regular reservation by some curmudgeonly, but exceedingly rich and big spending, with lots of rich and big spending mates, blokes. Some sort of social society, I gather. I don't really care. It was like a test of how good I really am, which was passed with flying colours, off they all trooped into the night singing our praises, hefty tip and repeat booking safely bagged. Therefore I am currently Golden Boy, at least until tomorrow, which is, of course, nice (I am, of course, aware, that it'...

Heigh ho for the new year and what have you. I've got a lot more time for New Year's than I do for Christmas, it's a more relevant to me, and I do seem to find that January brings with it a new impetus; largely as working in catering.... IT'S OVER! IT'S OVER! IT'S FUCKING OVER! (for another year, anyway) All that aside I saw the New Year in in fine style, a really good night at work with everyone dancing and waving their arms around, bucketloads of champers, a fairly dull after-party from which I bailed and then the best bit of the night, sat at home with a big chunky glass of port at about six in the mrning, just having a mment or ten of quiet reflection. This was followed the next day by a spectacular Casa Coastaltown Gumbo Extravaganza which was just plain great, just to have plenty of people in the same space (with a notable exception - get well soon Cel). Then a brief illness which I seem to have got away with and yesterday a shopping trip to the ...

Nearly there, just NYE to prep for. I'm now going to drink until I can't see.

Apologies for the saminess of the tone over these entries, but I really am done in. This Christmas has been hell, and despite the (amittedly surprisingly huge) bonus I received I'm still wondering if the effort was worth it. I have little patience for Christmas customers, and whilst I appreciate that this is a service industry and I just have to grin and bear the more goombah excesses of customers (passing out, falling off tables, unconscionable lack of manners and other complaints too numerous to list) I'm finally starting to wonder whether or not my time in catering has run its course. The exhaustion is only to be expected, but the factthat I'm sat here on my break, with an evening shift to follow and I'm drinking a rhone red to cheer myself up is cause for some concern. My self-control has always been a strength at this time of year, I'm able just to keep going regardless by avoiding booze and just shaking off the all-round fed-upness. But now... The pro...

Gaaah. Long day. Long, bone-breaking day. Superiors not turing up due to being drunk, big boss angry, very VERY busy, running, swearing, sweating.Much in the way of recriminations. That sort of thing. I am now in the uncomfortable position of being singularly unpopular for being the one who didn't fuck up. People are nuts. Very proud of some of the staff though, they were great. So, when's Christmas all over then? I'll have to prep for Valentine's day...

It's just graft graft graft at the moment, leaving those few moments when I'm not actually in work free for the all important business of wolfing a quick meal down my neck (for which I thoroughly recommend frying a tin of chickpeas with an onion, cutting some chorizo into it and stirring some mustard through, takes five minutes, and time is definitely a factor as currently stands). All writing is on hold while the season is in full swing, any which does appear is likely to be of a deeply misanthropic nature, and therefore not a great deal of cop. Everything is on hold. There is only the voracious public, and the implacable God of Catering. I am incredibly fucking tired.

In the thick of it now. first cabaret night of the season last night. Also first fight between customers *sigh*. Now, I like drnking, but these people are ridiculous. They come out for a meal and simply cram as much booze as possible down their throats as fast as possible. Nobody, it seems to me, is actually having a good time, it's as thoughthey are controlled by dome sort of inner force which compels them to drink, and to not really care what they're drinking. Everywhere I looked round the restaurant there were drawn, ashen faces, contemplating glasses. It got even worse when the cabaret started, at the point all the self-appointed "fun people" of the office started dancing, and dragging up those who clearly just didn't want to be there. Then they'd lurch and stumble, collapsing into my hard-working staff who were trying to balance full trays of drinks at the time. "Come on! Dance! It's Christmas!" Yes it is, and I'm working why can you...

You can always tell in catering when the festive season is rolling around. Table sizes go up from four to about eight. The wine stays largely untouched, sales of lager and alcopops go through the roof. It's depressing, but that's the nature of the beast. I'm not working in a high-end restaurant, I work in a bistro, and at this time of year the awful reality of that is works dos. All of our regulars, the ones who normally I'd stop and chat to, maybe recommend a new wine I've got in, the ones who ask you what's good today, or how your girlfriend is, whose family histories I know better than my own, sensibly stay away. In their place come companies nights out. Cowrokers who may hate each other normally and a boss they barely know lumped togther and forced to have a good time on company money. Some things are ineivitable. A secretary will get pissed and start crying. The boss will attempt to cop off with someone. I will get my arse grabbed. They will demand festi...

So tonight's the end of year reading bash for my research group, and it'll be held at Liverpool's Masque Theatre. As is always the case on the morning of a reading I have an open word document containing god knows ho wmany texts, and I'm struggling to select a few to do, with ineivitable quick rewrites. I was too busy to finish it last month because of NaNoWriMo, and last night was taken up with very important girlfriend-seeing duties, so I have nothing, as currently stands. I could do with spending the rest of the day working on it, however I have to go to work, as of approximately...now. Ah.

Jesus, that was too much like hard work. the scary thing is the fifty thou's up and yet I could quite easily go on. Except now I have to go to work. So I can't. Boo.

So some friends and I went to Manchester tonight to see Eddie Izzard at the MEN Arena, and it all went off, surprisingly, without a hitch. Travel went smoothly, everything went according to plan. Which was all a bit surprising. The gig itself was little short of astonishing. Less the performance itself (whilst I like Izzard's stuff I found him rather reliant on repeating tropes to get a laugh out of an exceedingly compliant audience. I think I actually sneered when he got a huge round of applause for some vague anti-foxhunting joke), more the sheer scale of the thing. I've been to rock concerts on a bigger scale, but to see a comedy performance on this scale was just plain strange , one of my friends nearly had an attack of vertigo, so steep were the sides of the arena. What was fascinating was to hear the sound of laughter on that scale. The slow build of a laugh in thousand upon thousand of people. It was pretty impressive. I could use words like "awe-inspiring" ...

So say you went to a restaurant with the intention of getting away without paying. It's pretty easy to do, waiting on staff won't challenge people leaving, they'll assume they've paid. It's left to the pooor hectic soul on the till to work out who's paid and who hasn't, and the odds are they'll be locked into an argument with a middle aged man who's insisting that as it's his mate (who's already paid)'s birthday they should refund the entire bill and give it to him to pay, and he's not leaving until they do etc etc because he eats here all the time yawn yawn and he's spent a lot of money here tonight (note: 80% of people who speak of "how much money they've spent " querying the bill have bought the cheapest meal possible. It's one of those things, like rain on your wedding day, black flies in your chardonnay or something equally imbecilic). So say you'd weighed up the odds and thought, "yeah, I can do th...

This is making me very happy today.