I Be the Judge

Part I

Utopia

"You Americans have had 'nuff suffering since the tragic events of 7/11"

Ali G, British comedian

"The hallmark of a self-inflicted razor or knife wound to the wrist is that there are several abortive, tentative cuts before the final fatal incision."

Doctor Sutherford, The Times, August 2nd 2003

I thought about writing a novel entirely subjective. Everything entirely as I perceived it to be. Someone famous said to me, in my head – they had a strong German accent – "If you are thinking about writing a novel entirely subjective, forget about it. Think about it for a while, and then forget about it." The title of the novel came very quickly to me: "I be the judge." Because it sounded cool, because it sounded unusual, because it sounded quirky, because I liked it. I rolled it around it in my mouth. I – be – the – judge. Who had ever thought of that? It should be 'You be the judge' – a polite, deferential phrase allowing another person to take precedence in their tastes or feelings for something. 'You be the judge of this, you be the judge of that.' Someone invites a friend around for dinner and tells them about a new recipe they have for a dessert. 'Is it any good?' the friend asks – 'You be the judge,' they reply. Not 'I be the judge.' But people want to judge, don't they? So – 'I be the judge' it is. Judge, jury, jurisprudence, judicial, judicious. I be the judge. A vous de juger.

A picture forms in my mind of dozens of people, sitting in the Underground, all reading the same book – the title, 'I be the Judge.' Remember Captain Marconi's Guitar – or was it General Jackson's Cornelian Choice, or something, never mind – didn't you hate it? I did – and I'll be the judge of that, thanks. That news presenter – what's his name? Barnaby Clarkson or Carnaby Barkson or possibly something else altogether, but I'm sure it ended in 'son' – anyway, he didn't. He thought it was 'absolutely marvellous' – well, that's what he wrote on the cover at least. Not meaning to enter into an argument with Mr C here over his literary tastes – but – that's what he wrote. So people bought it. Told each other – 'if that Barkson from TV thinks it's good it must be, mustn't it? And now they're making a film with Timothy Harness and that comely Spanish lass – must rush out and buy it'. And they did. And they thought it was good. I did. Buy it, I mean. I didn't like it. But you be the judge, that's the important thing. And I'm not jealous or anything but if a plug like that results in thousands of sales, why should I miss out? So as soon as this comes out, Mr Barkson's getting a copy, and I'll just sit back and watch that picture turn into a vision, and then – you can bet your cotton socks on this, but I'm not one for mixing my metaphors – I'll be sipping cocktails while the dream becomes an unfolding reality, shaping its forms and taking its shapes and shaking its tapes right there, in front of my eyes.

The East End of London, a place of menace and general mayhem. Aye, there is truth, but the warmhearted nature of the Cockney fails to shine through the dirge of such a slovenly portrait. See the margaritic splendour of the costermonger marching in garb through the honest boroughs!

Questions for the day:

– How would one view the world if one were Dutch? Is there such a thing as 'being Dutch', any more than 'being English', French, or any other nationality in the world? Dennis Bergkamp, Arsenal and Holland's star centre-forward, certainly seems to think so. The Danish, he writes in an article in the London Dullard, during the Euro 2000 football championships, are a team he admires because 'they play football the correct way.' By implication, there are a certain number of teams which do not play football 'the correct way'. Which might they be?

– What does it mean to stand 'in uffish thought'?

Brief answers to questions for the day.

– A Dutchman's view of the world: several questions in one. Influence of viking invasions, physical appearance of Dutch vs southern European people, notably Spanish or Greek. Linguistic proximity to other Anglo-saxon population groups : German, English, Danish, Swedish, Belgian Flemish. Proximity to French. Dutch history : colonies in the East Indies, colonies in the Dutch Antilles, Surinam, Spanish occupation. South Africa. The Boers. Afrikaans, the wars against the British oppressor (1882 : Tsarist Russia represses Jews, no relation...), William of Orange.

Obviously there is such a thing as being Dutch, English or French.

We might assume teams which do not, in Dennis Bergkamp's view, play football the "correct" way to include France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Brazil. Given their poor footballing record, perhaps one could agree with him on Greece. Mr Bergkamp's politics (a tall, nordic type) begin to sound a little iffy, do they not? At the very least a poor tactician: Denmark went on to lose 3-0 to The Netherlands, after losing by the same score to France a few days before...

– To stand 'in uffish thought': The expression, of course, is taken from Lewis Caroll's poem the Jabberwocky. Fourth stanza: "And as in uffish thought he stood / The Jabberwock with eyes of flame / Came whiffling through the tulgy wood / And gurgled as it came!". Gives the lie to any notion that 'and' should never be used at the beginning of a sentence. Only in poetry perhaps. Anyway, 'Uffish' could mean deep, but something about the sound of the word seems to suggest irritation, or upset[1]... or perhaps exhaustion (the third, previous stanza concludes, 'So rested he by the tumtum tree / and stood awhile in thought'). Which hardly makes sense: how could one stand in 'exhausted', or even 'irritated' thought? Does any adjective make sense next to the word 'thought', other than deep? What can it mean to stand in 'uffish thought'?

Perhaps the answer lies elsewhere – perhaps, in this unfamiliar universe of Caroll's imagination, 'thought' has a different meaning to the one which we commonly ascribe to it. Perhaps it signifies a state approaching meditation, a relaxation of the mind allowing a gradual replenishment of one's energy, a wandering rather than an active pursuit of logical answers and rational truths. And perhaps 'uffish' designates a particularly heightened state, one where alertness and relaxation, combined in harmony, ready the warrior for the oncoming assault of his 'manxome'[2] foe.

Lately I've felt my head filling with thoughts... but I'm not impressed, I remember the nothingness of two weeks ago, or two months, I remember the void. The void of a love taken flight, of course – but it went deeper than that. The void of mortality, the void of death: the void of reality seeping through an unguarded breech in a well-wrought carapace... when people said that life is hard, this is what they meant.

A few words on German wisdom: Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, Heidegger. What was that voice in the back? Freud, did you say? Dummkopf! Freud was Austrian. Heidegger was a card-carrying Nazi, Nietsche laid the foundations of... (sorry, something important has just come to my attention: on the 31st March 1923, French and Belgian soldiars, under the orders of a French officer, opened fire during a workers' rally at the Krupp factory in Essen... 13 workers died)... yes... now where was I? Nietzsche, as I was saying, much misunderstood, much maligned, Marx, a harmless professor, Schopenhauer a manic-depressive but also a genius... but where was the hope of redemption? the light at the end of the tunnel? Where the poetry? Don't ask: schwarze Nacht, the darkness of the bottom of the pit, the gingerbread house in the middle of the forest that turns out to belong to a witch, that was all he had to offer (and that reminds me, the Brothers Grimm)... and Freud was an Austrian. Oops! I forgot Kant. Quite a cool dude! Regular as clockwork. My kind of German, well-oiled like a piece of German machinery. Good name: Immanuel Kant. Sounds good, doesn't it? Critique of Pure Reason! That was him!

No Jeremy, Kierkegaard was Danish – i-e-r and then double a r d. You quite enjoyed Either/Or and The Concept of Dread? What about The Sickness unto Death? That's the crucial one. Written in 1849, six years after E/O and five years after TCOD. Not forgetting Journal d'un Séducteur and the Treaty of Despair. Incidentally, the Grimm brothers published their collection of fairy tales in 1812 – which included perhaps the most famous tale of all, Hansel and Gretel – to immediate acclaim. Who says you need to die to be famous?

Yugoslavia is losing four-nil to the Netherlands in the quarter finals of the European Championships (four goals by Kluivert). I'm glad: they're a nasty bunch of f***ers. Were they perhaps the team that Bergkamp was referring to when he wrote about the 'correct' way to play football? Here's another of his quotes: "We'll need to give Yugoslavia a five goal headstart against us for them to have any chance of winning." So I think we can agree that when you get down to it, he's a good bloke after all, is Dennis Bergkamp.

Fabien Barthez is in goal for France against Spain (these games come quick and fast) in the 4^th Quarter Final of the Euro. You can see him thinking: "How can I help my team do well... and look really cool at the same time?" Speaking of the French, one of their commentators made a strange remark on TV yesterday during the Quarter Final between Portugal and Turkey: "Fairly-played aerial challenges are permitted outside the six-yard box." A certain Guy Roux, long-time manager of the club Auxerre, considered to be a leading authority in the world of French football. So Mr Roux, are we implying that fairly-played aerial challenges are not permittedinside the six-yard box? A subtle one, which may hopefully confound those who believe that the game was invented for dunces.

At the beginning of the match Guy Roux was shown on television shaking hands with the French prime minister in the presidential box, uncharacteristically not wearing his trademark tracksuit (or perhaps he was underneath). Guy Roux ressembles Brian Clough to a degree, Nottingham Forest's successful, talented and talismanic ex-manager. He used to advertise chicken.

Now this might sound peculiar but I think that the quest for truth occurs at a higher level in British culture than in the French. To elaborate: Britain's wider cultural horizons enable it to sever the link between truth and self-interest – whereas the Gallic mind, assuming it exists, labours in all pursuits of a universal nature. I draw my inspiration from a review in today's Observer (25/6/2000) of the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. Mr Holden, reviewing the works, writes "Volume One begins with the sentence (...). Any adult who is not stopped in their tracks by that cutesy 'thank you very much', is presumably a Beano subscriber clutching a comfort blanket." Leaving aside the occasional Americanisms committed by Mr Holden ('cutesy' and 'comfort blanket' – straight from Jim Davis that one – and 'worrisome'), the man obviously has a point. That level of debate just doesn't exist in France – take my word for it. Not in a French literary review. I could be wrong. Incidentally, I wonder which bestseller he's talking about? What's that you say? You want to hear the first line of the book? Did I leave it out? Intentionally you say? Well, it is quite bad... What's that? You'll be the judge, you say? Well go ahead and buy the book if you really want to know... Will you read on if I tell you? and recommend the book to all your friends? And all your enemies, you say? Well thanks very much... But never mind, sales are sales, so here it is, the very first line of the very first part of Ms JK Rawling's Harry Potter phenomenon. Ready? Yes, yes, okay, I am getting on with it. Patience! Quiet at the back! Can you blame me for making some natural mileage out of your curiosity? Never heard of spinning out the suspense? Yes, Jenny, just like a spinning wheel. Now don't blush Jenny, you'll look just like Mrs Dursley the dinner lady who just – out – of – coincidence happens to have the same name as a certain character in a certain book we just happened to be discussing just now... yes, that book by Rawlings, Jenkins, pay attention will you[3]?

Clearly I should see her as a fortress waiting to be stormed. I must plan my attack with care – no detail to be overlooked. The campaign so far has been long and arduous. Though there have been times when I have been battleweary, my forces are now replenished and the conclusion of the siege is at last in sight. As her battlements begin to crumble, a white flag will soon be seen floating from the tower... what treasures lie deep behind its walls! And how could they now escape my grasp?

She went to Africa to nurse, caught malaria and almost died. Fragile as you were already, I imagine you went to many far-off, exotic-sounding places: Tanzania, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone... Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea... Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Mozambique... Liberia, Nigeria, Niger, the Congo! Did you know that the capital of Sudan is Khartoum? Population: around one million. Destroyed by the Mahdists in 1885, seat of the Anglo-Egyptian government of the Sudan until 1954...

... and did you know that Dar'Es Salaam was the capital of Tanzania until 1983? Now it's Dodoma (pop. around 200,000, versus around 1.4 million for Dar'Es). By the way, Tanzania was formed by the union of the independent states of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964. It has a population of 2.9 million or so, its exports include coffee, tea, sisal and cotton, official languages Swahili and English, its currency is the Tanzanian shilling and its religions are listed in the Collins English Dictionary as Christian, Muslim and animist. Just thought you'd be interested.

"What did you do this weekend? How did you spend your time?"

"I fostered my imagination. I fed it odysseys from the past and tales from the present. I allowed it to explore the nooks and crannies of other people's lives and other people's thoughts."

"And what contribution did you make to the lives and thoughts of your fellow human beings?"

"Look, that's a really difficult question to answer. How do you make a contribution to humanity? Did I go into central London to feed the poor and the homeless? No I did not. Did you? No, I suspected as much. Did I enroll with Greenpeace and Amnesty International? No, although I believe their causes to be worthwhile. Particularly Amnesty's.

"Not Greenpeace?"

"More political. Less committed to a cause that one feels instinctively to be right."

"Saving the planet?!"

"Does it really need to be saved?"

19/07/00 Celebrity is a product of the media age. No TV = no celebrity. Radio... mmm, radio was halfway there. But video killed the radio star and Boy George could only have made it in the age of the clip, the age of instant stardom, the age when four minutes in a silly costume on a steamboat on the Mississippi could be enough to propel you into the subconscious mind of millions of people. But that was nearly twenty years ago; what of the stars of today? Are they bigger, or smaller than those of the past? At what level would one trade a David Beckham with a George Best or a Paul McCartney? Elizabeth Taylor, true, is up there with the very greatest but does she have her own column, like Nelson or Napoleon? Hardly. So perhaps there were celebrities before celluloid, video and MP3 came along... but Nelson and Napoleon were celebrities – or rather great military leaders (and let's not forget Wellington while we're at it, or that Austrian who turned up at the last minute at Waterloo... Brückner?)... what I'm talking about is celebrity, singular.

Vivian Leigh – a celebrity who reminds me of MA. Head-turning beauty, every inch a star, no regard for consequences (her character, Scarlet O'Hara), played Cleopatra... just like Mrs Taylor... lived in an abbey in Buckinghamshire with hubby Lawrence Olivier – 'very stylish, a very star place to be,' reckoned Larry's son Tarquith in an interview. Also she smoked (of course) – despite having suffered from TB in childhood. Little did they know (come off it – everyone knew, or why else were cigarettes known as cancer sticks and coffin nails in the late nineteenth century? a bit like saying that nobody knew that cars could be dangerous fifty years after the first motoring accident). And she was a manic depressive – surprise, surprise, being an artist after all. And she played Blanche Dubois, in 'A Streetcar Named Desire', an over-rated film in my humble opinion but Marlon Brando never was my favourite actor (what am I saying? Apocalypse Now? The Godfather? Julius Caesar? no, my favourite actor is actually... Gérard Depardieu). Favourite film (seriously): Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with my favourite actor Richard Burton. They're good entertainers, the Welsh. Same goes for Ryan Giggs and Anthony Hopkins. Huge chip on their shoulder, of course. And also Lawrence of Arabia. Well, Cleopatra's not bad but it's a bit of a Hollywood megabuster if you know what I mean. And as for 'Gone with the Wind'. Never actually seen it!

Now – not a lot of people know this but I also quite like Michael Caine. But moving on: why the prejudice against Wales? Resistance to the English invader? History written by the victors? Perhaps... 'Paddy was a Welshman, Paddy was a thief', goes the rhyme, and you really can't get more virulent than that. Well, yes, you can, of course, but not without the help of machetes or catapults. The English had longbows. Most people just ignore the Welsh. They're celts, aren't they? One thing I will say: they'll switch allegiances 'just like that'. Not that bloke in the pub the other day, mind you. Oh no? Coming up to you and whispering – to me, a perfect stranger – 'I'll support anyone against England.' Si vous le dites, mon cher monsieur... ah, yes well, maybe not the French. And so we drift. Soon the Scots are mortal enemies, the Irish oppressors lying just across the water (who did the Irish ever oppress, apart from themselves?), the Spanish,... well the Spanish, they're probably just as bad. They had an armada, didn't they, coming to invade our pleasant little island? but we thrashed 'em, didn't we, well, anyway, we can sing so we can, we Welsh. Never mind the foreign affairs and the politics. As a Welsh comedian once said: 'if the English try to invade us, I know what we'll do. We'll confuse them to death!' Never a truer word said.

Ah, never mind nationalities. By all accounts they're a thing of the past. It's all federal this and regional that and how's your United Nations. Common humanity, that's all they talk about, and you'd think that patriotism had turned into a dirty word overnight. And did anyone see The Patriot, with Mel Gibson? All the English playing the bad guys? Coats of scarlet, got their just desserts? But why should I care about events which took place over two centuries ago... why worry about the reputation of the English? Why side with the enemy, me a Scot? Half Scot. Half French. I am wary of Brussels, a natural reaction to encroaching bureaucracy, but let us not deny our roots. A toast to all the hereditary foes of the Sassenachs.

Hi – I'm Frederic. I'm thirty, and I still have all my hair. Quite remarkable, really. There are those who say it's genetic but I prefer to see it as a reward for being good. Now – the problem with writing fiction is that you have to lie at some point. I'm incapable of lying – so, I'm incapable of writing a book. Well, I mean one that people read for pleasure. A novel. Which is a shame, as it happens to be my one ambition in life. Instead I write snips of stories – not really lying, as I never claim that they fit together in a single, unified tale. But – and this, I suppose, is where I contradict myself to a degree – I write them in the hope that they will, one day, connect – and, hey presto, my book will have written itself. With no effort of imagination on my part and no wavering of my convictions; there is work involved, of course, but the way I write, the individual scenes seem to come by themselves: a picture forms in my head, realistic dialogue settles into a groove and I just need to follow it along on the page until it reaches its natural conclusion, a few paragraphs later. No writer's block for me! The drawback, sadly, is that writing does get fairly tiring – one or two pages is usually my limit at which point I stop, frankly bored, if not actually physically worn out. Besides, I'm not a writer, it's just a pastime. I have plenty of other things to do to keep me busy and I think that my parents would find it strange if I spent all my time writing when I had work to go to the next day. People don't really know where they stand with writers, I've noticed – at least not those who are only just starting out in their careers (if it can even be classified as such). If someone writes a book – only one – does that make them a writer? Is there some sort of status attached? What if it wasn't any good? I must have written a couple of hundred pages already. If I typed them all and bound them up, cover to cover, would I suddenly have a book? Would I suddenly be a writer? Or does it need to be published?

My structure tends to be good – sometimes it takes a bit of a battering as I rush to reach the end of a sentence or worry that I may be losing my thread. Never do I go over myself: it has to be right first time. My adopted work ethic: strive for perfection, but if you don't achieve it straight away, forget it! Inspiration is plentiful. I daresay it makes me a little unreadable but I can always tell myself that the hard work – and the desire to accomplish something more substantial than a diary – lies waiting around the corner.

At other times I worry about characters. Novels have characters. But characters are by nature fictitious. Which sets me at odds with myself. I am aware of the trick consisting of using real people and changing their names at the last minute (Albert Cohen has a female character refer to it in Belle du Seigneur) but this does seem to be a little duplicitous... fictional autobiography. Somewhat distasteful, like washing one's laundry in front of a copy of a sensationalist newspaper. I console myself with another thought: my meanderings take on a certain psychological form, a profile, a study of myself, a portrait of a writer as a writer. Groundbreaking stuff, a novel entirely subjective. Structure? Who needs it! Read anything by Kundera, Henry Miller, Kerouac or Becket? Are they not considered writers? Did Joyce not draw his inspiration from Homer? Did they not write books (Kundera still does... and no, I'm pretty sure that Miller and Becket have passed away by now)?

That's another thing about me – notice how I used 'passed away' not 'died'? It's not squeamishness – it's more a kind of overbearing respect for everyone and everything. I think I might well be capable of writing the first book for adults without a single swear word in it. Well – maybe that's being prudish in your book. I have a feeling...

It's no good, I just can't say it (or even write it). There's no mystery, no dark secret, no cupboards at the end of dark corridors that best remain locked (or if there are, someone has neglected to tell me). It could have something to do with the sound of the word: piss, or arse, or prick.

No one has answered the fundamental question of what it means to be a man. My feeling is that it has something to do with respect for a spiritual world in which we evolve, as well as the material one. As though a fragile fabric filtered our thoughts and dreams, along with our prayers and our emotions. But these are difficult, complicated regions into which I rarely delve – even when inspiration pushes me forward and I feel that my pen is something to be followed rather than guided across the page. I can only say that swearing in some way seems wrong, for reasons which will forever lie beyond my grasp – an attack on our spirituality, a surrendering to the primal forces which seek forever to reduce man to his animal state. And is that not a paradox – for who, if not man, invented these words in the first place, and what is language, if not the means of securing our superiority over every other living being in the universe, both the sublime expression and very condition of our humanity?

You may disagree. You may point to the language of the bees, or the grunts of dogs and monkeys. And I may have offended you, for which I apologise – monkeys gnashing their teeth and pointing to each others' arses as evidence of their superior powers of communication, hidden powers that scientists with their humano-centric view of the world refuse to acknowledge. And why we have veered on to this topic I have no idea, for frankly the subject of animal intelligence leaves me as cold as a three-day-old teabag on a windowsill in Alaska in the middle of December. If I'm doing the writing, I ought to be able to choose what I write about, if that's all right with you.

What's that? two and a half pages? Enough already! I have work tomorrow!

They placed a man in a golden cage with a typewriter and told him to write. In return for water, food, clean underwear and certain essential bodily arrangements he wrote. Life stopped but he remembered Murphy and dreamed that he was tied to a rocking-chair. Life did not resume but at least he could feel that his writing was gaining momentum. On the day of his death a pile of work lay all around and it was felt, at last, that a life had been given up entirely for art. The piles of writing were later recycled as lavatory paper to help cover the costs of the experiment. What they had contained was unimportant. The important thing was the example that this man had set for his fellow man. They erected a statue in his honour and his widow received the most generous pension any state had ever granted. His children (he had two sons, both married, now in their late fifties) were offered places in the state's finest university. When they declined, the offer was extended to their three sons and two daughters, all adolescent, all the grandchildren of that great man the Writer. William and Harry and Sharon, children of the first son Charles and his wife Isabelle, went on to accomplish great things in poetry, the aeronautic industry and the foreign service respectively; Jonathan and Francis, twin children of the second son Balthasar and his wife J. sadly did not.

I always find it useful to remind people that the acknowledged Seven Wonders of the World are the Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis in Babylon, Phidias' gold and ivory statue of Zeus at Olympia, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos of Alexandria (confirmed by my Collins English Dictionary Millennium Edition, my Petit Larousse Illustré and my Petit Robert II – the order is the same except for the last two which the PR II permutates). The Taj Mahal – a modern wonder, no doubt - was built between 1632 and 1643 so that really would be tweaking the notion of Antiquity a little bit.

Only the Pyramids remain in existence so perhaps the guide books have been keeping the list up to date with new additions as the old wonders dropped out.

Something like this...

Editor of guide book, 'Intelligent Tourism' (sometime in 672 AD): "Damn, we've lost the Colossus."

Head of Research: "Well, we knew it was going to happen. It's been looking a bit shaky since the earthquake of 224 BC."

Editor: "Yes, well we'll just have to find another one. We can't leave the page blank."

Head of Research: "How about the Great Wall of China? It'd do our Asian sales no end of good."

Editor: "Done."

Editor of guide book, 'Cultural Delights of the Antiquity' (published 1301), to his team: "Earthquake in Egypt. No more lighthouse on Pharos. No reason left to include Alexandria in next month's edition of the guide. Any ideas anyone?"

Junior copy editor: "Can't they rebuild it?"

Editor: "Not in time for the new edition."

Layout manager: "What did they do when they lost the Colossus?"

Editor: "Good question Tarek. Nice to see you read our books from time to time. Why do you think we carry the Great Wall of China since the days of 'Intelligent Tourism'?"

Tarek: "Sorry."

Research analyst: "Well we could always include Notre Dame. That's just about finished. My sister's been to see it in Paris and she says it's quite a sight."

Editor: "Look, I know that Edward's busy with Wales at the moment but I'm just not sure about the situation on the continent. If there's a war with France and we include their number one cultural attraction the publishers'll have my neck."

Second analyst: "They'll probably have you drawn and quartered as well."

Editor: "Yes quite. Let's get back to the subject, shall we? Can't we think of anything British?"

Marketing manager: "No good for sales. People want to get away from this place."

Editor (looks out at pouring rain): "Can't think why."

Tea lady: "What about something Italian?"

Second analyst: "There's just not been a lot going on since the Romans kicked it."

Editor: "Thanks Will. They've gone a bit Germanic."

First analyst: "Well my great aunt's been to Venice and she says it's not bad."

Editor (irritated): "Well yes but we don't do towns we do things. The pyramids. The hanging gardens..."

Tarek: "They're gone now."

Editor: "... I know! The Giralda!”

Marketing manager: "Can't think."

Analysts (together): "Mind's a blank."

Sales manager: "What’s in America?"

Editor: "OK. Has noone here been to Seville?"

First analyst: "A couple of wigwams."

Sales manager: "What about Australia? (blank stares all round) ... never mind."

Willibrord: "I'd make an exception and go for Venice."

Editor: "Done. And we'll make a note to have it replaced by the Taj Mahal in 1643 like Jane says (winks at Jane). It'll probably be under water by then anyway. Now... moving on to the new layout."

First analyst: "Um... boss..."

Editor: "Yes Claudius? What is it?"

Claudius: "Tarek's right. We really ought to do something about Babylon."

Editor: "Well what about Babylon?"

Claudius: "The Hanging Gardens. It's a shopping centre."

Editor: "A... shopping... centre."

Claudius: "Well ever since Seleucus Nicator built his new capital in 312 BC..."

Editor: "312 BC!"

Claudius: "And then that was destroyed in 160 AD..."

Editor: "Wait a minute. You're saying that we've been carrying a wonder that hasn't existed for over sixteen centuries?"

Claudius: "Well more or less..."

Tea lady: "Nice pictures though."

Claudius: "And now it's a shopping centre. Built about ten years ago. Very modern, so I hear."

Editor (panicking): "That isn't the point! If the papers hear about this..."

Willibrord: "Oh I wouldn't worry about that. Gutenburg isn't due to invent the printed press for another 130 years or so."

Editor: "Well that's something at least. Maybe we can cover it up. A modern shopping centre, you say?"

Claudius: "With fountains and paved passageways and very charming mosaics. I haven't been."

Editor: "But no hanging gardens."

Claudius: "No."

Editor: "Not even a rose bush?"

Claudius: "Not that I've heard."

Editor (exploding): "Then why do they call it the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?"

Sales manager: "Marketing."

Editor (holding head in hands): "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

Second analyst: "Tarek tried to. But you told him to shut up."

Editor: "Look, sorry Tarek, but no more writing in hieroglyphics, OK? I want you on a training course to learn latin by next week. Ask Jane to fix it for you."

Jane: "Got it."

Editor: "OK everyone, we're keeping the Hanging Gardens. Any objections? Good. We'll have to rejig the text a bit to place more emphasis on local economic development and when something new comes along we'll replace it with that. Jane, book a meeting later this week to talk about the layout. Maybe we'll keep Venice after all. Meeting adjourned. Back to work people."

I have lost my watch (I'm still writing – I've just started a new paragraph) – I'm not sure where it could be. I'd quite like a cigarette right now. Not really, really like – just quite like. It would mean I'd have to stop writing for a bit. Yes, I think I'm going to have a quick look for my watch.

"C'est curieux, James... si tu regardes juste le taux supérieur d'imposition en France, tu vois 54%, tu te dis que les gens vont quitter le pays."

I know you'd find it easier if the above were in English, but this is how we talk with my friends in Paris (I wanted you to get the flavour of it). For non-French speakers, I've added a translation at the bottom[4]. It's a fairly common topic of conversation, too, but I should point out that we are, basically all the nation's elite since we all graduated from one of those super-prestigious Grandes Ecoles that everyone's heard of over here but no one really likes to acknowledge and still less understand (in competition with the universities). You get a better quality of debate out of an HEC or an ESCP alumnus (the engineering schools, Polytechnique, Central, Mines, I'm not so sure about... they tend to be a little less voluble in my experience).

Dream last night: friend James was a writer for the Evening Standard. Front page photo, more than decent size, bald pate, dark eyebrows and cheesy grin. Claimed in the headline article that he had children, which I knew to be untrue (I was reading in the Underground, near White City on the Central Line, down from the BBC centre, from the front page of the paper of the person sitting opposite me). Where this dream came from I have no idea. James is an old friend, we grew up next door to each other from the age of about nine. Used to irk me at first and then we got used to one another. Maybe some kind of underlying rivalry? When I woke up he was still the editor of a film magazine (which is a rather more respectable position than scribbler for the Evening Standard in my HO).

Commenting on something I'd written he once said, "It's writing about writing." He had a point but I didn't take it badly. Why not? Read any Miller recently? I've just finished Nexus (so-so), and I had the eeriest feeling at times that we'd tapped into the same obscure... ah forget it it's not going anywhere. Stick to Nin. Oddly enough I have three friends named James – two in the UK and one in France. Not much I can add to that.

I came across a letter I'd written to a friend some time ago – unfinished. It went like this:

"I wonder how M. will react when she finds out I've written a book pretty much with her as the star attraction? Will she be flattered? Will she feel betrayed? Will she fall in love with me all over again (if she isn't already)? It wouldn't be the first time a book had been written with the explicit purpose of regaining a lost one's love. (Sorry – did I betray myself just now? I really am getting into things, aren't I?) No, no, let this be clear. I am under no illusion whatsoever that anything I could ever do or say could ever win M. back. She's gone – finito. Nothing left, passion all spent (on my side that is – it took long enough). Naturally, nothing else in my life means anything like as much as that devouring passion I had for her once did. Maybe it's just as well. Meanwhile I have this semi-autobiographical novel thing to get on with (how can it be autobiographical? I'm not talking about my life here – there's no 'and then, when I was about four and a half, I stepped on my father's razor blades' – although I did, my foot bled profusely and it hurt like hell, I can still remember it. It happened in Paris – just outside, in Montfermeil, a suburb made famous by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables – it's where poor Cosette had to carry the pail full of water back to Thénardier's tavern – at my uncle and aunt's flat. First floor of an estate, one bedroom for their two daughters which is where I also slept, one long corridor with an evil fucking razor blade sticking out of my father's toilet bag in wait for a four and a half year old running barefoot to the kitchen."

It makes me laugh to remember that my fantastic French teacher M. Chateaubriand used to tell us not to use parentheses in our work – I use them all the time (and what about it, eh, old Chatterbox, as we never used to call you?).

I have found my voice! (should I thank Mr Henry Miller? or is it just a coincidence – another one, never mind – that I just happen to have finished the third part of the Rosy Crucifixion by said author and that the neurotic insecurities of a fledgling writer – and the guy is forty, by the way – scream at the reader from every page?). Anyway, old Henry's book was about writing (read it, you'll see) – mine is about... Lurve.

How pompous! How self-inflated! I know, I know, guilty as charged your honour, but I do quite like that phrase, "the neurotic insecurities of a fledgling writer". I'd say it had a good ring to it, wouldn't you?

One of my worries – just for the sake of posterity, I'm writing this on a notebook that served in my days as a management consultant. What happens when I reach the pages that have already been written on? It's a thought, isn't it? What happens to flow? And I've only got about thirty pages left! A voice mocks me gently from a distance... "What flow? Do you really think that you have flow?" What a peculiar experience of writing this is.

I was twice engaged to M.. She would probably only acknowledge the once but it was twice. Both times were painful, in some ways the first more than the second. Something of an expert at inflicting pain in fifty-seven varieties, our M.. Two simple examples that make me wince: "Does it [feel like an age since we walked down this street together]? To me it feels like the last time. Does that feel like a slap? It was meant to." First time round. "I never want to see you or speak to you ever again." Sound of phone being slammed down (repeated, often). Second time around. The scary thing: she's my other half, the Yang to my Yin, the circle repeats itself and it wasn't, in any case, the last time we spoke... there was a second time... there must be a third. It just goes to show that the Stones' immortal line, 'You can't always get what you want', applies to all and sundry. The song continues, 'but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need', which I confess never to having understood very well. What I want, I need, and what I need, I want. Isn't that human? Should I lie in bed – alone – telling myself, "I can't have M. but do I need her?" What else is there for me to need? Do we need warmth? Do we need a tender touch on a cold winter's night as we clamber under the duvet together? Of course we do. Still, well done on the knighthood Mick. Did you know that we used to be neighbours? Never mind, the line sounds good... and there's a lesson there, somewhere, or my name's not Jolly Jack Hunter, which it isn't, it's a name I made up a second ago for its pleasing sonoric qualities... and it's relevant to the Stones' universe after all, not so far removed from Jumping Jack Flash.

Let me know if this is getting too much for you. No? Sitting comfortably? Then we'll continue. (Of course – you're the reader – assuming that you've stayed the course, that is). Anyway, as I was saying, I was twice engaged to M..

I once wrote a short story – seven pages long. In a bar, in Soho, Old Compton Street, seven pages in two hours and quite a few beers. I mentioned her not once. It's never been published and... well, what I'm thinking is I could slip it in here and would anyone notice? I think I can get away with it... I'll be the judge of my material, thank you very much, and I wouldn't let good writing goes to waste. Here it is...

Writing is said to be a painful exercise, and boy, I can tell you, it is. Stick to accounting, or grave digging, or whatever it is you do for a living. Come to think of it, can writing really be blamed? I'm beginning to get the impression (and it's only an impression so far, mind you) that living can be a little on the... shall we say difficult side. So is there any reason to blame writing for the occasional stumble on the poorly-paved path of life (like that image? good turn of phrase? jot it down somewhere, don't let it go to waste). Ooops... patronising my readers again. Sorry! Didn't mean it! Not intentional! It's just my eagerness to please that's getting the better of me! Please don't take it personally. Frankly a lot of the time it's not the readers I have a problem with, it's the writers. Dostoievsky, fair dues, Crime & Punishment is the greatest. But I do have the slightest problem with the Brothers Karamazov – it's boring. Never finished it. Maybe translation to blame. Something unpleasant about the characters... Now if I get started on a list of books I never finished there's going to be blood on the floor, I warn you. Balzac, Tolstoy, ... Balzac: can't stand him, talks about money all the time, very vulgar. Although Lettres de deux jeunes femmes mariées was the most sensitive and delicate thing I had ever read and retains a place in my fondest memories. Also goes for correpondence between two of Dostoievsky's... can't remember the name. Best to read in the original if pos. Perfume good though, French and English. Some translators they really can write. How do you translate Ulysses? Get Larbaud to do it for you! But why did Baudelaire waste his time with Edgar Allen Poe? Was it really worth it? Did the French show him any appreciation for his efforts? Nobody in France reads Poe after the age of 16. Boris Vian similar fate. But being French and a saxophone player to boot his claim to a place in the pantheon of cultural icons is far greater. Poe happened at the wrong time – too late for a strict reaction to romanticism (which everyone had forgotten by then, such was the thrust of the Symbolists), too early to lay claim to influencing the surrealists. Caught between deux eaux.

"We have a rule which is not steadfastly applied that if you fight you go, irrespective of whether you are right or wrong." Excellent!

It takes time to write a book. Can't be done in one go. The question is – is it the same thing to write a book as it is to create a world? Ask Mr Miller!

Do they see men as "vessels that carry money?"

"Corree is still dancing to finance her career in computers." Well done Channel 4! Great characters, good dialogue, an enlightening insight into the world of dancing in that splendid little island of Jamaica. Vivid and colourful, sometimes tasteless but in a somehow tasteful way. How otherwise to explain that the phrase from the documentary, "don't want no short d*** man" could have made it on to my notebook? Ever seen two people dancing Zouk?

... James... James... James... a drunken buffoon... (me, not him)... gifted, contemptuous, egotistic, selfish, neurotic (literally), bon-vivant.

Who provides a greater service to mankind: the one who writes a book or the one who invents Concorde? One might have the vision but does that make him the genius? And let me tell you something else: it only takes one man to write a book. And for the sake of our comparison, does it make a difference if that book is called The Idiot or My Struggle? This one requires some thought: praising Hitler for services rendered to humanity, a paradox too far, I believe. See Chaplin's The Great Dictator to make your own mind up on that one. Splendid. Splendid. Charm in abundance, Hynkel a beguiling mixture of determination and sensitivity. See him face down the pompous Napaloni the cheesy ravioli! And dance with the globe! His grace in the face of the greatest difficulties! Poor Hynkel, more sinned against than sinning. And even Chaplin seems to find it difficult to discard the ridiculous notion... But Hynkel certainly gets the crowds on his side. A rabble-rousing prophet. Does the devil have all the best lines? The problem with this undoubtedly great film: it makes the evil dictator appear rather too sympathetic.

Whatever his qualities as a writer (Mein Kampf has a better ring in German), Adolf Hitler was famously (infamously) known as a failed artist. His common problem (by common consent): no talent. Or very limited at least. Could that little talent have been nurtured? Could he have become, through practice, dedication and patience, an artist worthy of the name? We shall never know if the Viennese college of art shares responsibility in the genesis of the XXth century's most criminal mind, most brutal given the advanced technology at his disposal (Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao all come close) – and the ruthless efficiency of the German people.

Let us bring a small measure of even-handedness to the judgement of History. Hitler was not alone in creating the might of the Third Reich. Plenty of his adopted countryfellows put in a hand. Neither was he responsible for the economic conditions which led, through poverty and hyperinflation, to the polarisation of politics in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Neither did he write Das Kapital. The monster grew and grew and finally collapsed under the weight of its misformed evil (and if a vision of The Fly is forming in your mind with Jeff Glodblum very good very good... but remember that it still required the presence of a determined man with a double-barrelled shotgun to finish the monster off).

An idea for a film... I'll get back to my list of least-favourite authors later: two twelve-year-old boys are watching the final scene of David Cronenburg's masterpiece (they're underage but never mind): a mutated version of Goldblum's eponymous character finally has his head blown off and pretty gruesome it is too. The character by now is 100% Brundlefly claims a computer screen in the background in a subtle touch. One of the two boys, let's call him Jack, is impressed by the images on the screen: he comes out of the cinema pretending to shoot at people in the street with a shotgun. No too horrible... his friend Scott, Jack's mother, Jack in a psychiatric hospital from which he escapes at the age of eighteen to become a menace to society. Standard horror flick.

5/8/00 Sunny afternoon in Ealing

The seventies decade was a time of togetherness, a time of being one and the same. Hence the lack of irony: irony means laughing at your neighbour, yourself, making fun of his hairstyle, yours, his shirt, his flares or his jacket. No irony means no restraint – and things soon took a turn for the worse. Blame Vietnam, blame socialism, blame what you will, things got a little out of hand. See the magazine adverts of the time for evidence.

What is Ealing like? Here's an example: sitting at a terrace table of a café near the Broadway station this afternoon, I looked over to my neighbours and there sat a woman with heart-shaped sunglasses... heart-shaped. One smoky brown heart of plastic placed over each eye. That's Ealing for you. It's Essex with money. And class. No Ford Cortinas in Ealing. Only BMWs, Jaguars and the occasional Peugeot 406. Of course, the other cars make their presence felt but not to the detriment of those kings of the road... the greenery and the bars. The one at which I was sitting charged £2.76 for a bottle of Budwar plus 34p service charge (mandatory). 15 minute wait and the most tangible sense of ennui you could ever expect to find on this side of the old Soviet block. Or an existentialist café on the Left Bank in Paris. The waitress justified the service charge prettily and insisted I take a receipt. Sheltering behind a brisk, unfeeling, short-but-courteous professionalism. It's a 12.5% tip, is that all right? Groping for a three-letter word to add to the end of her question as a matter of poise. Beginning with 'S' and ending with 'r', commonly used as a term of respect towards paying customers. Of course, I shrugged and said it was cool.

By the way – I've been compared to Tom Cruise. Much better nose, however.

You never meet anyone you know in Ealing. It's got that end-of-the-line feel to it. Nice Victorian houses but no one you know ever hangs out in Ealing. Why should they? They flee, as quickly as the District or Piccadilly or Central line underground train can take them (well connected, is Ealing). Or mainline straight to Paddington in fifteen minutes all through the night at hourly intervals.

Well, OK, I stumbled on someone. M., will you forgive me? A schoolfriend of yours from Roedean. A. It's so funny – while I was chatting her up in the bar beforehand I was thinking – this woman has exactly the same expressions as MA. It's uncanny. Only when I asked her later did she blurt out: 'Know her? I was her mentor!'

I once had dinner in a plush London restaurant with a comely blonde who worked in the City. Do you ever read the Alex cartoons in the Telegraph, I asked. 'Read them?' she replied, 'I write them!' Coincidences coincidences.

Even if I change the names (which I've a mind not to do) she'll still know about it. She'll know I had carnal relations with her role model on a one-night stand in Ealing. And she'll forgive me: sex was never important, the physical rather than the emotional side. There are no strings attached when you have sex with a girl on the first night at 3.30am in a shady copse over Hanger Hill golf course. (Well, at 3.30am it would be shady). It's only human. Sorry M., sorry, but don't you think that the world went just a little bit awry? Wouldn't you like to help me to put the pieces back together again?

And A. It wasn't really a one-night stand, we had dinner together a few nights later. How ever could we have come to meet? Ealing... its parks, its shopping centre, they brought the mall to Mohammed, they really did, its reservoir and water tower and its leafy streets. Perfect for marathon running. I liked it but I don't think it really cut the ice with M. from Islington.

Despite the similarities, the late 90s and the early 00s are all about hyper-irony – utter individualism, in other words. The seventies taken to the other extreme. In its own way, it's just as unattractive, possibly more so. And of course, the 70s have become very fashionable again. Flares etc. We make fun of them (irony) yet we acknowledge their historical significance. Ten or fifteen years ago we knew them to be naff. Barring the odd Star Wars or Abba fan with a yearning for memorabilia that was the end of it. Gold chains and David Cassidy hairstyles – they'll be back next.

My boss's wife fancies me. So does every other woman in the company. But my boss's wife is prepared to go further: she confessed her desire to me after an evening when we'd got slightly closer to one another than the strictest observance of Scriptures would technically allow (we strayed this side of adultery... does that make me a prude? I'll let you be the judge of that one, thanks very much). Did the funny looks I subsequently received in the office from my other female colleagues indicate disapproval or desire? Either way a classic three-way tryst was up and running. M., please take note: I have been sexually harrassed by the 37-year-old part-owner of the company which employs me.

The world is a more civilised place today than it was before Shakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet; the writing of Romeo & Juliet made the world a more civilised place. I, who have no great affection for the Bard, must this allow. And notice that in this olde style of writing the verb is placed at the end of the sentence, just like in German. No wonder Shakespeare is pretty hard going.

Two families at war.

Boy meets girl, they fall in love.

Their end is tragic, yet their love is spared the corruption which comes from the passing of time... never to know jealousy, never to have doubts. Watch passion turn gradually into easy (uneasy) habit.

Their end is violent, for passion oft leads to violence.

Their end is sudden – as all ends must be.

8/8/2000 – 4am.

Woke up mad with my brother – needed to get some thought under the bridge. This stuff about Romeo & Juliet, who needs it? Yeuch. All sorts of dark thoughts. Imaginary dialogue running like this:

Me: "If I give you a pen, will you use it to twirl around your hand and stop cracking your knuckles?"

Him: "I'll use it to poke your eye out."

Or this:

"If you don't stop cracking your knuckles two things will happen:

- you'll have arthritis by the age of 35

- you'll acquire the nickname 'bone cruncher' or 'caveman' or something equally complimentary."

(Hateful glances, I acquire the nickname 'arsehole' or 'dickhead' or something equally complimentary).

That's all you need to know about my brother. He won't make another mention unless we get on to the details of how I met M.... which is the only thing on my mind at the moment, of course.

A fairground... no that was later... the Comedy Store near Leicester Square. He brought her along. HE brought her along (yes Pierre, your brother introduced you to MA. Did you think she would materialise out of thin air? Get over it you weed. Do any of us expect to have our insides ripped out and devoured by another human being? OK, well if you can't get over it at least get off the floor and stop sobbing like a little child. Lighten up a bit. Try to see the funny side of things and dry your eyes you snivelling little wretch.)

Well, yes, I confess that I did end up gnawing the carpet of my flat in the rue Notre Dame des Champs. Very tasty. She found the flat for me. Charming sixth arrondissement. But it all started with an evening at the Comedy Store in the West End. Joyful, fun... I think I'll find a way to let her know that Tanya's got married. As Tanya was there with us that night it ought to set a few bells ringing (in more ways than one).

Problem with writing a book number 23: you don't know if you can do it until you've done it.

... and number 24: you don't know if it's worth doing until you've done it.

The other thing I woke up with (apart from my momentary rage, brought on no doubt by a dream about work) – was a blocked nostril and a very dry throat (ah... I forgot to mention the alcohol last night). While my present consumption is low it may just be time for another cigarette.

Why am I mentioning this, you wonder. Well in my present circumstances, living at home with my parents, I try not to smoke in my room. So it's a case of sitting on the windowsill of my first-floor bedroom, leaning out and hanging on for dear life while I get my dose of fumes... as the saying goes, its not the smoke I crave it's the nicotine...

9/8/00 – 2am

"I apologise for the smell!"

"I can't smell anything," the cab driver replied.

"You will. It's Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's fairly pungent."

People often ask me if they can write. The fact is – can you retranscribe a piece of dialogue – faithfully (three lines enough)? The above is an example. If you can, you can write. Furthermore, if you can truly write, if you truly want to write, then as soon you get home you'll be dying to couch those sentences onto the blank page awaiting your careful attention. Again, the above is an example of this.

"Get home OK – but I'm sure you will," she said as she left the cab. She reached into the passenger window to pay for her share of the ride.

"No, it's all right, I've got that," I said.

We drove on.

"We're going to Hanger Lane anyway, just turn left before the traffic lights."

"Gotcha."

We drove on along the Uxbridge Road; not for the first time in my life (and doubtless not the last), I felt the need to make polite conversation.

"It's KFC – you're bound to smell it fairly soon."

"I never eat the stuff myself. Prefer a Burger King or a McDonald's."

End of conversation. See? It's easy.

And if you can do it when you've had a few you can tell yourself that you're really going.

"I'm going to get a cab. Would you like to share...?"

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to Hanger Lane, along the Uxbridge Road."

"I'm going that way too. Yeah, that's cool."

She was South African. Quite pretty, too, since you ask. She didn't smoke. (I hesitate to add 'but' at the beginning of the last sentence, lest there be any non-smoking readers present. It doesn't necessarily kill you by the way. Look at Winston Churchill. Died at the age of 92. It's a myth propagated by ASH and the British Medical Association. Ask FOREST to set you straight.

"You're not a member of Forest, are you?" she asked.

"No, I'm not, as a matter of fact, but I'm thinking about joining," I replied.

"I am. In fact, I'm their social secretary."

I looked at her, stunned.

"But you don't smoke!"

"I turned down an offer of a cigarette. That doesn't mean I don't smoke."

"True," I mused.

"And anyway, why should you smoke yourself just to believe in others' right to do so if they choose?"

"I'm going to be accused of making this up. You don't mean that do you?"

"Of course I do. I'm the social scretary of Forest."

M. will be my fiercest critic. She always was.

15/8

I thought I'd found something I could write to MA. (It was 2.30am and I was quite drunk.)

"I fear that I still need you to help me make sense of the world. What should I do?"

Her predictable response: "Try to remember what you used to do before you met me."

No return.

How could I explain that until I met her, I made sense of the world in the expectation that one day she would enter it? Explain that all was preparation for that decisive moment? No doubt about it: she had me trumped whichever way I pondered the question.

26/8

The way to approach humanity is not to anticipate the bad behaviour of your fellow human beings. Expect love, honesty, generosity, empathy, virtue.

"A chaque fois que tu allumes une cigarette, le mot 'con' apparait sur ton front." Each time you light a cigarette, the word 'cunt' appears on your forehead.

Insulting, no? Yet she said it. One morning in my flat in the rue Notre Dame des Champs. We weren't going out together anymore. What was she doing there? It was her flat as well in the sense that she had found it, helped me buy the cutlery, etc.. The conversation occurred over breakfast, just after we had both lit up for the first time of the day (my smoking until that point had always been limited in her presence). You could argue that she was looking after my health, I suppose. My MA, do or say something out of pure selflessness? You have got to be kidding.

We all know things about God – is that not evidence enough that He exists? What more could one want?

Incidentally, I've been compared to the lead singer of a New Romantic band of the 80s. Fame at last! Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran. Thought that you'd be interested, that's all.

Just for the record, I have now been likened to:

- Tom Cruise (flattering)

- Pierce Brosnan / James Bond (even more flattering)

- Jim Carrey (not sure about that one)

- Martin Kemp / Simon Le Bon / Nick something-or-other.

Mais...

L'amour, le rire,

La tendresse, l'espoir

Sont les mots que je préfère.

D'ou me viennent ces mots?

Qui pourraient le dire?

Je vais d'endroit en endroit

Et mes souvenirs viennent aussi.

Je rêve d'un monde meilleur

Que je sens à portée de main.

L'amour, le rire, la tendresse, l'espoir,

Tous y auront leur place ;

Et on n'oubliera pas le rêve, non plus,

Le rêve qui ouvre l'espace.

28/08

Here is another coincidence: today, 28^th August, at about 3pm, I read John Diamond's Saturday column in The Times Magazine. "God, but I hate smoking. It's all the standard stuff, of course. The smell – or, worse, the fact that now I don't even notice the smell the next day – the ash everywhere, the knowledge that a fag in my hand is the equivalent of having 'dumb suicidal bastard' tattooed on my forehead, well you know the littany."

Amazing, no?

Something else: I want to tell my mother: "Mum, if I've inherited anything of your artistic talent, then I should be able to write beautifully." But what if all the beauty had gone to my face?

Does that sound vain? It isn't meant to; it's just a statement of fact. Another thing about my face is that people always think that I'm much younger than I am – say about 25 instead of 30. I've a cousin who's about the same (and her initials, though I'd never noticed it before, are... you guessed it).

Big thing happening tonight: my brother announcing he's breaking up with his fiancee. I knew it would happen – predicted it in a letter three years ago in fact – knew it all along. It's a shame, of course, for Deirdre. She's lovely but after all but who knows, eh? Maybe she cheated on him (first). Maybe they just drifted apart. You can't know about these things – just can't. A couple fit, they don't... people on the outside always know, of course. Know if there's a spark, if there's the fizz. See Jerry McGuire. It's all there – that scene where the black footballer tells his agent, 'but it ain't sexy.' That wraps it up. Now if people could just stop reminding me, 'you know how it feels, of course.'

Two brothers, two engagements, both broken off.

Dear MA,

We enter this world unprepared for life. We spend the first twenty-five years – unprepared. What kind of sick joke is that, God? Why did you have to make us so downright stupid?

And why do you give me dreams that make me wake up with the shakes?

And how do mothers know not to let their children use rude words?

And what's wrong with rude words anyway?

What is a rude word?

Who's in charge of this rig, anyway? You or us? Guess it's you, eh, thunder and lightning out of a clear blue sky and all that stuff.

I hope you don't mind me writing to you like this – it's just that I think about you often, and words I would like to say to you spring forth spontaneously in my mind. The sentences form, and break up and disappear, over and over, day after day, very often just as my thoughts begin to wander. It seems a pity to let so many thoughts go completely to waste...

Pompous ass! What makes you think your thoughts have any value?

... and since they have become more charitable and good-natured of late, I finally gave in to the urge to put pen to paper and send my thoughts to you.

Poor sentence structure. Reminds me of a poorly-written sonnet by the bard – same level of pretentiousness.

Thoughts of love, thoughts of sorrow, thoughts of hope and thoughts of happier times past.

(Get on with it).

Often-imagined conversations I could be having with you, as you come to life in my mind and I experience the pleasure of talking to you.

(That's nice. He's gone nuts.)

I'm writing now, but it feels like I'm having another conversation with you. Does it matter? What can I say that I have any chance of you responding to?

Prepostions at the end of sentences. Tut tut.

The sentence "I never want to see you or speak to you ever again" beats on my brain unceasingly. Did you mean it to hurt so much and for so long? The description I used to explain my feelings to Jean-Luc was that of a diver trapped in a bell at the bottom of the sea – you can see how it fits.

Aren't you fond of those metaphors of yours?

Sometimes I want to scream, but mostly now weariness stills my thoughts and my passion...

Yes, no doubt about it, the passion was well and truly spent. What came next? I'll write it in blue. I haven't a clue. I know you can take it so try not to fake it but always remember there's me and there's you. Clouds my emotions? Dulls my sensitivity? Casts o'er a sickly veil of thought? Can a veil be sickly? I doubt it. A hue or a colour but hardly a veil. How did Wodehouse put it again?

30/8/00 Blank Holiday Monday

I'm working up an understanding of '60s and '70s classic rock music. So far I have:

- The Beatles

- The Rolling Sones – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. Bill Wynam died on the drums at Phoenix. 1972?

- Keith Moon and The Who – not forgetting Roger Daltry and another one who had a bad time with drugs apparently. Though, also apparently, RD never went anywhere near artificial stimulants.

- Eric Clapton – greatest guitarist and one of the greatest smackheads. But which band did he play for?

- Elton John – drugs, gay.

- Lou Reed – with the Velvet Underground, Take a Walk on the Wild Side. Possibly solo. And in came Andy Warhol to manage the band. More drugs, etc. A Perfect Day – all about a heroin trip? Famous last line: "You're going to reap all that you sow."

- David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, Major Tom, etc.

- 'Golden Brown, texture like sun' – from Golden Brown, all about a certain illegal substance invented by the same German Chemist who gave the world Aspirin circa 1890, said to make the user 'feel like a hero.' But who sang it? The Moody Blues?... rings a bell.

- And what about Knights in White Satin?

- Bohemian Rhapsody, a classic. The rest a little kitsch. Freddy Mercury (deceased, Aids) and Queen. Not so keen on their other concoctions.

The best thing about writing is what it tells you about yourself – the more you write, in fact, the more you know. Which should be interesting information for anyone pondering the old injuction to 'Know Yourself.' Plato?

But I was writing about something else: something about philosophers' injunctions and voyages of self-discovery. Ah yes: I am head over heels in love with MA. I mention her name on every page. I look for signs of her existence in advertising, books, films, shops, in the Underground, on the train, in an airport, on a ferry, crossing a bridge, crossing a street, taking a tunnel, jumping off a springboard, jumping off a kerb, jumping off a cliff... I see her in my dreams, I see her in the pages of magazines, I see her in films, on television, in books I read and others that I read about, I sense her presence in the perfumes I inhale on a shopping trip through London, I hear her voice in the round and perfectly-formed vowels of upper-class women in BBC costume dramas. Veritably she is a goddess, a muse, an ornate and beautiful vase containing all the precious and delicate essences of femininity: she is there to be adored, revered, protected and glorified, preserved in an unsullied, exalted and beatific state, from where she may cast blessings down on those whom she favours. Ask not what MA may do for you, ask what you may do for MA.

A Roman master to his slave, curtly: "That book you wrote was rubbish. I'm very displeased."

Slave: "Have I incurred my master's displeasure?"

Roman: "I'll say you have. No passion – no feeling. Long passages of drab, boring descriptions, long lists of words that didn't look as though they had any sort of structure to support them. Well, you're the writer. You know better than me."

Slave: "You may make a very fine critic, my Lord."

Roman: "Don't try any of that silver-tongued flattery on me. It won't work. I want more action, and I want more passion, understand? That character – S.. She was good. She felt alive, hungry... what's the word?"

"I left the Black Cross in Notting Hill around four. I went back to my appartment. I sat there wondering why I just can't do it, why I just can't write, why I just can't make anything up."

That sounds very like me does it not? Guess again – it's from London Fields by Martin Amis. Maybe I'll count him as one of my influences although I only just read that passage. Honest. The truth is that I influence myself more than any one author influences me.

So – is this a book about writing or a book about MA (two little letters which stand for ...). I'll let you be the judge.

Incidentally, the name of the first character to feature in the next paragraph of the book is Marc Asprey. Initials... see what I mean? See those two initials?

Page 39 of the same book, the text continues: "My memoirs, my journalism, praised for their honesty, their truthfulness. I'm not one of those excitable types who get caught making things up. Who get caught improving on reality. I can embellish, I can take certain liberties. Yet to invent the bald facts of a life (for example) would be quite beyond my powers."

So now I can truthfully say: I have been inside the head of a famous writer. I'll be appearing on a show with Lord Melvyn Bragg next.

Next paragraph: "Why? I think it must be something to do with me being such a nice guy, originally. Anyway, at the moment reality is behaving unimprovably, and nobody will know."

And then, page 42 of my Penguin edition, there's the following: "I can invent: I can lie. So how come I can't invent? Guy said, 'Really? How interesting.' [...] 'Let me be the judge.'"

I want to get past platitudes – the things that everyone writes. Still, isn't that classic?

The argument that every man or woman's life is capable of contributing to the sum value of humanity is powerless to counter the rival argument that since we all one day must die, nothing we do can ever be of any importance ('Ask not for whom the bell tolls' – J. Donne).

Since I am certain that I will die, what difference does it make if I die tomorrow or in seventy years' time? And yet I changed that sixty to seventy just now to give myself a little leeway... Since my neighbours, too, are destined to disappear, what difference does it make if I bring pleasure to their lives, or pain, given that the sum value of any pleasure or any pain that they feel must of necessity be zero?

As I see it we are faced with a dichotomy: either nothing we do has any value, or everything we do has value. If life appears meaningless to you don't delay: jump off that tower and... wait: did I hear you voice concern at the possibility of hurting a fellow human being? Ruining an innocent bystander's day by landing on their shopping trolley? Then there is the sign that you perceive value in the world – and if you perceive value, then never leave it gently. But if you do see value, then be aware of a great responsibility: for everything you do must be a conscious act of contribution to the value around you. Nothing you can ever do again can ever be innocent, everything you do will contain a grain of meaning. To believe or not to believe, that is the question...

Nothing more beautiful than a beautiful young woman; nothing uglier than an ugly old hag. Man's dilemma: he can choose to engage in the world around him – but the outcome, as with any engagement of a military nature, is uncertain: will he end up with Snow White or her evil stepmother, a classic picture of horror in Disney's animated version of the fairy tale?

Unafraid to show up the stark and objective duality of the world (good versus evil, beauty versus ugliness, life versus death), Walt Disney conveys a perfect sense of a living, moving tapestry in which we men must choose, or not, to play a role. We seek possession of beauty: far better, perhaps, to close our eyes – or gouge them out, like Oedipus – and allow our other senses to converge in a struggle for survival, common to all, rather than an unaccountable – and mostly harmful – urge for sublimation.

Women: a fountain of beauty or reeking hovel of scummy putrefaction. Therein lies the paradox. Not a plain one among them who cannot be seen to be following a tangent towards one extreme or the other. Ugliness inspires revulsion; revulsion is close to horror; horror could practically be defined as the desecration of beauty.

Women know this: they seek to make themselves beautiful and despair at the ravages of time on their appearance. In Snow White, the evil stepmother tramples on her beauty, sacrifices the last days of her youth, takes on a form designed to terrify and repell: a sin for which the only fitting punishment is eternal damnation. But she was the unnatural exception – turning the story on its head, she chose her own path, not wishing to conform, chose not to behave in accordance with the rules laid down from up on high.

There are women with morals and women without. If you believe at all in civilisation you have to believe that women with morals are above those without. But then... it's easy to have morals when you don't feel the itch to go and sleep with a man. So – is that all that it boils down to? Or is it a false premise to state that some women have morals and some do not? What if a woman's morals (a woman with child, say) were by nature different from a man's? What if: "If I do not sell my body to this American GI my child will starve. Who is any man to tell me what I should do when my child's survival is at stake? My child! The fruit of my body!" Would any man dare to stand against such a woman?

Victor Hugo deals with the theme at some length in Les Misérables. I was awarded the highest grade in class for an essay on LM (90%, or 18 out of 20), so I know it quite well. We were to choose a novel which we considered to be great, and then write about it. I also went to see the musical, so that helps too. It's a sprawling epic, all three tomes of it (something like 1,500 pages in the edition I read), so it's not one to be taken up lightly. To be honest, today I'd probably go for War and Peace (I'm trying to work out whether Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet qualifies as a great work of fiction), but there is still meat in Hugo's best known work. Attractive, if stereotyped characters, a clever, twisting, intricate plot, VH's inimitable prose, a touch of myth, tension flooding through pages packed with the whole gamut of human emotions, mingling with sadness, anger, anxiety, tenderness and joy... and even the occasional smile or wink from the author or narrator... yes, Hugo must have known that he was on to a winner.

I was referring, however, to a different work: The Deer Hunter by Michael Cimino, a veritable cinematic masterpiece. And it raises the issue of human morals (or more specifically those relating to sex), since a young Vietnamese woman is seen enticing the leading character into having sex with her in front of her small child. Naturally the scene takes place above a bar not far removed from the fighting raging day & night. To be honest, I can only assume that the woman, nay practically a child, is South Vietnamese. The male lead has just been trying his hand at Russian roulette, so he's had a fairly rough old time of it (he just happens to be of Russian descent, though American – clever Michael Cimino!). From the girl's point of view, he's a GI. He's American. Everyone can see he has money. Everyone knows. Or maybe she just wanted to ease the heat in her crotch? In the film it's very hard to tell. No money changes hands, in fact the subject is never even raised... one merely assumes.

(A quick aside: Julian Barnes has interesting things to say about the use of certain words. In Flaubert's Parrot, I quote, page 91 of my Picador: 'Nowadays we aren't allowed to use the word mad. What lunacy. The few psychiatrists I respect always talk about people being mad. Use the short, simple, true words. Dead, I say, and dying, and mad, and adultery. I don't say passed on, or slipping away, or terminal (oh, he's terminal? Which one? Euston, St Pancras, the Gare St Lazare?), or personality disorder, or fooling around, bit on the side, well she's away a lot visiting her sister.')

Dear M.,

I can't help thinking that you'd be glad to be reminded of some of the things that you said to me. So here they are, the ones I can remember.

"I'm damaged. Damaged people are dangerous."

"Il te déteste... tu peux le comprendre, non?" (referring to Frédéric)

"Yes! Yes! YES! YES! YES! Oh oui chéri je t'aime..."

"Do you mind if I ask you something? Are you into...?"

"I thought that if I smoked, it would encourage you to come" (to Switzerland).

"Toi et moi, on est des idéalistes."

"I don't want you to remind me of the past."

"If I had been older I would have had more patience with you."

"You'll end up with a little black number." (Not yet I haven't.)

"Trollope." (or was that 'Trolope', or even 'Troloppe').

"Clunk" (not a word, the sound of a telephone receiver being slammed down, oft repeated).

"Yes!" (in answer to the question 'Will you marry me?', first time around.)

"Look, I don't want to talk about engagements. It's better if we just forget about it for now, okay?" (two days later, Cap Ferrat.)

"He's taken away my lollipops!" (to her brother, in Paris, referring to the cigarettes I had asked her not to smoke.)

"..." (long silences on the phone, listening to the sound of one another's breathing and to our hearts beating.)

Love is a construct, an illusion. It has no basis in nature. Why do we fall for it? Without language could it even exist?

"Hi ugly!" (not to me).

23/9

Exotic places: India, Japan, China.

No other place qualifies.

Peru: mysterious, mostly obscure.

Africa: dark and threatening

Persia: full of sordid barbaric practices

Italy: too much like home

Russia: a frozen wasteland with bandits

Australia: a sunny penitentiary

Tahiti: a floating dash of colour in an ocean of azure. Close to being exotic. For all Gauguin's efforts, too insubstantial however – though wins the prize of best-placed contender

Antarctica: see Russia minus the bandits (penguins instead)

Arctic: Antarctica with polar bears instead of penguins

Zanzibar: part of Africa stupid

New Zealand: an island off a penitentiary. A cricket pitch... 5 o'clock tea... a waterfall...

Chapter 29

Pierre placed the cup on the saucer, gently, then continued.

"So you see Emma, this is what happened: I was thinking about different countries and places, writing down my thoughts about which were exotic, which merely unfamiliar. When it came to New Zealand, I imagined a cricket club with two snow-capped peaks in the background... then my thoughts trailed off. I wondered how the things I had written might sound in French and the phrase 'it loses something in the translation' came into my head. Why should that be, I wondered? A list of places, attributes listed along side each one... it seemed interesting, attractive to me in English. But then I thought that, every novel, every essay ever published forms part of our cultural heritage, a cultural landscape... which, in the case of English, includes Julian Barnes, Irvine Welsh, Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. All had views on the exotica which I referred to a moment ago. And then my thoughts turned to Russian literature... Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, and the literary monuments that those two left behind. And I could think of no context, as though they were alone in the Russian wilderness – but no less great for that. And a new image formed in my mind: both were great mountains, rising steeply out of the delolate Russian plains: solitary, majestic wonders of nature. Whereas if one were to look at the British landscape, or the French, one would view a crowd of peaks, all jostling for space: Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare, Gide, Hugo, Balzac and others beside. And a question appeared in my head: if Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac were both mountain peaks which would be the highest? And what about Shakespeare and all the others...? There is a picture of Dickens astride the Channel, one foot in London and one in Paris. Then it struck me: two mountain peaks, a waterfall overlooking a cricket pitch... this rich vein of thought, this fascinating mental tapestry unfolding almost before my eyes: is this where it had all come from? New Zealand?"

"OK, so which do you think is higher: Mount Hugo or Mount Balzac?"

"No, you don't get what I'm saying: what struck me was that one minute I was thinking about the Kiwis on the subject of mountainous topography and the next, about literature, again on the subject of mountains... literary ones, this time."

"It's not the most original of metaphors, if that's what you mean."

"What do you think about my image of the peaks jostling for space?"

"Well for one thing, I think that you're underestimating the Russian landscape a bit: you could have added Gogol, Bulgakov, Pushkin and many others besides. And for another: isn't literature universal? Why break it down into individual parts?"

"Because that's how language developped. Any English-speaker from the States, India or New Zealand can't help but be offended when I write about how exotic I consider their countries to be. But that's the meaning the word exotic contains: it measures the cultural distance – cultural, not geographic – between any nation in the world and the motherland Britain. Mother, that is, because she spawned the English language. Scotland might be exotic (and it is to a degree) if it weren't quite so savage and a visit to France could never in the least be considered a voyage of discovery: the French are our cousins and they practically created this country in the first place... anything that's ever happened since then has never been anything more than an on-going feud between the two nations which respect each other more than any other in the world."

Though much of what I write in this book is true, the dialogue above is entirely fictitious. I made it up. It's all lies. M. and I would never have spoken to one another in such a way (go over it again to find the parts that jar to the ear). The fact is that I don't care too much for English literature. Shakespeare's comedies are fine as far as they go – Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labours Lost... but his tragedies leave me as cold as his principal protagonists at the end of most of his plays. With the single exception of Richard III (perhaps, not strictly speaking, a tragedy? a historical play?). I couldn't finish Othello, it just seemed to drag on forever. And don't get me started on the subject of his poetry...

Test: was Marx a Socialist?

In the middle of the afternoon, you see a good friend reaching for a flask in her handbag and discreetly taking a swig. Do you:

a) put it down to pre-menstrual tension

b) ask her for some yourself

c) laugh inwardly at the depravity of human nature

d) say nothing, but resolve to make enquiries into your friend's personal circumstances

e) ask her if there's anything that she'd like to talk about

Answers (in no particular order)

If your answer was c), there is a more than reasonable chance that your view of life has been tainted by some personal mishap, probably in the field of romance. Try to get a grip on things. Try to develop a positive outlook. Try to see yourself as others see you. Your cynicism may be contagious. You may notice people starting to avoid you; you may see them laugh when you tell a joke but sense that it is you, rather than the joke, who are the focus of their laughter (something in their eyes... looking for complicity). Parties mysteriously take place behind your back: you find out about them weeks later through casual 'indiscretions' by the coffee machine. Your colleagues, who saw you as a threat, now seem to offer pitying glances whenever you open your mouth... particularly if your boss is in the room. There may be time for you to save your career, social life and remaining self-esteem but you'd better be quick about it. First you must attempt to disgorge whatever painful memory lies at the heart of your miserabilia. It may be that zinc tablets do the trick. Alternatively you may wish to consider emigration which always does wonders for the circulation. Try a change of climate. It can get chilly in Esperanza in the autumn.

If your answer was a), I have a suspicion that the healthy realism which permeates from your choice like a heady perfume conceals a morbid fascination with the workings of the human body. Cancer is nothing more than unfettered cell growth and a dodgy liver can be cured by a regular course of camomile tea. Right? Right. A sycophantic approach to human relations combined with the certainty that 'it all works out in the end' should ensure that encroaching loneliness, at least, will not prevent you from pointing out the funny side of things (even if you are looking at yourself in a mirror).

If you answered b), congratulations! This was the correct answer. With a bit of luck the more unpleasant symptoms of early cirrhosis will be alleviated by the certain knowledge that at least you have company.

If d) was your tipple, may we suggest that you hire the services of ABorC private detectives, specialising in a, b, or c (whatever that means... oh, it's a reference to the quiz, perhaps a little cryptic methinks). Make hay while the sun shines.

If you answered e) this was the only wrong answer in the list. Your penalty: a warm feeling that translates into a radiant glow (so fetching) whenever you show your face. Aww, inchee a lovely baby? Coochycoochycooee.

The problem with Americans these days is that they talk in slashes/don't know exactly what they mean to say. The reason for this is that they experience something called 'thought fusion'/can't be bothered to finish their sentences properly. 'Thought fusion' is similar in many respects to its close relative / brother word 'thought confusion'. Both result in weakening structure and poor/nonexistent flow. Repetitions frequently occur, I said repetitions frequently, I said frequently occur. Re-re-re-repetitions freque-fre-fre-frequently occur. Words whose meaning is somewhat/completely different are juxtaposed in the apparent hope/belief that meaning will spring forth. Obscuring the fact that the speaker/writer/narrator hasn't got a clue what he's talking about.

24/9 My references: Pope, Shakespeare, Donne, Joyce, Beckett, Woolf and Amis (fils). Not forgetting Oscar Wilde.

25/9 Bien sûr, en appliquant une formule mathématique savante on arriverait sans doute à une solution aux problèmes dans le monde, une fédération d'états, peut-être, avec un président soucieux de gérer au mieux les intérêts de chacun de ses citoyens. Mais la question demeure: qui serait ce président? Et là, la guerre recommencerait.

26/9 – 3.30am. People respect miserable characters more than they respect cheerful ones – a miserable character reflects the fact that life is tough, which is most people's experience of it. Respect, however, is not the only determining factor of human behaviour. If you wish to guide people's actions, charm may be at least as important a tool in securing their devotion to your cause.

So... am I saying that Snow White's stepmother was right to turn herself into a witch?

28/9 Internet advertising is in your face: there's no charm; it's advertising a jumble of letters with a sledgehammer. You're a big, successful football club. You can charge a fortune for advertising space in your stadium on a big night. Do you rent it out? Or do you save it for yourself and splatter it with 'www.liverpoolfc.co.uk'? Well, you've guessed it, if you're Liverpool, you choose the latter.

Why do I care? A number of reasons:

a) I used to half-support Liverpool as a child; those were the days before Heysel and the Reds ruled the world (well, Europe at least)

b) ... no, I don't think I can think of any other reason.

30/9 Tout ce que tu dis résonne en toi et laisse une profonde trace psychologique. N'oublie pas que tes souvenirs sont faits de tes paroles aussi bien que de celles des autres. Dans le doute, abstiens-toi de parler; n'écoute pas les demi-sages qui clament que la parole est d'argent; c'est le silence qui est fait du plus précieux métal. Et qui ne dit mot consent.

*****

How does one go about organising a CD collection? Something you might be interested in. Mine isn't huge but it's got to the stage where combinations naturally occur, choices have to be made – about 200 or 250 or so (all legally purchased) plus however many may be missing – I can't find my No Doubt CD anywhere which leads me to believe I may have another stash hidden away somewhere in the cellar – possibly another 10 or 20 or so CDs. My Madonna 'Ray of Light' CD is also missing, not to mention another of my favourites, Zingalamaduni by Arrested Development, but Vincent has that one. And where did 'Parklife' disappear to? Could be in the stash to which I just alluded. Might also explain a few of those missing 'Now' compilations. Actually it would have to – I can't think what else could have happened to them.

6/10/00

Cause and effect are difficult to dissect but patterns may usually be discerned. Serbia is a part of Yugoslavia with a recent history of bloodshed and repression. Highly unattractive in an objective sort of way. 86 years ago in Sarajevo an event took place which caused the breakdown of a whole world order and led directly to the loss of millions of lives. One death on Serbian soil was enough to set off war between the great European powers. Today, many years after the invention of totalitarianism, the ruthless eradication of political opponents in countries around the globe, the final victory of the western democracies, the chapter finally comes to a close. This is how history is written; this is how it will be studied in five hundred years' time.

Lesson 1: a critic must always have a perpective

Lesson 2: a critic must never be a prophet

Lesson 3: both of the above lessons are deeply flawed, and probably quite meaningless. My point on history, and Serbia's role in world events throughout the 20^th century, I stand by (remember Tito's Yugoslavia). As far as organising my CD collection is concerned, I have much more to say and probably will - but not tonight, I think. A recurring theme: my love for Emma – a little more to add, all loves must run their course. Occasional forays into French: tied into the fact that Emma, after all, is half-French; just trying to impress her. Reminiscing over football clubs, complaining about the internet: the minor indulgence of a lonely technophobe (how many of us left are there? our numbers dwindle...).

Imagine you're a junior staff officer in the army HQ of a military power that's on the brink of losing a war. People still have their personalities, they still have their old values, but they're under great pressure and they don't how long they can keep everything from falling apart. That's what it's like working for TQM. Except, of course, that the company has no real competition, it's highly profitable and the MD keeps having great ideas to put the organisation on the world map. It's a rollercoaster ride where the brakes have been taken off and you're really not quite sure that the shiny modern scaffolding is going to keep your weight when you reach the next peak. So you just sit back, hold tight and try to enjoy the ride.

20/10 Rainy day in Ealing.

If someone asked me to describe London, I'd say, 'It's a bit like Paris, circa 1780, but...' and then I'd add a qualifier, because otherwise it wouldn't be funny, it'd be quite lame. You want to stimulate people's interest, catch them unawares, add a twist that sometimes warrants the title that foreigners like to give, 'British humour' (whether it actually is witty or not is another matter – it's the impression that counts). So – here are a few of the possible qualifiers. Any one should do. A bit like Paris circa 1780 but...

a) it's a lot dirtier

b) it's more class-ridden

c) it's more expensive

d) there are more lorry drivers

e) you can't get a decent steak-frites

f) you can get a decent steak-frites.

Any of the above is guaranteed to raise a chortle – it's the combination of the serious and the absurd that the English love so much. Meanwhile, London really is like Paris circa 1780 – I kid you not. Same divide between haves and have nots, same mutual fear and loathing between the cans and can't dress, same hysterical scribbling in every free-minded canard in town, proclaiming the fall of the established order and the rise of a new, more democratic, more egalitarian society. And they were right back then... why shouldn't they be right this time as well? All you princes, princesses, queens, lords, ladies, knights, earls and barons of the realm (not forgetting the baronesses), I'd be quaking in my boots right now if I were you. Lucky they got rid of the guillotine!

21/10 Thoughts for the day:

1) 'The big thing about the internet is, it's digital' (said with a thick mid-town Manhatten accent)

2) There are people who spend their lives in a state of permanent fright. Should we feel sorry for these people, or should we scorn them? Our instinct is to do both. Their tormentors inspire revulsion in us, yet they themselves remind us of 'frightened little mice'. Do try to be brave Thomas! Why won't the worms turn, to quote a popular expression? What more do they have to gain by showing their cowardice?

3) What you say may be harder to forget than what is said to you. But what is said about you is forgotten last of all.

On that last point – why do we remember our thoughts and especially words for such a long time? Let us turn for a moment to those of one of the prayers from the Roman Catholic liturgy:

"Bless me Father for I have sinned

In my thoughts and in my words

In what I have done and in what I have failed to do

And I ask Blessed Mary ever Virgin

All the angels and saints

And you, my brothers and sisters

To pray for me to the Lord our God."

The universal answer, of course: guilt.

7/12/00 My CV has a strange quality: elegant to the touch, beautiful to behold yet somehow inherently remorseless.

11/12/00 The problem with adverts is... how can I explain it? Some I love... and some I hate. I love, almost with a passion, Guiness "Wild Horses", the new Discovery Channel ad (did you know that breaking wind is good for you, and the channel recommends that it be done fifteen times a day?), Anna Friel in the Virgin Upper Class ad, vainly trying to charm (men seduce, women charm, remember that) the man in the moon, and one or two others that will come back to me at some time or another. I hate, vehemently, anything with ET and Tesco's infuriating slogan, 'Get a bigger basket'... but video allows me to confront my loathing, again and again.

Even my brother's starting to hate ET, and God knows he's always been a lifelong fan... so maybe BT's starting to get it wrong somewhere.

"He is certainly not as dashing as Willoughby, yet he has a more pleasing countenance." Of course, 'Sense & Sensibility' is all about marriage... the contract of marriage. Mr Ferris releases Lucy Stile from her engagement. He eventually marries Miss Dashwood, and the occasion gives us great joy. It seems that we have an affinity with the emotions of our fellow human beings – whether painful or joyous. A laugh on the screen is enough to make us smile... the sight of a woman in tears is enough to bring tears to our own eyes. In real life, men and women share the right to laughter, but women, mostly, do the crying. Yet one is as much an expression of emotion as the other, and if men may feel chagrin, should they not also be allowed to cry? Perhaps... perhaps, though, we would prefer to see as little crying as possible in the world and if women are weaker than men, that is not to say that men should be brought down to their level. Besides, where do women look for strength but in a man?

And yet, and yet... why do the wedding scenes at the end of 'S & S' make the tears well up in eyes of the bravest among us?

And why, just why, does that disgusting extraterrestrial puppet from the telephone adverts put me in such a rage of disgust and pure, pure, hatred?

12/12/00 Adapted from Salomé, starring Stewart Granger and the divine Rita Hayworth.

Salomé: I loved a Roman once. He chose Caesar over a Barbarian.

Centurion: He made a mistake and he paid for it. (Pause). Henceforth you will be ruled by passion, not reason. Does love still hold a place in your fiery bosom?

Salomé: I will never love again!

Centurion: No, you will not.

Salomé: My heart will remain as cold as ice!

Centurion: Your heart is as cold as ice.

Salomé: Teach me the way of Caesar!

Centurion: The way of Caesar is long and arduous and not, I am afraid, for a humble woman. A woman should stay at home, prepare the cena, spend long hours in front of the mirror making herself beautiful for when her husband returns home... I could use a wife like that.

Salomé: Is it a wife you seek, or merely another slave to add to your collection?

Centurion: She shows spirit at last! Your feminine nature has not deserted you altogether then?

Salomé: I think I dislike the trace of irony which I detect in your tone. Your pronouncement of the word feminine. Would you prefer me to go against my nature? to harbour the passions and desires of a man in what could only ever be the body of a woman?

Centurion (admiring her figure): I'll warrant that at least. How our characters are formed by the forms that nature chooses to bestow upon us! If you were half as lovely as you are would your spirit still combine the same qualities of fire and ice which allow you to inflame a man or freeze him to the core? Is your spirit an ineffable essence or is it merely an effect of the effects which you produce on others? My brother Aeschyllus believes that he has the answer to the question of soul... but he is a poet and I a humble centurion. He has knowledge of truths for which I hold not the key, the paths which I follow lead merely to glory or destruction. Whether 'tis true that truth lies in the journey itself I could not say, and yet I am assured that there is no prize worth having without the conquering of 't.

Salomé (slyly): You speak well, my lord... are you certain that your brother is the poet in the family?

Centurion: He is the poet and I the athlete. Great feats of adventure, triumph and exploration are the forces of my spirit. I wake with the desire to set foot in the world and to measure myself against the challenges that it has to offer me. The highest mountains, the mightiest armies, these do not intimidate me. Nay, rather they spur me on to exceed the limits of what I thought previously possible! And when I have taken my measure, when obstacles have been overcome and enemies defeated, then at last am I ready to return to the simple pleasures which a warm hearth, a devoted wife and a household of servants may afford a simple and weary soldier.

Salomé: So you are married already?

Centurion: No man in my position could survive for long without a wife. In that department I may say that I am well provided for.

Salomé: And yet, perhaps, you could manage another?

Centurion: One has never too many wives. This, also, is a truth which I have brought home from my campaigns in Abyssinia and beyond...

Salomé: ...And I, as a Barbarian...

Centurion: ... Yes, you, as a Barbarian (he holds her by the chin).

Salomé: The might of Rome is great but I decline your gracious offer.

She swoons, he catches hold of her and they embrace.

31/12/00 – 1.31am

1) Character development in a story... what a story's about, character development.

2) People who know their own minds... that's what I like. However, how does this thought tie into the dream I had last night? More disconcertingly perhaps: why should it? And last of all, what was the comedian, or TV presenter, doing running down the track as the underground train was coming into the station? Too many questions, not enough answers...

3) How to remember who inspires our thoughts? A necessity, nonetheless...

OK so the story goes like this: there's some old clutz banged up in a beaten up old shack somewhere in Ohio. Suddenly a woman comes up the path and blows a hole through one of the walls with a shotgun. Well two holes in fact, 'cuz the walls are thin, it's a small cooped up kind of place and the shot just goes right in through one and out the other, clean through the hut. The woman, by the way, she was shooting from outside, perhaps I should have said. And the man, he was inside but he came out okay... pretty shook up all the same. Well heck wouldn't you be? So he comes out cursin' and swearin' like a Portuguese sailor in a blizzard on the straights of Newfoundland. But ol' mother Hubbard (that's her name), she stops him right in his tracks. Before he'd even a chance to clear the porch, there were bullets flying and dust clouds formin' just in front of his boots so he figured maybe he'd best stay just where he was for a minute and figure out what was goin' on out there in his front yard. And there he was, standin' on the porch, squintin' in the sun tryin' to make out who this hell-sent visitor was, and she called out to him, Old Jack McGuire, you got any idea in that thick little head of yours what's made me come out here to polish your boots with my trusty Smith & Weston and you know what he said?

4/1/00 – 12.05am

Young men peering from a tall window late at night always have something sinister about them...

Where are the great American writers? They have the disadvantage of writing in a foreign language. Not that this has prevented others from achieving great literary feats in the past: Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, Julien Green all left signs of their immortality in what was not their mother tongue. But at least they had one to refer to: Americans have none, and they consequently have no feel for what language is supposed to sound like: supple, melodious, unlaboured and above all with a crystal-like precision that allows one to capture its beauty from many different angles.

5/1/00 There are certain criticisms that should only be made by women. To say that a man is vain, or egotistical: that is a female criticism. Men should not know or speak of such things. How do you know if you are vain and egotistical? Read the following sentence: "He who speaks with passion speaks truthfully and beautifully." Sound like it makes sense? Feel that you, you alone, can see the depth of meaning and insight the sentence contains? As a vain and egotistical gardener I was watching on television was saying, "the mood and the atmosphere, what we call the sense of place"?

If the answer is yes, you're with the V&E.

Turn the sentence around for proof: "He who speaks with truth speaks beautifully and passionately." And again: "He who speaks with beauty speaks truthfully and passionately." Don't kid yourself: it's utter codswollop.

Don't get me wrong: vanity and egotism are nothing more than a shortage of talent.

The problem is that to explain the meaning of words, we must use words which hold new meaning. There's no evidence that any meaning exists outside of words – no evidence at all. How could there be? This quest that people embark upon – the quest for what cannot be said – can't they see that it's doomed from the start? Does it take a lifetime of working on algorithms and Excel spreadsheets to recognise circular logic when its rears up its ugly face and spits at you in the eye?

An example: to explain the verb 'to lead', one needs to explain the concept of leader and led, front and back. Another: to explain the verb 'to fall' requires the concept of height – of levels, one higher than the other. One lower. If one understands the notion of height, the explanation of falling becomes self-evident. But how does one explain 'higher' and 'lower' without referring to the notion of falling in the first place?

10/1/00 The truth is an extremely good defence. Does this mean anything? I refer to Prince Myshkin, Dostoievsky's Idiot in his eponymous novel. One of the novel's characters, Ganya, seems to create truths, but their nature is different: "The disgusting and unavoidable thing about money is that it creates talent." The interesting thing is that we can perceive him to be diametrically opposed in character to the prince – not diabolical, exactly, but wholly given to artifice. Perhaps more human as well. He has no insight into the hidden and absolute laws of the universe – like the rest of us, he must make his own up as he goes along; perhaps, in so doing, he displays more genius and agility than the rest of us do in similar situations. But we react to him with scorn. Why does the prince inspire so much respect in the reader? Because we sense that his truths are eternal, objective... no fruit of his passion or vice, no visceral response to desires which pound in his breast, eliciting some half-emotional, half-instinctive theorem, a product of ceaseless turmoil and flowing, animal intelligence. And so we respect him, and so he sickens us like all goody two shoes should.

There is solace to be found in reading the story of a fool who has parted with his money... when you yourself happen to be a fool who has parted with his last remaining pennies. But then what else is money for if not to be spent?

The narrator's description of a character can never be objective. Something of hearsay, something of sentiment creep into even the most dispassionate portrait. When he writes 'so and so was such and such' we cannot be sure that the author did not have the intention of signifying, 'so and so gave the impression of being such and such' – and, as readers, we are justified in latching on to the latter of the two interpretations. If we apply this rule to Dostoievsky's introduction of 'a certain Prince Sh.', we arrive at the portrait of a man, 'one of those modern men of action who [give the impression of being] modest and honest, who [give the impression of] sincerely and consciously try[ing] to be useful, who are always working, and are distinguished by the rare and happy quality of being always able to find work.' Naturally my own interpretation is hampered by the fact that I read the text in English and not the original Russian. Such a man, of course, such a character, is designed by the author to arouse our immediate suspicion and contempt. Particularly if you yourself are quite devoid of such skills, not someone in possession of the 'rare and happy quality of always being able to find work.' But beware of circular logic: as a narrator, am I any more reliable than Dostoievski's in The Idiot?

As no truth can ever be expressed in a novel, the whole of fiction writing is merely an excuse for the presentation of Words. Or even Letters. Get that into your head and you'll come up with something decent. Words are their own masters.

20/01/01 Pop art musts:

1) Grace Jones

2) Macy Gray (the latest one, with the piano in the video)

3) Bjork, Dancer in the Dark

4) Goldeneye (007 with Pierce Brosnan)... or is it 'The World is not Enough' ('Goldeneye' sounds much better)?

I predict that Macy Gray and Bjork are due to sign tunes for the 007 series. Too unjust if they stop making the films before they get a chance to. The consecration of the modern popular artist is a signature tune on a Bond Movie. Why waste the space with Madonna? Duran Duran... A View to a Kill (with Graceybaby). Sheena Easton (where she came from... Glasgow). Tina Turner (obviously). Aha.

Popular culture: culture for the moment, not for the future or the past. Pop culture reinvents itself constantly, ergo it is soulless. Pop goes 'pop' just like a balloon. Let's add: Zombie Nation by Kernkraft 400.

First leitmotiv: video is as important as sound.

Second leitmotiv: mood is more important than rhythm.

No Brian, I'm not including you, you're too old. You belong in Absolute Beginners. Nor you, M ('n'M).

Speaking of leitmotivs, communism's intellectual underpinnings are what saved it from general opprobrium in spite of the evils and failings of its application in Russia and everywhere else. One can even ask the question: can what is essentially a mental framework (the bourgeoisie collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions, in a phrase) ever actually be applied with any chance of success? Surely it serves us better as a sort of prism through which to view the world, like Freudianism, as philosophy has generally through the ages, or in a manner similar to Von Clausewicz's Theory of War.

But its power lies in the fact that I cannot criticise it without another part of me labelling myself instantly 'petit-bourgeois'. And in the fact that the world has more poor people than rich. Everyone loves Robin Hood – just ask Stan.

A work of art goes through transformations in your head after you've seen it, after you've finished reading it, watching it or listening to it. So it doesn't matter if the plot doesn't follow a set path: think of a sculpture or a painting if that makes it easier to understand. The end need not necessarily come at the end, nor the beginning at the beginning. It's the impression the artist leaves that counts. See Charles Chaplin (The Great Dictator) or David Lynch (Mulholland Drive). I disliked the second intensely – yet months later the image of the walking producer remains imprinted on my mind's eye. There is the story in that curious film: a producer walks from place to place, looking cool, keeping his stride, entering his Porsche convertible, chatting at cocktail parties and oozing charm whatever his surroundings... professional, sharp, never wholly out of his depth, this is the angle from which the director views his subject. How many films present a clearer picture of the inner workings of a Hollywood machine? Understand why all the critics loved it? This is their territory, David Lynch is one of them – he allows them to dream. Me, I tell you, he's a con. There's no story in Mulholland Drive, no plot, don't try to make sense of it because you can't, not even DL himself, he's just on a wild fantasy-induced spree through the workings of a decrepit, senile, disgustingly obsessed mind (his own) and that's all there is to it. Not that lesbian pornography has anything particularly reprehensible about it but all the same... don't try to pass it off as art, please. I wasn't born yesterday. And just because I've written about it now you all want to see it. Don't, don't, I tell you! don't fall for the smoke and mirrors! It's a con! Not very good! You won't like it! I'm telling you! You won't like it! Do something else! Treat your wife to a decent meal for a change! Why should she do all the work in the kitchen! Spend a bit of quality time with your children! Teach the younger one to read! She's old enough! Help your older son with the maths homework! You can do it! So can he if he puts his mind to it! Not that difficult and well worth the trouble! Helps you later on in life!

Why do I waste my time?

The essence of 'right-on' (aka Guardian) criticism is to make poor art sound good in the interests of ideological correctness – to invest all literary production with historical meaning (in the Hegelian sense).

Everyone in Paris has a similar view of what looks good. Nearly everyone in London has a different view. And when it comes down to it, you can't beat Paris for style, can you? Supposing I were to choose between the two cities. Which criteria would I take into consideration? Pollution – far worse in London, unless you live in Hampstead or on Primrose Hill. But even then you're still likely to head to the West End from time to time. Honestly there's no worse place in the world (apart from the East End, that is).

"All we're doing is recording excellence. Excellence exists with or without a thermometer." And that would have been the end of Mr Golly's train of thought. What does he mean, saying all 2 or 3 star Michelin restaurants are the same? And what would it have to do with the tyre company if they were?

Actually I like BB Golly. Far more readable than Jeffery Clarkerson. There's an inventiveness and urbanity to his writing which I find delightful. Only problem: he hates the French. So obviously becoming a food critic wasn't the most obvious path down which to take his career (trick to writing like BB Golly: never use five words when eight will do). One might say that he'd be seriously impeded in his objective judgements. But, never mind, he carries on regardless, laying claim to every French culinary delight as though the British were entitled even to a modicum of respect in that particular field of achievement. See Mr Golly? I can play the language game as well. Injustices slip from my pen just as easily as they do from yours. I can reach for the same florid insult or bon mot – an expression, by the way, invented by the people you profess to despise. Would your favourite joke be the one about God creating the French to compensate for the natural beauty of the country and the clemency of its climate in a belated bid to placate the neighbours? Yeah, I quite like it too. It's all right. But I particularly like the one about the English being invented for a similar reason: to keep the Scots north of the border from getting too big for their boots. (I mean: with neighbours like that...)

But anyway, let's face it, Mr Golly, you're still on the foothills of literature, climbing up the craggy face of Mount Emile Zola. One novel to your credit, and that's it? And the reviews, if memory serves, were not particularly flattering?

Shall we not accept that the categories 'enlightened' and 'benighted' are open to objective classification? We shall – but only with the footnote that these are conditions more-or-less explicitly expressed in both words' very definition[5].

So here goes.

An enlightened place: Paris in the XVIIIth century.

A benighted one: Russia in the XXIst (and by implication, before as well).

7/3/01 We reserve our greatest opprobrium for those who make the world an uglier place.

12/3/01 Listening to a song by Pulp just now, it occurs to me that the only way for us substantially to improve the quality of life is to find the answers to all the fundamental questions. Since that will never happen, we are all doomed to an existence of light entertainment, alternating with moody introspection (see Blais Pascal's Pensées for further details). Depressing, isn't it? Luckily for me, I have the Trainspotting soundtrack on in the background, which is anything but depressing. I'm not depressed. Not, I repeat, not depressed. I'm quite chirpy. What if Pascal got it wrong, along with every other pessimistic philosopher since time immemorial (let's face it – pessimism does come with the job description)? What if there were no fundamental questions? What if pure hedonism were the only answer to the non-existing question of life's little quandaries?

12/4/01 For a long, long time, the need to understand why women smoked filled my imagination, occupied my every waking thought. Why did they smoke? Why why why did they smoke? Oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why? Now that I have gained some understanding into the reasons for smoking (though a recent pop song includes the line, sung by a woman, 'Don't ask me why I smoke – but I drink to get drunk'), now that my quest is over, a new focus of analysis has entered into my sphere of consciousness: why oh why must I seek to analyse everything? Why oh why oh why oh why? Why this need to understand? Of what less fruitful exercise could one conceive? Could there possibly be anything worth understanding? Is there any evidence at all that anything out there is serious? Surely not! Let us enjoy the mysteries of the world! What can we possibly know of it? What possible benefit could we ever gain from such knowledge? Far greater the realm of the unknown, ever spreading its shroud of misty logic out ahead of us, confounding us as we progress, drawing a veil around our miserly pretensions to ever reaching any sort of conclusion, some answer to that question, that injunction, that challenge that the Greek philosopher lay down to us all, know thyself, why not know our neighbours? Would there ever be less sense in understanding those around us, those on whom we depend for so many of our needs, so many of the pleasures which punctuate our sometimes dreary existences, sometimes so full of joy, of hope, of sheer bewilderment before the majesty of the universe that yes indeed it is a pleasure, a privilege to be alive, and we can only raise our hands to the sky, sing alleluia! and dream, as we close our eyes, of eternity descending into the moment, descending into the empty shells of our flesh made man, conspiring with the elements, insomuch as they exist, and turning us into super-human beings, virtual representatives of a new and everlasting species for whom time and space are of merely theoretical value, of no material significance, vectors in some deeply-embedded chip that weds us seemlessly to the motherboard of life, the sumptuous fabric of the pristeen edifice of our subjective empires, the beatific realm of our inner sanctum, our selves, chamber of echoes in a vast, underground cavern, set deep, deep within the recesses of our imaginations, seas of turmoil and ceaseless, solitary, heaving miasmas of disconnected dreams and dark forms whose shadows cast doubt among the seeds of our unburgeoning enlightenment?

Part II

Sultanas

"Only man buries. No, ants too."

James Joyce, Ulysses, p105 Picador Reader's Edition edited by Danis Rose

L'émission de Marc-Olivier Fogiel est une émission en équilibre instable. Il était temps que je réussisse à écrire une phrase correcte en français.

" Pourquoi est-ce que la terre est ronde ? " demanda le petit garçon.

" Eh bien, parce qu'elle est faite comme ça. "

" Mais ça sert à quoi? Dis, papa, ça sert à quoi ? "

C'est fou ce que les enfants entendent et enregistrent vite.

La rondeur de la Terre nous prive d'une origine, ainsi que d'un repère. Nous sommes des prisonniers! L'infini nous échappe. Et si... la terre était réelle, et tout le reste n'était qu'illusion? Décor de cinéma? Nous ne pouvons toucher l'espace qui nous entoure. Par conséquent, comment savons-nous qu'il existe vraiment? Le réel, ce qui résiste. On ne peut qu'être frappé par la ressemblance entre l'image qu'on se fait de Jupiter, de Mars, des étoiles et des satellites et ce qu'aurait pu inventer l'imagination d'un homme. Qu'est-ce qui est arrivé en premier: le réel, ou l'imaginaire?

La création de l'univers, des étoiles, du soleil, de notre planète, des espèces végétales et animales qui l'habitent, de nous, en tant que représentants de l'espèce humaine, peut être le fruit d'un Esprit. Je ne suis pas sûr que cet Esprit, qu'on ne nomme pas, qu'on ne voit pas, sache très bien ce qui se trouve aux confins de cet Univers, ni dans le moindre recoin du moindre des atomes, mais c'est sans importance, puisque ce sont nous, les Hommes, qui l'intéressons, nous, Hommes dont les dimensions et les caractéristiques sont figées dans l'espace et le temps que nous occupons. Certainement, cet Esprit a pu se mettre en chacun de nous pour voir quelle compréhension nous avions de l'Univers qu'il avait créé...

Back to English. Matthew Bond of the Daily Telgraph TV review section has a funny way with words. How can a lack of imagination be breathtaking? Stultifying, maybe, and even that doesn't sound right. But breathtaking? A view can be breathtaking; anything spectacular can be breathtaking. A lack of imagination, by its very nature, cannot. Choice can be breathtaking – you do not look at an empty shelf in a supermarket and say, "that shelf is breathtakingly empty." The onomatopeical equivalent of breathtaking is "wow!" You do not go "wow" when you are faced with an empty TV schedule except out of sarcasm or cynicism, unendearing qualities for a journalist.

(5 mn later) I was right – the article is deeply cynical, but what is worse is that the writer seems unaware of the fact, himself accusing the BBC of cynicism in the next line. Too much cynicism, I think, here. Too much world-weariness. Shall we perhaps do away with laughter altogether, an involuntary expression of our ignorance holding no place on a controlled and civilised planet? Once again, lest I be mistaken by world-weary readers: (deleted). What's so brilliant about setting Pet Rescue against Neighbours? It's canny, at best. You're getting carried away with yourself, Mr Bond...

The dullest, most cynical film I ever saw was "Green Sun", with Charlton Heston. And the director and scriptwriter got it spot on, of course: human beings recycled as high-protein foodstuff. Ah the seventies! Disaster movies! Jimmy Carter! A heavy dose of millenarianism! Okay, I take it back. Mr Bond's just being a little bit over-sensitive. I may be the one with a touch of millenarianism at the moment.

Moral of the above: if words can wound you, it's a clear sign that you need to toughen yourself up. When children taunt other children, it's easy to remind them that "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." Maybe it's the children who do the taunting who should be reminded of this; the words can do no harm, but what the words represent creates fear in those who are taunted. A taunt carries with it an intention to harm – it's a warning that children targetted know they must heed. Hence the fear, hence the distress. A taunt is one step short of a stolen satchel or a punch or something even worse. It conveys agression, but mostly it conveys the intention to agress further. Paradoxically, the intention may be unconscious – one will often hear children defend themselves against the charge of bullying by protesting that they did not intend to hurt the other child. In a sense, the similarity in a multitude of different cases of taunting leads one to suppose that a basic kind of instinct is at play, one that carries through from the seemingly innocent calling of names to, in many instances, outright physical violence.

A child taunted reacts differently according to his or her psychological make-up. The threat is virtually always recognised, provoking a typical 'fight or flight' reaction. It is interesting that in most cases the target of taunting is an apparently weaker member of the group. but one whose strengths may lie on the academic side of things; taunting, as such, represents a kind of attack from the physical against the intellectual domain.

Given the imbalance in forces, the intention to harm is restrained by moral considerations. Those who taunt, too, can tell themselves that they are not causing any real harm. The physical can intimidate the intellectual – except in the classroom, where the presence of the teacher is normally a sufficient symbol of authority to act as a policing force, protecting the intellectual by providing a strong counterweight to the physical forces present.

Back to the purifying waters of television. Dear dear dear... Nestle Moreish. Nasty ad (Shredded Wheat, grandmother and grandson). Bad images. Negative images. Why do they do it? Is it drugs? Why do they want to do away with everything linked with old, 'traditional', values? Is it because of New Labour and the omnipresence of French culture?

But seriously... I had the choice between fleeing and fighting. Instinctively, I fought. Perhaps the proximity of my three tormentors made the choice easy; perhaps, as my path was barred, I had no escape and so no choice; I could have stood, and waited, and cried, and broken down; I cried, but I hit back: within a second, one of the three was holding his hand against his eye in agony – one punch, well directed, from me, had broken through the ring of torment that had surrounded me a moment before, challenging me to break... Sticks and stones... I had said nothing, but they were the broken ones.

One thing that always concerned me was the unpredictability with which people reacted to the information you gave them. When would they take it seriously? When would they respond with sympathy? When would they use it against you in an attempt to make you look ridiculous?

The new Mercedes Benz advert isn't so bad if you don't look at it while they're singing.

21/5/99 Something I just discovered out of the blue:

"... it would be a very good thing if people were taught how to speak. Language is the noblest instrument we have, either for the revealing or the concealing of thought; talk itself is a sort of spiritualised action; and conversation is one of the loveliest of the arts."

– Oscar Wilde, Court and Society Review, 4^th May 1887.

I'd never seen Wilde write anything so sincere – little good that it did him. So – nothing new under the sun!

... And here's another one:

"Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."

– Oscar Wilde, The Model Millionaire.

Society rejected Wilde a) because he was foreign or b) because he sought to reveal truths about them. Perhaps they would have preferred it if he had first sought to reveal, explore and discover truths about himself?

Why does it not matter to me that I wrote "reveal, explore and discover," rather than place the words in an apparently more logical sequence? Because, dear reader, no matter what I reveal in my writing, there is always more about me, and about my art, which remains concealed, and which you must take pains to discover before passing judgement on any particular aspect of the prose which it has been my pleasure to explore with you.

Exercise in writing (may also apply to some teachers): write a sentence, at least four lines long (or fifty words, whichever is the greater) with a) a logical construction, b) perfect grammar and c) a certain degree of style. I refer you to "Nothing... Except my Genius." A celebration of wit and wisdom, by Oscar Wilde, published by Penguin.

Forget about placing thoughts in other people's heads for a moment – what about being able to read other people's thoughts? What would it be like? What kind of leap of invention would it take for someone to discover a machine which enabled telepathic communication? Interesting sideline: does Britain have a 'Palais de la Découverte'? I think not... in every respect, France is an altogether superior country to the UK. Name one thing that the British are better at... gardening? France can afford to have thousands of untended gardens and still keep their owners living in decent conditions... which is more than can be said for many of the gardeners in this country.

Language, though... it always comes back to language. It seems to me that "You don't know the meaning of the word!" has much more force when it comes from a woman than when it comes from a man... as though men generally couldn't care less if someone knew the meaning of a word or not. Take 'gay': a lifestyle or an invitation for trouble?

Exploding myths – lesson 1: how can Britain be associated with tolerance? How can a country that placed Wilde in the dock for the crime of buggery be considered tolerant? Blame Victoria...

That's why gays get away with calling themself 'gays'. What could the rest of us care what the word really means? Besides, the original word was 'queer', which no one really understood as a word – as the word itself suggests: "that which cannot be understood." There you go – a fitting description which applies equally well to every form of human behaviour.

Sometimes I write things down, and I almost wince as I finish writing them, because I know it's not what I really think... so I know I'm going to have to keep writing, so that the reader knows that it's not what I really think. After all, they're not to know, just by reading a sentence. If a thought is expressed, it's still a thought, even if it's unacceptable, and people can harbour thoughts – if they bear grudges, if they feel guilt, if their heart is sullied, a thought can drift down and latch on to their consciences, bed itself down and hold them captive. Good thoughts and bad thoughts, they float around in a spiritual world half-removed from our sphere of consciousness. Assuming thoughts can be planted in our brain... Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. Were they his lovers, or someone else's?

Explore the meaning of someone:

- the difference between 'good' thoughts and 'bad' thoughts

- the concept of the muse which poets and philosophers have referred to throughout the centuries

- where all these thoughts could be coming from.

Ah language is too final isn't it? When you start a sentence, it has to end doesn't it? But thought isn't like that. Why should it be? thought exists in a continuum of its own, knowing no boundaries, no begining and no end, only an ever-lasting middle.

Un fil... une lame... une tranche de viande... un plan. Impossible de voir une tranche de gigot sans construire un plan dans lequel elle se situe, le plan auquel elle appartient. 'Appartenir'... nouveau concept, trouvons un symbole qui le designe.

De vivre dans le monde matériel nous donne accès au monde des idées. Qui peut dire si l'un précède l'autre? Quelles sont les idées qui viennent de moi, de mon entourage, d'ailleurs, un ailleurs que je cherche à définir, tâche à laquelle je ne suis pas encore parvenu ?

Certaines idées proviennent d'une réaction au monde qui m'entoure, mais ces idées sont des idées pauvres. Exemple: ce fromage a mauvais gout, l'odeur de la fumée d'une cigarette me déplait. Je peux m'en servir pour naviguer dans le monde physique, mais leur utilité, je pense, ne va guère plus loin. Au moins ces idées ont-elles une utilité démontrable : je sais que de m'approcher de trop près d'une source de chaleur vive me procure une sensation désagréable – sorte de garde-fou qui m'aide à survivre dans le monde physique. Mais les idées 'nobles', à défaut d'un autre terme, peuvent aussi servir d'aides à la navigation : il me suffit de les rédiger dans un livre que je vendrais pour en faire mon gagne-pain. Le monde est friand d'idées... une activité noble consiste à les lui fournir... Pierre Bernardi – Fournisseur d'idées. La qualité garantie, le sourire en prime. De la littérature en reclame! Une idée à creuser.

Let us turn our thoughts to beautiful women. Emma Samms! She's lovely. She looks lovely, when she talks she sounds lovely. Why are all the nicest women Emmas?

Jack: Emma Thompson, Emma Samms, Kate Winslet played an Emma, Kristen Scott-Thomas – she's not an Emma, but she could be.

TV presenter (laughing): yes... I see you're right there. Why do you think that is?

Jack: I don't know. They're just all Emmas...

TV presenter: OK. Moving on. When you were on your last film "Warriors on the Move", apparently you said...

Advertising. A gentle humming in the background. Whoever invented Lego, he had a good thing going.

Right. A quick tour of my living room. No particular reason, I just thought it would be interesting. On the floor (what I can make out): next to the orange sofa I'm sitting on, the Collins English Dictionary – Millenium Edition, voted the world's best dictionary, so at least it claims on the cover. Next to it, a pair of slightly soiled, cotton (I think) burgundy socks. Next to them, a pair of brown shoes I picked up at the Stanford shopping centre. Three books lie next to the dictionary: Mr Nice, by Howard Marks, with a grinning picture of himself on the cover (it's an autobiography), lying neatly next to that, against the side, Quatre-Vingt Treize by Victor Hugo, an historical account of the year in France, year of the terror that cost the lives of thousands of French noble men and women, with a picture of a grubby-looking republican on the cover (could be a Jacobin, actually, by the look of his shabby accoutrement, clogs and the rather desolate landscape in the background), holding a Tricolore aloft; underneath, at an angle, turned back to front (the other two are facing me), a paperbook version of Risibles Amours (in French) by Milan Kundera, the cover of which carries a brownish, cubist (I think) painting by Picasso, though it's mostly obscured by 93. The two other books are also paperbacks, the two French books belong to the same collection, Folio. Slightly further away, next to the superposed Folio novels, a pile of three or four newspapers. The one on top, The Times, carries the headline 'Paedophiles to live as free men in jail' (I'm not sure what the date is, as the top half is facing downwards). An open copy of The Spectator, folded over, next to the newspapers, on the left, sporting articles entitled 'Lonely Ex-Spice' and 'Wishful Thinking' just about in view (crikey – I've never been so literary). Next to that, on the left, comes a pile of paper junk: newspapers, an Evening Standard supplement with three pairs of female legs showing through, pages from my CV, pages I've written and removed from the letter pad from which they emerged, intended for the book – ahem – a wedding invitation for the reception I went to in Paris last weekend, Florence and Nagi's, more paper, an open, folded newspaper (I can just make out that it's The Independent) and moving back towards the Spectator, a cream coloured envelope used to deliver the invitation. Furthest to the left, against the fireplace, sits a Canon printer – hence all the paper. Next to that, further along, there's a wicker chair, but I was going to get to the furniture later. Well never mind. There's the chair, a two-piece suite from Habitat (I'm sitting on the sofa part, the armchair's in the opposite corner to my right), a Philips 21" TV and JVC video on a black plastic stand, switched on to Channel Four late Friday night television. Between the TV and the armchair, more paper, a large orangey-yellow torn envelope, a video tape, an Essec directory and a Yellow Pages phone book. (Doesn't reading about gay relationships when young and having doubts push you further along the way?) Further along, closest to the right-hand wall (relative to my seating position): a pair of brown Timberland shoes, which I always see as Docksides though in fact they have three pairs of holes for laces instead of the usual two, more paper, in piles, another issue of The Times, backdated, and an edition of the Economist with a tomato on the front and the headline 'A message for Europe'. A striped plastic bag, a reddy-purply-pink (that's fuscia) cardboard folder, a couple of plastic bags from WH Smith (blue) standing against the wall and acting as paper bins, an ironing board. That's it. There's an iron perched on the right-hand arm of the armchair, leaning against the back, a clean white shirt, half-ironed (actually it's in a crumpled heap), lying on the armchair together with more junk and – I can just make out – a packet of Fisherman's Friends, which I recognise by the acid-green colouring of the packaging, and, just next to me to my left, a low table with my laptop and on the sofa next to me, to my right, not forgetting the mantlepiece (more junk, plus my mother's painted eggs), and a hideous dresser / writing table at the far left-hand corner, and a chair at a slight angle. Christ. There's junk everywhere in this room. Another Yellow Pages phone book on the dresser, assorted bills and a pile or two of correspondence. And that's it.

The secret of the mutual distaste between the French and the English? For centuries, each nation has looked at the other and strived to be everything that their neighbour was not. The Germans are right to feel disgruntled at having been consistently overlooked, but then they never did hold much in the way of interest. Or am I thinking of the Swiss?

The way Americans speak constitutes a kind of political statement, and I think that's wrong but maybe that's just the British in me speaking. Anyway: why should I care how English is spoken?

So much of who we are, and who we can be, is determined by what we look like, how much room does that leave for personal choice?

Well, to put it one way, I have the choice between writing this, and not writing this; it's not determined by what I look like. We do not have to be receptive to other people's reactions to us.

Men in drag – eurrgh – yuch.

"Rumour has it that 'Through the Keyhole' is being used at the entrance exam of Oxford and Cambridge."

It's a complicated set-up, the world, but it's made by man so there's got to be a way around it. I mean, man's been ingenious, but is there that much difference between us today and people in mud hats five thousand years ago? If you were a slave, you probably didn't bemoan your fate, you probably just saw yourself as a victim of economic forces beyond your control. But did that make you unhappy for it? Come on, there's a limit to how unhappy you can be. Then you just become inured.

22/5/99 It suddenly occurs to me that many of my habits revolved around spending money. So by not spending money, not only was I saving it, but I was losing my habits as well! No money, no habits! I soon realised that this could apply to everything: newspapers, tobacco, drink, drugs, women... The key to absolute freedom was not to have any money!

The new Rover advert ('Chemistry') is very poorly written, and I find that... offensive. If I write that an ad is poorly written, nobody will be offended. Readers will simply come to the conclusion that I have some particular interest in the advertising industry, perhaps professional. Mistake: I have no profession. I just don't like poorly written ads, and when I see one, I write about it. You should try sometimes, instead of making hasty and misguided judgements on what may or may not interest me. Try to do your civic duty. Don't waste time trying to interpret my words: you won't be able to make head nor tail of them. Do they think that people – 'sophisticated' people – will not notice? Do they not care?

They may be right – but no matter. Just remember what I was saying just now about judging intelligence. Each to their own place. Me and Bill Clinton we're like this, see? Whereas old W Bush with his IQ down in the 90s... probably thinks it's pretty hot down there. Won't people leave him alone? Is he really that bad? Did he really say 'We may be at war then' when the Mexican president invited him for a State visit to celebrate the ten years of Nafta? Do Americans cringe every time one of his utterances is reported in the press? What about Floridians? They're the real culprits. 99.9% of them probably don't know that Chad's a real country.

The triangle: Genius – Hard work – Common sense (that's a new one, probably expecting Influence).

"You say things to your friends, and then you think, should I have said that? But you can't live your life that way." Too right, David Beckham, too right. Applause for that man!

Does anyone like the Honda Accord ad? Doesn't it annoy you?

I've heard people say that writing was the death of memory (I think it was Chatterbox, actually). It's not true: when you write, the basic information (eg. cost of old vs new Wembley, 750,000 vs 222m pounds) is saved, but you also remember things about what you wrote – the text acts as a spur, a key to retrieving other pieces of information that remain, stored in your memory. The text within the text, so to speak.

Excite – good ad. Apart from the swirl at the end.

Fascism is about putting opportunism before beliefs. Fascism is based on pretty good psychology mixed with thirst for power. It's about lowering people's aspirations and clouding their idealism with dogma. Well it's what you'd use, isn't it? It just sounds right. Clouding idealism with dog-ma. Sometimes it's just worth repeating these phrases. Over and over. Nice when it happens. You hear the word dog-ma, you just think, that's something that's going to make me less intelligent. You should, anyway. It does. On another track, people's intelligence is impaired when their reactions to external stimuli are primarily visceral. Constant exposure dulls the senses and clears the way for rational thought.

Sybill: He seems to be learning his lesson.

Zeus: About time too! A young man of his age...

Aphrodite: Still on the booze, I see

Zeus: Yes, well we'll get him off that. (Unlatches the cover on one of his rings and pours some powder into a glass). That should do it.

Aphrodite: How long will that last?

Zeus: Forty of their days and forty of their nights.

Aphrodite (langourously): Not too long, I hope... we don't him losing all sense of pleasure.

Zeus: My dear Aphrodite, it would only take you to appear before him for all my charms to be undone. Which you won't do, I hope...

Aphrodite (caressing the old god's beard): Me, Zeus? Why, my loyalty is as assured as any (quickly). I mean... naturally, I will abide by your wishes.

Zeus (rising): I sense treason! I sense revolt! I sense mutiny!

Sybill: Oh don't be silly Zeus, we're not on a boat.

Aphrodite: I must say, he is rather tempting, but I will respect your will in this as in all things, Mighty Zeus.

Zeus: Good. Let's see how he's coming along.

Pierre is writing in a notebook.

Pierre: ... And that's it (puts down his pen). They should like the bit about the Greek gods. Phew. This place is a mess. (Looks at his watch and picks up the telephone). Let's see if I can get through to M...

Being a soldier means sacrificing personal dignity for the sake of a common cause. The cause may be uncertain; the loss of dignity is not. Why should common be good? In every other acceptance, or nearly, it is something of an insult. If English is such a rich language, why is there no distinction between 'common' and 'populaire', neither of which carries in any case any negative connotations in French? (Well, 'commun' does sometimes. So does 'populaire' for that matter). Isn't it striking how one can talk and talk and suddenly realise that one's words are total nonsense?

Could there be an argument that women's morals are different from men's? I think there is, and that women get ahead by repeating ad nauseum that it's a man's world, hence absolving themselves from any responsibility for anything that happens in it. It's enough to make you wonder if there shouldn't be two sets of laws, one for men and one for women. Certainly, there are offences of which only men can be guilty – rape being the most obvious one.

Wit is used in England to keep people in line. As in:

"So what do you think of Geri Halliwell?" (chat show host, trendy, say Frank Skinner).

"Well, actually I was thinking she reminded me of Prefab Sprout the other day" (guest, say me).

"What, as in she's tone deaf and she's got a voice like a cheese grater?" (laughs from audience).

I bet FS asks people to fill in questionnaires before he has them on the show. As in:

"Name three topics on which you have strong views."

"What are they? (the views, stupid)"

"Have you ever made love in the shower?"

Okay – so maybe the last one was a bit much, but I couldn't think of anything else so that one slotted itself in. You get the idea.

The next time I express myself in public, I will expect a fee for my efforts.

Bet it comes as a shock when people who've been taking the p*** realise I've got something to say. Not that I carry chips, mind you.

When guys start talking about God on TV, you know they've got a problem. "A non-reflective life, as far as I'm concerned, ain't worth living." Can this guy connect with other people? What happened to "Judge not, lest ye be judged?" Gaaargh!

Can't people see how... ah, I've forgotten what it was I was going to say now. See – visceral reaction. I was going to put down an obviously intelligent, caring, Californian woman. It's just that she's a complete turn-off. She's overweight, she's got oodles of fat flapping down her neck, she's got a hair-parting that hasn't been seen since the days of Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz and her red blouse covers her arms (it's obviously a warm day) and goes up almost to her chin which is actually probably a blessing. Why don't you just eat less cake woman!

Burning Man... Black Rock Desert... Experience of cosmic dimension... narcissism... "feeling human"... "intimate space"... "amiotic environment"... "mystical state"... "ritual without dogma".

This may be big but it's mostly about California, Northern California, wanting to be the centre of the world. Boy, they hate seeing themselves at the far end of the world map.

"Our cosmology from our religions is (...) archaic."

You're deluding yourself, woman! There is no centre! It's a globe!

"Western science is a cultural artefact."

The day they prove the existence of UFOs, I'll be watching. If I'm not ("no causal reason") in the bath or something at the time, that is. The sensualists are wrong ; the spiritualists may be only half-right. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs.

- In Xanadu did Kubla Khan... Samuel Taylor Coleridge

- Gates of Perception (or something)... Aldoux Huxley

- The Verve: 'But the drugs don't work/They just make things worse/...'

- Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

- Um... etc. Trainspotting. Irvine Welsh. Robert Palmer (might as well): Addicted to Love.

23/5 Everything about Oscar Wilde seems facile. Did he ever go to any depth in his observations?

In America everything is new; in Britain everything is steeped in history. Which is the more suffocating?

Of all the arts, I have found that music is the most effective in cancelling out the possibility of intelligent thought.

The pen may not be mightier than the sword, but there is certainly no defence against a word written in anger.

Even the most vibrant intellect cannot resist the deadening effect of a three-bow start at the opera.

Anyone who believes in art cannot believe in drugs.

It's difficult to seek understanding from history, for the more we look into the past, the more we see that we recognise in ourselves. The mind latches on to those details which most ressemble today's society, until it seems as though we are mirrored in the existence of those who lived one, two or three hundred years before us.

If you seek to live your life artistically, you will forget all the bad parts in it. Indeed, the bad parts will merely appear to you as the bedrock from which a lovely flower grew.

People spend a great deal of time thinking thoughts which come to nought, which confuse them and leave them feeling helpless. Woman's strength lies in their ability to focus these thoughts on practical matters. The role of the artist...

I have art to keep my mind alert; for when I tire of art I have books; for when I tire of books I have magazines; for when I tire of magazines, I have television; for when I tire of television, I have newspapers.

Society has placed journalism on a pedestal: it is worshipped as the highest form of insincerity. Of course, the highest form of insincerity is really Art.

Prison is society's form of acknowledgement that even the most desolate souls will be cared for by the State. No society can ever consider itself perfect without a properly-functioning prison system.

It is perfectly possible to adapt one's self to a life in prison. All one must do is recognise that the boundaries of the mind are always self-imposed.

If one is to do without something which one holds dear, it is best to adapt to the change in circumstances before the change actually takes place.

The observer's life is the most fulfilling one, but it also requires the most discipline.

"Commitment and consistency are the hobgoblins of the mind, so you should remain here at the university."

"Yes, but Professor Kinderhund was referring to the consistency and commitment to a course of action. The expression only holds true when it refers to thoughts and ideas. As put by Lord Henry in The Portrait of Dorian Gray: "Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect – simply a confession of failure."

There is something fearsome and ferocious about Pierre's passion for me. He is an ogre, and will eat me for his supper if I am not careful.

There is something painstaking and poisonous about MA's long betrayal of our love. She is a witch, and would grind me into a powder to use in one of her potions.

A definition of literary, or artistic greatness? When people talk about you after your death in the present tense.

Never allow yourself to be convinced by argument. Only believe in what you know to be true.

So... tell me what you are. Three years with a woman with a large nose... you didn't want to marry her, good. Engaged to a woman of porcelaine features... separated before marriage, a lucky escape. Separated again – even luckier. Nothing ages so badly as female beauty. A romance with a girl from Italy, a sign of character and good taste... it was Italy that turned the natural decadence of Greece into art. The rest, I see, is of no consequence... judgement is passed, very well. Your history is indeed, a true reflection of who you are.

It seems that we have moved from a guilt-prone to a guilt-free society. But the sum of talent is the same, and the end result is no different.

If a friend can betray you, he invariably will. That is why friendship is improbable between man and woman, and impossible in marriage.

To create a Wildeism: take a statement, no matter how absurd (the more absurd the better, I should say), and use it as the premise for an argument. As an exercise in style, unbeatable. As a statement of truth...

I think Oscar Wilde was really put down for forgery: pretending to be an artist, and pretending to do so in a language that wasn't his own.

I hate the way electronic items sometimes leap into life for no apparent reason. My VCR seems to think it's a piece of artificial breathing apparatus all of a sudden. Meanwhile, the national weather on ITV is slightly more optimistic than the local version with regard to the temperatures we should expect in London tomorrow: 19 vs 18 degrees celcius (or centigrade). As one – the local weather, as always – appeared on our screen immediately after the other, the effect is somewhat bizarre. Was the local news making an obscure point of some sort? A kind of 'no you don't, you nationals, we've got our own weather down here, you lot keep out?' Who should we believe? The 19s or the 18s? The optimists or the pessimists? Let's go for local idiosyncracies. I am a Londoner.

Monks holed up on a rock in the middle of the sea... if people did that today, they'd be considered mad!

Pre- to early Christian Ireland: a bit like California today, really. Connected to everything, protected from everything.

Dean takes the glass of vodka and drinks from it.

Annabelle: Are you going to drink that? There's a fly in it!

Dean: That's okay, it's dead now (removes fly from glass).

24/5/99 People with vastly different profiles may have very similar behavioural patterns.

Eg:

- students travelling to Paris may choose the cheapest flights available

- a businessman, used to flying business class, well-paid, travelling to Paris to visit friends for a week-end may also choose the cheapest flight available.

The businessman may travel more often, but there may be more students than businessmen.

The more frequent the travel (or use of any other service), the better informed the client is likely to be. The better informed the customer, the less likely he/she is to be swayed by 'relationship' type arguments – factors such as quality of food, frequency of delays, ease/fluidity of check-in, flexibility of the airline, are likely to become more important.

A company which inspires loyalty does something different – whoever heard of 'relationship management' by Apple? Apple stood – and still stands – for values with which many customers identify: independence, quirkiness, openness, honesty – and it got those values across through mass marketing, such as the superbowl launch of the new Macintosh with the sledgehammer ad. There is no substitute for creating a sensation.

Likewise, in the good old days, IBM never went for relationship marketing – or any marketing at all, in fact. It contented itself with selling the best products, providing at the same time peace of mind to those who chose to trust them as the provider of their company's computing requirements. There is no substitute for excellent products and services.

A relationship cannot exist between a company and an individual. Relationships can only exist between people. One can be the client, the other the representative of the company providing the goods or services – the salesperson, in other words.

(Later on) You get some gems on TV.

All problems can be formulated into clear, well-constructed arguments.

Solutions only come about in response to problems.

To illustrate: after the disaster of the first world war, many parts of Germany were subject to extreme states of lawlessness. This was the problem.

Electing Hitler, a leader at the forefront of a movement promising law and order, and with the apparent will and determination to succeed, was the perceived solution. See The Pianist, a film by Roman Polanski, for a full depiction of the strength of this argument.

Internet frenzy

Load up viewbar – switch to Boots – receive points on loyalty card. Boots: send leaflet to all loyalty card holders. All Advantage: provide viewbar. FNAC.

Science fiction is preoccupied with the future to the exclusion of the past and the present. America veers dangerously close to presenting itself as an incarnation of this literary form: an unguarded territory where demons and goblins do battle with those who brandish the banner of memory. Witness Captain America. Witness – in particular – Spider Man, the recent Hollywood production. The Green Goblin – a picture of fantasmagoric evil. Truly William Defoe's finest performance, he an actor of no mean talents (but could he play a good guy?). See also the determination to build the country afresh. No good American likes to be reminded that his country was built on the debris of a lost civilisation, rounded up and bartered against a few herds of steer and a transcontinental telegraphic system which mirrored the progress of man's march across the great western wild.

New members: which is your favourite store? Which type of purchase do you generally give the most thought? (Nightclubbing is completely addictive.)

Nuts & bolts: office and office staff; office equipment, furniture, etc.

(Bit sad: the English always referring to the war.)

(Everyone patronises Britain. Not just the Americans, the French do it as well.)

(Stupidity in this country is more uniform than in some other countries. In France, for example, political leaders are expected to be intelligent. President Chirac used to translate Russian literary texts. French schools work on the principle of 'know thine enemy'. Why they encourage the best pupils to learn German. The very best learnt Russian at the time when Chirac was an idealistic student at ENA with strongly-marked communist sympathies. Intelligence here is much more random.

People don't let each other speak in Britain. They cut in and interrupt all the time.)

IDEAS:

- Get loyalty cards on board

- Partnerships with European retailers

- Get more information from members on the kind of service they'd like to get, the kind of value they're most sensitive to – negotiate with partners on the basis of the information received –> orientate depending on whether member is a clothes / cosmetics& skincare / hifi-electronics / computer person

- Enjoin parners (particularly retailers) to recruit new members

- Consider 'viewbar' itself as a product – find companies who might be interested for their own, internal use

- Business to business?

- Explore other uses that customers might have for the 'viewbar' (eg. PC equivalent of a 'post-it', or personal decoration?).

Laughter is a positive word – the onus on the author is that it should be used in a positive sentence or context. Failing which the author commits a failure of taste, or faute de goût.

(Writers seek to improve the world.)

We can work on ideals, such as – if all the planet's wealth were evenly spread, everyone could be happy – but more can be done by exploring the heart of man's iniquities, the universal cattle prods that charge each individual with positive or negative stimuli. Analysing these stimuli, separating the good from the bad at a universal level, that is the writer's vocation, and when he performs it with success he is on a par with the philosopher. When he performs it badly, he is little more than a journalist.

A small oligarchy will grow...

(A weak leadership sets the seeds for it to grow, develop and thrive in the country, eventually succeeding in aligning the politics of the ruling government with its own interests, in exchange for securing the government's hold on power. But each generation kicks sand in the face of its elders and the nation's idealistic youth may be effective in reversing the politics of hate and exclusion so instrumental in keeping their parents' generation in power. Witness events in South America. The lesson is always the same: a weak government provides the breeding ground for a small class of tycoons to prosper in the midst of general poverty.)

Still later...

At some point in my mid-twenties, I suddenly became 'Mr Popular'. But it didn't do me any good in terms of personal happiness.

It's hard not to feel cynical when you watch the Oprah show. They have no interest in universal values whatsoever.

(Adopt a granny – 0800 25 15 25. Towards a more individualistic society.)

Parents – always meddling. Why don't they know better?

(Britain seems to be a country of extreme specialisation, true?)

An irritating aspect of American English is that the Yanks seem to have second-guessed the British – the English, to be honest and fair – on so many words. 'The new thinking of the Royal Family' – a very ugly way to put it for a BBC presenter commenting on the State opening of the Welsh National Assembly, Jenny whatever-your-name-is.

I haven't decided what to do with my parents yet. Should I boil them or bake them? (There are species where the female devours the male. Are there any where the young devour their parents?)

As time moves on, I reappraise more and more of my past actions, casting their hitherto unquestioned value in a new, more unforgiving light. Should I have visited MA in her chalet in Switzerland? Should I have surprised her by my visit? These are not the anguished cries of a tortured soul; I prefer to see them as mature reflections from which I gain a better understanding of the past and draw lessons for the future.

24^th May 1999

"James – would you agree that everyone is sick and tired of hearing about the millenium?"

"Absolutely. Definitely. Sick and tired of it."

"So why do people keep talking about it?"

"Well, it's there, isn't it?"

"But Big Ben and Buckingham Palace are there, aren't they? It doesn't mean that we talk about them all the time."

"Yes, but Big Ben and Buckingham Palace are always going to be there. The Millenium's just a date in the calendar."

"You don't mean it's going to disappear in 2001, do you?"

"Eh?"

(Merseyside should definitely have its own assembly. Definitely.)

1) We trivialise evil at every turn. We talk about evil little sisters; the cover of The Spectator last week carried the title, "What to think about evil?"

2) Only when you write a thought down do new thoughts occur to you. It's as though each written thought were a key in a computer game, allowing you to go up a floor. 'Ka lingering in the land of the living after death.' Was that a thought? Pleasure stems from the senses.

3) Soaps satisfy the country's voyeuristic tendencies. Peering through net curtains and having hushed conversations on street corners. Fitting that the first soap to arrive on our country's screens should have been Coronation Street.

(Once I stopped wanting something life became much easier! And far more pleasant!)

The Church wardens vs Bishops:

The debate as it stands, judging from my perusal of articles in the press: the General Synod of the Church of England proposes to give a bishop the right to suspend the churchwarden if he deems the churchwarden to be unworthy of the job ('for any cause which appears to him to be good and reasonable' is the precise wording of the proposal). First comment: wherever you go in this country at the moment, there seems to be an open can of worms at every turn. No wonder so many newspapers get sold – this place is a journalistic paradise. Secondly, the examples of misdemeanours presented in the editorial which might result in a churchwarden being dismissed are: paedophilia and homosexuality. What happened to stealing from the church kitty?

a) Cranking up the country's institutions: who cares what the institutions look like, so long as they run smoothly? And if they don't, what's the good of going at it peacemeal?

(Question to Brits: would you always agree with a fellow Brit against a Frenchman? What about against a half-Frenchman / half-Brit?)

b) Are bishops held in such low esteem as to be considered susceptible to whims? I believe they are.

c) A little knowledge is an excellent thing. The more knowledge, the better. The fxxxing class system. That's the root of everything. Get rid of the bloody royal family.

(Dr Rachel Baggaly (WHO) looks like a frightened mouse.

(Alan Smith – Match Analysis, DT: not good enough.))

What was the first impression we had of America? I remember it clearly: it was one of violence. How could any society be so violent?

"The idea is simple: we exterminate all the evil people in our society. Hence: no more evil."

The poorer people wanted to get rid of the rich people.

An investment banker caught in the wrong part of town, in dapper suit and fine leather shoes, was held down, beaten up and dragged to a police station with a demand for his immediate execution by a group or irate, well-meaning, law-abiding citizens.

A boy slapped his sister: "You're evil," his sister cried. The boy ran off, sobbing, and hid himself in the folds of his mother's dress.

The law stopped when it came to relations between husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, or other forms of intimate relations where it was recognised that a different form of passion was at work. A murderer's advocate used this loophole to acquit his client, caught in flagrante after shooting holes in his wife and her lover. A woman slapping her husband during a row, for example, was not liable for execution and could not be reported for the incident by the aggrieved husband. A husband beating his wife might be arrested for assault, but would not normally be charged with being evil for an action committed in a domestic setting.

Here is a thought: a writer is someone who has an infinite capacity to adapt to his surroundings. TV may not take us out of our world, but it does add something to it: poetry and art, visions of places that exist outside of the mind's eye. It may be a post-modern invention, or maybe the world became all post-modern because of it. If the world exists through our senses, and if sight gives us our bearings, then the images on the screen are as real as the furniture and the ornaments dotted around the room, and with every flickering change of scene our surroundings change before our eyes, while we can only struggle to keep up.

Continued on the set of a television chat show:

"You wrote once that television changed our surroundings – added to them by the images it brings into our home."

"Yes... stories weave a spell on us. Television brings a constant flow of stories – news reports, weather bulletins, even game shows – they're all stories. I was interested in deconstructing that spell... that sounds very pompous, doesn't it?"

"No, no, not at all. But you also wrote that television ushered in post-modernism as it were. What did you mean, exactly?"

"Yes, the two occurred simultaneously, didn't they? What is post-modernism, exactly? What comes after it? When do we declare the post-post-modern society?

(Policing is a key to establishing civilisation.)

A quick aside: is there such a thing as 'Belgium'? Do Belgians take their own country seriously?

Should I go on? Very well. A piece of dialogue:

"Now I don't know what ideas you have about death, but imagine your worst nightmares. Do you think it could be worse than that?"

Well, a very short piece. The character playing the devil is suavely dressed in a six-button grey double-breasted suit, hair neatly combed back. The best description of Montgomery, to whom the question is put, would be 'James Stewart', in practically any of his films – perhaps The Man Who Knew Too Much by Alfred Hitchcock, where he plays an American doctor who becomes involved in an international tale of political intrigue – unwittingly, of course – with Doris Day playing his wife, a renowned soloist.

We are all, every one of us, trying to change the world. It's what keeps us alive; it's what makes death appear so unwelcome.

The state has to protect people against themselves.

Black civil rights leader: "Driving while black is an offence here in New York." What about Harry Belafonte?

There are some things you can say which are liable to get you punched on the nose. Which just goes to show that freedom of speech is a function of size. Intolerable when you think about it, isn't it?

(Serious people don't understand humourous people. Hey, sometimes you just get a bad egg! Can't beat Bénédicte saying her baby on the echography looked like ET and like its father at the same time... and looking at the picture one could indeed see the ressemblance. My guess is that she will be beautiful like her mother. What comfort is it to say that something happens only rarely? If you don't want your head to spin, it's best to ignore California altogether. If you don't believe me, I suggest that you visit hedweb.com. Strangely, the laws on social conduct appear to be universal.)

Pierre goes into the kitchen, thinking. He makes himself a cup of coffee. He tastes it, pulls a face and pours it down the sink. He tries again, this time switching the kettle on first.

This is a luxury war. It's a feel-good war. It's a party. And when it's all over, Mr Blair is going to wake up with the mother of all hangovers.

As Blacks achieve a higher status in American society, it becomes harder to ignore inner-city violence and poverty as just 'black problems.'

Back to the story: is honesty always the best policy? I don't think so. (All the people I know are great guys. There's my mum and dad to begin with, and my brother. That's just my immediate family. Then there's my sister in law. And cousins, uncles and aunts, not forgetting my surviving grandparent, my paternal grandmother, and a few second generation cousins (I mean removed) – those that I've met. After family, friends – all great people: their names escape me momentarily.)

A pause: "Nobody has to do anything."

A piece of immaginary dialogue: "Young people nowadays just want to have fun. I think the work ethic has completely gone."

"Why do you think that, Mr Hitchcock?"

"Probably because I'm fat."

(Caltrate Plus! Advertised on TV!)

How do you become captain?

First you have to impress.

The captain of a political party may impress by the strength of his debate. But politics is the art of rhetoric; cricket is the art of the bat and the ball.

"I grew up believing that men and women were equal. Now, that may have made me a nicer person, but believe me, it did nothing for my career or my love life. People at work thought me effeminate, and shunned me; women walked all over me."

Yes... in my head I suppose there was always something of the hooker in every female smoker. Nice girls turning themselves into hookers at the flick of a lighter.

C'mon... we live, we die, we have bad habits in between.

The pilot looked at the village around him.

"So, you think you're God and all the poeple around you think you're God? Gee, that must be a pretty cosy situation."

The good thing about Americans is that they say what they think. As a writer, it makes the job much easier.

"Come on, eh? One drop can't hurt."

"Every drop is hurting you."

Geoffrey slammed the brandy glass down on the table.

"What do you mean?"

"You're an alcoholic. Otherwise you wouldn't say that."

[The world is real – it's what we make of it that's in our heads. We spend our lives creating stories, convinced that everything around us is an illusion. What we have to do is tear through the scenery, allow the vastness of the world to enter into our consciences.]

"And give me some money!"

"Some money? You're a slut!"

"You made me feel like a slut so you may as well pay me as well."

In love: having fun.

"I guess all this time I was stealing from my friends. Mannerisms, ideas, even words and sentences... and not giving anything back." So sayeth a woman once described by an English journalist as 'looking like she'd been hit across the face with a frying pan.' Now that wasn't a very nice thing to say Mr Hensher, was it?

Actors take themselves very seriously, they act, when they're on camera... sometimes too much, if they're being interviewed for example. They act older than they are, they try to be older than they are, perhaps? They set themselves into a character which is utterly false, which ressembles no real person on earth, only other actors, and least of all themselves. The closest the interviewer gets to their true selves is the image that comes across on the screen, a kind of hologram that the actor projects for the camera – but it's a hologram which imprisons them, for the simple reason that they don't realise how empty their character is, a character that needs a world of papier-mache around it in order to thrive, a character that only works when the walls and the furniture are those of a film set.

Forget about the audience escaping from the real world – actors do it all the time.

Appetite is what gets you going in life; but I became a slave to mine. When that happens, it's important to regroup and put your appetites on hold for a while. How long? I'll tell you when I find out.

"A workman is worthy of his hire." These Americans are great.

The Chinese and the Japanese are like a group of Red Indians who found a stock of modern technology and worked out how to use it.

I have a weak chin and oversized ears – these are irretrievable weaknesses. As a result, they generate the strongest of characters.

"This country is finished, James. I just heard the woman presenting the weather saying "rinspite" instead of "respite."

"Well I don't know if you can reach that kind of conclusion from a small thing like that."

"On the contrary – the most important lessons are always in evidence in the smallest of details."

Things are pretty bad when people think the answer to everything is not to pray.

Truths are universal: eg. computer programmers don't know as much about people as they think they do.

Truth: CPs think that they know a lot about people.

Impression: CPs know a lot about people.

Sustained by: claims by CPs that they know a lot about people.

Conclusion: people believe what you tell them.

Consequence: people good, CPs evil.

I have nothing against computer programmers, it's just that the current bunch are all liars. It's a pre-requisite for the job. A bit like tobacco industry executives, or motor industry execs in the 50s and 60s (who used to say that cars were safe and seat belts made them dangerous). Especially those who volunteer confidential information in private – they're the worst. They're the real conspiracy artists.

My computer lulls me into a sense of false security. When I switch it on, and connect to my mailbox, it feels like my future is assured.

La maladie d'amour ravage tout sur son chemin. Bien sûr, elle touche aussi les femmes ; mais voir la force d'un homme brisée par l'émotion qu'il porte en lui, voilà qui est proprement insupportable. Epouvantable.

The French like to believe that the world is all about sex (see notes on Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize, p89). This is good. Parce qu'ils sont alors dans le vrai et les autres dans le faux. Mais comme l'abeille qui perd son dard en piquant sa victime, le sexe perd celui qui s'y risque – dans bien cas, tout au moins.

"Les hommes sont des animaux."

Difficile, puisque l'homme se définit par opposition à l'animal.

Si les hommes sont des animaux, c'est que la définition de l'homme est impossible, d'où invalidité de la proposition. En d'autres termes, si la proposition est vraie, c'est qu'elle est nécessairement fausse. Paradoxe. J'aime bien les paradoxes!

When I am thinking deeply, I am in a mental state which can be broken out of and which it is very difficult to get back into.

La pensée profonde ne fatigue pas, elle endort. Elle met le sommeil à proximité de nous. Elle coupe l'accès au monde extérieur, met les sens en veille, et l'absence de stimulation extérieure entraine le sommeil.

The French are very unsure of themselves. It's what makes them appear to be so arrogant. They try, like the Americans, to cover it up by making a lot of noise, but deep down they're very insecure. They know, like everyone knows, that they are human beings. Their problem is, how does their humanity sit with their Frenchness? To what extent are their values universal, if their values place undue importance on the fact of being French? Besides which, look at the slaughter which accompanied their revolution! A whole class of aristocrats, who may have existed through their titles, but were no less real people for that? And a king and queen to boot? The art of the late 19^th century, loved by all the tourists: entirely at the service of the State. There were, and always have been, great artists in France, so much of the work seems that of a virtuoso – but the Palais Garnier, for instance, is no less than a huge meringue designed to impress far more by its grandeur, its pomp and its ceremony than by the grace of its lines, to use an analogy that the French know well, no need to spell it out for them.

When you get a lot of people together in a room, for a dinner party maybe, they seem to agree that they have a lot of problems and that they're very bad at running their lives. At least, that's the way it always appears in films, as soon as the mood starts to get confidential, confessional or conspiratorial – usually, in someone's house sometime around dessert. My friends aren't like that at all. They tend to be very full of themselves, going on about how great life is for them. So maybe it's just a case of lonely writers' schadenfreue, getting it all out in the open for people to see? It's true that the things that people purport to love always disappoint them to a degree. The fish soup that you seek out in a restaurant or at home with a cookbook is never as good as the first one you had on holiday in the South of France; or if it is, it still lacks the ingredients that made it special on the first occasion: the smell of the sea air, the warm breeze upon your face, the sights and sounds of the resort your parents took you to that summer. It's what makes the French the best and the worst liars around: we all hark back to the memories of our childhood, but the French collectively and ritualistically lose their innocence each year in the celebrations of events which led to the crimes of 1793. The French have soiled the purity and ideals of humanity; because of 1789, to be a republican is to stand for murder in its vilest form: the ritualistic slaughter of a sacrificial lamb turned by ambition and greed into a scapegoat. And, as a result of Dame la Guillotine, there is a sharpness to the French even today. Not for nothing are they all fond of straight lines and cutting edges.

(Actually, the real problem with most of us is that most of the time, we're just not satisfied. Look at me: I had a good job at Boots but I packed it in to travel across the Atlantic. I could have carried on happily until the day I drew my pension... but no. What did I have to do? I had to go and find a challenge. So I ditched my job, saddled myself with enough debt to break a horse's back, and went off to California.)

To stand for a nation is to stand for crimes of vile description. We have a responsibility to keep ourselves safe. He who builds his home on the side of a volcano is committing a sin of some sort (and it's in the teachings of Jesus too). If nations must exist, then we must let them get on with their existences. But that does not mean that we have to support them, or that we have to defend them. How can anyone who calls himself Christian go to war to kill other people? Isn't 'love thy neighbour' fairly explicit? Isn't 'Thou shalt not kill' clear enough? The problem with war is that people don't feel guilty about killing if they're wearing the uniform of a soldier. I want to restore that sense of guilt, so that people around the world hesitate about bearing arms in the first place.

Cri d'alarme et d'angoisse en 1792: "après ce que la France a fait, est-ce qu'elle mérite d'être sauvée?"

1) Most people are vile

2) Writers are healthy

3) We write because thoughts occur suddenly to us

4) We write to remember our thoughts.

Strangely, the thoughts in my head translate poorly into words, on to the paper or in my mouth. I use words when thoughts occur to me... but it's a much less linear kind of language than the one I use when I write them down. And also strangely, writing is hard work (dictating would be no easier), whereas the thoughts are occurring spontaneously, clearly and above all beautifully, wonderfully, effortlessly. It's as though all the truth that they contain is summed up in a fraction of the space and time it takes to write a sentence, and as though each thought occupied a definite space in my head, rather than a sequence of words.

To give an example: I wrote in the last paragraph, "dictating would be no easier." I wanted simply to write 'dictating', but knew that this would be insufficiently clear – the whole thought was, "dictating would be the same; to talk would require as much effort as to write the thought down on paper" – but the sentence, cumbersome though it appears on the page, required less than a fraction of a fraction of time to pass through my head, by which time I had recognised it to be true, and had passed on to another idea.

(Criticism of the news: ITV weekend news has just announced that Pope JP II had injured his head in a fall. The broadcaster read out that the Pope "didn't appear to be in pain" during a later public appearance. As she read this, was she secretly thinking as I was, "appearances can be deceptive"? That maybe the Pope was concealing his pain? That perhaps the person, or agency, that made the observation might not have been attentive enough to come to a meaningful conclusion on the subject of the pain, felt or not, by the pontiff? What did the phrase 'did not appear to be in pain' tell us exactly? What concrete evidence did it provide? Did it even point us in the right direction? Not necessarily. It was a sloppy addition to an otherwise factual story, and should never have been included in the otherwise excellent bulletin.)

I was always very jealous of people who obviously didn't have consciences. There was no limit to how arrogant they could be. It looked so cool! Me, older brother, I was serious and I didn't have fun. One on TV has just said, "Jacuzis are good to fuck." He's French, a philosopher, he "doesn't give a shit" (typical French thing to say) about certain things, and he claims to have slept with 1004 women – honestly – and then he says it's horrible – horrific – to see girls behaving in that way. The hookers and the agents, he says, are vermin. He is utterly blameless. The girls think it's the only way to get on in their careers. Who could blame them?

Incidentally. I have very few sexual fantasies. Nathalie Blacker, I wouldn't want to do anything with you in the sack. Did it give you a buzz to play tennis with the duke of Eyebridge? Did you know that someone would come along and use everything he could find against you? Sorry folks... just picking a popular target. I know the DT readers love her to bits but I have them in my sights as well. If you read any newspaper you're fair game with old PB. Read books!

Man's instinct is to rise above nature. Purity is natural; we associate purity with nature. Man's presence renders nature impure. Purity is an affront to man!

Under the influence of alcohol = being under the influence of other people. Having relatively low self-esteem. Poor self-image.

I think that people have learnt, to varying degrees, that there is a terrible price for losing innocence, and they want to cling on to it for as long as they can. Hence the reluctance to support the war in Kosovo; hence the proclaimed disgust at phrases such as 'collateral damage'. Coppola's (was it Coppola) headline, "The first casualty of war is innocence", made quite an impact. What people have to realise is that evil exists out there, and innocence is no way to deal with it. Bomb the Serbs to kingdom come, that's what I say, and let the Ruskies know that Britain is back to stay. And I'm normally a pacifist.

The good thing about writing, and language, is that you can express things without needing to justify them. If someone asked me what my favourite childhood author was, I could reply, "Rather shamefully, I devoured Roald Dahl," and never have to explain what I meant – but the word would stick all the same, the association of Roald Dahl with shamefulness, some trace of vice, would have been made and would register in people's minds. And they would agree with that judgement. Why would they agree? Because it's true: CS Lewis is a better author for children than R. Dahl; where Narnia is pure fantasy, Dahl's stories smell of something unchildlike, something that brings children a little closer to the dread world of adults.

(I would guess that caution would prevent Jeremy Clarkson from writing a review of the Aston Martin DB7. It positively grunts power, so it would be difficult to write a bad review. At the same time, given what he has written in the past, and given what he stands for, somewhere in the piece he would have to include the line, "of course, it has the engine of two Ford Mondeos, but we'll let it off for that.")

I don't know if it's me growing up or if it's to do with a change in the programmes, but I'm much less of a snob when it comes to watching TV channels these days. (But you still won't catch me reading the Sun or the Daily Mirror.)

Later In any group combining elements of hysteria, the most pensive member is usually – if not always – the butt of all the jokes. But the group should think of this before getting carried away, because the most pensive one is also the most likely and capable of causing disruption to the group's sense of well-being.

Gap ads – pretty hip.

(Americans – maybe you could try to understand Britain instead of criticising it all the time. Do any of you understand what this country's about?)

Out of the blue: the more ideas you have the more intelligent you appear. The more knowledge you have, the more ideas you are able to generate. The more education you have, the more knowledge at your disposal. So – education makes people appear intelligent. Illustration.

The world is so easily influenced that I'm sure that most of the audience watching Shallow Grave – and this is a fairly select group that we're talking about, made in Edinburgh + low budget, faintly arty + unknown actors (at the time) does not equal mass appeal – were secretly thinking, as the suitcase opened and the three young characters, led by McGregor, gawped at the pile of cash, McGregor with a huge grin on his face, "Yeah, I'd take that." That, I believe, is what made the film so successful: people were relieved that it all ended very badly, reassuring them that the moral rules that we are all brought up with, and which suddenly didn't seem so very deeply ingrained in their subconsciousness, had some meaning after all. The truth is: we are very easily taken in by the devil, if he happens to be wearing a smile on his face (which he always does).

But the film is very amoral, in the sense that its own, potentially moral character, the one who most fervently refuses to have anything to do with the theft at the beginning of the film turns out to be the most sadistic, pyschotic one in the end – while McGregor's character's optimism (not to mention egotism) comes across clearly in the utterance, "I always thought (I was smarter than him)." Guess which one turned out to be the bigger star? But Ecclestone was good in Jude – excellent in fact. And he got to appear opposite Kate Winslet, which must have been nice.

The most difficult thing in the world is to write well. And it's not that easy to read good writing either. So if you're writing well, it doesn't matter what you're writing about, and it doesn't matter if you're talking a load of rubbish – as some writers do regularly. If a thought is well expressed, it's worth listening to – here's to you, Mr Golly.

Rich people have it lonely, because, there aren't that many of them around. And rich people stick together, don't they? If you're on the side of the people, you can't be on the side of the rich. So sayeth one of the characters in Gosford Park. A true classic by Robert Altman featuring a host of marvellous actors and actresses, my favourite being as always Kristen Scott-Thomas although Emily Watson comes a close second (very sexy, sexier even than KST which really is saying something) and Richard E. Grant and Stephen Fry (as always) are also very good. Fantastic photography and I liked it better the second time around, which doesn't happen all that often. But then the first time I had a huge candelabra in the way, thanks to the self-conscious artiness of the Studio 28 in Montmartre, my local palace. It's as simple as that. It's not a question of what you yourself, have, it's to do with your personal sympathies. It's very hard to explain, if you don't feel it inside you. It's not about self-righteousness, it's about caring. It's about belonging somewhere, in a special place that happens somewhere deep inside, a secret garden that we all must nurture if we are to have any chance of finding happiness on this lonely planet of ours.

If some great author of the past hasn't written almost exactly the same line I'll eat my hat. A series of guide books called Lonely Planet – the kind of cachet that only stems from a literary reference, albeit taken from the world of science-fiction or zen philosophy (crossed with American newageism).

If we could bring the unconscious into the conscious realm... that would be a great force for the advancement of mankind. Instead of which neuro-linguistic programming merely preaches salesmanship.

(People in their twenties and thirties today – reasonably affluent, the type who work in professional jobs by day and go out to trendy bars in the evening – behave as though there were nothing to look forward to in life. Seeing their sodden carcasses loll around the bar of a fashionable nightspot makes you wonder, especially the girls, what happened to the old-fashioned notion of conversation between men and women?)

When it comes to betting on horses does knowledge make any difference? If not, why is the farce allowed to continue?

(The most important and difficult thing in the world is to recognise the addiction. When you wake up in the morning in a bad mood and the memory of bad dreams it's because your body is low on nicotine – it's just gone seven or eight hours since the last dose – a lot if you're a hardened addict, say ten to fifteen a day, far worse if it's more than a packet. Sergio Leone's films get a little bit tediousafterawhile. I would imagine that there is a reasonably good correlation people who claim not to be morning people and smokers.)

The law interests me insofar as it corresponds to my ideas of morality. Aujourd'hui je prends tout ce qu'on me dit au premier degre. What other degree can it be taken at? If someone tells you something, why not believe them? Why not look for the truth in what they're saying, even when their words are demonstrably false? There must be something in there that means something – some hidden key to their personality. Or else they wouldn't be saying it, would they?

Well, the above may sound ridiculous but it was inspired by the film I was watching on television just now. Heavy – and what does the Radio Times have to say about Liv Taylor's beautiful presence, the copious amount of smoking, etc.? "James Marigold's marvellous debut feature has a ring of truth about it [that] few real-life dramas can manage." Too much truth can be boring – so I'm now going to bed.

The reason for racism towards blacks? Skin colour. The best weapon against racists is not to mention it. It behoves people to distinguish between man and animal. (Progress will come when Africans cease to buy products aimed at whitening their skin.) Our conscience is all that separates human beings from animals. Strange that so much should have been written on the subject of good and evil when this is the only distinction of any importance.

Laws are the key to civilisation.

The key to victory in Kosovo was to raise the level of violence, exposing the ruthlessness and the abject immorality of the Serbian fighters. The opposite course is being taken in Northern Ireland – in fact, the policy pursued in the province is one of appeasement – and this can only be interpreted by the terrorist element as a sign of cowardice on the part of the British government.

To resolve an apparently intractable situation, focus on the problems for which proven solutions are at hand. Applying this approach to Ulster, the number one issue which needs to be, and can be dealt with by the government, is that of lawlessness. Asking the IRA to abandon 'punishment' beatings is like politely asking a school bully to stop picking on smaller classmates – as soon as the teacher's back is turned the bullying will continue. The only way to alter the bully's behaviour is to command his respect – and this requires, to begin with, a certain psychological awareness on the part of the teacher. Recognising the anti-social tendencies which inhabit the bully, the 'beast within' in other words.

Isn't it incredible that we have communists today and two hundred years ago we had none? Isn't it incredible?

Is the world not as we believe it to be? What else could compensate for our leaving it? If we were immortal, the meaninglessness of our existence would not be resolved. Strangely, however, this immortality is not something which we find easy to imagine, unless one suppresses the notion of time. So if the only thing that matters is the life of our souls, and those of our children, why do we waste so much time worrying about the artificialities of material life?

The confusion in the West comes from one thing, and one thing only: that men and women float around in different spheres, completely unrelated.

So men, never pretend to understand women – even when they agree with you when you complain of their bitchiness. It may be true, but their understanding of the word is different from yours. Women connect in other ways from men, and there is an underlying emotionality between two women which men can neither understand nor share; and it compensates for their apparent stupidity in ways which we are unable to fathom.

(Madness: all a question of perspective. A woman may not be mad when her husband commits her to a mental ward, but wasn't she mad to have married such a man in the first place?)

I don't want to appear to be a Luddite, but I do think that something needs to be said about this whole e-commerce thing. People are getting carried away with the internet; not just swept off their feet momentarily, but actually carried away. There's no reason to the mass infatuation with it; it's all just passion and hysteria. For the first time in my life, technology is the thing that people use to show off to their friends; not just useful technology, that everyone understands, like a wide-screen TV or a new washing machine with super-digitalised stereo sound that makes you feel like your kitchen is a concert hall, but useless stuff, like how many gigabytes of memory your computer has, or how quickly you can connect to the net. Are we all becoming techno-nerds? Well, if we are, there's something I'd like to remind everyone about the nerds in question: they were the ones who spent the lunchbreak in the school computer room, because they were unable to socialise with anyone; they were the ones who applied their intelligence to devising lines of computer code rather than seek to understand the world around them; they were the ones whose idea of beauty was a 16-pin socket at the back of the school's mainframe computer. In other words, they're nerds. Anti-social, misanthropic (a word they wouldn't understand), and usually misogynistic nerds (with all that pent-up frustration from not being able to find a girlfriend). Computer nerds gave us on-screen pornography, an apparent contradiction in terms that I prefer not to explore; they gave us jumbled cables and email hysteria and web-page dementia (a picture of my dog anyone? just go to mydog.com). The only thing that they've ever been any good at designing, and I'll admit that they're ace at doing this, is video games. What went wrong along the line? Why did contact with the corporate world destroy their powers of creativity? Why did they suddenly manage to produce piles of junk that have everyone in a state of nervous paranoia in case they're using the wrong amount of RAM? How was it allowed to come to this?

I blame the companies, always the surest source of pre-senile dementia. Companies move from one fad to the next; unfortunately, this one happened to be bigger than them. Open the appointments section of any broadsheet newspaper and the words e-commerce and internet leap out from every page; never mind that there can't possibly be enough internet specialists out there to satisfy the perceived need. Companies are supposed to make things, or at least to provide services; since when did the choice of distribution channel become their sole concern? There are already channels that deliver goods to people straight to their homes. Do companies all choose to use them to sell their products? No. So why should these companies suddenly be obsessed with getting their names on to the internet? Why the need for all of them to look modern?

Call me cynical. But when a conversation with a friend leads to the declaration on his part, "nobody resigns these days, everyone waits until they get fired", I sense that something is not quite aligned in the galaxy of planets which make up the world of business. My metaphors may be mixed but my analysis is clear: why resign when the State only pays unemployment benefits to those who get the push? Ah, because a better opportunity awaits, because the psychological pressures associated with firing place a burden on the best-balanced people, not to mention the stigma heaped upon the unfortunate worker by their family, neighbours and friends? Ah well, it doesn't quite work that way anymore. Job security a thing of the past. Companies firing left right and centre. Now a major recession in the air. New technologies shot to pieces. Dreams evaporated in the sand. No more hope for the internet generation. Or the telecoms lot either. Juicy contracts for outplacement companies who really won't have too many people to place out if the trends continue at the present rate of descent. Millionaires going bust. Actually, no. People made a packet out of IPOs in the 90s and if they don't spend the money then the rest of the economy can hardly be expected to boom. Meanwhile their savings disintegrate with every lurch of the stock market (and there have been many of late). Consulting industry set to disappear. Advertising industry reinventing itself more quickly than you can say 'how many revolutions in the average-sized wheel.' Investment banking doing things investment banks do when an insufficient budget for Chardonnay leaves them sober in the afternoons. Estate agents living the life of Riley. Ireland crying over the end of the boom years. Belgium cocky over the European Union. Holland cocky over Holland. Germany. Switzerland. Sweden Spain Italy and now our Eastern neighbours. If things continue in this vein, western civilisation will be well and truly out of it by the year 4030. Never mind, I'll be sixty by then and who gives us a toss about the generation after? Think about the Africans and Asians who will benefit from the dispersal of Western economic might! Yes, indeed, this is the opportunity for all those who seek to carve out a niche for themselves in the world. Applause for the French, who lead the way in providing generous unemployment benefits, allowing poor writers such as humble me to get on with the thing that really interests them. If the benefits of writing a book do not outweigh the social costs of having me on the dole (a generous dole, allowing one to live in a certain degree of comfort, not quite skiing holidays in St Moritz but we keep our eyes firmly trained on the opportunities which may result in such a savoury outcome), then I'm a Scouser.

(Interesting characters:

- a buddhist monk with a keen interest in competitive tennis

- a Catholic priest fighting on the side of the Republicans during the Spanish civil war

- a Japanese warlord with a keen interest in Christianity.)

Ce que disent les tatouages, les clous et les biceps d'un motard des Hell's Angels: "Le monde est mechant, je le lui rends," ou encore, "je m'en protege" (si c'est un gentil).

Are 't's more difficult to pronounce than 'd's? I suppose they are, if you've been used to pronouncing them as 'd's all your life. But the enunciation of the 'd' does seem to demand less effort. Which raises the question: why should the Australians place less effort in their conversational endeavours than the British? And are the Irish and the inhabitants of Chicago more lazy than the rest of us? Is it to do with the absence of a class system? And what about the French and the Italians who prononce each letter beautifully, leading to great confusion of course as one might imagine if a word contains neither b, e, a, u, t, i, f, l nor y?

Well, no doubt that the public's appetite for film is insatiable. "Anything that needs locking up with a key is not worth the trouble, not in your own home..." Now, a purpose to acting: I can't write exactly what I meant in the last line, but an actor, given a little direction, would be able to express it perfectly. Written language is constrained by punctuation; the spoken word can incorporate all the nuances and modulation that the vocal cords permit. Song, theatre, opera and film are the only art forms available which allow the subtleties of the human voice to be explored and brought to the fore – producing, in turn, intelligence and beauty.

(Taste is defined by the image someone's actions, words, appearance, etc, create in our own mind.)

Labelling happens when our backs are turned. Jim Courrier has just been labelled a 'street fighter' by a sports presenter on television. I wonder what labels may have attached themselves to me? JC – an American Alan Shearer though somewhat more interesting.

"They sound like they're saying things that they're not really saying, but I can't figure out what it is."

"The chief moral and ethical adviser to the Emir. A man of great spiritual power."

(Imagery associated with smoking:

- the condemned prisoner's last cigarette before the firing squad

- after sex

- Fidel Castro's cigars (Churchill)

- Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Ronald Reagan, countless others.)

Where did the Scots get their taste for regalia? Does it make them proud that their nation is universally regarded as a theme park? Who is to blame? Could it be that the country is paying for past sins? Civil wars and treachery, Scotland's history is littered with a trail of unsavoury episodes that point to a land removed from civilisation by internecine struggles and constant political intrigue. Is that fair? Or are they just the victims of English imperialism?

Men come in all shapes and sizes, but what distinguishes one from the other is fairly explicit...

But this only matters at the level of the species. At the level of the individual, does it make the slightest difference?

Noble works stem from noble sentiments – and their legacy outlives us all.

I think that for a long time, in everyone's mind, the year 2000 was associated with a period of renewal. The roundness of it (those three noughts!) held people's imagination and made them take their eye off the ball somewhat. You can't work productively when you're transfixed by a mystical force entirely beyond your control. You just roll around on the floor, losing all sense of balance, holding a candle up to the future, whistling tunes that may make sense at some point in the past... to which you will return as soon as you can get the DeLorean going again. (Thanks to Michael J Fox and co. for that extremely useful insight).

We must remember that things happen to us as much as we make things happen.

We are insignificant dots, and this is the perspective from which we must view our every action.

How do things happen to us?

We eat a dish (say – a plate of mussels in June) and get food poisoning.

I can just see the lead singer from Texas Ms Spineri saying to herself one day, "I'm going to be a pop star" (subtext: "that'll show them all").

I think that what the M. de S. gave to the French was a sense that these things were best left quiet; but the M. de S. was French and the British were never taught such a valuable lesson.

27/6 The history of the conquest of the West is a history of compromise; men creating justice, woefully.

If Montesquieu were right, then the Germans would gradually have grown soft from exposure to the sun. Climate is a natural barrier against dictatorship. From taking over Rome. Global warming. Never mind Franco, Mussolini, Salazar, all those South American and African dictators nor Napoleon for that matter. What exactly am I talking about? If a people grow soft then those best equipped to resist the natural conditions (heat, etc.) are surely those destined to become their country's autocratic rulers. Democracy's best friend is therefore the air-conditioning machine – at least in the muggier parts of the world.

It is very difficult for an attractive woman to do well in professional tennis, because there are so many temptations. There should be a handicap system, whereby the more ugly the tennis star, the more points would be deducted from her score at the start of the match. In defence of Anna Kournikova who surely deserves to win something.

The art of being Scottish is being funny without causing offence. This contrasts with the art of being English, which is to be funny whilst causing as much offence as possible.

Woody Allen's terrible tale of oral contraception: "I asked a woman to sleep with me. She said 'no'."

Life exists at different levels.

At one level, life has to do with nations, politics and international agreements. This is only one of the levels at which life exists.

Saying that history teaches us nothing is like saying that we do not learn from experience. It is a preposterous, dangerous idea. Worse still: "History repeats itself – first as tragedy, then as farce." Oh really. So was the second world war a farce compared to the first, perhaps? Is a mass execution perpetrated in Croatia far less funny than one committed, say, seven years later in Bosnia? Would it be a joke if Saddam Hussein were allowed to carry out his expansionist plans on the grounds that we've seen it all before? The most worrying aspect of my fellow countrymen: their refusal to take anything seriously.

Kinky Friedman: "They ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore." The most acceptable form of semitic humour. Makes a change from referring to even the mildest of Israel's critics as 'anti-semitic'. It's a song, but where on earth did he find the inspiration for the line? And where did he get the name Kinky?

Even the rumbling of my stomach is enough to perturb the course of my thoughts.

For all the talk of good and evil, and the limitations of the human condition, it doesn't seem impossible to imagine a perfect world.

A perfect world would / should be based on a perfect life for each of its inhabitants.

Some obvious points:

- no person should be alone

- there should be no violence

- each person's life should include both a material and a spiritual dimension

- all should have enough to eat.

Next lesson: how to provide shelter for the masses and season tickets for all Manchester United supporters with regular shuttle services arranged for those living in Singapour.

Most of the character traits we associate with those of animals are bad:

- thieving like magpies

- behaving like sheep

- being un-bear-able

- repeating things parrot-fashion

- monkeying around

- sharking

- swanning about.

Some are good: being dog-ged, lion-hearted, eagle-eyed, ... taking like a duck to water.

People should keep away from the less inhabitable parts of the world – deserts, volcanoes, ice-caps, fault lines, etc. No one should live in California or Japan. Best avoid Turkey as well. Don't go near Mexico or any of the small southern Asian countries. Greece – bit dodgy. China – prone to flooding. Also true of Bangladesh. India suffers from nasty droughts along with much of sub-Saharan Africa. Leaving out South America for all the obvious reasons we are basically left with Scotland, England, Spain, Italy and France. And Wales. Personally I'd occupy Germany too but you'd really have to empty it of the Germans first (Australia? hmmm). Only fair. After all, they did have a plan to send all the Jews to Madagascar.

I think that the average person feels down-trodden. Hence the great appeal of stories telling of the downfall of the high and mighty. It evens things out, in a way, and shows that deep down we're all the same. This is a mighty bad impression to have, because deep down, of course, we're not the same at all: there are clever people and less clever people, talented people and those with next to no particular talent.

My own view of the human species is as follows: people are not born equal, in terms of nature. Far from it. Potential varies widely from one person to the next. The achievements of some will greatly outweigh those of others.

Recognising that the summits each individual is capable of scaling differ widely, society's role should be to encourage everyone to achieve their maximum potential. This should be everyone's lifework and women who produce lots of babies, well, the jury's still out on that one I'm afraid. Fields of recognised achievement are multiple and various; as far as possible, all should be exposed to each of these fields. In addition, minimum targets of achievement should be set for all fields: no one field should dominate to the exclusion of the others until it can be shown that these targets have been met (the prime minister's going to like this). It is the State's duty to ensure that the targets are met. It is also the State's duty to provide the resources required for all to meet them (this is so New Labour). There should be no distinction of class or wealth in the establishment of the targets of achievement, they should be common to all. Neither should there be any distinction in the allocation of resources required for the training of each individual – each should have access to the same resources.

"To know exactly where the next meal is coming from takes the urgency out of life" – David Attenburgh, re. the wild cat.

I'm sure, when the wild cats were almost wiped out in Scotland in the last century, there were a few thinking, "Yippee, that's more rabbits for me."

Interviewer: "You were always something of a lady's man, Sir Geoffrey."

Sir Geoffrey: "Well, the idea is that when you make love to a woman, she should be grateful to you for it. If she isn't grateful, then it means that you've done something wrong. You see, you learn from experience."

Interviewer: "Until you run out of spunk, that is."

SG: "Well, not necessarily."

Interviewer (Ali G): "You're Ted Heath, aren't you?"

SG: "No, but there is a definite ressemblance."

When a person reaches a certain age, the only question you can ask of them of any significance is, "can they write well?" Yes, I confess that I am the former Prime Minister of Her Majesty's government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Edward Heath but don't tell that fellow who interviewed me just now. I'm really hoping to join the ranks of New Labour. Perhaps as a peer, what do you think? After all, they do seem set, like me, to carry on well into this century and the next. The nasty trick that life plays on us all is that while we're busy staying alive, we're not supposed to be thinking about what we're doing here.

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PROVERBS AND SAYINGS OF THE DAY

Time cures all wounds – Time does not cure all wounds. Some wounds fester and result in death. See also: "The devil finds work for idle hands".

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush – A bird in the hand is worth a bird in the hand. Two birds in the bush are worth two in the bush. Given the choice between the two, other factors should be taken into consideration: do I perhaps have a net with which to catch the two remaining birds? Are there perhaps more than two birds in the bush in question? Will I perhaps develop a new skill in going after the two birds that I may be able to use to catch more later? If I already hold one bird, and it's a case of letting it go, can I perhaps keep it in captivity before trying to catch the other birds? What if the choice I face is between one bird and four birds? A very strange proverb, with little to no practical application. See also the parable of the talents (Jn, Luke, Mt or Mk).

A stitch in time saves nine – In essence, a very practical proverb. As a general rule, very hard to criticise.

He who laughs last, laughs best – A very moralistic saying, which ultimately speaks against laughter. Largely self-evident, no practical value.

One swallow does not a summer make – Or in its modern version, 'one swallow doesn't make a summer'. Very true, particularly in Britain.

All paths lead to Rome – Even under the Roman Empire, this was blatantly false. Today, the saying is merely bizarre.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do – Very wise, although it may lead to excess. Those with an undeveloped resistance to the corrosive effects of vodka should perhaps avoid trips to Moscow as seven after-dinner drinks may be somewhat detrimental to their constitution...

You have to be cruel to be kind – A saying sadistic people use to justify their cruelty. Usually targetted at children. Eases the conscience of intemperate mothers and fathers. The thing to remember in world affairs is that many of the events take place between countries which know each other extremely well. Great Britain, France, the USA, these are countries which have been at each others' throats for centuries, sometimes allies, great friends when it came to bashing the redcoats in the time of Washington and Lafayette. Well, no, obviously not the English but then they started it. France, Britain, America, the eternal triangle which forms the base of all world affairs. Sorry Russia, you're out of it. Spain – similarly excluded. Italy – you need to grow a little. Everyone else is a non-runner.

Third time lucky – Preposterous. No foundation or reason or truth whatsoever. Pure superstition.

La troisième fois sera la bonne – Ridicule. Aucun fondement rational. Pure superstition.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't – Hmmm... if you don't know him, how do you know he's a devil? Shouldn't we give people the benefit of the doubt? Somewhat pessimistic, that one, stands in the way of progress. Let's hear it for the unknown devils!

Once a smoker, always a smoker (swap smoking for any particular vice – once a drinker, once a thief, etc) – Ridiculous. See above.

A leopard doesn't change its spots – See above!

When in doubt, say nought (pronounce 'nowt') – And be labelled a doormat. Many people successfully rely on their own hot air as a powerful levitational force. Of course, it must be said that there exist certain people who are, as a rule, very rarely in doubt over anything.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder – See 'Out of sight, out of mind'.

Out of sight, out of mind – See 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder'.

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks – another in the spirit of 'plus ca change'. I've never worked with animals, so it's hard to say... but Reagan's team seemed to do a pretty good job (George Bush's less so... the Japanese regurgitating trick was a little mal a propos... not to mention his son's bagel moment). And what about President Yeltsin? He seemed to pull a new one off every day! And President Mitterrand of France! Then again, arguments in favour of the saying abound (Brejnev, Ceaucescu, Thatcher, etc.), and we all know people in our entourage who appear to be a little stuck in their ways. So it seems to be a case of 'dogs for courses'. Which leads us to our next saying...

Horses for courses – Once again, my limited knowledge of the animal kingdom is a handicap. My guess would be that in the relatively closed world of horse-racing the saying holds true, though what practical application the saying might have in the world at large is completely beyond me. Of course, it has a nice ring to it...

C'est la vie – One of the best, and most widely used sayings (it's even the title of a pop song) and it happens to be French. That's life.

A Rolling Stone gathers no Moss – Well, it gave us the name of one of the world's greatest rock bands, so what more needs to be said?

Cast ne'er a clout till May's out (pronounce 'ut') – True in Scotland for the main part. In France it becomes 'En avril ne te découvre pas d'un fil, en mai fais ce qu'il te plaît', which is largely inaccurate. Even in sunny France, it sometimes rains in May, particularly during the tennis.

Never say 'never again' – the title of a Bond movie. Very apt, since it featured the return of Sean Connery, the original 007, who hadn't played the part for over ten years during the Lazenby / Roger Moore interlude (subsequently resumed with Moore in A View to a Kill, also starring the pop diva Grace Jones). As a saying, very apt. Very apt indeed.

The devil finds work for idle hands – Like writing this book, for instance. See 'Time cures all wounds'. What you do with your time is your choice and yours alone. The devil (whether he chooses to conceal his existence – the oldest trick, see the Usual Suspects – or not) has nothing to do with it. A cautionary saying against knee-capping, perhaps?

Jack of all trades, master of none – An argument in favour of specialisation. However, a) not everyone has it within himself, or herself, to become a 'master' and b) for the sake of balance, it's worth recalling the 15^th century Italian ideal of the 'Renaissance Man', or 'Honnête homme', flourishing in a wide variety of human endeavours. Da Vinci certainly seems to give that one the lie, not to mention a good few other writers / philosophers / mathematicians / artists since. We call to the bar (in no particular order) Desiderius Erasmus, William Blake, Galileo, Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, René Descartes, Sir Thomas Moore (Saint), Thomas Carlyle, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Alexis de Toqueville, Roland Barthes, Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhem von Leibniz, Michaelangelo Buonarroti, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos... See also 'Don't place all your eggs in one basket'.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth – I give up. But what if the horse is made of wood?

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – That one really gets my goat.

It only takes one rotten apple to ruin a barrel – Very true... unless you get to the apple quickly enough. Then again, you couldn't say the same thing about dried figs, dates, pistachio nuts, raisins or sultanas. Remember not to throw the baby out with the bath water, that's all.

The grass is always greener on the other side – Gave us a great pop song by Nik Kershaw. But what shade of green, exactly? What if you prefer flowers, or rocks, or a good honest vegetable patch? What if you live in an inner-city 1960s tower block? It occurs to me that green is supposed to be the colour of envy. Is this just a coincidence? Would it perhaps be possible to make one's grass grow greener by adding a little something to the water supply? Powdered or liquid? Could be an opportunity...

You're only young once – Perhaps, but it's how long you stay young that really matters. I have friends (who shall remain nameless, but they know who they are, hi Quentin) who were old by the age of eleven.

Don't place all your eggs in one basket – See 'Jack of all trades, master of none'. There's not too much call for blacksmiths and omnibus drivers these days (though trams are making a comeback). A useful piece of advice, unless you hard-boil your eggs first. Then again, I've got this great deal in South America that my brother-in-law's told me about. The company's sound, it's just signed a terrific oil exploration contract with the Venezuelan government and profits are expected to double every year for the next twenty years. You can't get surer than that. Anyone interested?

Rome wasn't built in a day – And neither were Paris, London, or any other city you care to mention. Why single out Rome? Don't Italians have enough already with their weather and their women and their food, their cars and their art without getting their own proverbs as well (translatable directly into French, that one)? Not that I'm jealous. Anyway, you could say a lot of things about Rome, but you wouldn't call it green exactly. Dusty, smelly and dog-eared would be a more accurate description. It's just a pile of old ruins, really. As for the proverb, Rome (or what's left of it) wasn't built in a day. It's true, not to mention fairly obvious. So what? See also next proverb.

From little acorns oak trees grow – Once again, a very factual saying. Acorns are little, consisting as they do of a smooth thick-walled nut in a woody scaly cuplike base (thanks to the CED), and they certainly produce oak trees. Unless a pig comes along and gobbles them up first, but that's a different story. The fact remains that very few acorns actually go on to become fully-fledged oaks. They get eaten, or crushed, or go on to serve as Christmas decorations (painted in silver, as seen on Blue Peter). Embarrassing. They grow a little, and then get eaten again, this time by deer and rabbits. Enough about acorns. They grow into saplings and get uprooted by storms or bulldozed to make way for parking lots, etc. So the moral is, 'don't put all your acorns in one basket.' See also 'Rome wasn't built, etc.'.

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched – Another in the 'don't' series. A chicken ain't a chicken till it's hatched out of its egg (any thoughts on that, all ye members of the pro-life lobby?)... there's no doubt about it. On the other hand, one's banker may be interested in a view of future revenues down at the farm. What better way to satisfy his curiosity than to count the eggs? Past statistics may be useful in estimating breakages, undeveloped foetuses, etc. An estimate can thus be deduced as to the reality or otherwise of the hatching process leading to a renewed supply of chickens – which, in turn may be expected to produce a certain number of eggs at a daily rate of say x, which rate may be entered into a relatively simple spreadsheet model and computed into future production values to a point in the future readily determined by attentive financiers, scrupulous chicken farmers and moderately competent computer developers. If, on average, 80% of eggs become fully-fledged chickens, this is the key statistic which will allow the tuned-in chicken farmer to secure a mortgage on his shed, place a down-payment on the latest tractor to roll off the production lines in Coventry and expand into those most productive areas of modern agricultural produce (biological, perhaps, providing as it does an entry into the upper realms of the pricing ladder – another key variable in our farmer's spreadsheet, one never to be neglected in one of the open, capitalist societies with which we are blessed in the modern world). Really, if that's the best that farmers can teach us, no wonder they're all going bust.

Not being able to see the trees for the wood – Not strictly speaking a proverb or saying, more an expression, but eloquent nonetheless. Refers to someone who is too immersed in the detail of a project, for instance, to see the whole picture... or vice-versa. Does anyone know? Obscure and, on the whole, meaningless: obviously, the eye can only focus on one thing at a time. As a criticism, stinging all the same. Incidentally, the French version is 'c'est l'arbre qui cache la foret', which turns the expression on its head. Clever people, the French.

Make hay while the sun shines – As though the harvesting season could be planned around the weather. "Oooh, it's a bit cloudy today, I think I'll stay in and watch TV. What do you say, Jack?" "Should be sunnier, with a bit of luck. Let's stay in and watch Neighbours." Otherwise, a dour proberb, betraying the nation's rural roots. Strictly for use by the remaining peasants, particularly those with a fondness for landscapes by Constable.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread – Thanks to Alexander Pope. It speaks of circumspection. But enough of this – about that project I mentioned in South America...

More haste, less speed – Definitely.

Love is blind – Is it?

Let sleeping dogs lie – Let lying dogs sleep.

Still waters run deep – Through their teeth, if they have any.

You can't judge a book by its cover – Shallow waters run shallow.

Tomorrow is another day – And you can't judge a cover by its book.

Blood is thicker than water – obviously!

Honni soit qui mal y pense – by three parts to one.

Mankind sometimes goes astray, and that is why each man has a responsibility to grow strong and independent in the eyes of his fellow men.

Good things come to those who wait – Well, we'll see. I admit that it's a new strategy for me.

Et puis, c'est pas moi qui l'ai inventé, cet MBA. A quoi ça sert d'aller chercher un diplôme commercial quand on a déjà un diplôme de l'ESSEC? Ou alors, il fallait nous le dire avant, et on aurait tous été en école d'ingénieurs. Tu sais à quel point c'est débile, un cours de finance? Tu crois qu'on y enseigne des mystères éternels, à mi-chemin entre la science et l'alchimie? Pas du tout... trois ou quatre formules qui se battent en duel, un coup de calculatrice, et le tour est joué. On a aussi vite fait chez soi avec un bon manuel, un verre de vin, et des mains de fée qui vous massent langoureusement le dos...

"You know, you get to a point in your life where you're so cynical that everything disgusts you, and solace only comes in the most superficial form?"

("I don't care much for redheads – terrible tempers." 007, Diamonds are Forever. Directed by Broccoli.)

Everything that everyone does is for their profit, conscious or unconscious, real or perceived, direct or indirect. There are no disinterested actions, except in art.

People like to be like kids and forget themselves. This is what we call a conscience: a yearning to return to the days of childish innocence.

Great religious art is wonderful at stimulating religious sentiment. It is impossible to contemplate Michaelangelo's Pietà without being moved by the incredible beauty expressed in the eyes of the Virgin Mary looking down on her son.

... People give to charities because they want to show they are good; people write books because they want to show off their intelligence; people model because they want to prove that they are beautiful. To themselves or to others, it matters not: we often imagine that we are looking at ourselves through other people's eyes. I should like to be remembered for something, but it is just possible that my detachment is sufficient for me not to be concerned by what my fellow human beings should think of me.

I would like to live in a natural world, untouched by the hands of men. A woman would be all I'd need, a woman or maybe ten. Ten oysters marching in parade athwart a cedarn cover. A Xanadu, untouched by man, unspoilt by idle chatter! Very often, qualities and faults appear simultaneously.

"Which do you prefer? Same sex or opposite sex?"

"Um, I prefer same sex, actually, thank you."

(The female presenter of Twister Week on BBC1 looked very sexy the other night. Tonight, she's wearing a pale lilac, open shirt. She doesn't look nearly as good. She is fit, though.)

... I was British, but I didn't have any of the usual British hang-ups: I didn't have a dual superiority / inferiority complex with regard to other nations; I didn't have such a large portion of me harking back to the days of Empire; I had balance.

I think that Victoria Wood is about southerners liking to be laughed at by northerners. It's the northerner in them saying, "See! I'm like that as well! Understand me!"

(Wouln't it be great if there were a place called Hope? People could ask you where you lived and you could say, "I live in Hope!" Brilliant!)

Well, if you say that the attraction between the sexes has to do with nature, you can't argue that homosexuality is something of an aberration. War... Sweden... attractive school teacher... 15-year-old boy. These elements combine to produce one of the sexiest films I've ever seen. All Things Fair, by Bo Widerburg. "Inte preta un papa"... or something like that. Ja foshtur inte svenska. Actress: Karin Huldt? Violet... the colour of royalty?

3/7/99 Now – some of you may be surprised to learn that around the age of 29 I decided to leave vanity by the wayside because I realised that it hadn't done me any good. I had spent the past five years or so trying to gain the approval of others through my looks, and had achieved much of what I had set out to achieve – yet there I was, 29 years old, isolated and alone, no closer to the woman of my dreams than I had been five years earlier. Instead, I began to write, with an urgency and a passion I had never before experienced – half expecting writing to provide its own reward, half because my quest for meaningful employment had so far proved fruitless and I had plenty of time on my hands.

4/7/99 Sachez, les hommes, que vous n'existez qu'à travers le regard des femmes. Qu'elles vous retirent ce regard, vous verrez que vous n'existerez plus. C'est là tout le pouvoir qu'elles ont sur nous. When people say 'take care', they are saying 'I want you to sort yourself out but I'll be there for you when you do.' It's an unbearable thing to be told, particularly by one's friends and family, who are supposed to be oblivious to our difficulties.

"Rien n'est plus fort que l'amour,

Il s'immisce dans nos consciences

Il régit tous nos desirs

Et confond toutes les sciences.

Toi, tu étais là, tu écoutais tous mes soupirs

Moi, pour un baiser, je languissais sous ton empire.

Refrain."

When you're worried about your future: that's when you contribute the most to society. Correspondignly, Soviet society, which guaranteed everything, received nothing from its citizens.

- Change brought about the Nazi party in Germany.

- All our societies had racist elements in the twenties and thirties. And before that, violence. And before that, lawlessness. And before that, tribalism. You have to give civilisation its chance, and allow it to work its way through our collective consciences. It will, regardless. Those who oppose change, oppose life itself. They would like to see us all crystalised and preserved as museum pieces in a state of frigid beauty.

Let's face it – I've been crushed by my own success. Each accomplishment leading me on to the next, each one carrying with it the weight of its own expectation. People – all people – usually talk a mixture of sense and nonsense. (The message from the nature documentary on BBC1 just now seems to be clear: it's the sharks in the world that you should admire.) Quite possible to imagine that most of the time we think for ourselves, taking in information from the world around us, and some of the time God talks to us, giving us clues, so to speak. We wouldn't necessarily have to know about it – the communication might take the form of a thought or an insight of some sort from Above, a form of revelation... At the same time, the more we think, the clearer our thought becomes. Clever people don't care if society is white or multi-racial, so long as there is no violence. Racists don't care if there is violence or not, so long as society is white. Notre conception du beau s'est élargie avec le temps, en même temps que notre ouverture sur le monde. Qui a vu une belle Sefarade danser la danse du ventre à la lumière d'un chandelier sait que des trésors de délice l'attendent dans les recoins de l'Orient.

Evidence that this is a strange country – part 1. The TV section's Critic's Choice for Saturday in the Sunday Times of July 4^th (the day the world was supposed to end, so that may have something to do with it) offers a selection of 7 programmes. One of the entries, Into Africa with Henry Louis Gates: The Swahili Coast, receives a damning review, finishing with the lines, "Next week, Gates' caravan of cameras takes the road to Timbuctoo – but few television viewers will sign up as fellow travellers." If the programme is so bad, why include it in the 'Choice' section?

The richer people are, the more willing they ought to be to pay for things out of their own pocket. Strangely, though, the country is far wealthier today than it was 100 years ago, yet as a percentage of national income, taxes are far higher. How can this be? Well, I have a theory that a hundred years ago, common people were under-represented in parliament since for the large part, they either didn't have the power to vote or they didn't use it – so long live the principle of universal suffrage.

But surely the basic principle of any civilsed, democratic society should be that the basic necessities of life should be available to all, regardless of income. As everyone should know, the nation state is a relatively recent development in world history. But what would happen if all barriers between countries were pulled down? Would the world be a more, or less civilised place? Would there be order, or anarchy? We oppose male to female – we may be better advised to oppose male and female to child. The result of the confusion is the tendency of many men to regard their wives as infants – to quote L. Bloom in J. Joyce's Ulysses, p598, 'What to do with our wives.' (in answer to the question, introduced by Joyce himself, 'Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently engaged his mind?'). We want to be grown up. What I want more than anything else is to be able to write without being constantly interrupted by my bladder, etc.

Usually 'adult' words are stronger than 'children's' words. For instance a child might claim to have martyred an acorn by 'stomping' on it. See how much more power is conveyed by the word 'crush'! By their words shall ye know them.

Some people say that motorcycles are dangerous, and others say that there's nothing like the feeling of wind blowing through your hair on an open road.

Some say that smoking is bad for you, and others sing that nothing goes to together better than a cup of coffee and a cigarette. To all the women out there: guess what, you ain't ever going to be men. If you're a woman, you can achieve beauty through make-up. If you're a man, what's the point?

What kind of guy was Jack? Well, put it this way: if there were ever a war between the USA and Canada, Heaven forbid, he'd come out on the side of the Canadians. I mean, look, he'd say, what can you think of a country that calls the final round of its national sport the 'World Series', when obviously no other country's teams are involved? Isn't that enough to show that the only interest Americans have is in world domination? And look how they treat their neighbours, north and south. Most of them aren't even convinced that Canada is a real country, just some sort of northern appendix deprived even of its own telephone code (1, just like the States). And as far as they're concerned, Latin Americans are pretty much there to be bought with US dollars. So for my money, Jack was right on cue on the Canada thing.

Incidentally, France, Spain and Italy are countries that aren't going anywhere. They're rock solid, stable, they won't budge. The US can be pulled either east or west, but it's fairly stable, in a bitty, fragmented kind of way – for the moment. Watch and learn. What if a couple of states should decide to secede, say in thirty years' time? Say California and Washington, or Texas for the sake of argument? Canada, if anything, is steadier than its southern neighbour – that internal conflict creates a powerful steadying dynamic. Let's face it, no Canadian, English or French, ever wants to be American, Chinese or British. The Québéquois might sometimes think that they'd like to be French but that's because the option isn't really open to them. Barring a resurgence of the French Empire which I think can safely be ruled out. And where would they be without the rest of Canada when the rest of the world considers them to be Canadian (even the French, who may take their own language for granted and other people's aspirations to sovereignty seriously, refer to their transatlantic... cousins... as Canadians, with a strong inflection on the 'ens' to mark the distinct and rather charming Québéquois French accent). The Scandinavian countries won't move, though they have little relevance to the rest of the world (on a map showing participation in world events, ranging from white for no involvement to angry red for constant empire-building and interference in neighbours' affairs, Scandinavia would be a very pale shade of pink). With the possible exception of Finland (rose bonbon), whose strategic position next to Russia (bright red) gives it significance while at the same time contributing to its people's relative obscurity – whereas we all have a fairly clear idea as to the identity of the Swedes (pale pink) and... the Norwegians (paler still) for instance.

Bright red: 10

White: 0

Britain: 7

containing England (8), Scotland (6), Wales (4) and Northern Ireland (2).

France: 8

USA: 9

Russia: 10

China: 6

Canada: 4

Peru: 4

Sweden: 4

Norway: 3

Denmark: 4

Finland: 4

Italy: 6

Spain: 6

Germany: 6

Cyprus: 3

Greece: 6

Turkey: 6

India: 5

Belgium: 5

The Netherlands: 5

Switzerland: 1

The Vatican: 1

Faroe Islands: 0

Algeria: 2

Morocco: 2

Iran: 3

Mexico: 4

Japan: 5

An interesting thing about large international brands is that they tend to be local – the latest advert for Persil even carries a typical grammatical mistake from the English vernacular: "They wouldn't clean as well if they was fizzin' in the drawer, would they?"

Possibly the most fervently patriotic of the country's population are the British gays and their Union Jacks.

****

... You know, I watch these gangster movies and at the end, I always think, just when the Padre's lost his only daughter in a random shooting, "well, you chose that kind of lifestyle, what do you expect?" Which may well be what the director of the film intended us to think (I'm referring to the Godfather III), but anyway.

Now, let me tell you about my brother. He's a little screwed up about a few things, so don't worry too much about what he seems to be saying. Given his positon, and his situation, it's only natural.

****

(If cocaine were legalised... People could use it for private consumption in their homes, without fear of arrest or losing their job. Companies would not be able to discriminate against people indulging in a legitimate pursuit, providing an employee's performance were not affected by use of the substance.)

Christian spent an enjoyable two hours watching the British Grand Prix. The spectacle of cars whizzing by accompanied by Murray Walker's enthusiastic chatter, always matching the high-pitched drone of the formula 1 engine, was punctuated by the occasional commercial break. An advertisement for British Airways came on: an American humourist pouring scorn on the United Kingdom (small country, preference for tea over sex, old tradition of polite diffidence, or diffident politeness, etc.). Not for the first time, Christian wondered what kind of a country he'd landed in when his Air France flight from Roissy CDG had touched down at Heathrow three months before. What was it with these people? How could the national carrier, supposedly the pride of the country (Christian's chest puffed up as he thought of Air France at this point), make sales by mocking the British? Could you be successful in England just by being unpatriotic? These people were mad, crazy, dangerous! If they didn't believe in their country, what did they believe in? Europe? That would be a new and interesting development! Or only themselves? Ah, les anglo-saxons... a byword in France at least, and probably across the world, for selfishness, materialism, "pragmatism"... a country without ideals, a nation of hobbits preferring to think about gardening, home improvements, house prices (as Christian had gathered from the few chances he had had to listen in on conversations between the locals)... he raised his eyes to the sky, shook his head and refocussed his thoughts on the race.

When Christian brought the subject of the advert up with a few of his newly-made English friends, he was a little surprised by their response.

"Ah, but you see, it's not the national carrier, we've also got British Midland," said Lewis.

With that, the subject was summarily closed, and the conversation moved back to houses and gardens. Christian wanted to scream. It's not the point, he wanted to cry out. No one cares about British Midlands! But he felt that an invisible wall had been raised around the rest of the group, placing him firmly on the outside.

He went home feeling depressed. That evening, he confided with a friend in France who had moved back to Rouen after spending three years in Nottingham.

"You have to understand," said his friend, "they don't take kindly to being criticised by foreigners."

"PJ O'Rourke is a foreigner."

"Who?"

"PJ O'Rourke. The American comic who appeared in the advert."

"Yes, but with Americans it's different."

"So the remark about British Midlands was deliberate?"

"Of course! The guy was confusing you, closing you out. Actually, it's quite subtle: he's expressing the fact that you still have a great deal to learn about the country, so basically shut up, under the cover of imparting information. And, of course, very politely. I'm sure that you didn't have a clue what was going on. Why do you think we call them the perfidious Albion?:

"But I already knew that Britain has two airlines!"

"That's not the point. Are you saying that you still believe the old myth about British fair play?"

"What a bunch of salauds!"

"Yeah, but they do make good adverts. You just got unlucky. Cheer up, you'll get used to them. They're very sensitive people, that's all."

****

In the 00s there was empire.

In the 10s there was war.

In the 20s came the fox-trot.

In the 30s there was trouble.

In the early forties there was war (continued).

In the late 40s there was peace.

In the 50s we had angry young men.

In the 60s came the swingers.

In the 70s there was the oil crash and all the evils of the time: inflation, strikes, chaos, etc.

In the early 80s, came Thatcherism and monetarism – and Mitterrand in France. Something of a historical irrelevance.

In the mid to late 80s, there was Gorbatchev.

In the early 90s, the walls came tumbling down. A thrilling, ecstatic time, as communism finally surrendered.

And since then? Well, not much, if you exclude Europe, hardly show-stopping stuff. We are becoming more parochial. The world may be turning into a global village, to quote Mrs Clinton, but doesn't that say it all? Let's face it: it's all getting a bit boring.

If the world were a perfect place, would anyone want to live in it? If the world were a perfect place, nothing would happen. Journalists would be redundant (hurray!). Conceptually, a perfect world is possible to imagine (just). Historically, we have no information to suggest that such a place ever existed. The world is ever-changing, it has no beginning and it has no end. The only thing we can do is seek to improve on our own personal circumstances. We can create perfection, however: in poetry, sculpture, painting and music. All the arts. Including cinema. The Americans are very bad at creating perfection: they're too obsessed with improving the material world, which can never be perfect, where perfection has no meaning. How can we improve on something created by God? I would argue that God put us on earth so that he could develop a decent art collection – that's what our purpose is in life. For notice one characteristic: art cannot be uncreated. Once it exists, it exists. It is eternal. Man has something which, in a way, gives him the ability to touch perfection: he has taste. There is such a thing as a perfect meal, a perfect glass of wine, a perfect bar of chocolate, a perfect cigarette; which is why, I believe, we crave these things. Will the world have made a greater advance when smoking has been eradicated, or when its ill-effects have been eliminated by science, something of which we can easily conceive: a cure is found for the related illnesses? Passion drives us on – without passion we can produce no art. Art makes life worth living. It sustains us and nourishes the soul. We live for art. Is it art? It's art all right – it says so on the cover. But the thirst for perfection goes on, so I'm not too worried about the future of this old place. I'm glad we got through July 4^th all right though.

Lord Bragg again – 2000 years of Christianity. The world is – you can't explain it. You can find possible explanations for it, eg. the heresies of the Cathars in the 12^th century, but no real proof. M. does believe in the old privileged thing in the Protestant chapel. I should ask her what she thinks when she sees a Gothic cathedral in all its splendour. No I should forget about her. In Britain, we like to support the underdog. It's part of our culture, tradition and heritage. Mr Blair and his team are about breaking that tradition. If I were Mr Blair, I would stop talking about the country's values and get on with the job of running the place. Hospitals, schools, transport and jobs, Mr Blair, that's what it's all about. After all, it's what he was elected for.

There are subjects about which I know nothing; and when my mind comes to study them, it unfailingly draws a blank. One such subject is the difference in offensiveness between the French word 'merde' and the English word 'shit'. That there is a difference, there can be no doubt; 'merde' more accurately translates into English as 'damn', as reported ten or fifteen years ago in an admirably satirical work entitled 'Parlez-vous franglais?' Yet their literal translations are the same, which just goes to show how much more sensitive we Brits are than the French: dung, excrement, the odorous produce of the nether parts of living beings from the top of the Animal Kingdom down to the bottom; the fertiliser, the giver of life, the feast of flies and toddlers (who know no better). An Argentinian tribesman, upon discovering the encampment of a battalion of conquistadores, thought by his countrymen to be gods, is said to have proclaimed, "They may be gods but their shit smells bad like ours[6]." It may have been an Aborigine or an indigenous New Guinean. And the invaders may not have been Spanish. Who can have reported this tale, I am unable to say, since it is well known that South American tribesmen were eradicated by their conquerors with their muskets and the germs which they brought with them.

Halloween, 2002. Advertisements in today's The Independent (2/11)

Front page (colour): British Airways – Nice return from 99 pounds

Page 2: Intelligent Finance – A cheaper mortgage at 3.8%, that's what offsetting means to the man pictured on the ad (3.35% discounted rate for three months, 4.9% APR variable)

Page 3: Omega – James Bond's choice (the Seamaster) in Die Another Day (out soon). Check out www.omegawatches.com for further details

Page 4 (full page): Dixons – Packard Bell 'fantastic photo PC Package including Kodak Camera, Printer and FREE Software for 999 pounds' or PC Package with Printer, Scanner and Webcam (their caps) for 799 pounds, free portable TV by Phillips with selected packages, Samsung 42" Widescreen Projection TV for 1615 pounds or 42" Plasma Widescreen TV for 2999 pounds, Thomson 28" Widescreen TV Package with DVD Player and NICAM Stereo Video for 499 pounds, colour handheld PC by Compaq for 449 pounds (save 50), Toshiba DVD/CD-RW Laptop for 999 pounds, JVC Exclusive Digital Camcorders (three on offer)

Page 5:

Minolta – weatherproof binoculars for 79.99 pounds ('ideal for almost any outdoor pursuit')

Firstdirect – credit card at 14.9%, 6 bottles of wine when you open an account

Page 6: The Link – 100 free text messages with Orange Siemens A50 for 69.99 pounds, plus various other offers

Page 7: Opodo – Your flight on your terms (including Paris from 38 pounds return)

Page 8: Homebase – power tools up to half price

Page 9: Zurich – Making it all possible (pigs might fly)

Page 10: Currys – Scary low prices

Page 11:

Bose – Better sound through research

HSBC – Wedding cake with the caption 'Our mortgages are made to last'

Page 12: Phones 4U – phones for you

Page 13 (full page): IBM – "Dreams, vision, ideas and results" – the end of PWC

Page 14: DVD – Double agent – Buy Bond Get Bond Free (www.dvd.co.uk)

Page 15: Flybe – Flyfree with flybe to New York or Paris ('a breath of fresh airline thinking')

Page 16: Alliance & Leicester – Easy saver account (3.5% instant access)

Page 17:

The Independent photo offer – buy two prints get one free

Citibank – Premium Current Account ('over 6 million people would be better off with us')

Page 18:

One.tel – Register and stay in touch for less

Carling Homecoming – 100 Manic Street Preachers tickets to be won ('set to take Cardiff by storm on Monday 18 November') – find out more on www.carlinglive.com

Page 19: no ads – instead a quote by Minister for film, tourism and broadcasting Kim Howells: "I can hardly think of a work of aret that has been produced over the past couple of decades that has any kind of purchase over the public consciousness"

Page 20 – 24: no ads

Page 25: Time – Power studio package for 695 pounds plus other offers ('pay nothing for 9 months')

Page 26 (final page – colour): Woolwich – Pair of shoes in bread basket, with caption 'it's harder to spot when your money's in the wrong place'.

Countries I always had a bad opinion of as a child: South Africa, because of apartheid; China, because of their fondness for torturing people – but then the Chinese also had a language akin to art, fine food and a turbulent 20^th century history that could only strike a lively-spirited adolescent with awe. To my mind, the land depicted in the letters of Jesuit missionaries and the novels of James Clavell (well; Hong Kong) was one of mystery and adventure. India; because of the caste system and sacred cows roaming the streets while people were allowed to go hungry.

****

Ever been interested in the kind of life the writer is living while writing his novel? Well, it's about 8.00am on a Saturday morning. I'm listening to Fashion Nuggets, by Cake, a cracking CD that happens to be particularly well suited to my present mood. I don't have anything special to do so I'll probably spend the day listening to music, reading some book or other (I've just started Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie) and adding a paragraph or two to my continuing story. I woke up fairly early (actually, very early) but I was in bed by midnight which is unusual (usually, I'm up watching TV till 2 or 3 o'clock, rarely surfacing before 9 or 10 the next morning). I awoke with a start, my mind following (my unconscious mind, that is, rudely interrupted by my waking up, and then emerging from bed) a double stream of despair: on the one hand, M., on the other, no job and no career. Prior to waking up, I had been having a particularly aggressive dream involving a fight with my brother. Now, the strangest of dreams that went something like this: I was feeling woefully ill-prepared for an important exam (setting us back eleven years or so). He, on the other hand, was sounding pretty cocky, which is strange because he's four years younger than me and we've never been in class together – we didn't even follow the same course of study after we left school, although we both have a scientific baccalaureate (for which I might have applied myself harder and earned a better grade but never mind). In terms of studies, I have nothing to be ashamed of: any ill preparation was usually off-set by a flexible mind that worked best under pressure, and my results were highly respectable. At school, I consistently finished in the top three of my class, even when through competition the classes were narrowed down by selecting those who were best at mathematics, and the slight dip at the bac was compensated for by my winning a prize in a national all-schools examination (something no one prior to me at my school had ever done). I went on to one of the best preparatory schools in France, Sainte Geneviève, and graduated in one year to the joint-leading business school, ESSEC – a course consisting of business and economics, equivalent I would say to a Master of Science degree from Oxford or Cambridge though considered an MBA. A word of explanation: business schools in France come under the umbrella term of 'Grandes Ecoles' (with the exception of INSEAD), along with engineering schools, agricultural schools (which explains part of the strength of the French agricultural economy) and a few schools of literature and philosophy – not forgetting that monument of the French civil service, ENA (not such a monument, when it comes down to it, only fifty years old or so, when most of the schools go back to Napoleonic times, or at least the early XXth century, and there was much recent talk of having it abolished, but with Jacques Chirac a graduate that's hardly likely for the next few years anyway). And I suppose that one might also add l'Insitut des Etudes Politiques, a sort of LSE, though its calibre is generally regarded as being inferior to the the rest – of course, wonderful if you're into that particular specialist course of study, but one finds that those who selected it rarely had very much choice in the matter. Anyway, as the French saying goes, "Qui peut le plus, peut le moins" – he who can acomplish the most arduous task can also accomplish the least arduous – and there's certainly nothing to compare with the ordeal of the prépa. (There was one student at Sainte Geneviève, slightly more voluble than his ability would normally have allowed, who failed the entrance examination to IEP, along with all the prestigious business schools, at the end of the first year, and was roundly laughed at for his feat, but made up for the slip by joining us at ESSEC the next).... But to conclude on the subject of the dream: my brother and I are getting close to a fight, and it's at the point where the punches are about to break out that I awake in a sweat, and follow through with my double whammy of lost love and thwarted ambition. So that's my life at the moment – the usual rules regarding the reliability of the narrator still apply, particularly as he enters confessional mode.

"Once the rockets are up who cares where they come down,
That's not my department, says Werner Von Braun" (sung with an accent... a bit irresponsible, these Germans... taken from a documentary on the making of the atom bomb on... BBC1 I believe).

("Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme" – Montaigne. Now we're getting somewhere.) New Bacardi advert in Jamaica.

As a writer, when you explain something, the reader expects an example. If you provide an example of something the reader expects an explanation. Why has this example appeared on the page? What's the point? Oh what's the point? That kind of thing. A writer must never disappoint his readers, I've said it before and I'll say it again. A writer must never disappoint his readers. So the purpose of the dialogue below is to remind ourselves of Pierre's continual tussles with fiction (which he secretely regards as an inferior literary form – he is very high-minded our Pierre, wants to be taken seriously). Intertextuality. For instance:

"More than that, there are some things you can't do from the TV anymore – you have to use a remote control."

As the implications of this latest piece of information worked their way through the group's minds, everyone agreed that this was indeed news.

"So if you lose the remote control, you're stuck," said Charlotte, often the group's spokeswoman, quick off the mark, stating the obvious as usual.

"Exactly," replied George.

Clever-cloggs Graham butted in. "That's not necessarily such a big thing. When you think about it, if you lose the keys to your flat, you're stuck as well."

The group weren't much interested in this channel of discussion. I wonder why? A bit too deep perhaps.

"I'm always losing my remote control," chimed in Charlene, "usually it's under a cushion or the dog's got it or something." Or something?

"Oh, Sam's such a rascal. Our one's got teeth marks all over it. Can you imagine!"

"That's because the Japanese have started making rabbit-flavoured remote controls," said Kenny.

Everyone went silent for a second, then laughed. Kenny, like Graham, was always saying unexpected things, but unlike Graham they tended to be funny. A smile immediately draws sympathy from us. It may have something to do with the resistance to gravity it implies, an act of free will. Though smiling is often involuntary. Interesting, that. But not very. Only a little bit. More interesting was MA's father's reaction when he heard that we were getting engaged. "You don't smoke, do you," he asked over the phone. "Or only a little bit." Free? We immediately think: "those people are nice, I could get along with them." So to smile is also to expose one's self, to make one's self vulnerable. But not as much as to smoke. Minor ripples on the surface of life's vast lake. Strange that to smoke is associated in people's mind with the consumption of a packet of cigarettes a day. Marketing, and something else. Each man acts as if he were immortal. Well, maybe not, but the relationship to death is complex. Why should a 75-year-old policeman chase after a 78-year-old ex-convict for a crime committed forty years earlier? Because the policeman sees himself as a policeman and nothing else. He is the law and the law is everlasting.

The character of Jean Valjean had a deep effect on me in my youth.

But Hugo creates an Inspector Javert who is faceless, and that may be the single flaw in an otherwise-perfect novel. Typical that his character should be played by Anthony Perkins in the film adaption by Glenn Jordan. And when Javert commits suicide by jumping into the Seine, is Hugo saying that evil should be removed from the world by whatever means available? Or does he make a point about the law's contingency (in the metaphysical sense)? To love is to be on fire. Leadership – the insatiable curiosity for life. Insatiable: you can never stop learning, never turn off to the signals coming to you from all sides. Every documentary you knowingly miss on TV causes a small panic attack; any unread article in a respected journal represents a mine of knowledge too valuable to be ignored.

Let me tell you a little about myself: as a child, I preferred Trumpton to Camberwell Green – because Trumpton had a fire engines and little boys like fire engines. There's no doubt about it. The idiocy of the Americans was confirmed to my by hearing the wailing siren of the fire engine outside my lodgings every night on the campus of Stanford University, CA. They honked and they parped and they screeched and they drove me round the bend. That and the primal screen that the undergraduates launched into on the eve of their exams (truly chilling). At a more advanced age, action men were fun. There was a satisfying robustness to their joints that you couldn't imagine with a Barbie doll. They held their position well. And the fuzzy crew cut. Any early homosexual thoughts were thankfully sublimed but I blush all the same at the memory of my youthful escapades. Call them journeys of self-discovery.

Here's a bit of unreconstructed French arrogance to bait all the French bashers out there: I think that most people aspire to being French, but know that they never can be. This leads to resentment, which leads to French-bashing. The same people lambasting the French at every turn are the ones peppering their speech or articles with expressions taken from French whenever they spot a suitable gap in the English language – "jeunesse dorée", "plus ça change" (one that I hate, since it's never used in French), etc. I shouldn't be complaining: as long as knowledge of French is seen as sign of sophistication my future is secured. If sophistication is a desirable state to achieve. It does all seem a bit ridiculous however. Raison d'être, by the way, is fine, because it's merely a French expression that's been adopted by the English language. In case people here had forgotten, the reverse happens all the time (le weekend, le hot dog, etc, even le brunch, which any right-thinking Briton should immediately disavow as a term to describe the late-morning Sunday breakfast involving eggs – usually scrambled, or benedict, but never fried – blinis, salmon and sour cream – known, a little oddly, as crème fraîche across the channel but I propose that we defer to my compatriots on these matters, etc, usually shared by trendy Parisians around one or two o'clock, always on a Sunday, depending on how late the previous night's proceedings went on till) – the only word I ever objected to was le happy end, which I tried to explain was the American version of the correct British term 'happy ending', though I don't remember anyone ever paying any notice. Of course, having a French name makes one an easy target on these fair isles, though fashion changes and Arsenal's storming march through the Premiership with the aid of Arsène, Thierry, Sylvain and friends provides us expats with welcome relief.

In terms of barbarity, lawsuits are one step up from duelling, but all the same, they could hardly be regarded as civilised.

It seems to me clearly evident that every development in current affairs is a step towards Scottish independence. Why not just have it over and done with? Let's face it: in the minds of everyone up and down the country, the Scots who form part of the government are more anglo-scottish than British. To Scots, they are tainted with a more-or-less mild form of collaborationism; people in northern England probably regard them as traitors, and view them with contempt; in their own minds, they are uprooted and rootlesss – witness Robin Cook's embarrassing flirtation with Cool Britannia; to people from the south, they have espoused southern issues and are a sign of England's continuing success at recycling its northern neighbours under the convenient cover of the Union; but to no one are they British, and Britain remains a conceptual framework under which people, particularly the English, hide their feelings of parochial nationalism. To these people, to proclaim themselves as British is to form an association with enduring imperialist values, rather than to express a feeling of belonging (true of the French, the Italians, the Spanish or the Poles) or a sense of their own identity. It's an old joke: vegetarians eventually develop flat teeth and end up looking like cows. But is there any truth in the saying 'you are what you eat'? It's an idea I'll explore in greater depth at some other time because it really is rather tedious. But remember the bit about the flat teeth and the udders. (Parliamentary Under-secretary at the DTI, The Times, 21^st July 1999: "Under the Conservatives a uniquely English-minded Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher, had ruthlessly centralised powers in London.")

Does anyone need any more reason than that to distrust Labour? Of course, the poor chap's probably doing his best. What he doesn't see is W. Hague's long-term strategy of whipping the nation into such a frenzy that everyone comes rushing back into the conservatives' – unionist – arms before the next election. It's a cunning plan, but one that leaves the Scottish Nationalists with plenty of scope for their own shennanigans. Roll up, and take a seat by the ringside: this promises to be interesting. My money's on... I'm not saying. Hague's smart enough but... they should have ignored his speech altogether and not sent in an undersecretary to try to put out the flames.

The big thing for Californians – North Californians – is hypocrisy. That's the thing. That's the thing they don't like. "Ahem... tricky one this. Why should government stop people taking drugs, when we're all going to end up in the same place anyway? And why should it concentrate on improving life expectancy? What difference does five years make? Where does this interest in human welfare come from? Why do we care for our fellow human beings? Morbid people are universally laughed at, or avoided, and we all, at some level, laugh in the face of death... which brings us back to drugs. Why worry if some individuals choose to court the Grim Reaper more assiduously than others? And if drugs are under the searchlight of the law, why not sky-diving and rock-climbing? Well, for one thing, no one associates rock-climbing or sky-diving (or motorbikes for that matter) with crime, addiction and South American drug barons... so you could say that society has a point. And it's hard to stop someone from climbing a rock-face... though, as with drugs, a slight miscalculation may result in instant death. On the other hand, it's the way the law stands at the moment that renders much of the upstream activity illegal... to be continued...

For all the appearance of tolerance that they strive to achieve, societies – all societies – are very set in their rules. In this sense, it could be said that French society is simply less hypocritical than British: it brings the rules out into the open, where they may be challenged (and frequently are). The British frown at anti-social behaviour; the French make songs about it (Renaud being a notable example with his Société, tu m'auras pas).

For what these meanderings are worth, they are anchored in fact, or at the very least popular perception (which is preferable to fact, after all, allowing as it does for subjectivity) – for instance, the British are considered hypocrits across the Channel. Stereotypes may or may not be grounded in fact – more interestingly, they provide a viewpoint or an angle from which to study a given set of circumstances – the point in the foreground from which a painter paints his canvas. If the painter is sufficiently artful, we forget that the scene exists first of all in the artist's eye, that the point of view seized upon by this artist is an integral, essential part of our appreciation of the work. In the case of literature, even the most racist, nauseating angle can bring forth beauty, albeit of a dark and frozen kind, for what we see in the end, when the writer sees only his object, is the object seen through the eyes of the writer – and the subjective interaction between the writer and his object, that humanity, is far more potent than any underlying theme – the hate is dispelled (to a degree), leaving beauty in its place (of a peculiar sort – think Snow White's stepmother before she drinks the potion)... if only the writer is observant and artful enough. And if he is not, it is the writer we attack, never his object – hence, in art, the sacred nature of the subject matter is always preserved.

The brain is a processing unit. It processes experiences, helping to ensure the survival of the individual – in other words, much of the brain's activity is autonomous. The quicker the processing, the quicker experiences are packaged and the easier it is for the individual to advance. The greater the number of experiences, the longer the period of time involved. I would theoreticise (with next to no specialist knowledge on the subject) that the standard time it takes to get over certain experiences is relatively similar from one individual to the next.

14/10/99 Thought Chain

Anatole Kaletsky's article on the London mayorship

–> Start with Birmingham, move on to London next?

–> Test markets. London first, or somewhere smaller (London: 1/4 or 1/3 of the UK population

–> Last night's chess match. Forced errors ("une illusion saine et profitable), convincing win

–> My friend Billy – "greatest triumph" (for me), he being something of a master (once played against Kasparov in a student match)

–> Samuel Davies: also based in Orléans, working for the same company as Benedict

–> Dominic, recruitment consultant, based in London, friend of Samuel's, ex-lycée

–> James, friend on the fringes

The lower we go in British society, the closer we get to the criminal classes. There's nothing honest about the 'honest' working class. They all think they're carrying on the work of Robin Hood and his merry band of smarmy buggers. Cockney culture stinks of the Thames at low tide, circa 1850. A foul stench of thieving rascals, low-life villains and dregs of the seedy underworld. Favourite phrase, epitome of cockney culture, containing as it does that mixture of rogueishness and wry humour, the nudge and the wink of the professional pickpocket as he lifts the wallet of his unsuspecting victim: "it fell off the back of a lorry."

Basically, the British are very "in your face". They are a very deluded people, as they believe their country to be the cradle of humanity. They are an inward-looking people, with a deep sense of envy towards their more successful neighbours. I think I have been giving my fellow Londoners too little credit – behaving towards them as if they were islanders when clearly they are not. For a good stereotype of a Londoner, start with Adrian Mole but add flair, panache, style and sex-appeal. Particularly if they work in advertising.

2/11/99 Reading list (ever increasing)

James Joyce – Ulysses

Proust – A la recherche...

3/11/99 – 12.38pm. Let us look at something interesting. The creative power of language is much-misunderstood (I believe). I mean: its power to alter in a fundamental way the world around us. If we accept the platonic distinction between the World of Things and the World of Ideas, then clearly books belong in both categories simultaneously, as do paintings, plays, sculpture and all other works of art. But what of the humble chair? Plato tells us that a chair, in so far as it has a physical presence which registers with the human senses, belongs to the World of Things. But if we consider its essential characteristics, the common set of attributes by which we define 'chairness', its place is in the World of Ideas. Which leads us to the irrefutable conclusion that Plato's world was a world without art – at least, not in the modern sense. His model of the Universe collapses when he is asked to distinguish between an ordinary wicker chair on a shadowy wooden porch, or a bench in a park in any city in the world, and the self-same object given pride of place in a temporary exhibition at the Tate – a question which, famously, was never put to Socrates in any of his dialogues. But that was not the point I was trying to make. More problematic still: a book has a clear physical presence: we can feel it, touch it, hold it, it has mass, a texture and various other physical attributes. But what of a play acted out on a stage? What of music? What of ballet? The answer is that their presence in the World of Things is real, but fleeting: if we define physical reality as above ('that which offers sensible purchase'), then ballet, music and drama (not to mention opera) are 'real': they are perceptible to the eye and to the ear, or merely to the ear in the case of music – when ballet and dance, strictly speaking, are merely perceptible to the eye. But their presence is fleeting: once the dance is over, we are left with... not merely thin air, but unmoving thin air (for sound is no more than air in movement, animated by waves registering in the depths of our ears by aid of neural connections via what is known in medical parlance as the eardrum – meaningful vibrations, i.o.w.). In this sense, ballet (for example) should be compared not with a book, but with the reading of a book – it exists, virtually, in the sheet music[7] and in the precise sequence of steps which make up the choreography of the artist's work. Though here again, a new difficulty arises: for ballet, dance, theatre, opera and cinema rely on a physical manifestation in order to exist in any but a virtual sense – in a complete and meaningful way – whereas the same cannot be said of literature or music in its broadest definition. Once again, however, this was not the point that I am trying to make. To some extent, of course (and this will conclude my parenthesis) theatre is 'literature dressed up'. This observation may also (accurately) be made of all art of a cinematographic nature. And where a book relies on a sequence of words for its construction, a piece of music relies on a sequence of notes – a code if not a language in itself. Opera brings the two, music and literature, together in a sometimes harmonious ensemble. Music and literature, those charming bedfellows, though sometimes recognised as art forms in their own right – it would be tempting to add, and rightly so – serve also as the fundamental components of drama, ballet, opera and film. Art – painting – and sculpture too, may serve as building blocks for these composite art forms – but they exist as well on their own separate planes (approx 591 words to 'planes'[8]).

To return to the original argument, which read, "The creative power of language is much misunderstood (I believe). I mean: its power to alter in a fundamental way the world around us", let us consider the phrase uttered by Michael Douglas' character, Gordon Gecko in the 1980s power flick Wall Street, "Greed is good". Up until the point at which the sentence was first heard in cinemas around the world ('movie theaters' for our American readers), greed was good – from the second the statement had been made, however, it ceased to be so. It instantaneously became despised, reviled, a symbol of an age from which people sought to distance themselves as quickly as possible – resulting in the Great Misnomer, that great media invention, the "caring 90s". I watched a documentary on British television last night. It was an American documentary and the narrator was describing the origin of the word 'lady-bugs'. Only when the insects appeared on the screen with their distinctive red and black markings was I able to satisfy myself that the narrator was in fact referring to creatures more commonly known as 'lady-birds'. I marvelled at the narrator's inventiveness: the 'ladybug', he explained, came from an old European legend according to which the insects were the companions of the Virgin Mary – 'The lady's bugs'. The point of art is not to cause discussion. Insofar as her exhibit in this year's Turner Prize, a soiled and unmade bed, clearly has discussion as its sole endearing purpose, it cannot be considered art, and the Tate Gallery's selectors for the prize ought to be taken discreetly out to the back and shot. They should not be allowed a blindfold, however, instead they should be made to face Titian's "Virgin Mother and Child" and give a ten-minute presentation on "What constitutes art" which would be recorded and made available to visitors of the Tate on cassettes complete with tape recorder, to be returned at the end of the visit. Clearly, the documentary's research assistant had been in a creative frame of mind, and my only regret was that the 'European' country where the myth – ahem – originated was never named in the programme, as to my knowledge Britain (and possibly Ireland) are the only countries in Europe to claim English as their official language and have been for the last five hundred years or so. If 'ladybug' (which I believe to be the true American version of the word (confirmed by the CED, yes so that must be right, origin 'Our Lady, the Virgin Mary') is derived, say from German (possible, given their influence on American culture) or Swedish, it would be interesting to hear our Teutonic or Scandinavian neighbours' version of the tale (following word count to be conducted automatically – approximately 550 words added since last count). My present musings, of course, do not constitute art. I can write this as comfortably as Magritte wrote 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' beneath a picture of a wooden implement used for smoking tobacco. For nor were his paintings art either, and he couldn't even draw properly, and they belong – all of them – on the same scrap heap as Tracy Emin's unmade bed.

I reread the first paragraph of the preceding page and realise that the 'famously' between 'question' and 'which was never asked' jars somewhat to the era – so out it goes.

I aim to encompass absurdity by drifting imperceptibly between the sensible (in the usual, non-metaphysical sense, meaning 'having or showing good sense or judgement', not a very attractive definition, that) and the ridiculous – this is an aim which has come to me most recently. Strictly speaking, I ought not to signpost such a brazen objective, but leave it to the well-advised critic to sift through the dross to find the occasional nugget.

17.40 Jean-Luc et Didier sont faits pour s'entendre. Didier vient de Martinique: mon frere apprecie cette ile; il est noir: mon frere aime bien les noirs. Evidemment, cela risque d'etre catastrophique – la vague de souvenirs qui risquerait de l'engloutir et lui feraient remonter six ans en arriere, retouvant la belle Clothilde, songeant à sa deuxième annee de prepa... c'est ainsi, une amitie ne peut qu'accroitre la part de Bien dans le monde. Nous verrons en tout cas la profondeur de ses sentiments pour Aline. Bien sur, son manque d'imagination risque de le sauver; mais si, au contraire, c'est l'imagination qui triomphe de lui, cette rencontre pourrait bien finalement marquer un point d'inflexion dans l'evolution de la conscience humaine.

12.40am

Right. After a weird and wonderful day's writing it's back to my first obsession. I'm not interested in the absurdities of life. I'm interested in what makes us human. So back to smoking, a useful trait to examine as it would appear to provide the clearest evidence of what we term 'free will'. Does not smoking make someone a nicer person? Shouldn't it be how someone smokes that matters? I know that smoking carries ample negative connotations for non-smokers – I wanted to know what people saw in the habit. The saying, 'once a smoker,' carries a shred of meaning after all – it's like saying that tastes, once acquired, are carried on throughout life: as with strawberries, chocolate, beer, wine, cherries, apples, kiwi fruit, sultanas, grapes, candyfloss, fresh cream, whipped cream, sour cream, sour grapes, raisins, tomatoes, rum, lime, lemon, brown sugar, ice, lobster, prawns (king-size), shrimps, crab, olives, onions, shallots, most cheeses you could mention and much else besides. And I believe that so-called cravings for cigarettes should be considered in those terms. It's getting late – more on that subject (perhaps) tomorrow... the usual rules about the reliabilty of the narrator prevail...

4/11/99 12.58pm. Douglas' character tells us that the world we live in is twisted. How could greed be good? He treads the ground of dangerous moral relativism – this hardly needs spelling out but if greed is good then its opposites generosity and altruism must be bad, unless bad is good and good is bad and each thing is equal to its opposite angreed, as we understand it, is sometimes good but does not need spelling out to us.

6/11/99 – upon waking up

Key words and phrases:

- growing older

- feeling

- ugly vs beautiful (eg. 'the ageing process')

- style

11.21am

Having just read J. Diamond's column in The Times, this is a conversation I would love to have. The scene takes place in a small party somewhere, with about six or seven people present, and at least one woman I'm keen on having sex with. Someone, let's call him John, starts off the conversation.

John: – Do you play poker?

Me: – No, I've given up.

John (with a wry expression on his face): – Why, were you losing too much?

Me (unexpectedly, genially): – Yep.

At this point, the discussion moves on to another subject. But the seed has been sown. John, confusedly, feels that he has lost points. No one knows how much money I lost at poker, if indeed I ever lost any at all; no one knows if the sum was material. My smile would seem to indicate that it was no big deal... but if it led me to stop playing... was I badly burnt, or did I stop just in time? My experience, the first and most important ingredient for a good romantic hot-pot, is intrigue. Sure enough, the woman John and I both had our eyes on is looking at me quizzically. The Mona Lisa smile. Hardly a raised eyebrow but there's enough there for me to know that she's interested, intrigued by our little exchange. If she senses danger, she's hooked. How could she not? The initiative is hers (in appearance). Let's call her Susan. She remains silent for the moment, as the conversation moves boringly on to house prices and interest rates. But soon enough, someone mentions coffee (the host, no doubt) and creates something of a stir. Sitting not too far from me, but away from the main group. which includes John, Susan seizes her chance. Feigning casual interest, and lighting a cigarette, she moves her chair over slightly towards me and returns to the subject of poker. By the end of the evening, I have her telephone number and the promise of a drink and a chat 'over a game of cards'.

11.51 At the end of the day, the French have it. Whenever the British get a little too big for their boots, they shrug their shoulders and say, "l'Angleterre, c'est une île."

(In Léon-style accent) Some people find life very tough, and some people find life very easy. If there is any injustice in the world, it is this. Why should life be easy for some, and difficult for others? (snap out of accent, resume normal mode of speech). My secret intuition at this point is that life is easy for no one. The Romans' answer was to 'let them have bread and let them have games'. But did those at the top live so differently from those at the bottom?

12.28pm A sentence to keep (by J. Diamond): "And some days, I go and play poker in a smoky room full of hunched men and women in which idle chatter is positively frowned upon."

– Calls to mind, of course, a famous painting by Paul Cézanne of two men sitting at a table with clay pipes in the mouths (playing cards, possibly, I'm not sure, they could be). Was J. Diamond thinking of this when he wrote the above?

Strangely, I sometimes write 'I' when I mean to write 'he' – like in the last sentence, "Was J. Diamond thinking of this when I wrote it?" It doesn't happen very often – twice, perhaps, in every hundred pages – but it's such an odd mistake that I think that I should mention it.

07/03/2001 Last night, Panathenaikos against Manchester United. Pan scored 25mn (approx). Man United playing with one man, Fabien Barthez in goal, and even he was unable to keep the Greeks off the scoring sheet (unsighted by four offside P. attackers, judged 'not to be interfering with play' – like hell, they weren't – soooooo interfering that Barthez let the ball slip into the net – and that was it, one nil to the Panathenaikos.)

Young girls want to be grown up and the first thing they associate with adulthood is smoking. Nothing can match the iconic power of the cigarette. A thin, elegant key that opens up a world of pleasures, a world of sex... right now I'd like one myself – but first I've got to get through this Big Mac.

"Vous êtes devenu communiste, Picasso."

"Oui, mais on ne me le reprochera jamais. A d'autres, on le reprochera. A moi, jamais."

"Que voulez-vous dire?"

"Eh bien... vous voyez, l'artiste bénéficie de certains privilèges. Moi, je..."

Part III

M.

Chapter 1

Pierre had initially thought very little about his girlfriend’s past liaison with his brother. From what he had gathered the relationship had been fleeting and they had both felt more comfortable reverting to their status of ‘just good friends’. It was his brother, in fact, who had introduced him to Marion. The Comedy Store, Leicester Square, Christmas, 1993. An attractive brunette, demure and well-mannered. Enough to make you sick, thought Pierre. Why did his brother have all the luck?

A few months later, on a sunny day in Paris, he brought up her ‘indiscretion’.

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

“Yes, I think it does,” he replied.

She immediately broke down in tears. (Pierre had been reflecting that her bare arms were just a little chubbier than he would have liked, which may have accounted for the relative heartlessness of his answer).

He traced his subsequent torment back to that moment. Why, why, had he not held his tongue? When their relationship ended, a few short weeks later, he opened his new, burgundy leather personal organiser and wrote down his mea culpa – a list of the mistakes he had made and would learn from in the future. He entitled it: A Catalogue of Errors. The last he barred out: “Not asking her mother for permission to marry M.”

Why was he reluctant to bring her mother into the equation? Pierre valued truth above all else. The last point was too tentative. Formal though her family could be, it was M’s mother who had encouraged her to break with convention in the first place, telling her that she was completely entitled to propose to him. So she had, after a snowy weekend together in Switzerland.

... To which his answer had been, he remembered with a shudder, “not yet”. That had been in February, in the early days of their relationship.

Was she too young for him? Five years younger, eighteen to his twenty three. Some of the details of their meeting were hazy but the impression she had made was clear in his mind: attractive and posh. Her signet ring remained hidden on that occasion – it was a cold night and she had a tendency to use the end of her oversized raincoat as mittens. More to the point, however, she aroused very little interest in him – indeed, they had even argued over the use of cannabis, which he considered immoral.

Intrigued, nonetheless, he had been pleasantly surprised to see her again two days later in the bowels of an amusement arcade near Piccadilly Circus. Over games of shufflepuck with her, his brother and a certain Dimitri, friend of his brother's, he did his best to flirt casually throughout the evening. They went on a fairground ride together. On his way home that night, Pierre was a little surprised to discover that he had her telephone number in his pocket.

A week or so later, she called him in Paris. She was coming over for a rallye, a kind of debutante ball, and would it be all right if she stayed in his apartment for the weekend? Pierre, who lived alone in a small flat with a kitchen, a single bedroom and very little room for someone to sleep on the floor, agreed with alacrity. The Carrefour de l’Odéon, with its cinemas, statue of Danton and bustling cafés lay just around the corner; in the other direction, the street led to the theatre which gave the area its name and the Jardin du Luxembourg beyond. A fine trap for an impressionable eighteen-year-old from London!

Three months after that, they had moved in together to a large studio in the rue Notre Dame des Champs, still in the 6^th arrondissement, with a large patio, which she had found for him.

Chapter 2

Seven years later, after an evening spent with a friend and an ex-colleague of his in one of Paris’s trendier night spots near the place de la Concorde, Pierre had a moment of epiphany: MA had used him in order to gain revenge on his brother! Suddenly, everything fell into place: her unexpected forwardness; her admission, a few weeks after they had met, in her family’s chalet in Switzerland: “I don’t like your brother very much”; the “incompatibility” between them which she brought up continually towards the end of their relationship; the food she brought up continually as a result of her bulimia; her suicide attempt four months after their separation in June. The violence and the aggression. The passion with which she gave herself to him and the suddenness with which that passion died. The deceit! And the lies, the treachery, the humiliation...

He composed a letter in his head: “Dear M, I have a question for you which you may wish to answer to my face. When you went out with me, you knew that you were going out with a recent ex-lover’s older brother. Why did you do it? Was it out of a carefree disregard for convention, or was it for revenge? My telephone number is _______. Give me a call so that we can arrange to meet. I suggest La Balançoire, next to the Louvres.” He imagined the meeting: she would confess; would struggle to find the words; he would cut her off with a simple “I forgive you”. Upbeat and lighthearted now, he would say “You still love me. So what are you doing with Dimitri? This was the snag, of course: he had recently learnt that she and D were engaged to be married. Indeed, they might already have tied the knot. Would this be a problem? M would expect him to take care of everything. Could they obtain an annulment, if necessary? A divorce might be more practical... but would it matter? What did he care about the nature of her attachment to Dimitri?

Sleep came quickly. When he awoke next morning he decided to write a diary and keep a catalogue of all the things he had written to, or about her, over the years. There were many. Shuffling through the papers, he found a poem he had composed for her, several years before.

I sensed that love,

My faithful friend,

Was ready to depart.

A strange deception,

In the end,

Which struck me

To the heart.

It seemed to be saying,

“There’s no point in staying,

I’ve seen all I wanted to see.

I know you’re a sport,

So hold on to the fort,

I’m sure all your friends would agree.”

And then she left.

I wanted to explain to her

How much was left undone.

I wanted to declare to her

The moon, the stars, the sun.

But somewhere deep within me,

I knew that she was right.

For all my good intentions,

She left without a fight.

My love is a favourite book,

Lent to a friend or lost.

My shelves hold many tales,

Yet as I flick through their pages

My thoughts will ever return

To the story I love the best.

He found a long letter he had recently written but held back from sending.

“Dear M,

As usual, events conspire to keep you in my thoughts. This time, it’s the film ‘Le Magnifique Destin de M’. I read in today’s Sunday Times that it was coming out in the UK under the shortened title ‘M’. (Previous occasions when references to you, your name or your initials have popped up innocently and sweetly to intrude on my sense of inner calm: reading ‘La Souveraine Campagne’, by Alain Jules, soon after we split up in June 1994 and discovering that the main character was a touchingly naive, charming French protestant girl from Savoie; applying to Harvard Business School, in 1996, located in Boston, Massachusetts (MA); sifting through CVs last year, while preparing the recruitment forum I organised in October, many of which carried that badge of scholastic achievement, a Master of Arts (MA) in something or other).

Each occasion serves to rekindle the flames of emotions which ought, you might imagine, to have been extinguished in the seven years or so since our original parting. I struggle on regardless, developing an ever-darker sense of humour in order to make sense of the little ironies which life continually throws in our faces. Just as our victories stem from our need to compensate for our previous defeats.

And to continue in the same rich vein of irony which seems to be informing this letter, ‘M’ is a film about the hope of triumph over despair, the treasures of inspiration and feeling to be found in the minutest details of everyday life: the colours are all vivid, the lives of the characters are all steeped in tragedy and pathos and yet never entirely untouched by the magic wand of Faith and Charity’s little sister Hope (in this instance playing under the guise of the film’s heroine, M), the lightness of touch displayed by the film’s director, Jean-Christophe Manon (‘The Grocery Store’, ‘Space Invaders 3’) sweeps away the weariness of the audience and leaves it feeling communally exhilarated. What cinema should be about. A true piece of regenerative art. A gem.

So I will continue (if you will allow me) to press against the battlements of your own inner calm and look for every instance of ‘le chaos purificateur de la vie’ (to quote M herself).

Here is an extract of a letter I almost wrote to the Times:

‘Dear Sir,

Although I know that I can write, I never seem able to find the right format to express my ability. Letters to ex-girlfriends, emails to friends, minutes to company meetings, all seem to fall short of the resonance and weightiness which I need to impress my talent on a wider audience. Write a book, you may say, and this is indeed an avenue which I have explored of late. But it is such a laborious process.

What I really need is my own newspaper column. A place where I can bring to the fore my experience of life (I am 31), my personal take on what it means to be French with a British background, my views on PY Gerbeau’s unfair demise, the supremacy of Euro Disney over any building that any English architect has ever designed and the dangers of placing prepositions at the end of sentences, or even individual clauses.

Here is something I wrote recently in connection with the news that ‘Trafalgar Day’ was to be made a new national holiday:

'Britain's greatest day came 196 years ago. On that day in October, Nelson's fleet saw off Napoleon's at Trafalgar. Nothing since then has ever come close – victory over Germany in 1918 and 1945, defeat of Argentina more recently after their invasion of the Falklan Islands – nothing. Truly, that day in 1805 marked Britain's coming as a Great Nation. Its politicians dictated their will to a third of the globe, its navy ruled the oceans and its merchants spread prosperity far and wide. How right then that a National Holiday should be declared to mark that special victory and celebrate the exploits of our forebears! Splendid that an oversight which mars the pages of our history books and must still sadden the hearts of the great admiral's descendants should at last be set right! Fitting, auspicious and so very, very apposite!

'Much has been accomplished since that glorious day. Britain's economy is now the fourth largest in the world by some estimates, the British enjoy a comfortable, almost cushy standard of living, matched by few households overseas; and having spawned numerous variations (the ugliest of which is the American) the English language is now the lingua franca from Canberra to Calcutta, leaving Bonaparte's adopted tongue, its erstwhile rival, trailing in its wake. Set fair, proud Britannia! Rise above the doubters and let not their doom-laden prophecies tarnish your Majestic grace!'

Not likely to work, is it? I think that the Trafalgar piece may be a little tainted with bombast...

For the past few years, I have spent much of my time painfully aware of the many things to which you might object in me. My rehabilitation has been long and slow but judging by the reactions of people around me, I seem to be getting there. My principal vice, alcohol (as you so rightly pointed out on various occasions) has practically been eradicated. I hardly ever drink at all, and never to excess. Hand on heart, I can look at you straight in the eyes and tell you I’m reformed. Leading a solitary life has been a considerable help: far from temptation, my time is divided between sleep, work, study and exercise – a striving for virtue from which I reap continual rewards.

To answer the question you once asked me, the truth is that I’m still terrified of you – as you, I discovered, are of me (or is that of yourself?). And so we live in mortal fear of bumping into one another in one of the streets of this beautiful city.

I have no girlfriend. Would you break into my life one day and lay waste to everything connected to it again if I did? I know (as you will have gathered) that everything we try to build is an illusion but somehow that thought doesn’t stand up to the very clear memory of you bursting into my flat one morning in rue Notre Dame des Champs to retrieve a saucepan which belonged to you. I was still asleep in bed with Claudia. And fair’s fair, it was always your flat as well as mine, but did you have to banish me to Neuilly-sur-Seine for a year with an apartment overlooking the cemetery?

I think that the only reason I went to Stanford was to escape from the place, it was so horrible. And then California turned out to be just as bad... Ever heard the song ‘Fallen from Grace’? Talk about having my wings clipped... but it was necessary, as I wrote earlier, and here I stand, a reformed character, for which I thank you.

On to other matters: your betrothal to D. You never answered my question properly (no, I wasn’t referring to your mother’s remarriage). Should I deduce that you wished to spare my feelings? How thoughtful of you, in that case! Nevertheless, I regret to inform you that I care nothing about your present situation, married or otherwise. If, after your frequent past denials, you now aspire to a life of domestic bliss, far be it from me to object!

And yet... your thoughts must return sometimes to the weekend we spent in Château d'Oex... and all the moments when it seemed that our love would last forever, when anyone watching would have seen the bond between us – and now the words of the song by Olive come to mind: ‘it is the distance that makes life a little hard / two minds that once were close / now so many miles apart / I will not falter though / I’ll hold on till you’re home / safely back where you belong / and see how are love has grown.

Yours,

Pierre

PS: Apart from the physical attraction which was there from the start, I fell completely head-over-heels in love with you because of the letters you wrote, beautiful, spiritual letters which opened up a world of imagination which I had never stepped into before. The mixture of playfulness, creativity and deep, deep passion was completely intoxicating, bewildering to me... not to mention the poetry: yours, and that of great poets from the past. Lamartine, Hugo, Apollinaire... these are the ones that I remember best.

‘Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,

Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.

J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.

Je ne peux demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.’

‘Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,

Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,

Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisés,

Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,

Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,

Et quand j’arrriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe

Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.’

(Written by Hugo for Léopoldine, his daughter, four years after her death.)

Should I not have foreseen, perhaps, that everything would end in tears? Ah, but when you met me, poetry was not my strong point. I thought what I read was beautiful but I knew nothing of the context. Perhaps if you had written down the whole of the poem, instead of just the first stanza?”

This was the closest that Pierre had ever come to criticising the one he loved. He was all too ready to accept that she was superior to him in every way... when, on one occasion, she pointed out that a compilation CD of his, ‘Classical Music through the Ages’, was a clue to a distinct lack of musical awareness, he had flinched and considered removing the offending object from his collection, otherwise composed of pop, rock, dance and R&B.

Over the next day or so, he was disturbed to discover a form of mental paralysis taking over his movements. He thought of the things that lay ahead – everyday actions, necessary to the regular progression of life, as unavoidable as the fact that a human body left to its own devices will eventually run to the ground. One cannot live off love and fresh water alone, say the practical French...

He thought again about the CD episode: no, he had been choked for words at the time but he had left the compilation in its place. It reminded him of a time at school when someone had written on the blackboard, ‘Bernardi likes Vivaldi – Classical Music for Plebs’. It worried him a little to consider that the old hierarchies were still in place in late twentieth century Britain but there it was. And had that not been part of the attraction of M? This, at her most patronising and snobbish, was what she had tried to lead him to believe. Her grandparents’ manor in Yorkshire, her family tree, the time spent at R... these were the things that placed her above him, she reasoned... Once the early flames of passion had died down, cold analysis would show that an old-fashioned desire for upward mobility, not love, was what was pulling at his heart-strings, and she wasn’t playing, so would he mind if she stepped off the merry-go-round?

Not that long after they had started going out together, Pierre had called M a snob. He actually called her a snob! It was during the weekend in the chalet. She laughed, quite content for him to think her one. In every sense, he was no match for her: though his parents had carved out a niche in London, their origins were modest; hers were aristocratic on her father’s side. There might, on the other hand, be a more straightforward explanation for their separation. Put simply, there was nothing M enjoyed better than a good scrap. As she had written on the back of an envelope of one of her letters, ‘The war of the sexes will never be won: too much fraternising with the enemy!’

Pierre’s view of the world gradually became distorted by his memory of the relationship. Some time in the Spring of 2001 he wrote the following text in the burgundy filofax:

“Civilisation, essentially, is the sharing of knowledge. The quantity of knowledge to be shared is the prime defining factor of a society’s level of advancement. On the basis of this definition, our modern, western societies are clearly more advanced than any that preceded them – even than any other in the world today. Indeed, it raises the question: can civilisation ever go backwards? Can knowledge ever be lost?

To begin with a definintion of knowledge: an accumulation of facts; the wisdom we extract from the knowledge at our disposal; any piece of information that we happen to pick up about the world around us; all of the above.

As time goes by, we appear to become more sensitive. For instance, no one would have dreamt fifty years ago of banning fox-hunting. I confidently predict that in sixty years’ time, horse riding of any kind will be outlawed, at least here in the UK. All it will take for the movement to take off will be for Prince Charles to wake up one morning and say, ‘Hang on, this can’t be right!’ and have his views leaked to the press. In ninety years time, the very idea of mounting a horse will appear repulsive to most children and adolescents.”

Why the reference to horse riding? Where the link to the price of eggs? What eggs do we mean, exactly?

He might have maintained that his view of the world was untainted by the loss of a few feathers in his romantic tussles with M.. Horse-riding, he would argue, was a potent symbol of a certain level of human development – no less cruel in essence than hunting or battery farming, particularly when one considered the numerous accidents in racing, a natural and inevitable extension given man’s thirst for competition (but then he had recently considered taking up against motor racing – was he concerned about the potential damage to the cars?). Perhaps. We would suggest, however, that Pierre, who had never enjoyed racing, saw the sport as the emblem of a society from which he felt excluded. Or, to put it more kindly, a love of horses might have led him to the view that horse and man are forever bonded in amicable symbiosis, their coexistence an endless source of harmony and joy for rider and ridden. He might understand how a horse benefits from being groomed and kept by his trainer. How strong the attachment can be when, from an early age, the horse’s personality begins to shine through... or he might have replied, in that case, why send them out to be killed at Aintree? These things Pierre could not, or would not bring himself to understand. To capture his thoughts most precisely, he could see no difference in principle between the killing of a fox in a hunt and the death of a horse after a bad fall at a racetrack.

In a broader sense, he himself would have been willing to concede that the simple act of writing down his thoughts was itself a sign of the dolorous effect of the collapse of his engagement to M.. Various diary entries give further insight into his continually sombre state of mind.

(First, however, we have for our readers an unfortunate admission. There are certain types of author who enjoy taking their audience to one side and claiming, disingenuously, “We would be perfectly incapable of relating to our esteemed reader the contents of our hero / heroine / minor character’s mind; the mysteries of their conscience are unknown to us; we have no direct connection to their thoughts, no treasure-trove of facts and insights thanks to which we keep a steady hand on the tiller of their evolution. We are as intrigued as you may be by the turns the adventures of Mark, Sophie or Paul may take once we have written their names down on the page.” Such sleight-of-hand (for such it is) may sometimes be conducted with great mastery. William Thackeray uses it in Vanity Fair, André Gide in Les Caves du Vatican and Victor Hugo (more than once) in Les Misérables. It is time to confess that the author of these pages (somewhat against his will, it must be said) also belongs to this category. A little earlier, we wrote of Pierre’s distaste of horse-racing and compared it to his newly-found concern over motor racing. We cast certain aspersions on his intelligence and character, wondering whether he might be worried about the welfare of a Formula One racing car. In the interests of truth and fairness, we should point out that his doubts followed the tragic death of a marshal at a race track, hit by a flying wheel at the scene of an accident. We pledge to provide, in the rest of this volume, as complete and accurate a portrayal of the facts as it is in our power to do, as and when they present themselves to our attention).

“05/06/01. The British nation is on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. Something has gone wrong with Proud Albion... something has not turned out quite right. The time for laughter is passed... now is the time for contemplation.

What are the signs of this discomfiture? A foreigner at the helm of one of the national football teams? The fact that public services seem on the verge of grinding to a halt? The end of the internet dream?

All of these, perhaps, and more. The French have been charting the decline of Britain for decades now. Has it finally reached the point of no return? What happens when a country like England goes into meltdown? Does it take the world with it?

Its neighbours, certainly: Wales, Scotland, Ulster, possibly (but probably not) the Republic of Ireland. Will people miss the English? I think they will. The Australians like to have someone they can beat at cricket, a far-off country that gives them a place in the general scheme of things. The French like the Ongleys who occasionally make it across the Channel: David Lodge, Jane Birkin, Sting... the Germans need to have a neighbour they feel they can look up to, the Italians have an ongoing love affair with English fashion (in particular the raincoat), the Japanese think that Elizabethan architecture is the epitome of style (along with Buckingham Palace, for reasons best understood by them), the Chinese are grateful that Hong Kong was returned to them without loss of face, the Russians remember the war, the Indians thank the English every day for introducing them to the delights of afternoon tea, the South Americans are eternally grateful for the technology brought over by the English (and Scottish) railway and mining engineers, the Spanish must love a nation that produces more eccentrics than Don Quixote could swing his lance at and the Scandinavians and the Dutch feel reassured by the knowledge that, somewhere, there exists a people who speak even better English than they do. The Americans? Ah well, they think that William Hague is the right person to win the election, but maybe not this time round... Which only leaves the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish...

So: France is right. Except when it goes about opposing the US (less frequent, these days, thankfully), France is right.

We will keep the English language, of course. The English language is a great and wonderful thing. We will keep the English as well, though Buckingham Palace will be turned into a hospital and the royal family sent off to permanent exile in the Orkney Islands. The Duke of Edinburgh will be taught the art of civil conversation in the company of a half-a-dozen sheep. The Queen will be encouraged to make herself useful by knitting a few woolly jumpers...

I stray from the point: what is wrong with Britain? Something simpler, I believe, than the reasons listed above: high-tech fatigue. People in offices think, ‘why has my PC made life so much more complicated than before?’ Not a specifically British complaint – but English writers, more receptive than others, have tapped into the zeitgeist and bring us a general sense of unease, if we only take the trouble to notice it.”

And this one...

“20/6/01. Love comes and goes. It’s a magical force over which we humans have no control. Well, it might sound trite, but it’s better than putting it down to chemistry. Truly, we have no control over whom we love and whom we hate. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and anywhere else you care to mention. Sorry, is that Anny’s lover I hear at the end of the line? Ex-lover? Get lost, Jean-Paul, you’re a deadbeat. Get back to your shapes and your objects, your namsy-pamsy existentialism. She’s gone, and you know it. Stop wasting your time. Me, I've got lots of it. Just get back to your Deux Magots and chill, write some more philosophy. That woman ain’t coming back no matter what you do, what you say or even what you write. And truth is, you wouldn’t want her back even if she wasn’t lost for all eternity. The truth hurts, brother, I know, I been there.

Gorgeous day in Paris. After the ‘spring’ we’ve had, it’s about time too!

Later

It is easier to understand La Nausée, Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal and in parts surreal novel, if one appreciates the fact that the author’s ‘existentialist’ take on the world is in fact a reflection of his inner turmoil. To all intents and purposes, the writer, in this rare instance, is the narrator. The two are indistinguishable. There is no prism provided through which to view the work – hence the impression created of a philosophical treatise produced in the form of a novel. The principal female character, Anny, spurns Sartre (the narrator) who seeks to intellectualise his experience as philosophy – but the ground, though fertile, is commonplace: pathos, loneliness, a desperate longing for companionship, the need for a shoulder to cry on... sensing her lover’s weakness, Anny rejects him: his fears are not her fears (although he tries to sully her with them), his needs are not her needs... his desire for attachment is his alone. She will not be tied down.”

The second of these two entries requires a modicum of clarification, perhaps, lest it be dismissed as the ravings of a love-crazed lunatic. Pierre sees a parallel between the agony of La Nausée and his own mega-funk (even the time frames are similar). Using the voice of an American radio disk-jockey, he reaches out across the generations (the novel was written in 1936) and gives a metaphorical shakedown to the founder of French existentialist thought (allegedly imported from Germany, but never in any case a true philosophy, more a useful term to categorise a slightly awkward collection of fiction and essays). Sartre’s art (bit of a mouthful, that) allowed him to rationalise the pain he felt from a difficult relationship and turn it into the raw material of literature.

As we continue our exploration of Pierre’s character, the following text commands itself to our attention, taken from a little red book which he bought with the intention of jotting down his reflections on the vicissitudes of life. Various words, dates and symbols appear on the inside cover, the most significant, perhaps, being M.’s email address. The text reproduced below constitutes the rough of a letter which we believe was never sent.

“Dearest M,

Will I ever be free of you? Will the image of your beauty ever fade from my consciousness? Will the memory of your perfume ever cease to evoke happier days, when all my senses were intoxicated as one?

A rose has thorns; but he who loves the rose, fears less the prick of its thorns than the passing of its grace. A rose of incomparable beauty came into my world; all that remains is a memory to which I remain beholden. Yet I would prefer to imagine that its secret poison holds me enslaved in a suspended, dream-like state from which I may awaken, than to believe that my rose has faded, leaving me only with the lingering fragrance of its distant, half-forgotten bloom.

I went last week to the Executive Job Agency at 12, rue Blanche, in Paris’s 9^th arrondissement. It would be tedious to transcribe a conversation in French but suffice to say that it was of a different calibre from one which might have taken place, for instance, at the West Ealing branch of the Unemployment Office (Uxbridge Road – next to Daniel’s Department Store). For one thing, the civil servant informed me that I might have more luck on the job market if I converted from Catholicism to Protestantism. This had happened to whole villages in Uruguay, he assured me, with remarkable economic results. Catholicism, he explained, had, according to his own research, a detrimental effect on the brain because of its unfortunate emphasis on learning by rote. A protestant mind was far better equipped to think laterally – a key skill in the world of business. I thought the 61-year-old (a fact he had divulged at the beginning of the meeting) was a little mad, though pleasant enough company. I replied that my mother, though Catholic, had encouraged me to think up my own prayers as a child before going to bed (not strictly true, but close). I was told that that was good[9]. “Lucky,” I said, “I already have the handicap of being left-handed!”"

... Pierre wanted to take action against his previous employer for wrongful dismissal. The civil servant thought it best to accentuate the positive.

"They're all liars, of course, of course... but you don't want to get into trouble."

His amiable demeanour vanished when Pierre asked him how he might go about claiming unemployment benefit.

“That’s a full time job here in France.”

“Claiming unemployment benefit, you mean?”

“Absolutely. People scrounge off the State, collecting stamps in their booklets from potential employers just so that they can claim their benefit.”

“Yes, well it’s just that I need some money to set up a company,” said Pierre, a little abashed.

“You want to set up a company? Do you have any idea how hard that is here in France? It’s a sea of red tape.”

I’ll take my chances, thought Pierre. “I have an idea, I’m sure it’ll work.”

“Well, you’ve got a good degree. Good background. ESSEC. Lequestrel, 1956. A bit before your time, eh?”

“Yes, it was. I’m afraid I don’t know him.”

“Then there’s Lacharte, 1964. You weren’t born then, were you?”

Pierre made his excuses and prepared to leave, unwilling to be drawn into a discussion on dates.

“Ah yes, well you’ll need this telephone number. It’s for the benefits office in the rue Damrémont, 18^th arrondissement. Very pleased to have met you. Scrounger."

Well, no, he didn't actually say 'scrounger' but the look he gave him as he left was clear enough.

Let us give credit where credit is due. Pierre ends his interview with the Job Agency having obtained nothing that he set out to obtain (no unemployment benefit – no support against his old employer) and yet he leaves feeling cheerful. It may be the warm sunshine on an August afternoon in Paris, or the sight of an attractive young woman in summer attire, but we see him return to his apartment in the rue Livingstone, opposite the Sacré Cœur, with a definite spring in his step. No thoughts of M. cloud his mind. As his general state of mind sways wildly between sunny and downright morbid, this is a development which we will follow closely in the future. We watch our hero as he enters a bakery and buys a quiche Lorraine and a quiche ‘aux courgettes et au roquefort’ for 28 francs. We watch him eat them quickly and continue his journey on foot up to Montmartre. He buys a copy of The Independent in an newsagent’s off the rue des Abbesses and climbs halfway up the Butte to a café on the lower side of a charming square with tall plane trees and a drinking fountain – the Bar du Relai de la Butte. He sits at the bar, orders a Kronenbourg 1664 and reads the newspaper. Twenty minutes or so later, saying goodbye and thank-you (one bar tender replies “au revoir”, the other “au revoir, Monsieur”), he descends to his apartment, a ten-minute walk down the hill from the Bar du Relai.

Once home, he sits on his bed facing the Sacré Cœur and continues to read. He will spend the evening reading and listening to music, first Bjork, then Whitney Houston, Bjork again and finally Jacques Brel (a famous Belgian). His evening meal is spaghetti bolognaise (ready-made sauce by Buitoni, Panzani spaghetti, grated parmesan in a plastic sachet at FF5.80 from a local grocery store). At around 10.30pm he calls a friend he was due to meet up with later on for a drink. Neither feels up to it. His friend is leaving the next day to India for a month. Pierre asks for a postcard, to which the friend replies « I don’t do postcards ». Neither does Pierre, as a rule, so this is a position which he is happy to accept.

Hiatus.

We have a text of his which we believe he wrote that evening (if the reader will forgive us certain imprecisions relating to dates, locations, et cætera – although the information at our disposal may sometimes be incomplete, we will stive to record as faithfully as possible moods, values and personality traits of our hero, in line with our earlier commitment, if not his every action: even in Britain, certain homes remain free of the invasion of closed circuit television cameras. We would not wish to be accused of prying.)

“Ah... the Americans. What a debt they owe to the rest of the world. The height of sophistication for an American is to show great detachment with words – as if to emphasise how disconnected and pointless they are in a land where everything runs as smoothly as a well-oiled machine. This is how they achieve irony: by using words that grate, that chafe, that offend the ear... without their ever quite knowing why.

In this Americans are all alike – for sophistication is universal in the US of A. If you have read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, you’re in! Did Hemingway not say that nothing existed before, and nothing as good had ever been written since?

Fundamentally, Americans are insecure, which is why they make such poor artists. Without security, there is no instinct. And where is culture without instinct? How can one compose, say, a great symphony, if one is constantly looking over one's shoulder? Small wonder that this is the country that gave the world South Park!

One senses that they are forever feeling around for their words (and mostly failing, in the case of their President), forever conscious that theirs is a borrowed language. And a mangled one. Only a nation with no respect for tradition, culture and heritage, their own or anyone else’s, would exchange ‘colour’ for ‘color’, ‘realize’ for ‘realise’ and ‘lite’ for ‘light’ on the basis that the new versions were simpler and more economical. Never mind that ‘to practise’, a verb, should always be written with an ‘s’.

Poor, simple, sweet, gentle, misguided Americans.”

We will pass discreetly on the hint of xenophobia implicit in the above text; more preoccupying, perhaps, is the error relating to the origins of the American idiom – various enlightening essays on the subject exist for the curious reader's perusal, none better than those written by the excellent William Bryson (though his analysis of French, it must be said, is flawed in a number of respects).

Less enjoyable for Pierre than the meeting at the job agency was his interview at the bank the next day. It was not supposed to be an interview; Pierre had simply gone to his local branch of the FFC with the intention of withdrawing 2000FF for sundry expenses. It was Friday 10^th August, 4.50pm – ten minutes before closing time.

The clerk, an amiable woman in her mid-forties, tapped out a few commands on her computer.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “You’re interdit at the Banque de France. I have to call the branch that holds your account in Neuilly – let’s hope they’re still open.”

She picked up the receiver on her desk and dialled a number. After a minute or two of pleasantries, she offered it to Pierre.

“They’d like to speak to you,” she said cheerfully.

Pierre took the threatening object. The voice at the other end was a degree or two less cordial than that of the clerk sitting in front of him. Had he received the letter, it asked, informing him that they intended to close his account? He replied that he must have misunderstood... as they were the ones who had ensured that his name featured on the Banque de France’s blacklist, he had naively assumed that they would do everything in their power to remove him from the centrally-held file, once his debts with them had been cleared. The woman assured him that she would look into matters. Could she call him back next week? Pierre gave her his number in Paris, the clerk believing that he still lived in London.

“No,” he explained, “I’ve moved back to Paris after three years in Albion and some time in the States before that.”

“You’ll have to give us your new address.”

“It’s Montmartre – 7, rue de Livingstone in the 18^th. Let me spell it for you: L-I-V-I-N-G-S-T-O-N-E. Like the famous Scottish doctor.”

“Very good. We’ll call you next week. Good day, Mr Bernardi.”

“Good day to you, Madam.”

Pierre returned the receiver and took the money from the bank clerk – still amiable, apparently oblivious to the humiliation which had just taken place in front of her eyes – and left.

As we say, his mood was more sombre as he left the bank than it had been the previous day. ‘Sombre’, in fact, is something of an understatement. He found a cafe in the rue des Abbesses (one of the many charms of the neighbourhood being the plentiful nature of its watering holes), sat down an ordered a beer.

After an hour or so, a woman sat down in the row of seats in front of him. When the table next to her cleared, he asked her if he might sit there. She agreed, and returned to reading her book – a translation of a novel by Donald E. Westlake entitled 'Pierre qui brûle'. Coincidence! Pierre had never heard of the writer. His attention was diverted by the conversation of a couple sitting on the other side: they were talking about firing practices in large French firms. His mood darkened further...

It lightened again a little later in the afternoon. Back in his apartment he stumbled on something he had written three years before. It made him laugh. It actually made him laugh. The lines came from his little red book. They began with an imaginary character in Paris pondering over the pitfalls of life in the company of an expert on the subject.

“‘André – Tell me. Why are Parisians generally so rude to us Americans?’ Lou asked.

‘It’s a game. It’s to keep you on your toes. Just fight back,’ André replied.

‘I don’t want to be fighting with waiters while I’m on holiday.’

‘Okay, I’ll tell you the real reason. Don’t take it personally: it’s because of the coffee they drink. It’s bitter and strong and it sets their nerves on edge. Did you ever see the Gary Larson cartoon with the little dog drinking coffee from an espresso machine and the caption underneath ‘How little dogs prepare for their day’?”

‘Yeah, sure. It’s hilarious. I love his stuff.’

‘Well, I bet Larson was in Paris when he thought of it.’

‘So you’re saying that the coffee is at the source of Parisian rudeness?’

‘In a nutshell.’

‘So why do you drink so much of the stuff?’

‘Because it helps us to be rude to you Americans, my dear Louis!’”

Not great art, he mused, but amusing all the same.

“In another corner of the cafe, a conversation was taking place between two characters in sun-glasses, dark grey suits and black, silk, expensive-looking shirts.

‘So, what’s the principle?’ asked Shady 1.

‘OK, the principle’s this,’ Shady replied. ‘There’s one boss – that’s me. The rest of the group are equal but I’m the boss. And there’s one poor sucker who takes all the flak. He’s the fall guy. That’s how the team stays together, see? Group dynamics. Look it up.’

‘I don’t get it. Why doesn’t the fall guy just leave?’

‘Sometimes he does. Then the group falls apart.’

‘So you’re saying that the fall guy’s the most important member of team?’

‘Hey, the most important member of the team – that’s me.’

‘Sure, sorry, no offence. Tell me more about Group Dynamics.’

‘OK. There’s one poor guy who gets all the crap thrown at him. Then there’s me at the top. Everyone’s thinking, ‘Gee, I’m glad I’m not that poor sucker down there’ and they give him some more stick, just to keep him in his place.’

‘Gee.’

‘The perversity of human nature. It’s beautiful. Like the bard in Asterix. The negative integrator.”

“An animated conversation was taking place in the middle of the room between an extremely large rugby player and a somewhat smaller man dressed in a tutu.

‘Sorry,’ said the man in the tutu, ‘but I see French civilisation as inherently superior to British. And you can't accuse me of being prejudiced. My dad's French and I was born in Wales.’

'The French are all racists, aren't they?' asked the rugby player.

'You're talking about sentiment, not civilisation.'

'What's the difference?'

'Granted, there probably are racists in France. Look at Le Pen in the last elections. But that was a protest vote! Anyway, being French, I can choose not to be racist. Thankfully, most people do. A Brit, on the other hand, might be more tolerant but it's not going to help him be more civilised. Put it another way: even if there are 15% or so racist people in France, that has no bearing on French civilisation on itself, only on the 15% or so misguided mortals who happen to live on the outer fringes of French civilisation, buffeted by the rival currents of cultures less advanced than their own.'

'I think you're racist.'

The ballerina choked on his beer.

'Me? Racist?' he blustered.

'Well, yes, talking about inferior cultures.'

'I didn't say inferior, I said less advanced.'

'Semantics. The thing is, all cultures are all exactly alike in terms of their development.'

'That's ridiculous. You can't say that some tribe in the Amazon that hasn't invented writing is the same as our modern European societies.'

Observing the scene from the other side of the room, Shady 1 reflected on the fact that the group ‘sucker’ might well be the character most opposite to Shady: calm, reflective and generous, most likely to command respect, at least among grannies and school teachers.”

"Further along in the bar, a journalist from Décolletage was interviewing Simon Sushkin, the leading fashion designer.

‘What do you think about the current situation in the world?’

‘I think that there’s a sense that it’s all too much at the moment. Too much is going on. There’s a feeling of utter powerlessness in the face of world events. Earthquakes in Turkey and now Taiwan, mass state-sponsored terrorism in East Timor, the war in Bosnia and Kosovo... What happened to the great wave of optimism that carried the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall? What happened to all the hope?’

‘Mmm... scary stuff. On a lighter note, what do you think of the string of frou-frou creations that we’ve seen emerging from the Paris fashion shows this week?’ asked Sophie Letterhead, Décolletage’s star reporter."

"Three physicists were lounging in one of the booths at the back.

‘How do people live with it, the idea that the world is going to end?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that: time, as perceived by us, is finite. One day, the world will come to an end. Humans will, one day, be extinct. How do you live with it?’

‘Well, hang on. How can you be so sure?’

Peter, the first physicist, paused for a second for thought. The second physicist moved in.

‘Big bang theory,’ she said.

‘That’s just a theory. It doesn’t make it true. How can anyone know where the world is going? We’re not God.’

‘I’m normally a sceptic,’ said Peter, ‘but John’s right there. Even if Big Bang theory is correct, it still doesn’t follow that we can know how it’s all going to end. If it’s going to end at all. We can’t see into the future.’

‘Of course it’s going to end,’ snapped Susan.

‘How do you know? Come to think of it, how can you be so sure that any one of us is going to die? We presume we will, we believe we will, but who’s to say –’

‘Hume’s theory of uncertainty’

‘– that it isn’t just a step in our development as a species?’

‘Empiricism.’

‘You can only know what your senses tell you.’

‘Scottish, 1711-1776.’

‘Works include A Treatise of Human Nature (1740)’

‘An Enquiry concerning the Principle of Morals (1751)’

‘Political Discourses (1752)’

‘History of England (1754-62)’

‘First name Basil.’

‘No, you fool, you’re thinking of the Cardinal. We’re talking about David Hume, the Scottish empiricist philosopher, economist and historian.’

‘Five greatest inventions of the nineteenth century.’

‘Steam engine, telegraph, telephone, internal combustion engine, strawberry milkshake.’

‘QCD. Quantum Chromodynamics.’

‘Twentieth century by a mile, you idiot.’

‘Steam engine invented in 1776 by James Watt, another famous Scot. Doesn’t count.’

‘I was talking about the steam locomotive, 1829, The Rocket, Robert Stephenson.’

‘His father George got there first, 1814. You still lose.’

‘I would have included radio.’

‘Marconi first transmitted radio waves across the Atlantic in 1901. What is it with you people tonight?’

‘Come on, John. I’m tired of this abuse. Finish your drink and come with me. We’re going back to my place.’

John finished his drink in one and gave Peter a wink.

‘Competitive spirit, eh?’

‘Hey, hang on!’

Too late – they were gone."

"Further along, someone stood on a low stool, talking to anyone who would listen to him. He seemed to be making some sort of speech. ‘The night in Cap Ferrat was the last night that we slept together. We slept together again after that, but only in the sense that we were lying side by side in the same bed. That was the last time that we actually slept together. And we didn’t even sleep – we argued. I argued, long and hard, while M. tried to close her eyes to the reality around us. Perhaps her reality was different from mine. Perhaps she had seen it coming for a long time, knew that the end was close at hand, knew that this was the natural conclusion to a long and drawn-out process, one that needed to be ended as soon as possible. Like the peace process in Northern Ireland. But in my reality, the world was falling apart all around me. And there was nothing I could do to prevent its collapse. Thank you.’ A few people clapped, the man on the stool took a bow, I turned round to François who was having a drink with me.

‘Have you read The Great Divide?’"

Over the ages (well – the last two or three centuries, at least), authors far and wide have found descriptive narrative to be the most effective way of meeting the deadlines which their publishers set them in their all-seeing wisdom. A rumbustious storyline, a knack for character development, strong dialogue, an ability to provide the reader with a sense of time and place, these are the principal ingredients of a modicum of literary success.

Others, more interested in their characters’ psychology, felt keenly the limitations of the genre. Virginia Woolf threw caution to the wind to produce To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway and Orlando. After the reception from her critics following her departure from received literary wisdom, what folly! what courage! to have persevered down this path! Yet she was not alone in her determination to mark out a new territory for literature: TS Elliot, Joyce and Beckett are perhaps, along with Woolf, those authors whose voices resonated most clearly throughout the 20^th century. In our own modest opinion, however, JP Sartre, with La Nausée (the second time this novel has been mentioned in these pages – but do we await compensation from the author’s estate? not a penny!), enjoyed the greatest success in combining the advantages of the descriptive and the psychological forms.

Fortunately there exist, to enlighten us on our hero’s development, certain writings at our disposal. In the temporary absence of any probing interior monologues, we have no qualms about reproducing these texts for our gentle reader’s benefit. The following text, taken from an essay written in his teens, explains to some extent the high regard in which his school masters held him (if not his class mates). One, a teacher of English, wrote in a report card “an exceptionally able student”. The class were asked to write a piece of absurd dialogue. The essay, of which only the following fragment survives, was awarded the highest grade and no doubt prompted the teacher to make the flattering comment quoted above.

“‘So – what’s the story?’

‘It’s about the struggle between the narrator and his principal character.’

‘Eh?’

‘In a novel, the narrator is supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful. In the book I’m writing, the character starts to get an inkling of this and enters into a struggle to become the narrator.’

‘There is no doubt that poor language can be an excellent concealer of sloppy thinking.’

‘Shut up. Take cartoons – sometimes you get a character that continually gets dumped on from high above: rain, hail, anything you like – but only he gets it, no one else around him. And when the character’s had enough, he shakes his fist at the sky. Except he’s not, he’s shaking his fist at the guy who drew him.’

‘So what else does he do?’

‘He starts to make fun of the narrator.’

‘How can he do that?’

‘Well, the narrator’s stuck, isn’t he? He can’t admit to what’s going on – that would be like acknowledging that his character had a view into his own mind – impossible, since he is the one who is supposed to hold all the strings. How can the puppeteer become the puppet? Think about it: he’d lose all credibility. No one would trust him any more – his audience would just walk away, ‘Just like that’. No, what he has to do is keep a careful eye on what’s going on, pretend not to notice, and dump on his character when he isn’t expecting it.’

‘But it won’t be enough, will it? The character can always come back with another piece of wit.’

‘Well, let’s not forget who’s in charge.’

‘The author, presumably, not the narrator. I’m missing something.’

‘Well, it’s comedy in a way. Like Tom and Jerry. Tom never catches Jerry but it doesn’t stop you watching the cartoon, does it? In fact, I’d say that the essence of Tom and Jerry’s greatness is that while Tom never catches the mouse, he never loses his ‘catness’ – the thing that allows him to look at himself in the mirror and say, ‘Tom, you’re a cat’. We never lose respect for Tom – we just think, ‘no, you’ll never catch Jerry, he’s too clever for you.’ You see? If Tom caught Jerry, that would be the end of it.’

‘Got you.’

‘Here’s another example: an author writes ‘blablabla, in my modest opinion, blablabla’. Well, what’s modest about an opinion which assumes an all-encompassing knowledge of everthing that’s ever been written since Tarek the Carver first put pen to papyrus?’

‘Tarek the Carver? I thought the great Tarek was a scribe...’

‘The word ‘scribe’ hadn’t been invented yet, you dolt. Anyway, the point is that the character starts poking at what he sees as the narrator’s pomposity. It’s meant to be comedy...’

‘Nothing like that has ever been done before.’

‘Wrong, Borges wrote a story about a magician who dreams life into fictional characters before discovering at the end that he himself is being dreamt.’

‘But Borges wasn’t exactly known for his sense of humour, was he?’

‘No, but the principle’s the same. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is because yesterday Mr Watson told us to write a piece of absurd dialogue. And I had this idea of a guy in a pub who tells his friend about a book he wants to write... a story about a character in a novel who has a tussle with the narrator.’

‘Eh?’

‘In a novel, the narrator is supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful.’

‘Wait... you told me this earlier.’

‘Shh! You’ll spoil it!’”

In the first half of the 20^th century people burnt books. It wasn’t just Germany: a court in New York adjudged Joyce’s Ulysses to be ‘untransportable’ and had the novel burnt on the spot. Previously the great Irish writer had had the misfortune to see the entire first consignnment of his novel Dedalus purchased and burnt by its acquiror. We may see a certain symbol in these acts of civilisation’s development: in previous centuries society burnt people whose opinions it objected to. As it grew more confident of its ability to resist subversion, it contented itself with the destruction of their literary output (with the exception of great swathes of humanity located in North Africa and the Middle-East). Lest these considerations reassure us to too great a degree, let us not forget that barbarity on a scale hitherto unseen was another feature of the 20^th century.

It would be wrong to confuse a certain superficiality in Pierre’s writings with evidence of frivolity. We know him to be the most faithful friend that one could desire. We know that he harbours in his breast the noblest aspirations – it is only his appetites which bring him down, as appetites are wont to do.

It would also be a mistake to ascribe M.’s decision to leave him to an inability on his part to satisfy her physical needs. His expertise in the matters to which we allude gave her great cause for satisfaction and we are free to assume that these aspects may have brought about the keenest sense of loss on her part following their separation... for a century of feminism, if nothing else, has informed us beyond all possible doubt that the notion of an errogenous zone in women is something of a fallacy, consisting as it does of the whole of their body, from head to toe; that the G-spot does exist, and its location is revealed almost in a vision to an honest lover; and that a call to one’s beloved after a night of extasy may well be the sign for her that the time has come to rid herself of a cumbersome bedfellow. This last point, of course, was known to our ancestors and we can only recommend the pages of Manon Lescaut for a full and graphic description of the horrors which await those who place their trust too completely in the mysteries of the fairer sex. A man enslaved by his mistress’s charms will never seek to escape from his torment: we may be assured that if the slightest hint is given that his command of her affections is less than complete then no effort will be spared to prolong, through whatever means at his disposal, and intensify the discomfort so that it may be stated as a general rule that the natural propensity for a man in the presence of his beloved is towards an absolute negation of self; and that in the face of such estrangement from his own interests, the best that those who are close to him may hope for is a rapid show of mercy from the one who holds sway over his affections. This may take various forms but it has generally been noted (a thing which conforms to this writer’s observation) that a woman leaving her lover will take pains to cover her deceit. Her emotions will waiver but not vanish altogether. There will be moments when attentions redouble and an apparent willingness to prove the best of lovers appear prevalent (whether through perversity or thirst for revenge for some past indiscretion, we know not which). These are the cruellest moments for the doomed party to bear and we are reliably informed of cases where the poor man’s nerves were finally shot to pieces by the see-sawing nature of his ‘innocent’ tormentor’s stumbling march towards freedom. In cases such as these we would plead with the exiting party to show compassion and resolution in the execution of her sentence, for it is a well-established fact that a wounded heart will cling to any sign of weakness as an echo of its own enfeebled state. From such false hope greater calamity ensues. To those cruel souls who would see in such disaster a just recompense for previous misdeeds we would reply that the taste of revenge is sweet in the short term but turns bitter as the thought of countless slights, real or imagined, gradually fades into nothingness and leaves in its place the memory of every trait of character, every feature and every act of selflessness which allowed love to flourish in the early stages of the relationship.

We might conclude from these musings that the female heart is a fickle organ, whose mysteries only the most intrepid or foolhardy would seek to explore in any depth. We believe instead that the power of a woman’s charm lies in the understanding men have of its fleeting nature. The surest (and most efficient) way to tame a wild animal is to leave it in doubt as to whether or not its successful completion of a task will result in a tasty dinner. What remains obscure to us is why the unpredictable nature of female desire should manifest itself to the greatest degree at the very moment when the heart is turning to pastures new. There seems to be something very unjust in this state of affairs, something which puts us in mind of a taunt. If the war of the sexes is indeed to go on for ever, then we must admit that man's inability to predict the results of his efforts on the female psyche must constitute a very significant part of a woman’s armoury.

Chapter 3

Pierre had a dream. He dreamt that he went into a boulangerie and ordered two quiches lorraines – the last two. The bakery was about to close. He paid and left.

Outside, a tramp was waiting. His disheveled state had a certain androgynous quality – the lowest form of androgynous. His hair was lank, he wore the remains of a grey nylon raincoat and his feet were wrapped in leaky-looking plastic bags.

“Those are my quiches!” he slurred.

“No, sorry, I’ve just paid for them.”

Pierre walked off. The tramp followed. He broke into a run in an attempt to shake him off. Turning a corner, there he was again! Panting slightly, he entered a shop a little further along the street. It was another bakery, with tables and chairs laid out for people to sit at and consume their food on the premises. The tramp followed him in.

“Give me back my quiche!” he slurred again. He now had a fork in one hand which he waved around menacingly.

“It’s not your quiche, I paid for it. And I’m not going near you while you have that fork in your hand.”

The tramp looked at his hand and registered the presence of the fork. He placed it on the counter and shouted “That was my fork! I mean quiche...” and stumbled out.

“What was that all about?” asked the waitress behind the cases containing cakes and bread.

Pierre explained the scene which had just taken place.

“Ah! I see,” she commented. “Well, your position is quite clear.”

“What do you mean, my position?” he reacted. “I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Yes, but you’re already in trouble with the police because of that beggar you didn’t give money to. My daughter’s a reporter on the Richington Herald and she thinks there’s a story. She wants to do a column on you. You’ve attracted some attention to yourself since you arrived in Richington.”

“The problem is,” he replied, “there are too many beggars around.”

“Yes, you may be right.”

Pierre awoke from his dream. Sensational material! He thought about the dialogue his subconscious mind had created out of nothing. What did he mean about there being too many beggars? Other thoughts entered his head. What if you could be arrested for not giving money to people in the street? Could it work as a model for society? Was he saying that they should be given a place to live, food and decent clothing and so on... or was he saying something else? Idealism... did it mean being more sensitive to ideas than reality? The idea of thousands of refugees with nowhere to go, as opposed to the reality of seeing them every day in the street, their mere presence bringing down the value of the neighbourhood and causing heartbreak for a thousand honest home-owners? If you can make a pile of all your winnings... How unsurprising, he thought, for the dozenth time, that Kipling should be the English people’s favourite poet. A racist and an imperialist... a nation of hobbits, the English... and how alike he was, finally, to Beckett and Joyce, resentful of his masters for giving him the language with which he expressed himself! How unsurprising that Beckett should have turned to French for the greater part of his literary output!

Now fully awake, he took his notebook and pen and wrote down the dream and the thoughts which followed it.

"Women are strange sometimes. They tell you ‘I want your faithfulness to come from the heart’. And then you can sleep with a dozen sex-kittens and they won’t bat an eyelid. But tell them, one day, that you don’t love them anymore and they go berzerk! At least that’s what I’ve heard. I’m adapting slightly the storyline of Manon Lescaut. Except that there is a twist which I left out: he doesn’t sleep around, she does – for money, protection. The bit about faithfulness coming from the heart is correct, however. I mention it because of something M. once said to me. I wonder if she was fashioning herself to be a modern-day Manon (the name has become a synonym for opprobrium – Serge Gainsbourg even wrote a song on the subject; was Manon his eponymous girlfriend’s real name, or was it just intended as an insult?). She certainly shared the odd character trait – what I like to call ‘boomerang love’. Boomerang love just will not go away – one morning she’s on your doorstep (you, by now, have a new girlfriend) on the pretext that you still have a fondue pan which belongs to her – and it’s in the middle of summer, and not even the Swiss eat fondues after the month of May, but that doesn’t matter.

I feel guilty sometimes about taking M. from Pierre. She told me about some of the things that happened when she was finally set on leaving him. About the morning when he collapsed suddenly in the kitchen, unconscious, and how she tried to pick him up from the floor, how he seemed to be gnawing his way through the carpet in the hall, moaning softly... she’d had quite a fright, she told me. Thought it was a heart attack or something. He got up again though, and escorted her to the Gare du Nord, where she was taking a Eurostar back to London, back home, where a new love awaited her. Pierre, by now, was an empty husk of the man who had entranced her just a few months before – and now she despised him. Despised him all the more for having made her believe that he was her prince in shining armour... nothing but a rotting carcass gathering flies on the floor of their little apartment in the rue Notre Dame des Champs.

And how he turned up one day at her parents’ home in Islington, when they were out... and she allowed him to stay, feeling sorry for him, wishing that he were back in Paris, far away, a character in a dream that she had had long ago, fading from her consciousness (how she wished he would fade!). She told me she had been terrified that her parents would turn up unexpectedly though she knew they were in Monaco for a week. Whether or not she actually called him a zombie, I couldn’t say, but he never tried a stunt like that again. Shame, in a way, I thought it was quite gutsy of him. It’s not something I could have expected of him, he always seemed more interested in staying in and playing chess on his own than actually going out and doing something in the world. Bit of a dark horse, our Pierre. Still – M. was never in his league. Sophisticated, smart, well-dressed, not to mention beautiful... what on earth did she ever see in him? Like I said: dark horse. He won’t catch me out again."

Chapter 4

“I think that artists should constantly be reminding rich people how much poorer than them everyone else is. If they don’t do that then they’re not doing their job properly, that’s how I see things. It’s easy to live on a large estate, cut off from the slums and the shanty towns, unaware of what’s going on in the world. Send out servants to buy the groceries (or order them over the internet), use email to work from home... yes, no doubt at all, it’s easy. But one thing that rich people have in common with everyone else is their receptiveness to art. So that’s the way to catch them. That’s the way to ensnare their consciences. Get them to read Oliver Twist, make them listen to songs by Simon & Garfunkel. That’ll get them.

“Good art: anything that focuses on the plight of the worker, the homeless, the sick, the unemployed. Bad art: anything that chooses to avoid these subjects, anything attached to the glittering life of the well-to-do. Anna Karenina – bad. Eyes Wide Shut, bad. In fact that goes for just about anything starring Tom Cruise. But Nicole Kidman passes thanks to her scintillating performance in Moulin Rouge. And Kubrick is saved thanks to Lolita and his shots of English suburbs masquerading as Hollywood. Anything by Balzac, good. Likewise Zola. Hugo, superb, Dickens, Proust, Hemingway. Mark Twain, so-so, Borges, a riddle, Bizet, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Austen, Camus, Gide, Joyce, good. Amis, James (Henry), Miller: pass."

I wouldn't wish to sound cynical but I think that recent developments have shown people to be profoundly superficial – that their superficiality runs deep, so to speak. Ask anyone in the street today how they would go about changing the world for the better, and I'll lay money on the answer being, "give internet access to all the poor people in Africa", or something along those lines. Not food, shelter or medecine. What makes the plight of these people so sickening, so utterly repugnant is their lack of an email address and a properly-functioning modem. Should we put this down to a lack of imagination? Or an unwillingness to consider the state of things beyond the end of the next street? A few years ago, I would have defended the more (if only slightly) optimistic explanation. Today, older if not wiser, I plump for the latter. People are not as esaily brainwashed as politicians would have us believe; they are, in fact, extremely adept at clutching at whatever snippet of information, scientific claim or medical advance to justify keeping their head firmly in the sand – the metaphorical equivalent of focusing on school fees, mortgage payments and company politics to the exclusion of all else.

And politicians? A crowd of drunken idealists still coming to terms with the fact that such underachievers as themselves could have scaled heights about which their peers at university, school or kindergarten could only dream – not knowing that those with an eye for these matters are aware that the mountain is in fact a papier-mache model on a film set, suffering from rising damp, standing in the path of a flood and equipped with faulty sprinklers.

How do we explain inertia? What do we mean when we say that a country is impervious to change? Two examples spring to mind: Zimbabwe and China. In today's international climate, both might be seen by sophisticated intellectuals and red-top readers alike as equally beyond the pale. In truth, of course, the two have little in common: one, a relatively small, recently-founded nation in southern Africa, the other a large and timeless monolith. One, finding its way on the world scene, the other imbedded in a history stretching back four? five? six? millennia. While China seems to absorb all light cast onto it like some giant black hole in the centre of the Asian continent, we seem extraordinarily well informed of every development within the cabinet of Zimbabwe's wily veteran politician president, Robert Mugabe. Being mortal, his hold on power will eventually slip. When it does, we may allow that foreign pressure and the interests of the country's entrepreneurial population will ensure that a transition to democracy, rule of law and widespread economic prosperity will occur with a minimal degree of fuss. But what hope is there for the Chinese?

Should we say that inertia is linked to size? What then of the United States, with its 280 million or so inhabitants? Surely a country which abolished slavery in the late 19^th century and ended segregration as long ago as the 1960s could never be considered inert? And what of the nation predicted soon to have the world's largest population, India, with a still-thriving caste system which labels a proportion of its citizens 'untouchables'? Small countries too, however, may suffer from inertia: though not strictly a country, the Isle of Mann, for instance, appears from an outsider's perspective to continue to do a lively trade in witch-hunting and alchemy (it may still have its share of witches; I have never set foot in the place). Full marks though to the tiny Hindu kingdom of Nepal, which recently pledged to pass a law condemning the practice of discrimination against that category of the population considered to be 'untouchable'. The Prime Minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba (sounds like an anagram of the American president and! sure enough! Bush is in there), told parliament: "Effective from this day, the practice of untouchability and any discrimination based on it will be considered a crime punishable by a severe sentence." Well, you don't change things overnight. Mr Deuba (W!), who came to power following the Shakespearian dispatching of Nepal's Royal Family, said that the decision was part of a 'package of sweeping reforms'. The Himalayan kingdom, one of the poorest countries in the world (measured by its GDP), remains strongly tied to the Hindu caste system and believes its king is an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. "The surprise move to ban untouchability was hailed by the opposition as a powerful step to push Nepal further out of its global isolation and choking poverty. Bharat Mohan Adhikar, a member of Nepal's main opposition party, said: 'This is a remarkable and daring decision by the government. This would end the feeling of insult these people have been facing through the years.' The 1990 constitution of Nepal bans discrimination based on sex, religion and race. But laws to enforce these provisions have yet to be implemented, and none bar caste discrimination. Mr Deuba said the government would soon present a bill in parliament to end the caste system in the world's only Hindu kingdom (two cheers). He also set up a national commission for Dalits, who are the lowest in the caste system and seen as 'untouchables'. Mr Deuba said Dalits would now be free to enter any temple, which priests often bar them from. Many Hindus will not eat food touched by them. Last year, Nepal outlawed the bonded labour under which Dalits had to work on farms owned by upper-caste land owners, trying to pay off the debts incurred by their forebears."

Chapter 5

Time weaves strange patterns around our consciousness. As we move endlessly from one state to the next, that which appeared important to us one moment disappears from our mind's eye the next. When Pierre found himself lying in his bed awake, on the morning Saturday 18^th August 200x, he found that the previous night's preoccupation with the situation in Zimbabwe, China and Nepal had vanished, leaving in its place an uneasy awareness of the precarity of his own situation. He checked his watch: 12.40pm. This in itself was enough to unsettle him vaguely. He had probably fallen asleep around 2.30am, having written until late, which meant he had slept for approximately nine and a half hours. He had swum fifty lengths at the swimming pool the day before, which could account for his tiredness. He could feel the unpleasant tinglings of a nascent cold in his throat and the back of his sinuses. He knew from experience that they could easily pass as the day went on but in the meantime they contributed to his sense of edginess. No dreams to recall. Nothing to connect this morning to the night before. Nine and a half hours erased from existence, a trip in a time machine which had moved him five hundred and seventy minutes into the future without even a simple token to show for his journey. Or was there something about adding granules to a bowl of milky coffee, granules which refused to dissolve and floated there, like fair-sized lumps of cereal in a bowl? And why the feeling of satisfaction in the dream (he remembered himself smiling) as he observed the granules? Who was the faceless person with whom he shared the experience, unseen as the bowl of milky beige-coloured liquid with dark brown chunks the size of peanuts filled his field of vision? Otis Redding. Cigarettes and coffee. He had listened to it before going to bed. There was the link, but where was the explanation? What significance could be drawn from a cereal bowl of milky, imperfectly dissolving instant coffee? Was there a clue perhaps in those giant sized granules, bobbing around like floating rocks? Or was it simply an excuse provided by his subconscious to think about cigarettes and coffee... which would no doubt explain the grin on his face...

"It is not the structure but the content of the unconscious mind which interests me. I do not care which neurons fuse and fizzle to create the pictures in my dreams. What interests me is the cinematic experience of the dreams themselves."

What would Dali have to say on the subject? He would probably say something like: "The unconscious mind plays games with us all. It is important to me to try to capture the essence of these games in my art. Hence, the dream produced by the droning of a bumble bee."

And the other surrealists? André Breton, Paul Éluard, Jules Supervielle? They would concur with the great Salvador: "If you want to write like Virginia Woolf, first you must capture the wolf." Pierre thought that quite possibly the surrealist movement had had perhaps too much influence on his mind of late, but then it was so tied in with stream-of-consciousness writing (écriture automatique), the most important literary current of recent times (in his opinion), that it was difficult to avoid.

As his mind moved away from thoughts of sleep his mood began to brighten. He would return to the swimming pool today to swim another fifty lengths. A glass of orange juice and a croissant would be sufficient to get his nervous system back into proper shape. His plans to set up a company could wait until Monday; he had no doubt that his commercial acumen would see him through the choppy waters which lay ahead for the next few months or so. He had a business degree, he had contacts, he had ideas and he had enough capital to tide him over for the next year at least. He did need to buy a refrigerator and a bulb for the halogen lamp in his living room and to have his computer mended. It would be nice, but not necessary, to have curtains fitted and a lamp added to his bedroom. He still had a mark on his thumb from the time he had tried to install curtains in the bedroom – the rail had fallen on his hand and bruised his nail. Was he awaiting correspondence from anyone? M. might well respond to the three emails he had sent her – but probably not yet. Helen was supposed to be coming to Paris soon, but would he hear from her? Her last email had mentioned late August as a possible date but in the absence of a reply on his part... Benjamin and he were meant to meet up some time for a game of chess – no urgency there. Sebastien and his wife Agathe, he had seen twice in the last week, Rajeev was in India for a wedding, Jean-Marc was giving him some space at the moment, Antoine had just returned from New York and certainly needed to find his bearings (not to mention an appartment) before re-entering the social circuit (it was like a never-ending motor-race, Pierre thought), Sabrina had never sent her CV after all, and what hope did he have of ever seeing Natasha again?

He picked up one of his notebooks and leafed through it.

The most important text, he felt, was entitled 'Mescaline'. It went as follows:

"Diary entry, 29/5/00, Eurostar, London-Paris, Mescaline

One drug I am not likely to forget in a hurry: the juice from the peyote cactus, or mescaline. Aldous Huxley, in Doors of Perception, compares its effects to those of a heavy dose of adrenaline. In the same book, Huxley describes Plato (page 17 of the edition I was reading) as 'deeply misguided', or words to that effect. The effect of reading his notes on 'suchness' (20^th century existentialism, I presume), was that of a philosophy student who had yet to assimilate the concepts he was twittering about – no logical flow, empty sentences like 'the symbol can never replace the thing itself in terms of the perception we have of that thing', or some such gobbledygook.

The fact that Huxley's actual sentence – though in essence identical – was comprised of different words, being somewhat pithier than the above, hardly served to improve it. Vacuous thought hurriedly put down on paper, stream-of-consciousness meets heightened awareness in the stultifying vacuum of an intellectual and emotional chasm. Could the same author honestly have spotted the link between clinical addiction, drug-induced (adrenaline) and love? The tepid yet hyperbolic prose (a feat accomplished through the senseless adjunction of 'concepts' such as 'suchness', 'void' and 'godhead') puts one in mind of an author of limited artistic ability who seeks to impress his audience by unveiling territories designed to appeal to their basest, most animal instincts – the speed-induced lunacy of a Huntress Thompson or Kerouac quivering on the verge of a sensory implosion, a feverish display of bludgeoned perception and battered synapses, blown brain cells and mutilated nerve endings.

But what do I myself think of the use of drugs? Actually, I'm all for them. There's no escaping the corruptible nature of the human body – so why worry about it? Mecaline, grass, magic mushrooms, heroin, cocaine... are any of these substances more evil in any way than alcohol, nicotine or caffeine, to name but three of the most popular western pick-me-ups? Would the educated use of heroin put anyone's life at risk, any more than the occasional dram of whisky?... Perhaps I shouldn't write about this. But how many great writers of the past have written while under the influence of drugs? And how many about suicide? Were they struck down by censorious lightning for their heinous immodesty? Do we blame the immortal Flaubert for introducing us to the fate of his sublime heroine, Emma Bovary?

If an unsuitable young man called out to his lover from his convertible, parked in the street, and the lover in question was a sixteen-year-old girl living at home with her parents, you'd want him locked up, wouldn't you? At least her parents would. And what if the young girl felt determined to follow her suitor against her parents wishes? Well, them, they'd lock her up, wouldn't they. To no avail of course, we know: the impassioned male in the prime of youth is one of the great forces of literature.

My memories haunt me. This is why sex is forbidden before or outside marriage. Ah, but the accompanying social evils make it rather an expensive barrier (see Jude for further justification of this). We see..."

As so often with Pierre's old texts, the last part of the fragment has been lost. The episode to the end, however, bears an uncanny ressemblance to the scene which we presently endure of a young man shouting 'Laetitia' repeatedly from beneath our window. Of course, if that were Laurent... oh my goodness! It is Laurent! What should I do? Think. Laetitia doesn't get back from La Baule until next week. Laurent thinks it was this afternoon, because that's what she told him. Which is why he's calling to her from the street. But he'll be gone in a minute! Think, girl, think! Call him. Go to the window and call him. Tell him that Laetitia doesn't get back until Monday. He'll realise she lied and he'll get the message. Leaving... but then he'll see me without my make-up. My face looks a mess. Don't be silly, it's dark and you're on the second floor. But then he might not recognise me. What a fool I'd look if he shouted out who are you? In front of all the neighbours! There he goes again, calling her name. What do I care about the neighbours? It's him I'm worried about. Just put down the pen and call him! But I can't... it's the pen that's guiding my thoughts. The pen, always the pen. What do I care about a real-world romance? Why did I leave Laurent to Laetitia in the first place? Because I thought that their names went well together? Better than Laurent and Arnica in any case. Why, why, why did my parents have to call me Arnica? How could anyone do such a thing to their only child? Why did Gide have to be daddy's favourite writer? And why did mummy have to bring a copy of Les Caves du Vatican with her on her honeymoon? Nobody reads on their honeymoon! You're supposed to bonk each other silly! Oh, Laurent, Laurent, Laurent, Laurent... stop calling out for Laetita, will you? She's only interested in your car. She thinks that you're thick and your father made all his money dealing drugs in the Caribean. I told her you'd need to go to London or Amsterdam, that's where the money is, they don't have enough to buy dope off you in Martinique or Guadeloupe, but she wouldn't believe me. She told me that the rich American tourists did all the drug-taking. Well, I suppose that's a possibility. But I always though that the Americans went to Barbados, not to the French islands. You could always ferry across there, I suppose. And come back to Martinique or even Ste Lucie in the evening after a full working day. Your wife cooks you crayfish and serves them on banana leaves with rice, on the beach. Perfect cover. Who'd ever suspect? I have to start to think more like Laetitia. She's so right. Oh, Laurent! Laurent, Laurent, Laurent! Stop calling her, do you hear! I don't care if your father made his money dealing cocaine in the Caribean! We'll go out there, you and me, and I'll cook you crayfish and serve you rum and sugar and lime in little cocktail glasses, with lots of ice, and we might even get to know the local rastafarians and get them to make green banana hats for us and we'll go for walks in the tropical rainforest during the daytime, and then we'll come back to our villa, or even our shanty hut, it doesn't matter as long as we're together and you'll make love to me all night and my legs will be all sore in the morning, like jelly, but I won't care because I'll still be able to feel you inside me, penetrating deep into my vagina, throwing me against the head rest or even the sand if it's just a palm-leaf mattress and oh! then we can drink coconut milk and smoke marijuana joints and we can think about planning a fishing trip in the nearby lagoons the next day...

Chapter 6

It is an oft-stated and very obvious truth that violent people are generally those who feel that they have the least reason to live. This might seem odd in a 21-year-old. But consider the facts: no fridge-freezer. No video or MP3. No swimming pool. Not even a Jaguar. Enough to drive anyone around the twist. The belief that violence stems from material disaffection is echoed in the pages of history. The vikings would never have pillaged and raped their way across the British Isles and Northern Europe had they not felt that their neighbours had something which they did not. Indeed, the very term 'have' is loaded, and 'have-nots' are noted by historians as the very inferior side of an equation dividing two camps into opposite corners during WWI, Britain, France and Russia on the one hand, Germany, Austria and Turkey on the other. The Germans lost, and they lost again in 1945.

The revolution in Russia in 1917 could similarly be explained by unbearable poverty. So too, the first French revolution in 1789 – in both cases, great violence ensued. The uprising itself could hardly occur peacefully and the wealthy classes whose properties were being attacked could not be expected to stand by without putting up a jolly good fight, which by and large they didn't. Particularly when it became clear, in Russia and France, that the insurgents had every intention of going after the people as well as their possessions. In this revolutionaries may be seen to be somewhat less honourable than highwaymen who generally allow the carriage to pass once it has been relieved of its more valuable items.

Few, however, could be said to have exceeded the bounds of civilised behaviour more extravagantly than the Mongol ruler of the 13^th century, Genghis Khan. Buried amid great secrect in 1227, the 2,000 people who attended his funeral were reportedly slaughtered by 800 soldiers, who in turn were killed to ensure that his rest remained undisturbed. In all more than three million may have perished during the bloody creation of the largest continuous land empire in history. At their height, the Mongolians simultaneously challenged the Germans and the Japanese. Apparently, some of the Mongolian fighting methods were subsequently adopted by their erstwhile neighbours. Archeologists this weekend were reported in The Independent to be close to finding Khan's burial site and treasure trove and Professor John Woods of the University of Chicago, who led the American – Mongolian team to the presumed burial ground in Batshireet could hardly contain his excitement: 'This whole country is virgin in terms of archaeology – almost no excavation of any kind has been done in Mongolia. There are tantalising references in folklore to maidens being sacrificed, and booty. We don't know what to expect.'

I can tell him what to expect: a best-selling book, a lucrative lecture tour and a role as a consultant in a large-scale Hollywood production drawing on every great myth known to man: on exhuming the tomb of Genghis Khan, archeologists discover documents pinpointing the exact location of the lost city of Atlantis and explaining in detail the techniques used by the Egyptians to build the pyramids. Etchings on the sarcophagus seem to show that a surviving pack of carnivorous dinosaurs were responsible for the downfall of the Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilisations, conveniently setting the stage for a sequel in Mexico. I might just have a stab at writing the script. There would have to be monumental set battle scenes, of course, and an eerie scene towards the beginning when young Genghis is seen to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for fantastic amounts of power, wealth and knowledge. Ironically, the knowledge turns out to be of little use, as the Mongols are not equipped with a navy and Khan has no means of exploring the city of Atlantis, so he vents his anger by beheading his three nearest aides. The frustration which he experiences (knowing as he does that the city conceals great riches) fuels his ambition to build the greatest empire that the world has ever seen. Armed with his nefarious powers this proves to be a relatively simple task (whilst providing ample opportunity to thrill the paying public) and towards the end of the film we see an older, wiser Genghis Khan waxing philosophical on the limits to human achievement and stating that the act of conquering is more important than the conquest itself. Faithful to his instincts to the last he then slays his team of closest advisers (in an intentional throwback to the original beheading in scene one) and arranges the final slaughter of the burial scene, leaving spectators with the lesson that no matter how much wisdon and experience we may accumulate throughout our lives, we are all, at the last, slaves to our instincts.

I have to watch myself. I have to listen to these strange conversations which take place in my head. When a voice says, 'Do you want a cigarette? What do you feel exactly? Do you feel aroused? This is your body speaking: tell me about your needs...', I need to record that voice, I need to bring it out, out into the open where others may see it and say: 'That is a voice which I recognise. That is my voice. Or if it isn't it sounds very like it.' Our voices, in fact, are all very different. Charles' is that of an old reactionary: "I think that we should all find a way of growing... no, I think we should find a way of storing food which doesn't involve silos and barns and all that sort of man-made nonsense. Very unsightly." "How would you go about doing that, your highness?" "Just one moment, I'll ask one of the villagers down at the pub." Ah, good day to you sir. Would you mind explaining how we might go about storing food without ruining the countryside? "Get rid of all the [censored], for starters. And we don't want any of those [censored] in these parts, do you hear? Yes, I know that we don't get many [censored] around here, The Yanks bombed them all in the war, didn't they? Missed a few though... still, one thing I'll say for the [censored], at least they're not fat. I've got a thing about fat people. Don't know where I get it from. Could be Diana, of course... no, she wasn't fat. Kept throwing everything up, didn't she? Silly girl... I'll never know what she saw in that Dodi character. Just another [censored], from what I could tell. And a father like his! Makes one glad to be British..." Yes, you're actually Greek, sir..." "[censored] be [censored], do you hear!" "This is typical. There is no respect for tradition in this country anymore. It is all gone to the dogs." That would be the Battersea dogs across the Thames from your football ground in Fulham, Mr Al Fayed? "Don't try any of that British humour on me. I am sick and tired of this country and all of its conspiracies. Yesterday we are playing against Manchester. Twice! we are winning. And we lose 3-2. How do you explain that? It is the referees at Old Trafford, they are all in the gravy. Next time we will bring our own referee, then we will have an honest game. But now I am leaving this country." Don't forget to turn the lights out at Harrods before you leave, will you? You won't be needing it anymore will you? "Pardon me?" It's just that Mr Winsor was thinking about taking it down and building an organic farm and maybe a village pub in its place...

The voice has left me. I think it's safe now to go and have a cigarette. Mmm, those lovely nine letters. No wonder they always seem to lead me to think about sex... only... why do people always say one is supposed to smoke afterwards? Surely before, or during, is better? The curling smoke of a cigarette ten hours after the last one. The yearning desire for nicotine inhaled (deeply) into the bloodstream... a full sensual delight: smell, taste, touch, sight and even (very slightly) sound. And the kick from the chemicals as the smoke descends into the lungs, some sort of sixth sense? It could hardly be described as such – expands, stays there... and drifts out through the nostrils and the mouth, passing over taste buds once again, forming a plume or a hazy cloud depending on the amount of smoke inhaled, the force of the expulsion... As Andy would say, I probably need to get laid.

Well-written prose entertains us but it also serves another purpose: as nourishment for writers. The most sought-after treasure is the Beautiful Sentence: that subtle and well-crafted combination of words, ideas and images which takes us directly to a higher plane of inspiration. As more and more well-written prose appears we can expect the general level of writing to improve. Though there is a catch: prose is of necessity more plentiful than, say, three hundred years ago, but not all of it is good. Bad prose, which surrounds us contantly (in newspapers, magazines and the works of M. de Bernières), wreaks havoc in the mind of the author. There is a trick to absorbing the information contained in newspapers without allowing the turgid writing to affect one's creative powers to any great extent: look only at the headlines, scan quickly through the columns, picking up relevant information on the way, note the words and combinations which may signal the presence of a Beautiful Sentence. Three were discovered in one of the supplements of The Independent on Saturday (particularly in the essay by Jennifer Clement, which gave an account of her childhood in Mexico and left me with a keen desire to taste the country's magic mushroom production 'and see God' (or failing that, black and white rainbows and silver-coloured staircases)). I have yet to apply this trick with any success to the work of Martin Amis.

Chapter 7

Pierre dreamt that he was back working at the offices of UDO. Everything was fine again with Marion, the director's wife. Antonio, the director, still wanted him fired. "It's not fair," Marion was saying, "that you and your brother Jean-Luc should be sacked just because you haven't processed your sales on the computer." Pierre was amazed to be back at the company but felt pleased that here, at least, was an ally whom he could trust. The organisation must have grown, too, since it now occupied two floors of the building. They were on the first floor. All the familiar faces were there: the two Carolines, Andy the 'reproduction assistant', Veronica the events coordinator... none of them particularly reliable or efficient, all of them trying their best. Pierre realised that he loved these people...

With Marion's support, there was no chance of him losing his job. Already Antonio, who had called him into his office for a 'quiet word' was looking for a way to change the subject. The information of the newly-formed alliance had passed to him telepathically, the moment Pierre had entered the office. "We have a problem with the sales tracking system. Do you think you could fix it?" Pierre replied that he would be more than happy to try. Feeling emboldened, he enquired about his brother's fate. "Your brother doesn't work here," came the reply. No, thought Pierre, he doesn't, he works in banking. What was Marion thinking about? Then, ever trusting, in an instant, it all became clear to him: some unknown source had told the director's wife that Jean-Luc was in trouble at the bank. This was her way of passing the information on to him. He knew that he had to call his brother without delay. "I'll fix the system if you let me make a call to my brother," he blurted out. The director's voice suddenly turned hard and menacing. He looked at him with piercing blue eyes and, with a thin smile on his lips, reminded Pierre that under no circumstances were employees allowed to make personal phone calls. The situation suddenly looked desperate. If Jean-Luc were fired from the bank for poor reporting, their plans to take over UDO were doomed to failure. Was that why they had asked him to come back? To confound his plans for global domination? And who had asked him? It was Marion, of course, beautiful, treacherous Marion... This is a nightmare, he thought, you're in the middle of a nightmare. In a moment you will wake up and all will be well. He looked up: the thin smile was still there. Only now the face became distorted, ugly, and a snake emerged from his mouth and his eyes were suddenly crawling with cockroaches... unable to look away, Pierre watched in silent terror as the snake slithered down to the floor and another one emerged, then two, then three more, and a large cockroach found its way into the director's right ear and his hair was writhing with pulsating, milky white translucid larvae and the cockroaches started to feed on the larvae, making an unbearable, gnashing, crunching sound with their pincers and their jaws and Pierre remained there, glued to his chair, unable to speak, unable to call out as the horror reached its paroxysm and he felt one of the snakes begin to wind its way up his leg...

Marion passed a hand over his brow. "Are you feeling better now?" she asked. You were crying out in agony. You must have been having some kind of dream." No, this is still a dream, Pierre thought. Any minute now she's going to turn into a silver staircase or a black and white rainbow. Her hand was still there, soothing, calming, and so was the voice which used to irritate him so much and which he now found strangely reassuring, although he could no longer make out what it was saying. Words now came to him indistinctly like poorly-formed metaphors... 'crickets' and 'ghoulash', and seven sisters... they passed over him, barely penetrating his consciousness, similar to the borborygms with which Valéry Larbaud had compared his work in the 1920s and 30s. An illumination descended over him. Ambiguity, he thought. The key to all great fiction. Never allow the reader to know exactly what you think, exactly what you mean. Entrance them with your words, entrance them with your sentences and leave them in a permanent state of perplexity. Only then will they thank you for producing a work which so precisely matches their own experience of the universe. Use words whose meaning confuses, confounds, words whose very existence should be called into question. Then you will be revered as a Great Writer... The moment of insight and clarity was muddied as a new thought entered his head. Where to find such words? Not in a dictionary, obviously. Should he simply make them up? Groping around in the dark, he searched for a suitable combination of letters. 'Muzzified', he came up with after a few seconds. A mixture of muzzled, puzzled and confused, a perfect word to describe the present situation. There! He could do it. He looked for another, scanning the scrabble deck in his head, briefly nonplussed by the fact that the word 'scrabble' had already been thought up – though whoever came up with 'nonplussed' must have been fairly chuffed with himself. 'Emblocked', that was what he was, completely emblocked. He needed a samarussian, one that might clear up this oxypath. 'Oxypath'! That was another good one, though he couldn't be sure of what it meant... which of course, was the point. So double-plus marks for oxypath, as Orwell would say.

"Are you all right?" Marion's voice, clear now and distinct, drew him out of his rêverie. "You've been using strange words, words that I couldn't understand. I think you've been running a temperature and it's making you delirious. You'd be better off trying to sleep." But Pierre, in his dream, was perfectly awake. 'Ongle,' he thought, and 'bishok' and 'raddle'. Sooner or later, he knew, he would come across a word that really did exist. Would that set him back? No! he thought triumphantly, it would simply add to the confusion!

"You said m...," she smiled, as her hand moved down towards his thigh. "That's my favourite word. How did you know?" He tried to protest that he didn't know, that he thought that he had made the word up, but once again the sounds dried up in his mouth before he was able to communicate them. Was it a coincidence, or was it a trick? Had she understood the game? If she had, maybe they could play together! But Pierre remembered vaguely that the woman was not supposed to be trusted. How funny, he thought, that if he had said that in French, no one would have known he meant this woman in particular or all women in general, since the determinate article 'la' applied to both the singular and the general! Might Marion have realised? Like some crustacean animal he retreated into his shell. There was no telling what Marion might do – she might turn into a giant millipede at any second, razor-teethed piranha fish might suddenly start plopping out of her mouth. But he looked at her and no, her face appeared to be behaving itself. "What were you worried about?" she was saying. "You know that your brother is safe where he is... Anyway," she added softly, "raddle means to interweave or, in another sense (as an alternative to 'ruddle'), to paint with rouge." Of course it did. He knew that. Didn't he? Or was it only now that she was telling him, that the information was slipping discretely in to an unguarded memory bank, taking its place deceitfully among the billions of authentic memories? There was no way of knowing, no way at all, and something about her appearance was starting to concern him. What was it? Of course! She had no nose! How could she smell? The nose grew back into place. Maybe he had imagined it. What had there been it its absence? He couldn't remember. And if the memory had vanished, surely the nose must always have been there? Memories disappear but noses do not. He held on to this certainty, tightly, like a talisman, hoping that it might protect him against whatever his brain might next throw in his face.

And suddenly the dream collapsed in on itself, vanished into nothingness like his ex-director's wife's nose and he was sleeping soundly in a world where the company actually had fired him, his brother worked in a bank and had nothing to fear and his own sole occupation for the foreseeable future was writing a novel which he somehow never managed to get started. Marion woke him up gently. Dreaming once more, he turned slowly to see a face which he instantly recognised as his mother's. "Mummy," he said agitatedly, "what are you doing here? I have to go to work!"

His mother vanished and now he was in a park, the Jardin du Luxembourd, sitting at a table with his brother Jean-Luc and M.. The weather was bright. "It's not the blank page that I'm afraid of," he was saying, "it's the two hundred and fifty pages that follow that one." Jean-Luc laughed – insincerely, Pierre thought. It was true that the joke was weak. But then why did he have to laugh at all? Why could he not take him seriously, he thought, not realising the contradiction between making a joke and wishing his audience to keep a straight face, why could no one take him seriously? If the joke had been stronger, would he have gained face? "It's the job," Jean-Luc told him, "you've got to get a job. And try and keep it this time." No, his brother wasn't saying that, he himself was thinking it. There was only so far his brother would go in avenging himself for starting out four years later than him. Mostly he remained docile now that he had outgrown the stage of scratching his brother's face. He was a Banker now. His place in the world was assured. There was nothing more he needed to do now to establish his dominance. The thought riled Pierre and he felt a sudden urge to slap his brother across the face. M. stopped him. "Tout ce que tu fais à ton frère," she said, "tu le fais à moi." That's strange, he thought, I've never wanted to... which, he thought, was a good joke, but perhaps not one to make under the circumstances. His brother, anyway, had disappeared and M. was now holding his hand and speaking to him in that patronising way of hers.

Certain people, you feel, lodge themselves in our consciousness and prevent us from getting a proper hold on them. Esther Rantzen is one. Much of the British royal family – Prince Philip, certainly. Would the world be a poorer place if any of these figures disappeared from the surface of the planet? Well yes, obviously. But we find it hard to say. Secretly, we may feel that it would deprive us of the opportunity to tell them what we think of them. How many more such people do we have in this country? Emmanuelle Béart qualifies in France. So too, from a personal perspective, does Brigitte Bardot. For some, Princess Diana – though I confess to having been saddened by her death. The point tells us something, I think: that we may judge people by whom they hate the most. By saying that I hate Brigitte Bardot, I am stating unequivocally that I despise the extreme right-wing views which she espouses. If I attract the scorn of the animal-loving brigade in the process, so be it. Similarly, when a friend told me recently of his abhorrence of Emmanuelle Béart, it was for parallel if opposite reasons. And if this were Spain in 1936, this 'friend' would no doubt be a mortal enemy. Political persuasions may change over time and perhaps the sixties sex kitten has renounced her despicable beliefs. Whereas Ms Béart's convictions, I am certain, stem from the heart, I have no doubt that Ms Bardot's originate in a need to prop up a somewhat neglected ego. Having declared her preference for animals over human beings, particularly of a feline nature, how better for the fading star to illuminate her glossy excentricity than by expressing her support for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, many of whose members probably count themselves among her most fervent admirers?

Some people strive to create, some people strive to achieve. By achieve we mean force their way up the greasy pole of life. We hold that creators of that which is inside them. They carry within them a seed which cries out to be planted. If a child's parents are both achievers, they may be consumed by ambition and burn out at an early age; some may never make it beyond the first step of the ladder and then they will transfer their need for achievement on to their own children. If a child's parents are both creators, they may be ruined by any failure of their own to create; and they will seek to instill in their children their own thirst for creation. Of Pierre's parents, one was an achiever and the other a creator – this allowed him to stay his creative instincts until a time when he felt his talent would most be likely to bear fruit. His friends were evenly divided: Sébastien, James H, James W and Béatrice were creators; Jean-Paul, Rima, Frédérique and Nagi were achievers. Sébastien, of similarly mixed stock, was the one he felt closest to – despite having come close to a run-in with him over his girlfriend while they were both still students. It was true that Pierre had broken up with Katina when Sébastien had announced to him his love for her; as is usual in such cases, the announcement served to make her more attractive in Pierre's eyes and they were back together within a week. Neither had mentioned the episode again and Sébastien was now happily married to Agathe, a creator if ever there was one.

Pierre's creative side, as we say, had remained dormant; now, at the age of thirty-one, he decided that the time had come to find a suitable spot for his acorn and watch it grow into a fine, strong oak. Coincidentally he discovered he could sing, a feat which he had believed until that moment would remain forever beyond his grasp. The song which prompted this revelation was a track from Gainsbourg Forever, a compilation of hits by the French singer, entitled New York USA. Impressed by the awe-inspired yet simple lyrics and the African drumbeat in the background, Pierre recorded his own version into the microphone of his mobile telephone. As a fierce self-critic, he detected a marked improvement in pitch and tone compared with all his previous efforts. So marked, in fact, that the conclusion was beyond all possible doubt: there no arguing the fact that he could definitely sing. His voice was deep, and rich and melodious – deeper, in fact, than Gainsbourg's himself, though Pierre had never had the assistance of a single Gitane. The pitch was good, the notes in harmony and the impression on listening to his rendition of the song was altogether an enjoyable one. Most of all, though, he loved the bare-faced cheek of the song's lyrics: J'ai vu New York, New York USA. J'ai vu New York, New York USA. J'ai jamais rien vu d'au. J'ai jamais rien vu d'aussi haut, oh c'est haut, c'est haut New York, New York USA. Empire State Building, oh c'est haut. Rockfeller Centre, oh, c'est haut... any remaining doubts that Serge Gainsbourg was a genius of the very highest order were removed from his mind in a flash.

At the Sancerre, his favourite bar in the rue des Abbesses, Pierre tried out his newly-acquired skill on a group of buxome and suitably-alluring young maidens. They swooned, and soon Pierre was being driven around Paris in a gleaming silver Peugeot 206 as his four conquests, three blonde and one brunette measuring between them 1m75 on average, complimented him on his singing prowess, his manly good looks and the rapidly-emerging bulge in the front of his trousers. Later on, back in his apartment, Pierre's conviction grew that had his repertoire of songs been wider, at least one of the four would have wanted to spend the night with him. On the other hand, he reasoned, as he lulled himself to sleep, the sight at close quarters of Claudine's legs, Marie-Jérômine's breast, Céline's midriff and Cécile's... was worth all the sex in the world...

"C'est un livre qui commence en faisant semblant de parler d'amour et qui finit par parler exclusivement de cul au fur et à mesure que le jeune héros (moi) s'aperçoit que les satisfactions en ce domaine sont nettement moins aléatoires."

"Vous pensez donc qu'on peut séparer l'amour du sexe?"

"Absolument. Ainsi que je l'ai dit à ma fiancée au moment où elle me quittait, 'mon amour pour toi est si pur que je me contenterais d'échanger avec toi des paroles jusqu'à la fin de nos jours. Tes caresses me sont superflues.'"

"Elle vous a quand-même quitté... il doit y avoir une leçon à tirer..."

"C'est vrai. Je crois qu'elle craignait justement que son corps ne m'attire plus. Elle était extrêmement jalouse..."

Jean-Luc switched off the television in disgust. Pierre's confessional style whenever he appeared to present his book on French national TV shows such as Vol de Nuit made him cringe with embarrassment. Why did he always have to speak about Manon? He wanted to tell his brother to get a life – which was tricky, given that he now appeared to have everything that anyone could ask for. More than anything else, he now felt consumed by his hatred for his brother's ex-fiancée. His doctor had warned him that he might be developing an ulcer – he well knew the cause. His bile was worsened by the knowledge that this was her revenge for his dumping her all those years ago. His brother thought that he had it bad but he didn't have a clue. He didn't have to carry around with him the guilt of rekindling her bulimia, or the memory of her words when he had told her that it was finished between them: 'all right then, I'm going to fuck your brother. And my name's not Manon if he isn't a spineless, quivering wreck crawling on the floor like a scared puppy by the time I've finished with him.' And he was the one who had introduced them, which meant that he was to blame for the subsequent mess. How could he have so misjudged Manon and so over-estimated his brother? Hadn't his own experience taught him how dangerous she could be? He hadn't believed her. He'd thought she was bluffing. He'd laughed in her face. And now? His brother bringing shame to the family, Manon back in the picture (again), apparently mollified by Pierre's literary success (and the rumours of a six-figure advance on the next instalment). And for him, the beginning of an ulcer at the age of twenty-six. Was his brother really as good in the sack as Manon claimed in all her recent interviews? Well, there was only one thing for it, he thought. He would just have to win her back...

Pierre was feeling sick and continuing to smoke certainly wasn't helping matters (although they do say that a cold lasts the same amount of time no matter what you do to it). Having placed some water to boil it took him a few moments to register the fact that he was looking for his watch to time the pasta. He moved around in a haze, looking around and wondering what he was doing standing up when he might be lying down. 'Never mind', he thought, 'I'll make some spaghetti', and was surprised to find on his return to the kitchen that the water was already boiling in a pan. He went back to the living room to look for his watch and found it, hidden beneath some papers. One was a draft of a letter he had written a while ago to M..

"Dear M,

Although...

Yours,

Pierre"

Lucky I didn't send it, he thought. She'd probably be arranging for my crucifixion by now. He picked up the book by Fay Weldon he was reading. He enjoyed her prose: it was quirky, the story had pace and the characters were believable without being mundane. By the time he put the book down and returned to the kitchen, the spaghetti had turned to mush. Tired by the cold and by his day's literary endeavours he decided to call it a night. The passage about his brother's reaction to his appearance on a television show was no good, it would have to be rewritten – but for now it would have to wait.

Pierre gave up on the Cloning of Joanna May on around page 140. God, he must have been desperate to have enjoyed it so much first time round, circa 1990 or whenever it was. It was sick, abhorrent, the very kind of book he'd been railing against in his diary the day before. Such a tricky thing to get a handle on, literature – stray from the classics and you were on a minefield. Who knew if some the other things that Weldon had written might not be good? This was just confused, with notions of nuclear fusion in the wake of Chernobyl, the phantom of cloning and the frantic sexual antics of a woman approaching the end of her natural shelf life. Which was a fairly horrible thing to say, and Fay Weldon said some fairly horrible things of her own in her... (he searched for a word less complimentary than 'book')... in her...

He left the sentence unfinished, disatisfied with 'tuppenny gore-fest'. After all, it was only a book. Some of the dialogue was good, and there was no denying that she had captured the spirit of the age... ten years before the subject of cloning really hit the big time. Her description of a captain of British industry involved in the 'twin' activities of nuclear energy and cloning was intelligent and, if anything, it was the female characters who came off worse in the novel. The plot struck him as being weak and the basic premise, of course, was pure science-fiction – just. But there was much tension, such tremendous nervous energy in the narrative, in parts of the dialogue that he had just been considering that he wondered if her best work might not be twenty years down the line... if she lived that long. In his opinion what she needed was a good strong dose of Proust to tone down the fireworks and restore a little balance to the text. If Proust in French were a little awkward (Pierre was a firm believer in keeping to the original – you never knew what you were getting with translations and it was certainly not what the original author had intended – he had once picked up a copy of To the Lighthouse, in French, and been forced to put the tome down after ten pages, feeling a little queasy), Woolf would do just as well.

As we grow older, we learn that certain things are painful. Arguments with neighbours, for example, are painful. So we turn down the music on the stereo. And if the neighbours complain, we make sure that we are especially apologetic. Those who refuse to learn – well, those people are of no use to society. The tramp on the rue des Abbesses, I wonder, the tramp who stinks and carries his bag around with him with his cheap bottles of wine – is that how he started out?

I'm not saying that there isn't kindness out there – but you wouldn't want to bank on it to get through the day. A scratch is as likely as a caresse – more often than not from the same person (or cat, or dog). And the inner life? Equally at risk. I feel trepidation in my heart every time I open my email account. Something a BBC reporter who had spent time in the Middle East described recently as 'hyper-vigilance'. The desire of grown men to crawl back into their mother's womb because it's actually a bit too frightening and dangerous out there. Which it is, of course, but how else does one encapsulate the concept of our mortality? Ah, I hear you say, but does that mean that we have to have homeless people in the street? Yes, I would reply, if there are not enough homes for everyone then there must be homeless people. And the rot doesn't stop in London or Paris, my friend: have you paid a visit recently to Calcutta, Mozambique, Bangladesh?

Some of the worst pain we inflict on ourselves, needlessly. When Pierre first broke up with M. in June 1994 did he need to keep seeing her, constantly? Would a clean break not have been preferable, perhaps? Followed, if necessary, by reconciliation and friendship a few years later, once all the bad blood had drained away?

Face. All things boil down to face. This book is about face. Too much face breeds arrogance – at one point, I had lots of it. Too little leads to dejection. Again, I have visited both ends of the scale.

Last night I was in a pub called the Frog and Rosbif – an English pub, sort of – in the centre of Paris. I looked around – there was plenty to catch the eye. The signs, drawn in chalk and coloured ink, advertising the beers, the menus, the special offers. The 'old' clock behind the bar. The bar itself, decked with pint glasses and two-litre jugs. The fans, hanging from the ceiling like slow-turning helicopter blades. The brass chandeliers. Even the potted plants, stacked generously in front of the large, arch-shaped windows. Unfortunately, just in front of me, directly in my line of vision, sitting on a bench, was a very large bum. Its owner was French, smoked, had a generous laugh, chalky skin and glassy eyes (I could see when she turned her head), probably from too much beer. She was wholly unattractive (not just in my eyes, I mean in a very objective kind of way). Further along was a solitary man reading a newspaper and he, too, was a sorry sight. There – fatness and sadness brought together, if only on the pages of an unfinished novel.

Luckily a pair of attractive young women soon sat down next to me. We quickly entered into conversation on the subject of eye operations – gruesome, but bonding. Both in their early twenties, one called Virginie and the other Danielle, or Hélène, it doesn't register. Virginie works in a restaurant in a rugby stadium – the Stade Français – exculsive entry, no riff-raff, Hélène – she must have a name – Hélène is a nurse.

Gays and lesbians have their sexual freedom today – but do they have face? Face is a male thing – it makes the world go round. I used to hate it – it put me in mind of inscrutable Asian types plotting webs of deceit against their friends and refined cruelty against their enemies. Face, I could see, was easily lost and took a great deal of time to rebuild. To conceal one's emotions behind a mask was the best form of protection – and then, did they shrivel up in the dark like the feet bound up in tiny shoes of Chinese women? Face is a universal male thing – it's the twinkle in the eye of the black guy two tables away, watching me make my move on the pair to my left, practically mouthing his secret thoughts, which I have read in any case – no great telepathic mystery this, the voice stems from deep within the male psyche, a primal force which shapes the world around us and has done since man first lifted a tool, man first made love to a woman. 'Go on my son!' The roar of the crowd as the treasured striker goes for goal. A little further along, a couple are kissing, blatantly, unconcerned by the drinkers milling around. Face. I would recommend the Frog & Rosbif to anyone who chooses to pay their respects to this beautiful city.

Smoking oils the wheels of social intercourse. And it puts me in mind of sex. Everyone should smoke, albeit in moderation, at least when they go out, probably the rest of the time as well.

I made the conversation up. Well, I didn't make it up exactly. It happened the day before. We really did talk about eye surgery; I got the ball rolling by enquiring about the large tattoo Virginie (that was her name) had on her right shoulder. Very beautiful, Virginie. And her friend, Hélène, had her charms as well, but they couldn't match Virginie's. Will I see her again? Yes, if I can be bothered to go to the stadium where she works.

Last night's affair was much more tentative. The pair sat down to my left, on my invitation. The blonde sitting diagonally opposite from me, a French version of Alicia Silverstone, found me to her taste, I could tell. Her eyelids were half-shut, giving her eyes the shape of shallow cups. Their conversation was interesting and I followed it intently. I wondered how much they could tell about me from my appearance. Quite a lot, it would seem: I was weating tight black Levi 501s, a dark brownish-burgundy leather belt, quite classically styled, and an ample beige-cream tee-shirt with two masks (one smiling, one sad) draen in burgundy and black ink with lettering 'Got soul?' written just above. I wsa reading an English broadsheet newspaper (or pretending to) and placed on the table in front of me were a packet of Marlboro Light cigarettes, a box of matches, my UK passport and an ultra-sleek (tri-band) silver mobile telephone inherited from my previous employer. I listened most carefully to my two attractive neighbours when the subject turned to the French education system, raising my head and ignoring the newspaper before me. More specifically, a very elite part of the French education system, the prépa, and more specifically still the literary sections of said system, khâgne, in which it transpired that at least one of the pair, the blonde diagonally opposite, was studying. So, to return to my self-portrait: interested in education, probably well-educated himself, every sign of being affluent, garrulous and confident in the presence of others. I bought a packet of Golden Wonder cheese & onion crisps from the bar tendered it to them. The brunette, sitting directly next to me took one, her friend declined (alas!). Neither did she smoke, though her friend did. Unfortunately, I was more interested in her than in her friend. Nevertheless, it was she, Alicia, who smiled at me and said 'bonne soirée' as they left the pub.

Now I have two targets in my sights: Virginie and Alicia. Things are looking up. Clever Alicia, moving the subject of the conversation towards education to arouse my interest. Clever, well-dressed, beautiful, blonde Alicia.

This thing about rules that the British have. It really is a nuisance. For example: "It is acceptable to eat tuna fish whose capture may have led to the death of innocent dolphins if one is unaware of the fact [of the dolpins' death]. If one is not unaware of the fact, it becomes a crime." But tell me, please, whoever it is who invented these rules, where am I supposed to find dolphin-friendly tuna fish here in Paris? Do you honestly think that the French care tuppence about these things? They force-feed geese, for heaven's sake!

Mention Paris in August and even the most die-hard romantics are likely to tilt their heads a little to one side and say, 'oh, the Parisians are gone and it's full of tourists – very hard even to find a baguette.' Personally I like it that way. Whether the people aroud me are Parisians or tourists makes very little difference to me – on the whole, the tourists tend to be a little better behaved. I recommend a circuit in my neighbourhood: take the steps up the through the gardens to the Sacré Cœur, carry on through to the place tu Tertre and follow the shoulder of the hill down to the rue des Abbesses. No doubt you will see me at one of the terrasses on the way – the one reading a newspaper, scanning around from time to time to check for the arrival of a nubile ingénue, I will perhaps approach you at your table and ask for the time, or make a polite enquiry about some characteristic sign on your person – if, that is, you have chosen to sit down at the same terrasse. The one I would recommed most of is the Bar of the Relai de la Butte, which combines excellent service with an unbeatable location, halfway up the rue Ravignan at the point where the street is interrupted by a few steps, a leafy square with a drinking fountain in the centre, the Bateau Lavoir to one side and, at the upper end, the continuation of the rue Ravignan taking the stroller up, up, the final third of the Butte to the striking forms of the Basilique at the summit.

It may not be necessary for an author to express an opinion for the reader to take issue. A single word may suffice. Yes, truth is contained in words as much as in sentences, phrases and propositions. We have no way of providing an estimate of the value of Pierre's work – yet we will refer to it as a manuscript. A manuscript: a book or other document written by hand, or the original handwritten or typed version of a book, article, etc, as submitted by an author for publication. Yet how much more meaning the word contains than that which is conveyed in definition provided by the Collins English Dictionary! How much more information we may glean, or wish to glean, from the conjunction of those two Latin words, Manus (the hand) and Scrivere (to write)!

Pierre's manuscript was beginning to take shape. Eighty pages or so, the most he had written so far. Work still needed to be done on the structure, it still needed to be tidied up but still, parts of it at least were well-written. What then made him leave it on the table outside the Bar du Relai de la Butte? Simple misfortune? An unconscious desire to be rid of the thing? An equally unconscious attempt to bring it prematurely to the world's attention? We have no answer. We can merely relate the facts: at approximately 9.00pm on Friday, 27th August 200x, on a warm summer's night, Pierre sat down at one of the bright metal tables outside the bar, ordered a beer, then another, and then another. He had with him a copy of day's Independent, complete with news of the latest threat to journalists' lives in Zimbawe, dissensions in the British conservative party in the run ip to the leadership election and shootings by the Israeli governemtn in the occupied territories in Palestine, and the manuscript of the novel he was writing. When he left the establishment approximately four and a half hours later he had drunk, in total, somewhere in the region of seven litres of Bitsburg Weissbier at 4.2% alcohol content. The bill came to 350 French francs, or approximately 50 euros (it would hve been less if he had drunk at the bar). As he stumbled from his chair and made his way home he waved goodbye to the four or five people still remaining at the neighbouring tables. Nobody waved back but Pierre was barely in a position to register the lack of reciprocity, let alone take offence. Maintaining focus and concentration in the presence of unyielding territory he negotiated the few cobbled streets which led him back to his appartment, pas the Internet café where he regularly checked for news from M..

We may be certain that the email he received that evening at 8.30pm from M. had much to do with his subsequent unruly behaviour, uncharacteristic though it was. We may be equally certain that the next day, he regretted the amount he had had to drink almost as much as the email itself. We will not pry into the news that the email contained – we suspect that it carried the confirmation that M. had finally tied the knot with P.'s rival F., but this is not for us to know. We may state unequivocally, however, that if the news of M.'s attachment and the excessive quantity of alcohol consumed the night before had a deadening effenct on his limbs and on his spirit, the realisation that he had left the manuscript begind at the bar woke him up with a start. Naturally, when he made his way sheepishly up to drinking hole a little later there was no sign of the thing. Lost, vanished, spirited into thin air as if it had never existed. The memory of the drink was clear enough – was it possible that he had imagined the manuscript, dreamy it into existence, willed in with such force that he had actually, for a time, held all eighty pages of it in his hands? But what could have been the purpose of such an effort? Did he care for fame and fortune? Not one iota. Did it matter if his friends and family, to say nothing of the public, recognised him as a great living writer? Not a jot. Did the conceit of immortality resonate within him like the echo of some illustrious past? All he could hear inside him were the plaintive rumblings of his stomach, warning him of the imminent risk of a dangerous about to take place. He noticed one of waiters looking at him quizically. 'It's all right,' he said. 'Last night, you know...' The waiter had not been on duty the night before and therefore made no connection. Neither was he very interested in the ruminations of this solitary character who occasionally turned up in the afternoon to order a beer, with his English newspaper and his slightly uppity manners. Pierre decided to go home.

Chapter 8

Mr Blacker produces some wonderfully innovative thinking in his column in today's Independent. He writes about the part-privatisation of the British library; he introduces the suggestion that authors be sponsored, or 'adopted', by individuals or companies. He himself seems to find the idea abhorrent. I cannot see why. He talks of the 'virtue' of public services. I fail to understand. Is not society, as Margaret Thatcher pronounced, quite dead? If I choose to take up writing as a career, will I not be delighted if some wealthy patron decides to subsidise my efforts, pay for my rent, my food, my drink, etc.? Is my work likely to suffer? I hardly think so. Did not Michaelangelo produce the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel under the patronage of the Vatican? That's the problem with these lefties: well-meaning, but ultimately utterly misguided. Still, you can't help loving them, and we all agree that old Joseph Stalin was a far more acceptable proposition than evil Mr Hitler. He helped us win the war, didn't he? What more can one ask from a man? Circumcision?

Geneviève is starting to act more like herself again. What I mean is, I can predict what she is thinking. Or is it simply me who is reverting to being a human being? I hurt my foot playing football today. Should I tell her that it might be broken? Of course not – she would be over in the Eurostar in a flash.

At some point late in the last century, Ms Anne Rice invented an extraordinary character: Lestat the Vampire. His tale can be taken at all sorts of levels – though most would see it simply as a horror story, full stop. (My goodness – if this were being edited by an American publisher, that 'full stop' would just have been changed into a 'period'. How would I explain that 'full stop' sounds better than 'period'? They would insist, I would have to threaten to sue, and there would go my US book sales...)

"It's important to remember that you are actually quite a big thing as a human being – your life is huge." Not something I could have written myself – we owe the line to Maxi Jazz, front man of the band Faithless, the very last two lines of his interview with Ms Fiona McClymont (a Scot, that's nice) in today's Independent Magazine (Saturday 25^th August).

... And I'm 31, for crying out loud. I can't have my mother coming over to Paris just because I have a slightly swollen left foot.

It is important to recognise that most laws are introduced, not for reasons of morality, but for the single purpose of allowing society to function. In this sense any law, right or wrong, can be seen to serve the common good. If anyone disagrees with this statement, thinking perhaps of laws against Jews introduced by the Germans in the 1930s, or the racist laws against blacks and coloured people which existed in the United States of America until the 1960s or in South Africa until the 1990s, or the law which still exists in the USA today allowing nazi memorabilia to be bought and sold freely over websites, or the laws which exist in various Muslim countries allowing some form of public hood to cut off the right hand of people who have robbed, or to stone to death any woman who has committed adultery (dreadful sin though it is), or the laws which provide for the execution of murderers, traitors, terrorists, thieves, etc., I would ask them to write to explain why sufferers of back pain are prevented from using cannabis, the only drug recognised by doctors to alleviate their distress.

By coincidence I read in today's 'Home News' section of the Independent, 25^th August 200x, that the penalty in Saudi Arabia for terrorism leading to the death of civilians is public beheading. Shall we be specific. The father of the man who was murdered in a bomb blast last November in Riyadh said in an interview with The Independent that the penalty for such a crime was public beheading. His daughter Hilary is attractive; he himself, judging from the photograph provided by the newspaper is something of a wizened old man who probably 'knows in his bones' when something is right. And to his mind, public beheading for "the correct perpetrator" is something that he could "go along with".

Mr Rodway (such is his name, the article informs us) is wrong. People who think like him are wrong. Full stop. No matter what their anger, no matter what their pain. No matter what their loss. I cannot be bothered arguing with him what he thinks the mother of the guilty man (if it is a man) (if he is guilty) will feel if the execution goes ahead. Or their father, sister, brothers of children, if they have any. Should we visit a curse on the whole lifeline, perhaps? Would this achieve a desirable, satisfying result?

I speak of curses because another article in the newspaper (the world is a very interesting place at the moment) mentions the fact that a band of Greek monks are finally lifting one that a village on the Aegean island of Limnos should "never sleep again." The source quoted is Reuters, so I think that we can trust them. For anyone wishing to check for themselves, the village is named as Mondros, the monks are said to come from the community of Mount Athos and the delegation from the monastery of Koutloumani, charged with conducting the three-day event of lifting the penance, was to be composed of the monastery's abbot and four monks. Shall we quote some more? I think we should.

"The Christian orthodox monks were welcomed by residents and tourists eager to see the curse removed.

The monks will stage a series of prayers and will carry a relic of the Holy Cross through the central streets of Mondros today, [an] official said.

Former residents of Limnos now living in Athens made a pilgrimage to the monastery to ask for the curse to be lifted. Limnos is one of the closest Aegean islands to Mount Athos, an autonomous collection of monasteries scattered on a northern Greek peninsula.

One villager said: 'We want this curse lifted as it is not our fault but our fathers'.'

Monks have been chanting the curse for at least one hundred years since Ottoman forces killed almost all their brothers in the village in retaliation for attacks on Turks by locals. The massacre is believed to have [taken place] at the end of the 19^th century.

The official said: 'We are a pretty village and we don't have other curses. So once this is done with, we hope to attract visitors for the nice things we have to offer.'"

The village will no doubt be grateful for the additional revenue from the boost in tourism. Will the monks from Koutloumani benefit from the donation? I began by thinking that the story showed the filthy nature of the Greeks: attack the enemy, if you are Greek, and soon enough your own side will start shooting at you. These people were not to be trusted, as the old saying goes. I paused: was I being unjust? To a degree: the monks, allegedly, did not start shooting, they contented themselves with throwing a curse. Highly reactionary, these monks. Content with occupation by the Turks. Or merely opposed to violence? Not such a bad thing for monks to be... by throwing curses?

This wonderful (though tragic) story set me on a new train of thought: what if the tale were a complete fabrication, a set-up between the monastery and the village designed to attract much-needed publicity? Well, they could hardly have come up with a better scheme. Imagine! Three days to lift a curse! Not even a dopehead on Mykonos strung up on a week's supply of Extasy could have an excuse to miss the party. Clever people, these Greeks. Very clever. Not content with having the most beautiful scenery, the best weather and the greatest cultural heritage in Europe, they also have the best wheezes.

My fascination with Lestat is linked to the fact that he senses his powers but feels reluctant to use them. He believes that killing people is wrong. A vampire with a conscience. Could this not be a metaphor, I thought, for the way that men behave, or choose not to behave? I have a little bunny rabbit in my sight (a quote from the modern classic Swingers) – do I hurt her with my claws? Or do I decide to let her go unharmed? What the theory missed, and this perhaps is its principal weakness, is the power that women have over men. Less obvious, more insidious, able to express itself in a hundred different ways – in truth, quite terrifying. Women, on the whole, seem quite unconcerned by the might of men. In groups, they seem quite superior. Even one to one, a woman will appear wholly unaware of the dangers she faces until the moment the blow actually strikes her in the face. I too, have a similar tendency: the tendency to believe in my ability to argue myself out of any corner. With women, on a certain cue, they just laugh amongst themselves – and then, as a man, you are aware, through the suddne sharp decrease in pressure in the pit of your stomach, that you have become the centre of the joke. Such an experience haunts a man long after the event, and many is the time when I have raised myself from the table in a bar to make my solitary way back home reciting to myself softly the words 'sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.' We bring it on ourselves. Why play the game when we can watch it at home on television? Everyone knows that marriages end in failure, everyone knows that nothing remains after the first short burst of passion. Is a man worse off if he prefers to keep to his own company? Do the rumours of what he does with his right hand in bed at night (or left, as the case may be) ever reach him once he is safe within the walls of his ivory tower?

(Incidentally, to answer Ms Walter's point in yesterday's Independent: sexuality in boys starts at a very early agre. It is in the beginning self-centred: that is, a self-causing erection results in pleasure of a sexual nature which the boy then seeks to reproduce. My first memory goes back to the age of nine though my earliest recollection of intense 'erotic' excitement leads me to 1977 (I was seven), discovering that my school teacher, whom I was of course madly in love with, was a smoker – perhaps it was the word 'smoker', with its empathis on the 'o' in the middle, which aroused me more than the act itself... perhaps not. There was a case of a female teacher at my junior school in Basingstoke who was rumoured to smoke – I was then approximately five. We talked about these things as young children do, in hushed tones, but the facts never materialised. No doubt the French are more relaxed about such matters. The affair, as a result, was never allowed to take on full-blown erotic proportions. To conclude this parenthesis, I would state unequivocally that I believe that the word 'masturbate' would receive a far better press if it were recognised to constitute a pursuit in which women are generally as keen to indulge themselves as men are. The perception is, however, that women are, in this regard, virginally pure).

We think – how can Liverpool have a 'John Lennon' airport? Then we think that it's a bit American, and we think about Graceland and Elvis, and we realise that Britain is a bit American, or at least bits of it are. Which is why we hate Liverpool and everything it stands for (mostly theft, stupidity, incomprehensible speech patterns, ...). And Merseyside is officially one of the poorest regions in Europe. Is that not embarrassing?

Many people dislike newspapers. This is understandable. Newspapers tell us about the Real World and the Real World is often a mightily unpleasant place. Do we wish to read that someone "had to climb over heaps of rotting corpses, on [...] hands and knees while the murderers [...] were finishing off the last of their victims?" What useful purpose does such knowledge serve? Could newspapers not exist in vacuum and journalists be locked up in glass boxes for the public to watch as they underwent their fruitless occupation? In the case of foreign correspondents, holographic maps might appear of the regions they were covering with lifelike 3D graphics of tanks and helicopters and fighter planes and computer-simulated explosions to give paying visitors a 'taste' albeit sanitised, since the stench, the noise, the full visceral, carnal horror would need to be edited away, of the real experience. What else do we seek when we read such reports, if not a vivid illustration of war and carnage from behind the bullet-proof shield of the printed page?Whoever remembers if the Tamils of the Shining Path, the Mossad, the Khmer Rouge , the KLA, the IRA, or the ETA were responsible for whichever nloddy massacre? Surely the tracking of such organisations' deeds and misdeeds carries an element of trainspotting about it?

The picture changes incessantly. One village strikes at another village, the village strikes back, a third village becomes involved in the crossfire. Which means, of course, that fighters from village A have moved their position to a hill overlooking village B. Unfortunately, village C, with which neither A nor B have a quarrel, lies behind village B and directly in the line of fire from the vantage point of village A's new position. The weaponry at the disposal of village A's liberation army (the ALA for short) sourced via a Maltese arms dealer from a battlefield in Central Africa is powerful but relatively imprecise. Sure enough, a stray shell landing on village C's single church and destroying its fourteenth-century byzantine dome soon ensures that population's involvement in the nascent conflict. Now things become a little more complicated. The ALA, having secured possession of the hilltop, might have been assured of rapid and overwhelming victory, as Village A's two rival newspapers were beginning to report. Now, however, they are faced with two enemies, the BLA and the CLA. At this point, we should perhaps provide a little background information for the kind reader's benefit. Village A (population 4 000) are known as the intellectuals of the region – hence the two newspapers, the Morning Tribune and the Bugle. People hailing from Village B (pop: 3 000) have a reputation for being slow and uncouth. Neighbours of Village C (pop: 7 000) have always considered its inhabitants as little more than "unwashed religious zealots." Back to the action: the "zealots" of village C are heartily displeased at the loss of their church but less than enthralled by the prospect of striking up a durable alliance with people they see as pond-life and riff-raff (viz, the population of village B). Early contact between the leaders of village B and C confirm the prejudices of either side and feelings of mutual contempt rumble beneath the surface as the two issue joint communiqués declaring "eternal friendship and collaborative support against the imperialistic, satanistic," a word included at the insistance of village C's Counselor for Spiritual Affairs, despite spirited resistance by the elders of village B, "maneuverings of the ALA." A period of calm ensues as seething discord between B and C reaches breaking point and any joint action against village A is mired in an endless shuffling of official papers between the different departments of village C's surprisingly well-developed administration and the newly-created Department of Municipal Security, a poxy little office in the annexe of the Town Hall, off the main square of village B, staffed by the mayor's cousin in lawm a fifty-four year old trader in bootleg whisky, contraband cigarettes and the little metal badges with which the village's young male population like to adorn their jackets before an evening's passegiata. The lull saves village A, whose resources had been sorely depleted, and allows them to enter into secret negotiations with village C with a view to storming village B from either side and dividing the territory into two equal parts. The plan is set to go ahead until, at the last minute, sensing reluctance on the part of the CLA to fulfill its part of the bargain, the ALA informs the BLA of the on-coming assault (a link having been formed with an ALA member's brother-in-law enlisted in the opposite camp). Instead, they propose that village A and village B be merged into one and village C be booted into the next kingdom where they so clearly belong. Here, having secured a potentially useful contact in the offices of village A's leading daily newspaper, the Tribune, we must depart, leaving our reader with a number of different options for the progression of the conflict: 1) while B is storming C, A storms B and cuts off its retreat, leading to total victory for A; 2) B pretends to storm C but in fact attacks A, while at the same time being attacked by C, and a stalemate results; 3) C and B seek to invade A, A holds firm and uneasy calm descends, until B turns against C and finds itself no match for C's militant, fanaticised zealots. A and C then declare a truce, which is surprisingly held and leads to long-lasting peace between the two village's peoples.

Yesterday's report in the Independent by Robert Fisk, however, of events he witnessed in Lebanon and Syria in 1982, is more harrowing than most. He writes of men, women and children being butchered in a maze of medieval tunnels beneath the city of Hama. He writes of wounded soldiers, "bandages round their bloodied heads", holding their heads in their hands. He tells of a girl fighter who "had thrown herself into the arms of the [Syrian] soldiers, blowing them all up with a hand grenade clutched to her breast". He gives the account of a woman with a boy in her arms, seizing a bar of chocolate meant for her son and swallowing it whole. Here, we realise, is a journalist who may well understand the true meaning of 'hyper-vigilance'. We must erase these visions from our mind, we cannot afford them to intrude on our consciousness and divert our energies from the everyday business of living. We have too much at stake. We must always remember that our life is huge.

But how can I not return to the words of Mr Fisk? "A pall of dun-coloured smoke hung over the city and a policeman was about to direct my taxi on to a bypass road when two Syrian soldiers asked my driver to take them back to their unit outside Hama." Background material which prepares us for the scene to come. "I ended up on the banks of the Orontes river, beside a T-72 tank that was firing straight into the roof of a burning mosque."

"For perhaps a quarter of an hour, I watched the tank firing over open sites, directly into the city with its thousands of terrified citizens cowering in cellars or lying in the rubble of their homes." I pause to consider what I am writing. Does anyone need to be remembered of the horror of war? It maims, it kills, it resists all attempts at rationalisation. It may turn children into rabid animals. This we know. This is why we believe in progress. Mr Fisk causes us to feel great indignation. His accounts fill us with outrage. But who are we to rail against? Village A, Village B or Village C? And what of the women? and what of the children? what of that girl with the grenade to her breast? Away, away with these nightmarish visions, my shoulders are not strong enough to carry the weight of the world's anguish and torment. IT was not my doing. Why should I be held responsible? What made Mr Fisk choose to share his experiences of the Apocalypse? And why am I following down a path so clearly signposted Madness?

I may have broken my foot yesterday. My friend Alexander the doctor, who happened to be on the scene, said that I should eat lots of dairy products. That shouldn't be too much of a hardship. I like yoghurt.

Chapter 9

Place two children aged ten, one French, one English, in front of two plates – one filled with baked beans, the other with lentils. The English child will take the baked beans in a flash. The French child will look at the baked beans, say 'yuch, I don't like that colour', and choose the plate of lentils instead.

The experiment works, with similarly predictable results, at practically any age, regardless of sex (if anything, the French girl will merely give a look of greater scorn as she rejects the plate of beans). Every time, the French child will go for the more natural-looking dish, while the English one will stick to the colourings, sweeteners and additives that he or she has been brought up to love.

There are variations which one may attempt: using Bird's Eye frozen peas instead of beans (English child makes slight frown, worried nothing else on menu for supper, but chooses peas; French child makes joke about English radioactive food, and takes lentils), or using French baked beans instead of Heinz (English child starts to cry, French child hesitates, remembers that beans contribute to flatulence and takes the lentils, depending on how mischievous he happens to be feeling).

Interestingly, both lentils and beans combine with sausages to form popular French dishes (the latter being known as 'cassoulet').

This put me in mind of a conversation I overheard in a pub the other day:

"You should try the English breakfast, it's great."

"What, with sausages and everything?"

"No, you won't like the sausages. They're not the same in France."

The first person was making a very fair point. Well, half a fair point. It is perfectly true that sausages in France contain on average more mear than sausages in England and therefore taste very different. The second half of the point (though the first half of the reply) was an assumption: knowing that his conversational partner hailed from northern England, he guessed that the French sausages in an English breakfast would prove to be a disappointment.

I overheard very little else of interest in this conversation between two electricians, one from Durham and the other from Birmingham. Both were in Paris to work on the same construction project in Saint-Denis; both were staying in the area, just north of the boulevard de Clichy; one warned the other of the dangers of losing his wallet, to pick pockets in the area, saying that the local police force were completely overstretched (which I daresay could be true) and had people at the station able to speak every main language spoken by tourists in the city. I was more interested in the fact that Manchester United were in the process of beating newly-promoted Fulham 3-2 in the Premiership so I left them to their talk. The Beckham goal was absolutely tremendous.

Nevertheless, both the experiment and the conversation, I think, show up the so-called present trend towards globalisation as bunkum. We are nowhere near being global. Barely any nearer than we were fifteen yeras ago, when we were studying the 'American model'. The only thing I can state with any degree of certainty is that, yes, Britain is being sucked in. It will hurry up and adopt the euro if it knows what is good for it, never mind what Mr Brown may have to say about his five economic tests.

Paradoxically, Britain is being sucked in. Yet the island(s) will stay where it is, it will not move, a long long way from the coast of North America and just a few short miles from Calais. When the British have finally taught the French that there is a difference between the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish (the last part they have particular difficulty with, believing one the whole that Northern Ireland is somehow 'part of England'), we will get along just fine. For now, as a Scot, it still grates to know that the United Kingdom frequently appears on French school maps as "Angleterre". They do not wish to know. To them, we are part of England. One, whose acquaintance I made yesterday and whose Australian wife is quite charming, said to me, "Scotland is the same as England except that it's Catholic, isn't it?"

How does one respond to such ignorance? A Glasgow kiss, perhaps, had we been in a bar, but this was a picknick, a picknick in the Shakespeare garden in the Bois de Boulogne, for heaven's sake, and how could one find a more blatant token of English cultural imperialism? I defended myself as I could – pointed out that most of the cabinet were Scottish, starting with Mr Anthony Blair himself, so the status quo really wasn't such an unhappy situation. I fumbled around, scored a point or two, lost several more, brought Ireland into the discussion – obfuscation tactics for which I paid dearly. Not in conversational points, this time – in terms of self-esteem. I'm not too big on the whole 'All Celts together' thing, particularly as it places me in the same company as Bretons and Galicians. Must be something to do with my Italian blood. Galicians, I have nothing against, but Bretons... is it the stripy tops? The worry that they probably do go around on bicycles with cloves of garlic around the neck, baguette under their arm, moustache and beret? 'National' dress is big in Brittany as the Bretons still see themselves as a separate nation... ruled by some king or other (probably the Duke of Edinburgh).

I frightened myself writing about the Middle East yesterday. What I wrote, in the end – what I chose to keep – was far more gentle, lowkey than the apocalyptic visions which first burst forth from my pen... strange, given that I myself have experiences of being in a war zone – albeit on a personal scale. So scared was I that I found myself in the back of patrol car, trembling, doing my best to answer the questions the kindly patrol officer was putting to me. So scared was I... and would you not be, if at three o'clock in the morning there was someone on the other side of your front door, the other side of your bedroom wall, chanting strange rituals at you in some foreign language?

I believe that English is a more honest language than French. By which I mean: take something badly written in any language, translate it into French and it can be made to sound good. Because French is naturally beautiful. The same trick will never work in English. I refer specifically to The Joke, by Milan Kundera. Louis Aragon, no slouch, prefaced the novel and called it "one of the greatest of the [XXth] century." I can only assume that he read it in French.

The French revolution was successful: it aimed for democracy. The Russian revolution was less successful: it aimed for popular democracy. The lesson? Democracy is far too important to be left to the people. Ahem. I mean: democracy is too important a word to allow itself to be qualified. But I have a question: what does it take to annoy the British secret service? And what happens when they are annoyed? Do they say, philosophically, "Well, Marx did live in Highgate, after all" before they put the boot in? Does the whole thing become completely Kafkaesque (two men in suits on a stretch of wasteland early in the morning, preparing to slit your throat – must be Belfast)?

Truth in novels (and anywhere else) is always very difficult to come by for very simple, fateful reason: truth must be expressed in words. A person who believes passionately in a thing will find it easier to find words to express their thoughts. Eloquence is a sign of conviction but what happens when the words replace the belief? An unspoken belief is pure – once it is allowed into the commerce of language it becomes sullied. Every word is jealous of the parcel of truth which it contains. Some, like 'let' or 'do', may appear to lack aithority – humbleness of their origins is compensated for by the inexhaustible uses that man has found for them. Others, rarely employed, attempt to mask their idleness in haughty splendour – 'uxorious' or 'sybarritic' are two such words. Some are favoured, some are not. Some are in fashion one year and disappear the next. Others are stalwarts, as old as time itself, watching on their younger siblings with benevolent disdain. Not one believes that his value (words are masculine) depends on his usefulness. And where do words come from? In truth, Truth created them. They are Truth's creatures, let loose on the world, unruly and deeply disrespectful of established order. Mad, revolutionary, blood-thirsty, murderous. When Truth created words, she (Truth is feminine) thought that they would serve her. She was mistaken. Words are their own masters.

One large American needs to be airbrushed out of my picture. Why? Because she is large. There is a price for self-indulgence: thou shalt not appear in the pages of my novel. If it ever gets written, of course. I try to be kind, I try to be generous, but kindness and tolerance lead to vice and decay. Let us be honest: we would rather look at fit, healthy bodies than the other sort – the sort churned out in vast quantities by the good old U S of A. What is it about fatness which offends the eye? Something to do with the very real, very physical weight one is imposing on society. Personally, I am thin, and I always have been. As far as I am concerned, there is no other way to be. So do I speak from behind a distorting prism of thinness, or do my words carry some universal truth? I do not know – one would have to ask a fat person. But let's face it: you don't see thin people going on get-fat diets, do you?

Blame society, they say. Recognize that fat used to be considered beautiful, they say.

Chapter 10

It is very difficult to be a novelist when voices everywhere proclaim the death of the novel. I don't know how they do it – the other novelists, I mean. Not when VS Naipaul, contemporary writer most closely associated with the death of the novel, has just been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Is it part of some sinister Eastern plot to undermine the foundation of Western society? If so, we must concede that McDonald's restaurants doubtless play a leading role, along with practically every large American multinational from the food industry. Intentionally, or not? Is the collapse of modern, liberal civilisation (I had to cross out the word 'empire') the result of inherent contradictions, to quote our pal Lenin, who seems to have been resurected in the shape of Putin, or are some dark and evil minds at work, plotting our downfall? Is it accidental, or not? Was Lenin commentating an objective reality? Or a mental picture which came to him in a dream?

Or a vision? Clever people, these Russians. Let us not believe, however, that they have access to sources of inspiration closed to the rest of us. They have one single advantage over everyone else: their country covers half of the world. Easier, then, to aspire to capturing the...

Universal truths: are they the same from one country to the next? Who higher than Blake, than Coleridge? Lenin, Tolstoy, Da Vinci or Borges? Sartre! Yes, Sartre, the one who is greater than me. Pah! I'm kidding. St John the Baptist said of Jesus: "he is greater than me." That was scripture, I'm writing literature. Completely different field. No reason to bow to the strictures of false modesty.

Chapter 11

The thing about national airlines is that they tend to reflect the images we have of the countries in question. BA - a little lost, a little confused, not quite sure where it stands on the "Is it a pond or is it an ocean" question. Air France – sleek and efficient. Sabeena – disorderly and somewhat unprofessional. KLM - a mite over-confident, a mite too sure of itself (witness the crown over the three letters). Alitalia – stylish and sexy. Swissair – there is no possible way they can be going bankrupt. Iberia – very peninsular: does one not tend to forget that they exist from time to time? Lufhansa – oh, all right, we know you're there; we're just pretending not to notice you.

26/10/01 It seems that the darker people are, the closer to age-old tribal traditions, the less enlightened, the more tolerant they are of racism (referring to the abuse thrown at E. Heskey in his march in Portugal). Clearly, the British in particular mark out their superiority by combatting this sort of thing. We can only regret that other nations do not follow our example.

What do the French think about the Gibraltar situation, I wonder?

2/11/01 I spent a considerable part of the late 1990's wondering whether people were inherently evil, concluding that they weren't... possibly quite corrupt, however... and that you had to watch out all the same.

A particulary unpleasant event occurred in November 2001. A promotional celebrity video I am shooting... should I include Kate Bush or not? I decide that I will: 'The Star with the Certain Seventies Appeal.' Next on is Christy Turlington: looking beautiful, but not quite wearing the right accoutrement. A bountiful shopping expedition, obviously, judging by the carrier bags she has with her. I needn't have worried. Ms Bush appears quasi-simultaneously and starts to undress in the bathroom across the hall. Though not quite as young as Ms Turlington, it is hard not to admire her figure. Christy follows her in: they are about to have a shower together. The older character washes the younger, standing in the bath, two women bonded in soapy embrace. I think: could be a full-blown shower scene. What if this were Psycho? Cue shrill violin music. Knife-wielding maniac appears on the set. Involved in the action by now, I try to resist a mon holding a very large kitchen knife at me: he looks surprisingly like Michael Douglas. A message flashes up, in captials, yellow on a red backgroumd: 'BAD STAR SELECTION', and then 'SATANISM'. At which point I awoke with a jolt. I mean, Kate Bush did remind me of a witch the first time I saw her on television but to accuse her of being satanic's going a bit far – although it was Hallow'een the night before last... was saphic love the problem that my unconscious mind was trying to grapple with? I go back to KB: no talent, chosen because of her name... those were the times.

xx/xx/2001 Power: universal effects. 'Absolute powere corrupts absolutely.'

Louis XIV: Absolute Monarch

Louis XVI: First Constitutional Monarch – yet also a figurehead of absolute monarchy – the head had to go, that the body might live

Louis Philippe: Usurpateur Bourgeois

Napoleon III: Emperor Dictator.

A state like Singapour can no longer ban chewing-gum without at least wondering what the effect might be on its international reputation. It isn't a question of whether you are pro or anti America: it is about whether or not you are part of the community of nations. Australia: are you looking into your role in the plight of the Aborigines? It will come back to haunt you. Being an island, you may avoid international opprobrium for a time – but the status carries its costs. Japan: are you doing your thing to help the environment? It is your world as well as ours. China: are you quite certain of your ability to live in autarky for the next 5,000 years? Russia (great desolate plains, frigid wastes): warm enough? Mexico: cool enough? South Africa: are you content to allow the mistakes made at home to be repeated amongst your neighbours? Israel: do you expect to survive for another fifty years? Finland: are you awake, Finland?

25/1/02 – 1pm-ish

1.45pm. Reading an article in the Evening Standard – 2/1/02. Newspaper which conspired to deliver me a warning at UDO in September 2000 or thereabouts (well, I was tired of fruitless cold-calling – I needed to resource myself, as the French say). The article concerns a French celbrity actress, Jeanne Balibar, and a film in which she stars – Va Savoir, by Jacques Rivette. It makes me think of Christopher who failed to invite me to his wedding, who used to have appalling bad breath, something which I have mentioned once to Vijay – and if by any chance he passed on the message, it might explain the oversight. Sharp fellow, a whizz on Excel, uncommon ability to steal any show in which he happened to appear: his bearded appearance might well account for the knack. Unusual, highly recommendable, but not a friend... a comment which puts me in mind of Salvador, a propos my relations with a certain Ludovic Lemagne.

Naturally, my friendship with Winston, I would hardly count in my favour as regards C. V, too, is guilty of such an attachment yet his status as 'support staff' in the company all of us worked for, BA&H, might help to explain the apparent healthiness of his relations with C.

27/1/02 I started to notice that my life was running itself along yearly cycles. Example: relationships beginning in January, painful break-up in late Spring, the Summer to recover and hope restored in late Autumn with the promise of something new in the air around December. Or: job hunt in January, big boost in my fortunes by March, sign of rough weather in September and back to the drawing board in time for a seasonal hangover at Christmas.

Time and again the pattern would reproduce. Even at school, my best efforts were always apparent in the term beginning in the New Year. Was I unique in this respect? It seemed so. Some heightened sensitivity seemed to tie my fortunes in with the rise and fall of the annual cycle, as though Mother Earth experienced a secret pleasure in expressing her rythms in the person of Jonathan Daniel.

10/02/02 America's greatest quality: valuing decency

Every language has its own history of the world. The most important one is written in English. Germans suffer from myopia. The French are probably as far-sighted as the British (colonies on every continent, in every ocean). The Italians lack scope. The Spanish are all tied up in a massive end-of-the-world (theirs) party. The Chinese suffer from delusions of grandeur, small race that they are. Likewise the Japanese. What of the Americans? Their long-term objective: to set up the US of the World. I think I could go along with that. If the Capital were Paris.

More likely, however, the project will self-destruct. Unable to overturn China, or Russia, or Europe for that matter, the country will revert to its original state of a loose federation of sorts, lawlessness returning to the edges of its terrifying urban sprawl in true Wild West fashion. Hey! When a country is ill, you got to expect side effects! Mr Martin Ivens is undoubtedly the cleverest columnist I have encountered so far. Though not quite clever enough, all the same.

Aphorisms

If it is in my interests to like you, I will like you.

Once goodwill, illusions, hope and innocence have been exhausted – then can we grow old.

Can a rule have no exceptions? Yes, but that would be the exception to the rule.

I have no money and I have no name. If you wish to be friends with me, allow me to question your motives.

It's hard to criticise a state that comes up with Concorde and the TGV.

So long as a country has enough people willing to become politicians and officials, there is hope for it.

23/2/02

- Un parapluie est intrinsèquement ridicule. Le seul endroit où il est un tant soit peu convenable, c'est sur un parcours de golf – sport qui est, lui-même, extrêmement ridicule.

- Quels sont les autres sports que vous trouvez ridicules?

- A ma connaissance, il n'y en a pas... le sumo, si, peut-être.

...

Songeant à la jolie brune qui venait de lui faire une queue de poisson dans sa 206 cabriolet, Jean-Paul se concentra sur la route devant lui. On avait beau être en mars, il faisait beau, pas de circulation. Il alluma une cigarette en se disant qu'il faudrait décidément qu'il arrête de fumer. D'ailleurs, c'était dangereux au volant.

Véronique tenta une fois de plus le numéro qui s'affichait sur l'écran de son téléphone portable. Toujours rien. Ce maudit répondeur sur lequel elle n'avait pas la moindre envie de laisser un message. D'ailleurs c'était elle qui réglait la note. Pourquoi payer vingt secondes de plus pour satisfaire à la curiosité de quelqu'un qui n'avait qu'à être là quand elle l'appelait? Elle essaya de nouveau. Quatre sonneries. Puis la connection se fit.

- Jean-Louis Trimard?

- Jean-Louis! J'étais sur le point de désespérer...

- Allo? Qui est-ce, s'il vous plaît? La ligne est très mauvaise.

- Jean-Louis, c'est...

Clic. Un naufrage de plus de la communication mobile, fléau de notre société. Vu la fréquence de ce genre d'incident, c'est à se demander pourquoi on n'entend pas plus souvent dans nos cafés parisiens voler en éclat des glaces sous l'impact d'un portable transformé momentanément en missile ballistique.

Véronique, pourtant, reprit son calme, commanda un deuxième café, alluma sa quatorzième cigarette de la journée. La semaine prochaine elle arrêtait, promis juré. Pas question de rater ses vacances de ski à cause d'une pneumonie aigue ou autre effet secondaire de l'abus du tabac. En attendant, il fallait bien avouer que c'était ça lui calmait les nerfs. Qu'elle avait à vif depuis l'épisode de la veille. Pourquoi Jean-Louis était-il aller raconter à Claire que Stéphane et Violaine étaient sur le point de rompre? Est-ce qu'elle, Véronique, déballait sur la place publique tous les dessous sordides de la belle-famille de Jean-Louis? Qui n'intéressaient de toute façon personne? Elle tira de nouveau sur sa cigarette, une longue bouffée qui s'échappa ensuite par ses jolies narines.

Chapter 12

"Pierre's concern that he had broken his foot quickly turned to relief as he realised that he had merely sustained a bruise." This wonderful sentence allows itself to be played with in a variety of ways. We may replace 'concern' with 'worry', or 'relief' with 'concern'. We may write 'he had merely bruised it', 'he had only bruised it' or 'it was only a bruise'. In each case the change in meaning is infinitessimal but our reading of the event is subtly altered along with the inferences we may make as to the character's mood and the actions he may take as the tale progresses. The writer himself, of course, cannot but help but be swayed by the various implications that his choice of words may suggest. And yet, and yet, his decision will ultimately not make the slightest difference to the development of the plot. Since the sole purpose of plot is to bring successive words into focus we need not be concerned with it – like an overgrown baby depend upon it to take care of itself. If not on the pafe it will exist in the reader's mind. More important, if the writer is honest, are rules relating to repetition, rhythm and sound. These are the elements which make up a novel. Not 'things' but 'elements'. Not 'make' but 'make up'. Our quest for precision is unceasing since detail at every single level is the condition sine qua non of any self-respecting work of art.

On which subject, why is French more beautiful than English? We may begin by exploring the differences between the two languages. For instance, in French the noun tends to precede the adjective: 'le chat botté', 'la porte ouverte', 'le silence étincelant'. On the other hand, exceptions are common: 'le beau jardin', 'la grande table', 'la superbe demeure', ... there is much more flexibility than in English. One may write 'la maison rouge' or, more poetically, 'la rouge maison'. Every sentence calls on faculties which in the British tongue are frankly untested.

"Since parents are the original source of all feelings of guilt, this is our starting point. If your parents are both alive and married, ask yourself: 'do I care if they divorce?' If the answer is no, feel free not to call them, avoid replying to their letters or emails and, if you must speak to them at all, sound surly and uninterested. If the answer is yes, call regularly and make lively enquiries as to health, jobs, family, friends, etc. Beyond that you are absolved of all responsibility (with the exception of presents and cards at opportune moments). If your parents are both alive and separated, the worst is past: it is now their turn to feel guilty. If only one parent is alive, responsibility is heightened and you should be careful to list attentiveness to birthdays and special occasions (mother's day, Christmas) to the regular phone calls. There is one thing to be said for guilt: if you list it among your prime concerns then the rest of your life is probably chugging along quite nicely. Beware nonetheless: it may easily cause you to crash through the barriers and plunge headlong into the bottomless ravine. My own most vivid experience of guilt had less dramatic consequences but still resulted in a long period of soul-searching: having arrived foaring drunk for my first day as marketing manager for Lilliput UK I spent the next two months peering at myself in mirrors and ove-compensating with colleagues who found the situation hilarious and nicknamed me 'Pierre Bacardi' until my lack of confidence fed through into their own performance. After this it was only a matter of time before I was given the push and it happened in entirely unforeseen circumstances (by me, that is) one Friday afternoon after a sales forecasting meeting with my boss Ludovic. Absolutely unforgiveable, was one recruitment consultant's subsequent verdict on my behaviour and I would agree and refrain from mentioning the incident were it not for the name of the company, which I am certain will win over the most censorious of my critics: I did it for Isabella."

"Not long afterwards my parent company's tagline, "Because I'm special, see?" was quietly withdrawn, trampled on, but not before a catastrophic loss of market share in every one of company's leading markets."

We think, as Hegel and all the subsequent communists did, that the world holds meaning. In fact we are wrong: it would be much more meaningful, from a historical point of view, if the main republics – France, the USA, Russia – were allied against the old monarchies – first and foremost, Great Britain.The fact that the USSR focused instead on the United States tells us a lot about the system that Lenin built up: not a struggle for ideology but a pursuit of empire. We should hardly be surprised by the greyness of Soviet towns and cities – many in the north of Britqin are little prettier. The glitter and dazzle of a high-street in, say, Newcastle or Durham fills many with revulsion (to say nothing of the tackiness of the American stripmall). Where some see choice, others see the twin tyrants of exclusion and exploitation. But why seek to bring down the towers of capitalism when there is a far more obvious target: the walls of the Tower of London? The Normans built 'em strong and they built to last, to (mis)quote the words of a fantastic song by Jimmy Page (a true revolutionary). One thing puzzles me however: with their lyrics and their appearance, how on earth was it decided that prosecuting the now-disbanded (and partly deceased) Sex Pistols 'would not be in the public interest', to use the accepted phrase? Did they not cry out for 'Anarchy in the UK'? Did they have some sort of special protection or insurance? Is it not a wonderful thing that they were allowed to express themselves so freely? Is that not the heart of the British Democratic System? Is that not why the walls of the Tower of London stay standing still, and was Jerusalem not builded there, upon those dark satanic mills? Stability, excentricity, xenophobia: the sordid, writhing mass refulgent at the heart of the British National Character.

"Stability, Excentricity and Xenophobia appear to lie at the heart of the Tory Party. I therefore suggest that the initials SEX serve as its platform for the forthcoming elections.

Yours, etc.,

Harry Pinkbottom."

Chapter 13

My publisher was on the line.

"I've got a sketchpad here and I'm trying to trace all the lives of the characters you've introduced in your novel. Well, the different strands of the story look like the tentacles of a jellyfish but I don't see how they all interact."

"Well, you know, the point is that it's a psychological..."

"Who's this girl taking notes from her bedroom?"

"Cecilia? She's..."

"She sounds like she's playing with herself. Doesn't it sound like she's playing with herself, Tom?" I had no idea who this Tom was. "How can you play with yourself while you're writing a diary?"

Very easily, I wanted to reply. But it seemed pointless to enter into a debate on the differences between the male and female anatomies. Best to let the crisis blow over.

"Look, if you're not happy with the book, I can take it back. Sanders & Wright have already expressed an interest..."

"Pete, you live in a world of fantasy. I'm giving you until September 15th to get the book into shape. Then it hits the can. Have a good day."

The phone at the other end slammed down before I had a chance to respond in kind.

An American meets a Frenchman in Paris and says,

'Gee, you Frenchies don't like us Americans much, do you?'

The Frenchman replies:

'Well, Tom, look at all the American TV series and movies we watch over here. You could say that American culture is actually pretty big in France.'

The American thinks for a second.

'Well,' he says, 'American popular culture is kind of cheesy. I guess that must make you hate us even more.'

Says François: 'But the French love intellectual debate.'

'Oh yeah, I heard that you Frenchies were all intellectuals,' says Tom.

'And those who prefer not to watch American TV shows like to discuss their impact on French society.'

'Typical French, always discussing things, never want any action,' says Tom, aiming at a nearby pigeon.

'So cheesy American TV shows and movies actually form a major contribution to French intellectual debate.'

'Hey,' says Tom, waking up, 'is that true?'

'Sure,' says François, 'in fact if the French stopped watching your TV shows and your movies, intellectual debate in France would practically cease over night.'

'Gee,' says Tom, 'that must make us pretty intellectual.'

'Absolutely,' says François. 'In fact, as a general rule, the worse your TV shows and movies, the more intellectual you get.'

'Wow', says Tom, 'I'm sorry François, but I've got to leave you now.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Invest in some Jerry Springer shares!' says Tom. 'It's my patriotic duty!'

You know what the problem is? Your country's too big for you. You have an absolutely huge country on your hands and you don't know what to do with it. That's why Prince is so good: he's small, so questions of size don't worry him. He's been used to it since he was a kid. But your average-sized American male? Not a chance. Scarred for life the second he discovers that even if every single US citizen owned a Cadillac, there'd still be enough room to park them all in Texas.

A recipe for success in the Balkans: UN authorised NATO peace-keeping forces need to be established on a long-term basis with the clear message: "We will remain until you are able to prove that your police, military forces and different population groups can co-exist in a responsible manner."

In the past, my list of favourite records has had a tendency to evolve quite a lot over time. I want to reach someting definitive. Some names just have to go – Kate Bush, for instance.

The essence of communism (as practised in the USSR) was system – no individuals. It needed someone with a firm hand to knock out those whose individuality caused distorsions to the overall shape – hence Stalin's ascendancy. The perfect man to carry out the purges indispensable to the prosperity of the general system – sorry, population. A firm hand, a clear lack of imagination, limited intellectual ability, the perfect combination to succeed in a career in the Soviet Communist Party. Naturally, a slice of luck played its part in the events. Being in the right place at the right time, he took the puppet strings which were offered to him and proceeded to run the show.

The fact that I remain single is a constant reproach to M. Seven years ago I was ready to marry her. If there is no one in my life today, she alone is to blame. My friends know this. My parents as well. My brother. Seven years bleed into eight, eight into nine, nine into twenty. Cast off burdens, by all means, but beware that the one you loved may find revenge in harmless deeds like a glove wipped angrily across the face of time, left wondering how it came to pass that for this solitary man, the clock has ceased to tick. Is he dead? Not dead: alive in a place that knows no cause and no effect. So far removed from all we hold dear that his existence is now little more than an idea kept fresh in the minds of those who love him still – or once did. And though ideas are powerless to reattach a leaf to a twig or make blossom a branch withered by the frost, yet they may be said to hold the entire world in their thrall. One who has become an idea may pass through walls to trouble those he chooses in their sleep... or caress them like a warm and gentle summer's breeze.

Il ne faut point confondre fatigue et mélancolie.

However, the reproach is hidden, never spoken. She may read it in the bacon streaks of wispy cloud in an evening sky or the patterns that a sheet of paper describes as it floats down a river. If her mood is darker, she may look at the stream of murky water gushing down the gutter of a rainy afternoon and there, in the gloom, discern the words of the lament. Where can she hide from it? Nowhere where there is poetry, nowhere where there is laughter, in no place where the soul reaches out of the body and aspires to something that it cannot know, only sense, a place hidden away from the day-to-day contingencies upon which we build our lives, seek to maintain balance, like stepping stones laying out a path across a shimmering pool whose distant shore remains hidden somewhere beyond view.

Ecstatic shivers sped up and down my spine when I discovered, aged five, that one of our primary teachers smoked. Aged seven, it was a revelation that Mathilde, the red-headed thirty-year-old who answered all my dreams could possibly be beholden to the thin white tube which she produced and placed between her lips, drawing deeply from the fumes which it contained. Mathilde, our 'maîtresse', seemed all-too-pure to indulge in such an evil habit. To my knowledge, none of my classmates shared in the secret pangs of longing which the discovery inspired in me, even though some were aware of the fact that our guide through the intellectual minefield of elementary school presented to its young combattants was a smoker of cigarettes.

Later, as time passed, I grew to accpt the fact that the sight, or even the idea of an attractive woman smoking acted as an aphrodisiac – much as I hated the act of smoking itself. This tension, no doubt, between the good of beauty and the evil of the smell being at the heart of the semi-permanent priapic state in which I seemed to find myself the moment I walked down a busy street, switched on the television in the evening (certain European films being the source of most stimulating material) or simply thought about the pretty blonde, redhead, brunette I had seen place a lighter to a cigarette perched alluringly at her lips at some point in the course of the day. If she were young, I could spice my feelings of illicit wanderlust with thoughts of innocence lost; older, and the mature acceptance of perversity forced my arousal to an even greater extent; particularly innocent-looking (Jane Seymour, for instance, or one of Alfred Hitchcock's blond heroines) and the exquisite anguish demanded almost instant relief.

The great project of English literature since the XVIth century has been the demonstration of Shakespeare's greatness. Nothing may detract, nothing else may carry any weight. Have we not had enough of the bard's pretentiousness? May others not take his place? Is one required to be Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Pakistani, Australian, Canadian, South African, West Indian, Sri Lankan or Kashmiri to find his parochialism tedious and outdated, his anti-semitism offensive, his chauvinism ludicrous and his ribaldry sadly puerile?

Faire feu de tout bois: "My father made the world his confidant with respect to his learning and ingenuity and the world seems to have kept the secret very faithfully."

Dear Margueritte,

Do you know that as time goes by I feel more and more devoid of emotion? Is this how love is supposed to run its course? Slowly draining away and leaving the one who was beholden to it feeling like an empty shell? Of course, of course, everything that I write has the very specific aim of winning you back. But whereas before, this was an objective in which the whole of my being believed, today it seems more like a reckless intellectual pursuit. And the worst of it is that if I give up the pursuit, what do I have to show for the last ten years of my life? I see clearly what lies ahead: your presence more and more like a distant dream, gradually seeping out of my pores...

Any woman can make a passable impression of being a man: a firm handshake, a clear and steady gaze, 'a calm openness of manner to characterise all of her utterances', to quote from Conrad's Nostromo, referring to Antonia Avellanos, who offers her hand in 'an emancipated way' to Don Martin Decoud. Would a woman adopt such a pose for virtue or for vice? For vice: to smoke, to drink, to partake in all the pleasures hitherto reserved for men (in public at least). For virtue: to contribute to society in wats deemed inappropriate for its female members, to give her intelligence expression in fields more suited to masculine endeavour, according to rules set down in stone since time immemorial? Or, being human, for virtue and vice?

One certainty begins to make itself clear to us: whereas the contours of vice are sharply defined, universal in nature, those of virtue seem fluid and hazy, as though virtue itself were a mirage shimmering on the horizon, a haven only for weary desert travellers to aim but never to reach. Was Joan of Arc virtuous? Or Elizabeth I? The mark of their virtue seems stamped by History, a posthumous reward for heroines who rose above their lot and inspired their people to believe that they, too, could take control of their own destinies.

Miss Jean Carter sat down at her writing desl and dragged lazily on a newly-lit, full-strength Victor. How tiresome to be called Jean, she reflected for the first time in her life. How irritating to be taken constantly for a man in her correspondence with the Québecois! She intended to do everything in her power to aid then in their struggle for independence. Being of direct British descent, she understood all too well why they should wish to divorce themselves once and for all from their Anglo cousins. The English had become little more than gentrified Americans: retaining the faintest traces of their British heritage but in the main uncouth, surly, mercenary and corrupt. And the dress! Imported directly from the forests of the Rocky mountains, latest fashion guaranteed. Little had changed since the early settlers had come to eak out a living in the country's rugged backwaters, she mused. A country similar to Switzerland in so many ways, she thought, with the exception, of course, of size and multilingualism. And interest, she smirked, taking another drag from her Victor, deeper than the last. She had worked to do: the leader of the Free Québec Rebels was expecting her report on the situation in Canada's ruling liberal coalintion 'at the double'. How amusing he was, she thought, with his antiquated English expressions which he used in her presence! And quite sexy too, she remembered, in his well-cut Lanvin suit. No, she must not think of that. She must think and act like a man, drink like a man, smoke like a man (as lit another cigarette from the stub of the last) and not give in to the easy emotivity with which her sex was cursed. She looked at herself in the mirror which she kept in the top drawer of the desk. What would Laurent Meurçat see in her anyway? With her hair cut short in a bob à la Jeanne d'Arc she looked like a boy; well, that was the intention. For all her consumption of cigarettes, her face remained unlined, her teeth pearly white, and her large green eyes gleamed back at her from beneath a set of long, dark, perfectly-tended eyebrows. Yes, Laurent might still find her attractive, never mind the fact that her 95^th birthday was no more than a matter of weeks away. How right she had been to keep herself for him!

Let us leave Miss Carter to her report. If a man is a fierce racist but pioneers open-heart surgery, saving countless lives, is he good or is he bad? On the plus side, virtue always comes back into the equation. Virtue and goodness are two different words, however, and there is a reason for this. Goodness is a universal value – virtue is strictly feminine. La Vertu, in French – despite the puzzling lack of an 'e' at the end of the word, the most common signifier of femininity. Other exceptions include l'amour (feminine in the plural) and les gens (in a more restrictive sense)... there are a few in fact... leaving aside the most tantalizing of all. If a woman is virtuous, that is all that is required of her. For a man to be virtuous, however, that is not enough... we need to know what goes on in the secret of his heart. I raise the question because Professor Christian Barnard, a South African pioneer of heart transplants, died quite recently. The obituary in the Independent told us that he was seen as a cross between 'God and Frankenstein'. To me, there is no doubt that he was a great man. But he was a white South African who studied in Minessota (hardly a hotbed of radicalism when Dr Barnard studied there in 1956 on a State university scholarship). Aparthied (and to a lesser degree segregation in the southern United States) was in possession of considerably better health than many of Dr Barnard's patients at the time: do we have any evidence that he rebelled against the political system of his native South Africa? The debate, in my eyes, veers close to the one surrounding Germany in the 1930s: were they all bad? If heart transplants had been developed, not by a South African, but by Dr Mengele in person, would we still consider him evil? Come now, dear reader, no beating about the bush. Let me add some grist to the mill: what if Professor Barnard had conducted his early experiments on Blacks alone? Let us not be squeamish: how do you think that God must feel as He weighs up the evidence? Yes, of course, there is Purgatory but that isn't anything more than temporary solution. A halfway house. Perhaps you side with those who saw Professor Barnard as a monster, and medecine as the root of all evil... no doubt the termination of a damaged foetus, from your exalted position, constitutes a murder in the third degree. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that medecine's great benefactor shared any such sentiments. His sentiments, in fact, are very much moot. His work saved lives: the hard evidence in the case. He reaped great rewards, he married a beautiful woman, his fame spread far and wide, in proportions made possible only thanks to the culture of mass communication which appeared in the second half of the XXth century. As for his values, as for his motivation, as for his beliefs, these were matters for his conscience alone. Why split hairs? He may have been a money-grabber, he may have been a fame-seeker, he may have believed that a quarter of the world's population descended from trees... if such were the case, would the evidence be laid out in black and white on the pages of his obituary? Somehow, as my eyes swept down the column of inky script, I hoped it would: it might make it a little easier to bear the comparison between a giant of his profession, and me, a feeble little writer, scribbling away in my tiny, decrepit little flat in Montmartre...

Enough of such silliness: not only was Professor Barnard the leading physician of his time, his liberal values were unimpeachable: denouncing apartheid, working with black nurses, transplanting the heart of a white woman into a black man. He married, not once, but three times. He had six children (though his eldest son André, also a doctor, committed suicide in 1984). My flat, moreover, is far from decrepit and I am not a 'feeble little writer'! Feeble? Feel the power of my pen! Little? I'm almost six feet tall! Writer? I couldn't write a line of decent prose if I tried! Um... no, that is not precisely what I meant. I meant something entirely different. 'The meek shall inherit the earth', said Jesus, and I for one shall drink to the earth, whatever it might be worth without the buildings, factories and luxury products which capitalism bestows upon it. Feeble schmeeble. I'm a tiger! Hear my roar! Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Power is fleeting, as is our passage on this Earth. Our desires vanish, our achievements are forgotten and who will keep their memory vibrant when the world is returned to dust? Beauty, it goes without saying, has the half-life of a mayfly yet it lingers, our retina remembers its effects, it persists and our poets mourn its passing.

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among those dark satanic mills?

Without wishing to cast aspersions on William Blake, there are no mountains in England nor ever have been. Such delusions go some way to explaining the national character of the English and we shall express no surprise that the genius creator of The Lord of the Rings and its resident population of dwarves and hobbits, should have been an Englishman (that he drew his description sof elves from his knowledge of the French remains this writer's firm conviction). Nevertheless, he makes an eloquent point about the despair one may experience when frace and splendour (there are comfortably large hills in Britain, in the West, the North, the South, and mountains in Scotland... Mr Blake no doubt visited these on numerous occasions) is replaced (trips to Wales may further have stimulated his imagination) by (my belief is that his poem represents a verbal misappropriation of Scotland's natural habitat) the huge, ugly, polluting machines of progress.

Why seek to deny that words may frighten us? Unemployment, cancer, terrorism, nightmare – these are all words which arouse varying degrees of fear in the person who hears or reads them. Fear itself, is a word with the power to cause a vague sense of anxiety... a characteristic shared by the words 'anxiety' and 'anguish'. Whereas the suggestive power of such words is objective – the extent to which a person may be gripped by them is not. Anyone sitting on a pile of money in the bank, ambition fulfilled, secure in their possessions, is unlikely to be found in the thrall of the word 'unemployment'... though the expression 'stock market crash' may hold its own secret terror. An otherwise healthy person in their forties, fifties or sixties, unable or unwilling to relinquish a three-packet-a-day smoking habit, may feel a shudder run down their spine each time the word 'cancer' is mentioned in polite conversation. For someone living fifty kilometres south of the Irish border 'terrorism' may provoke similar discomfort – though less, perhaps, as the ultimate sanction of a bomb planted under the seat of a car, may appear too distant a possibility – say a politician, then, dealing with the intricacies of a 'peace process' in a country torn by civil strife, uncertain about their security arrangements (for reference, see a vintage episode of the British comedy, 'Yes Minister'). 'Nightmare', for one suffering from pangs of conscience, may play out its particular brand of horror at any moment of the day.

The effect of such words is mild in comparison with that of the malevolent 'big boys' of our treasured language, 'execution', 'hanging', 'torture', 'decapitation'... we cease for fear of offending our gentle reader's sensibilities.

Pity though the poor writer who must delve into these tormented waters on an everyday basis!

Pity him, and remember that the fault is his own. Did I not delight, as a child, in scaring myself witless with tales of vampires, ghouls and monsters in every shape and variety? Did I not thrill at the thought of violent killers spreading murder and mayhem in the most tranquil village (or, preferably, on a road at night in a dark and brooding forest). My very favourite, no doubt, for its potency, its association with images of deathly silence, confinement, isolation, glacial stillness, broken fingernails and contorted desperation was the word 'coffin'. A wonderful tale read in a dearly-held compilation told of a man looking out of his bedroom window on to a moonlit garden at the dead of night and seeing an unknown figure (unknown yet recognised , remembered in a fleeting glimpse of the previous days events, a lift attendant in a department store), carrying one on his back and looking up meaningfully at the man in his room. What a marvellous piece of Victorian panache! It allows us an opening, I believe, into the sensitivities of the late XIXth century: a queen, mourning her departed husband, infusing her subjects with her morbidity, inspiring in them the same sense of hopelessness and defeat. Behind the net curtains there lies in wait a ghost. Beware the old and creaking attic, it is not the timbers of this venerable house which groan in the night nor the stiff November breeze which causes the candles to cancel out their light. Masters of their age, enveloped in their romanticism, the Victorians knew how to spin a good yarn. Though the most celebrated of the time perhaps was written by an American, the catalogue of hauntings, mysterious apparitions and unexplained occurrences is long and plentiful. Why are such compilations available on the open market? Do they not do great damage to our childrens' minds? Is it advisable say, for works such Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Bram Stoker's Dracula to appear on the shelves of the young readers' section at Whiteley's (in theor abridged versions, with colourful pictures to stimulate the tender victim's imagination)?

Come to think of it, what of Goya's Saturn devouring one of his sons and Edward Munch's The Scream? Or Maupassant's Le Horla? What about the whole Romantic movement? Why glorify Nature? Nature kills. Abundantly. It destroys. With abandon. It poisons. With relish. It distorts, deranges, depraves and derails. It inspired a movement in poetry, the Symbolists, who understood that the only civilising force which stood in its path was Man. Man, the fountain of all Wisdom, the inventor of all Things, the keyholder of all pleasures. You have to hand it to Man: of what use would 'absinthe' be without his intemperate curiosity? What purpose would the humble leaf of marijuana serve without his extravagant temerity? Who, if not man, would ever have imagined dissolving powder in a teaspoon over a flame and injecting the resulting liquid through a syringe (or bazooka, as Anna Karan called hers) into one's veins with the sole intention of procuring pleasure? And how else would diamorphine ever have made its heroic appearance on the stage?

My only concern, one which relates to the reflections above on words and invention, is the absence of any truly great English literature. Of course, of course, everyone brings up Shakespeare, but it hardly needs mentioning that the Bard of Stratford was flawed in a myriad different ways. Who else? Waugh, perhaps, comes closest. Milton was unreadable, Ben Johnson preconceived, Thackeray long and windy and Fitzgerald an American. Yes, Woolf brought special talents to the table. But was she not perhaps a mite self-absorbed? Ah, and then, of course, there is Pope. Pope who gave us that wonderful phrase, 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' The one saving frace of his Rape of the Lock is that it sends its readers to sleep long before it has a chance to encumber them with indigestion. Still, it must be said that An Essay on Criticism isn't bad ('a little learning is a dangerous thing').

French fares better: there is no denying the merit of Baudelaire, Eluard, Aragon and Péguy. This, in a sense, is natural: the highest form of literature is poetry and French is inescapably more melodious than English. So, would Coleridge, Blake, Lawrence and Auden have fared better if they had written in French? The point is delicate. For one thing, nothing prevented them from learning the language. The muses of Literature may not be charged with their charges' indolence, to use a Shakespearian turn of phrase. For another, it is the English language which stands accused, not the French. Production in a foreign idiom can hardly be of relevance. We do not cite Waiting for Godot which achieved fame through its original French version, En attendant Godot (though the difference in the lyrical quality of those two titles is marked). Justice might require that we produce an exhaustive survey of everything which had ever been written in English. Yet how far back would we go? Beowulf? How broad the range? Should it cover Creole? As languages melt into one another endlessly, only one thing is certain (delete as appropriate):

- Elvis is dead

- The Beatles were over-rated

- The Stones were and are under-rated (perhaps because of their silly name)

- The Eiffel Tower is the tallest man-made structure in the world (maybe not, but it is tall)

- At least one of the above is false

- At least one of the below may be true

- Falsity may never be proven

- May is the first month of Spring (it is in Scotland)

- The Swiss make the best chesse

- Marco Polo vanquished Brazil in a star-studded final, personally scoring a hat-trick.

The consideration on appropriate reading matter for children put me in mind of an extraordinary conversation reported to have taken place between a worker for Christian Aid for the World and three Taliban clerics in Afghanistan in whose custody she found herself. The worker, Sally, carried with her several crucifices, of course, her wits and two items which command our attention: a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula (published by Penguin Classics) and a map of central Europe. These she used to defend herself, explaining that vampires (with which the imam and his acolytes were not familiar) could only be successfully warded off with the help of the cross. Sally provided a suitably horrific description of the vampire's powers, usefully complemented by the appropriately graphic book cover (a close up of Bela Lugosi in Nosferatu). At no point did she hint that the vampire was a fabled beast: it was as real, she said, as the grizzly bear or the sabre-toothed tiger, with which the three clerics were acquainted. They were impressed by her presentation of the vampire's natural habitat, seeing the obvious similarities between the Carpathian mountains and their country's moutainous topography. When Sally pinpointed the precise location in Transylvania where Count Dracula's castle was known to stand, the senior cleric found himself drawn irresistibly to this far-off land with its forests of pine and its craggy peaks so similar to the ones he knew, shrouded in mist and buffeted by snowstorms (Sally had stretched her descriptive powers to the limit), while his two assistants pulled nervously at their beards and awaited their master's judgement. The darker of the two men snatched the book from Sally's hands: more impatient than his colleague, he wished to arrive at his own conclusion as to their prisoner's guilt. The vampire on the cover was obviously real. His actions drew the priest away from his rêverie.

"Why does this creature fear the Crucifix?" he asked Sally, his acolytes, the tent, no-one in particular.

A moment's paused ensued.

"It is because he is fearful of God's power."

The two acolytes were now growing increasingly anxious, tugging at their facial hair and clenching their teeth, their jaws moving in strange contorted rhythms.

"It is because God is in the crucifix."

One of the acolytes started to howl in low, animal tones. The other clenched his fists to his face, his long fingernails tearing deep into his exposed skin.

Sally watched fascinated, perfectly skill, hardly believing the scene taking place in front of her.

"It is because his son Jesus died on the cross so that all of mankind might be saved."

His two acolytes fell to the floor, writhing in silent agony. Their mouths were foaming and they were clutching their stomach as if shot. Their leader continued, impervious to their torment.

"All glory and honour is yours, Lord, God of all Creation."

And now something strange happened: Sally found herself praying with this Taliban freak, praying that his two young bearded assistants would rise from the ground and be healed by the saving power of God, praying that the community in which she had been received should be released from darkness and superstition, praying that her captors would repent the error of their ways. And when she awoke three days later, in a comfortable room in a hospital in Geneva, she swore that all this had taken place.

No, seriously, I'm making it up, but I like the idea of the legend of vampirism helping to save a damsel in distress. The terror which the Taliban spread is all to real, unfortunately. Mountain people, mountain people, what is it with mountain people (the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, the Taliban, the Apalache mountain people in Deliverance, the Scottish lairds pitching battle with their clans, the Basques and let's not forget the Swiss while we're at it...)?

It's a pretty fair assumption that most people want more money. I can't prove it, but go into the street and ask people individually if they want more money (whatever the country or city), and the answer is likely to be 'yes'. Are mountain people different? Do they dream of goats rather than euros? Or maybe goat maids? Being cut off have they perhaps not heard of the green folding stuff? Do they have culture? Do they read books? Would they know what to do with a magazine if one were placed in their laps? Would they tear out its pages and use them for kindling? No, one should try to use small dry twigs. But paper always helps. They have fires in the mountains, don't they? Of course they do.

There is more to life in the mountains than isolation. There is the collossal sense of power conveyed by the craggy peaks – that rock, over there, the size of four blocks of flats: except that the distance makes it seem as small as... say, a medium-sized boulder. A tiny rivulet might turn out to be, on closer inspection, a majestic waterfall; that chink in the scenery, a cavernous gorge. Nothing in the mountains is ever as it seems: man's best defence to maintain a sense of proportion, to maintain a sense of his rightful place in the scheme, is to ignore the overbearing backdrop. Else it will drive him mad.

As with all things too large to comprehend: I can well imagine that someone born in the nineteen thirties or forties might have a very ambivalent view of nuclear energy. Too new, too dirty, too downright weird. Particularly someone with a very clear childhood memory of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima or Nagasaki (fantastically large, making the people beneath seem like ants). That such power should be harnessed for the good of mankind! A dicey proposition, a dangerous conceit. An impenetrable force clearing out old certainties, ancient ideals of harmony and peace. The Americans dealt with it in their own American way: they invented science-fiction. The world, it is a'changin': but not as fast as our ability to absorb the changes into new mythologies of how the world used to be.

Perhaps this is what makes mountain people different: no-one has been able yet to produce a mythology which accounts for the awesome majesty of the spectacle which surrounds them every day. The Grimm brothers come close and the magic realists of South America (Allende, García Márquez...) put in a decent effort.

Chapter 14

Am I the only one capable of using one word for another? I mean, for instance, 'low' for 'slow'. To clarify: the advertisement for Virgin Airlines with Anna Friel, marvelous soft focus, close-ups of her face, slow drum music in the background – someone picks me up, and says, "It wasn't slow, it was quick." I know what I meant. I meant 'low'. But if I chose 'slow', it's because that word expressed the atmosphere of the film ever so much better. Which doesn't make me right, or the other person wrong. Then again, I am quite useless at describing music. I'm not quite sure what 'rhythm' means. I ought to look it up, but I'm feeling much too lazy. Too lazy to finish my sentences, too lazy to explain the difference between rhythm and beat, between feeling the rhythm (it's a nightmare word to write) and feeling the beat, it's time for bed... which is what Ms Friel invites the moon to do in the ad for Virgin Atlantic, and very clever it is too, the moon won't come to bed and we see Ms Friel delectable in her nightclothes, pleading to the moon, but the moon won't come, not for Anna Friel, not for anyone (and the low drumbeat in the background marks the tempo – at least, I think that's what it marks – it's a little African night music) and still the moon won't budge. 'Finish your drink and come to bed!' That's pretty clear, Moon, isn't it? Fairly unambiguous? But the moon won't budge. And Anna knows it wants to, and so she says in her Lancastrian brogue, she says 'You know you want to' but maybe the audience senses that it isn't Anna's night, and the inflections in her voice aren't producing the desired effect – at least, I think I mean inflections – because the moon won't budge. Silly moon won't bat an eyelid, Anna's got her knickers in a twist and tries to plead in soft – I think – cajoling tones with Mr Moon, his face a-grinning – young Ms Friel's not amused, for Virgin's laid the spread and now she's got to pull it back and jump into bed alone but still there's time for one last effort. 'Are you coming to bed or what?' Lancaster voice, trained to command respect, yet her laugh when she pronounces the airline's name would suggest that Ms Friel's motives are somewhat less than innocent.

Sep 10^th The MA habit is broken. Until I read an article in The Sunday Times discussing the damage that fizzy, chemical-filled drinks cause to teeth. MA, I remember, used to be a Diet Coke addict. Seven years ago, she already displayed a few of the symptoms mentioned: notably discolouring. What would her mouth look like today? At the end of the article, I read that toothbrushing prevents much of the harm from being done. This is a relief: 26 is too young for anyone to have a mouth full of rotting teeth. The article is meaningfully entitled 'Acid Test'. I realise that even writing a book will not cure me of my addiction for MA. I am an addict – better for me to accept my fate. My addiction needs to be managed. There are rules which I must follow:

1) Never to fall in love with anyone else ever again

2) Never again to mention MA's name

3) Never to show the signs that my memory has been jogged into summoning up her idealised presence

4) Never to allow reality to intrude on the idealised version of her I carry around with me at all times

5) To become as indistinguishable from her as possible; that the day might come when she sees herself in me.

I pass the five rules in review: I am pleased to note that I have gone quite some way to accomplishing rule number 5. I am on tenterhooks: when will the Glorious day arrive? Am I prepared for it – say the event should take place tomorrow? Judging by her emails, changes are afoot: cruel, vicious, nasty MA is becoming kind, gentle, nursing Marguerite. Can I face the metamorphosis into Marguerite or Marion? I have very little choice. If a drug user's supply of heroin changes from grade A to grade B does he cease taking the drug altogether? Of course not. I am puzzled suddenly by my hesitation: is not her change the sign that she, too, is identifying herself with me?

I delude myself, of course: there is no happy ending to my fairy tale. The night is darkest before it becomes a little darker. The Hamlet cigar is a clever invention since comedy is the world's sole redeeming feature, compensating for its unremitting bleakness. For myself, I fear nothing more than the loss of my physique, my beautiful straight teeth, my sumptuous clear skin which darkens to a deep cedar brown at the faintest hint of sunlight. It is for MA I tremble.

(Moral of the above: feelings are there to be trodden on: as Pierre retreats into the shadow of narcissism, the expression of his feelings for Marguerite becomes trite and unconventional).

Pleasure/pain is utter crap, but it is true that sacrificing a small pleasure may result in a greater one later. Example: not smoking today may mean that I am able to bounce a great-grandchild on my knee in eighty years time. Or it may simply mean that tomorrow's cigarette tastes better. So: pleasure today, or pleasure later?

The importance of democracy resides in the fact that it provides a forum for disagreement without loss of face.

In so far as I was fascinated by war, my experience of childhood was very similar to that of many other young boys. The principal difference lay in the fact that I was more intelligent by far. A test at the age of 16 gave me an IQ of 16, the highest recorded by Mensa. Personally, the competitive element provided me with the greatest motivation to succeed. How delighted my parents must have been to see me come home, play tennis or go to the cinema with my closest rivals at the top of my class! Year in year out, I would accumulate prizes and they would return home from parent-teacher meetings feeling elated, jubilant, words of praise from the exstatic guardians of my learning still ringing in their ears.

Only in my last year of secondary school did my form falter somewhat. I dropped from first or second to fourth. My grades in maths and, more specifically, physics took a hard pounding. I took the prize of fifth place in the National Examination of English, however, securing further praise from my headmaster. I was offered a place in France's leading independent college of higher education to study a combined course of Mathematics, Philosophy, History & Geography, Economics, French and Languages, followed in the second, third and fourth years by general business theory: marketing, finance, accounting, psychology, more economics and statistics. I remained an achiever.

My fascination with war led me to observe that each one carried within it the seeds of the next. At fifteen, I ended an essay on the subject with the line, 'war has always existed and it probably always will.' Sententious though it may been, I do not believe that it deserved the teacher's comment that my conclusion was 'weak'. Regardless of this harsh criticism, my grade on that occasion was a respectable 17 out of 20 – this being the scale on which all work in the French secondary education system is graded.

If an English person were to ask, I would say that I was middle-class. Though I would add with a smile, 'but I'm more French than British.' In certain parts of Ealing, or possibly across London, the answer would be, particularly if my interviewer were female, 'so you're French middle class.' The conversation would continue as follows:

Me: Yes, but France did away with its aristocracy a long time ago, so there isn't really anything above the middle-class.

Female Interviewer: You can have more money, can't you?

Me: Yes, but I see that as more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference. You can't feel inferior to someone just because they have more money than you.

FI: Me, feel inferior to Prince Charles? That'd be a joke. I used to go to school with...

Me: No you didn't

FI: With a cousin of the heir to the Throne of Romania.

Me: What was her name?

FI: Isobel de Castille

Me: You're kidding me.

FI: No, seriously! She was two years younger than me. But we ended up in the same class together after I had glandular fever and she skipped a class on account of her extraordinary ability to lap up the facts which our teachers did their best to fill our heads with. Except Mr Benson, of course, but they put him away in the end. Isobel was astonishing. I've never seen anyone read so much so fast. No personality, mind you. Never took her face out of her reading matter. I'm boring you...

Me: I don't know if you're telling the truth or puling my leg. My face always goes blank when I'm not sure how to react to what people are saying...

If relations with my friends had been more democratic there might never have been a tale so gripping, so astonishingly essential that a smile comes to my face as I think of the pleasure I will take in setting it down on paper. I have never had literary pretensions, never published so much as a short story in a school magazine; never considered myself to have the slightest artistic bent. I have set my faith in the wheels of industry and enterprise and where those wheels have failed me I felt it my due to turn to the State to feast on its tender nipple. When the State failed me, I turned to the street and there took solace in the faces of those who had lost all hope of a brighter future. The future is bright – the future is orange, I told them, quoting a line which I myself had spun in my days in the phone business. Go to work on an egg! Another of my favourites, by the House of Bulgari's immortal Director of Literary and Corporate Relations, ex of Fabergé. Has anyone noticed that the things that captivate people in a good book are the words themselves? Not the plot, not the characters, not the descriptions: just the words. The art of the novelist consists in creating a setting for words which casts them in the most favourable light possible. One, or two, maybe three per page maximum. (Three strikes me as one too many). The principle was picked up brilliantly by Fay Weldon and she deserves therefore our greatest respect. Just for being a super-duper person who inspires a crush in every man who sees her face on a leaf inside one of her novels (a small number, I imagine, as her production has a reputation for being aimed at a female audience).

In a short story set in France, Mr Julian Barnes used two swear words in as many pages. These, I felt, were two too many. Certain words are beautiful and other words are ugly. If literature is to be regarded as the highest of the arts then it must strive for beauty. This is something that Mr Barnes, of all people, ought to recognize. I regard a regular outpouring of profanities as the sign that someone's inner world is not all it might be so perhaps JB's adventures in France did not turn out to be the fountain of vitality which he may have anticipated.

The problem is not the absence of an enemy, as everyone seems to be saying (British, French or American). The problem is the apparent imbalance between the number of victims and the scale of the destruction on the one hand, and the small number of suspects on the other. How can retribution be effected on the heads of just a few dozen Muslim fundamentalists? How does one appease the thirst for vengeance of a whole angry nation? Never has a sense of powerlessness swept so quickly into the hearts of so many people. The Americans are finished. The disproportion between previous strength and their sudden vulnerability will be far too great for their hearts to bear.

One cannot use a person's behaviour to divine what lies in their heart. What can one use? Their words? Insufficient: one must use his art. As Christian art is the most beautiful, we must place Christian civilisation at the summit of all humanity. Most importantly, no art is ever perfect: it can always be improved, refined. This must give us hope: progress is open to all. The intensity of emotion that a work of art arouses is the only benchmark of its quality. That which touches us constitutes great art. That which merely provokes an intellectual response merits our deepest scorn. This is the condition for civilisation to thrive.

I had a fantastic childhood and early adulthood but I seem to remember that some people have a very bad time of it. Some people – so bad that they want to die. I remember an ex-girlfriend of mine saying, around that time, 'when I'm dead, that'll be the end of it.' I didn't understand something very sad in those words, something almost sinful, and I wasn't quite sure that I wasn't the cause of them. Never had I given her hope that I might have fallen head-over-heels in love with her, never had she experienced with me the magical feelings of slipping out of her body and soaring into the sky which I had known in my first encounters with true Platonic love.

I pitied her and allowed the burden of my sympathy to rest snuggly on her shoulders. More like some kind of parasitical blood-sucking creature than a blanket or a shawl. Why be ashamed of words? She vampirised me.

When I saw her again two years ago at a mutual friend's wedding she looked better. There was warmth in her hands as we danced slow rock and roll together. It had been a long time since we had broken up.

As the French say, 'les paroles s'envolent, les écrits restent.' If a fifty-year-old man tells a young recruit in a publishing company that people buy their magazines for the pictures they contain, the younger man will certainly respond in some way to what he will consider a cynical challenge. In the mental struggle which follows, the older man has the advantage for he has humour on his side – a dark wit borne of years of experience against which the rookie has no defence. Doubtless colleagues overhearing the conversation will shake their heads and tut, 'There goes Tom again, perverting our youngsters' without malice, for Tom is an old pro, respected by all, he was there in the debris helping people out of the wreckage of the Oklahoma bombing, lost his wife there and fought for years to overcome the alcoholism that hardened, shook him down, claimed its decisive victory after sparring with him for months before and finally left him on the verge of ruin before a miracle occurred and he saw himself in a mirror one day, maybe, or a Samaritan stepped in his path and led him to Damascus, and now he writes for Tower magazine, foreign correspondent based in Manhatten. an old joke of the founding editors who used to say that Manhatten was a republic unto itself, bearing the same relation to America as Britain had to Europe, and old Tom's a star, or at least an overgrown mascot and we'd love him as well as honour him of only he didn't keep teasing the new recruits.

Everyone is stimulated by competition. The problem is that competition breeds jealousy. And jealousy stifles. If what we see is beneficient, beautiful, strong and good, the originating force was competition. If destruction cast a shadow over tranquil hearts and peaceful minds, we may be sure that the spirit of jealousy has festered in a putrid corner of humanity, robbing its host of their will and turning them into the instrument of its power. I played a game of table-tennis against a young, female South African friend of my Zimbabwean cousin's. I beat her 21-2, 21-1, 21-2, or by some such scoreline. At the end, it was jealousy, not competition, which quickened her pulse. Someone muttered under their breath, that it would have been nice if I had let her win a few more points. Let her win? Jealousy has never had the slightest hold over my actions. Let it mutter and threaten all it likes, I will not be moved by it. Others are weaker and may quite easily find themselves in its thrall. To give in to it is to despair and to despair is to lose all hope whatsoever of contributng anything to our fellow man. Man! It makes me sick to hear people moan about so-and-so's Porsche and so-and-so's twelve-bedroom mock Tudor mansion set in fifteen acres of prime New Forest woodland. Ideas! These are the essence of success, the keys to a dynamic and fruitful existence. Ideas allow us to triumph over grief, to overcome setbacks, to rejoice in the diversity of life's rich offerings. My cousin's friend had a shortage of ideas, a failing of imagination, and my utter dominance (it was a friendly match) was seen by her as an attempt to overpower and dominate. Not just by her: several witnesses to the event clearly felt that my satisfaction was won at the price of her enjoyment and was therefore somehow degraded. Sullied. Even shameful. Jealousy had crept into their hearts, too, they had not even lifted a bat. It travels, finds hosts everywhere, wears the clothes of camaraderie, binds the souls of its victims and leads them happily down the path to oblivion, believing all the time that their piper plays the merriest of tunes. Ask the gentle inhabitants of Hamlyn if they would not agree. The few points my young opponent picked up were hers, and hers alone. She had won them fairly and squarely.

Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies.

"De quoi parle votre roman, Monsieur Pierre?"

"Il s'agit d'une allégorie. La vérité décide de se donner une expression en inventant les Mots. Mais les Mots lui résistent, s'échappent, n'en ont que faire de la Vérité, s'évertuent à créer des Fictions."

There is something inherently selfish in anything we do which increases the burden we place on society. Smoking, therefore, is an evil. So too is drinking to excess. Sport, on the other hand, strengthens the body and disciplines the mind. Athletes provide a role model for young people to follow, they inspire others to emulate their feats of endurance and skill. A marathon man is a man for all times, scorning the weather if it rains, breaking through the barriers which pain places in his path, using the metronomic beat of his shoes pounding the pavement as a springboard for the mind, driving forward and upwards to a place where everything follows the same unchanging rhythm as the muscles in his body, leading him onwards, never tiring, settling into their own pace, working hard to keep the athlete in motion.

A form of to-do list: passport I have; cleaned my bedroom I haven't; go to the bank I must.

The important thing in life is good company. Everything else is superfluous.

Some people find it difficult to write. Not everyone. Dame Muriel Spark, for instance, claimed in a recent interview with the Independent that for her, the difficulty lay in finding the proper motivation. I say, fiddlesticks. When one writes as well as Dame Muriel, the motivation is a side issue. A side show. A certain shortage of breath? Pick up the pieces and hope for the best. Actually, no: go down to the swimming pool and do fifty lengths. No substitute for sport, my friend, no substitute for sport. Clears out the airways, unclogs the arteries, even sharpens the mind. Mens sane in corpore sano, as the saying goes. Those Romans knew what they were talking about. Pity they forgot about the heart! No use having a good mind if your values are all shot to bits. Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme, to quote Montaigne, and he really did know what he was on about.

"I disagree with boxing."

"That doesn't mean that you should dispute other people's right to enjoy it."

"If I can get enough people to agree with me, I can force through a change in the law and have boxing banned."

"Anything else you'd like to do away with?"

"Yep – fox-hunting, motor-racing, horse-racing – horse-riding generally, in fact – Ainsley Harris and Sesame Street."

"Ah, you're just reacting to the picture of Bin Laden with the puppet Bert from Sesame Street."

"But you agree about Ainsley Harris."

"Obviously I agree about Ainsley Harris."

"Well, there you are then."

"What about boxing."

"Look, if two grown men want to duff each other's heads in, that's their problem. Ainsley Harris causes pain to millions of viewers on a weekly basis."

21/10/01 Captain Blake was a film director in Hollywood. His name wasn't really Captain Blake, of course, but that was what everyone called him. His real name was Jonathan Marshall. "Piss poor discarded rattlesnake's skin of a name", he declared on his sixteenth birthday and proceeded to the town hall to have it changed by deed poll. Ever since that day, William Raphael Shakespeare Blake esquire, or Captain Blake, as he preferred to be called, had been accustomed to having things his own way – a useful trait in his chosen profession, the directing of cinematographic productions. He had one professional motto: "If you want something written in English, get someone from England." When pushed over a couple of beers, he might elaborate: "No American can write a single word with US spelling without trying to make a political point – 'one in the eye to the Tommies'. And no American can ever write a word with an English spelling – colour, organisation, what have you – without becoming in the very second his pen touches the paper," he would press his right forefinger down on the bar, or the table where they were sitting, at this point, for effect, or jab it in the direction of someone's face, as close as possible to either eye, without prejudice, if they had been annoying him earlier in the evening, "a lousy traitor to the cause of the republic of the Star-Spangled Banner."

Could God have intended our purpose in life to be to fight evil? That would be an interesting one... after the last combat, you die... of course, not everyone is strong enough for the battle – the devil has all the best tunes. Still, we men and women of good intention struggle on, hopeful of our place among the faithful once our time on earth is up.

Well, it's a thought, but it doesn't take you very far. Art requires inspiration! Bombs, fireworks, words that crackle, great big bonfires lighting up a darkened sky... auspiciously sending up flames shooting up into the heavens. Up, up, up.

'To be caught in the grip of evil is a terrible thing. Someone like that has every reason to look forward to the release that death will bring.'

You know this war? (chewing rapidly) I blame it on Microblast. Twin Towers? Retribution on America for coming out with such a piss-poor fucking product. The rest of the world is safe – it's done nothing wrong (still chewing). I tell you what – you just take that Shakespeare and you fucking ram his face into the fucking wall. Hard. Like this (mimes action). You do that. And say 'this is for the Mullahs'. And you ram it again. And you say 'this is for the Yanks.' And you do it again. And then you say 'and this is for all the firemen who gave their lives so that you could come out with your crappy software.' And you take a redhot poker and you ram it up his arse, hard (chewing even more nervously). Fucking Bill Shakespeare. I wish I could fucking (a friend tries to hold him back in the act of hitting the wall with his bare fist). No, it's all right...

30/1/02

Better to be poor in a rich place... or vice-versa?

Cigarettes bad for health?

Schadenfreude.

La Grandeur du Moi.

Le moi ne nous appartient pas – il naît de l'intersection entre éléments internes – notre langage, notre apparence physique – et d'éléments externes – le moi des autres. La seule chose qui nous appartienne est notre conscience ('avoir sa conscience pour soi').

– Le moi et l'amour

– L'évolution du moi

– Le moi et l'intelligence

– Le moi et la volonté

– Illustrations du moi

D'après les écrits qui nous restent de l'époque et les faits historiques qui nous sont connus, l'Angleterre et la France au XVIIIème siècle prisaient l'intelligence au dessus de tout. L'Allemagne des années 30 mettait en exergue la perfection physique – nul autre exemple à l'aube du IIIème millénaire, si ce n'est, peut-être, l'Afrique du Sud ou certaines parties des Etats-Unis. Quelles autres combinaisons peut-on voir? La création artistique, en Italie, au XVIème siècle? Le courage, en Espagne, tout au long de son histoire? Nulle part on ne rencontre comme valeurs dominantes la générosité, l'humilité, la grâce... ces valeurs-là ne vous définissent pas un peuple... tout au plus pourrait-on associer la Grande-Bretagne au 'fair-play' au XIXème... avec les réserves qu'un lecteur avisé s'imaginera sans peine. Disons aussi que la France est universellement perçue depuis trois siècles comme la patrie de l'élégance et de la raison... mais que vaut une élégance qui conduit, au début du XIXème, à l'invasion de ses principaux voisins, et à l'abandon tragique face à l'Allemagne en 1940? La Pologne et l'humanisme, au XVIème.

Les grands peuples : Français, Russes et Américains. Il n'y en a pas d'autres.

Les petits : Ecossais, Suédois, Norvégiens, Danois. Il n'y en a pas d'autres. Les Canadiens, les Belges, Australiens, ce ne sont pas des peuples, tout au plus des colonies d'exilés.

On s'arrête là.

En 1918, Lénine décrète l'inauguration d'une nouvelle république : l'Ouzbékistan. Elle deviendra république soviétique socialiste en 1924 'sur le territoire de la républiqe de Turkestan et la majeure partie des anciens Khanats de Boukhara et de Khiva' (Petit Larousse Illustré, 2002). On peut dire que Lénine avait un faible pour les républiques. L'Etat compte aujourd'hui 23 340 000 habitants et sa capitale, Tachkent, nœud ferroviaire, est relativement célèbre. Sa population parle l'Ouzbek. La principale gloire des Ouzbeks serait-elle d'avoir su se constituer en république? On apprend (toujours dans les pages du Petit Larousse) que leur héros national est Timur Lang, ou Tamerlan, et qu'ils s'établissent le long des anciennes routes de la soie.

Les gens qui ont marqué leur époque sont principalement des intellectuels qui ont su s'immiscer dans les affaires de leur peuple : Alexandre, César, Napoléon, Bismarck, De Gaulle. Avec un peu de courage nous ajouterions Cléopatre, maus il ne faut rien exagérer ! Cette femme était pourtant une grande érudite, capable de faire face aux Romains, et d'un tempérament de feu... quel dommage que l'histoire ne lui ait pas été plus tendre.

Un point dont les Etats-Unis devraient se méfier : il n'y a pas un pays au monde, aujourd'hui, auquel il puissent déléguer. A part éventuellement la Grèce. Qui en profite pour se hisser un peu au rang des grandes nations. Ne sousestimons pas la zone d'influence de ce petit pays. Tout de même, nous ne sommes plus au temps d'Alexandre le Grand.

Envies : boire – fumer – lire – coucher – dormir – travailler – faire du sport – manger

ranger – parler – écrire – écouter de la musique – voir un film, ou une pièce de théâtre – sortir.

Autres : jardiner – bricoler – jouer du piano – etc.

21/8/02 Vincent wanted to buy out the Royal Family. That was his ambition in life, his one overweaning desire. He couldn't see why it wouldn't work: the queen was slipping down the Rich List, he noted with interest and he had the money. Everyone had a price. The problem was, how to go about making the offer.

"What do you mean, buy them out?" asked a friend.

What did he mean, precisely? Not take their place – he wasn't crazy. He meant – do the Great British public a favour. Free them from their chains! Restore justice and democracy in the form of a New Model Republic! No great supporter of Cromwell's excesses in the provinces he nevertheless acknowledged that such an enterprise would require an expansive agenda. As a keen exegete of political programmes he understood that momentum was the key to unimaginable treasures – on condition that the right note of expansiveness was struck. He understood the inherent appeal of promising more to the populace. If that meant joining the euro, so be it. In this instance at least, the end clearly justified the means. And then what? Immediate withdrawal from the European Union? Decimation of Loon under 80 megatonnes of explosives? A public causeway across the Channel to France? That would go down well, he thought. People need a ready source of Brie and red wine... why should they be forced to take the ferry (he refused to recognise the existence of the Channel Tunnel)?

"So tell us about your book, Mr Bernardi."

"Well, there are points that I want to make and I just use whatever action is going around in order to make them. And if there is no action then I do without. The point is, I want to make a point."

European powers: Britain, France, Spain, Belgium, ... then second tier: Sweden, Portugal (second tier? Brazil on the one hand, Macao on the other, parts of Africa... à voir), the Netherlands... what exactly has Germany contributed to the history of mankind, apart from a completely different name in every language?

Historical losers: Poland, Finland, Norway, lately Italy (a new country, but let us not forget the Romans), Austria, Hungary, Romania.

What are they famous for? Bulgaria

What happened to them? the Danes

Awkward neighbours: the Russians

The German Dilemma: caps with everything

What a mouthful: Czech mate

What a rip-off: the Swiss

And last but not least: Albania, Croatia, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Luxemburg, Andorra, Navarro, Slovakia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia.

Have we forgotten anyone? Oh yes – sorry Monaco.

21/01/2002

I had a great love of myself back in 1994. Perhaps it got a little out of hand... perhaps the replacement object of my affections, the ersatz, measured itself in the light of its predecessor: grandiose, elephantine. Was I right to set such store by my achievements? Certainly nothing has ever come close... nay, Stanford was a big Deal: getting in, getting out. Shaking it all – Californian style. My main headache, at the age of twenty three: losing – no, never winning – O.. Tush! What disappointment! Seven years on – little comfort in mulling over past misfortunes! Next to my position in the world, at 23... I stood for I, indeed I did. Bread with nought tak’n out, as the ad used to go.

So... when love (true love, reflective, as opposed to the other sort), came along, did the in-out and shook me all about, there was a sudden emptying, the rush of Pierre’s ego being deflated not like a pierced balloon, more like one being pushed empty, flattened as it were... not hiccuping, as a balloon must in the circumstances described, no, all the air coming out at once in a regular manner, strange to relate, order in dispersal, one second full and the next quite empty, no room (plenty) left for self-absorption. No, wait: room left, lots of it, but no container... the balloon, now emptied, refusing to take in any more air – the plenty room (none) making sense, like a balloon deflated could contain air, yet does not. Ha, ha! An interesting process... for the balloon, apparently good for the rubbish bin, began to fill itself of its own accord, slowly, gradually, almost deceitfully (for no one thought it could be inflated again), without fuss or effort. Strange, how an empty balloon could fill itself with air! What properties had the distended rubber taken on as a result of its previous inflation (a result of twenty three years) and its subsequent, sudden emptying? How could a balloon fill itself with air, wihout the assistance of any pump, no strong lungs to blow air in, a physical impossibility?

And yet it happened. Eight years on, I began to live again. More interesting is the phenomenon which occured, whereby the balloon was caused to deflate. This, we say, took place via the intercession of Love.

Right. Get a grip. No more rubbish. At 23, I was pretty full of myself. Uncommonly so. Charming, intelligent and successful. Undone in a few short months. I looked at myself, looked at M., thought ‘no, I’d rather love her.’ The seed of my undoing. The condition: the new object of my attentions had to have as much intensity visited upon her as the previous one. It became a little too much. Frightened her away. A little unfair, I think, my only crime hither to meeting M. was narcissism. An easy mistake, especially in the young. Hardly worth writing home about. No reason to hold it against myself. Forsooth! I was only human.

The next stage was painful. Loss of appetite. Loss of mind. No reason left to get out of bed in the morning. Classic symptoms. Love, who needs it! It’s this coming of age thing, isn’t it. You have to learn not to take the world for granted, and everything that’s in it. Well, I can buy that, I suppose, it’s what happened to me and I’ve no reason to think that I’m any different from anyone else. You see – that’s what’s changed. Eight years ago, before I’d met her, you’d never have heard me say that I was no different from anyone else. I was very different from everyone else. It’s a common affliction, blowing one’s own trumpet, and I had it big time. I liked to be around other people who had it as well. M. was attracted to such types: first me (the day in the Underground when I claimed to have stolen a poor woman’s wallet when she cried out that she had lost it), then my best friend. Very logical! We were very similar, which is why we were friends. She moved from one to the other. Naughty, naughty M.!

Phew! It’s hard work being a balloon that deflates in one go.

Chapter 15

Little truths and big truths – there is a difference. Therefore there is also a difference between little lies and big lies. A novel should reveal both (truths, that is). The little truths should be revealed lightly, in little asides, elliptical sentences that bring a smile to the reader’s lips as they recognise their own experience in the description of the characters’ existence. Big truths should hardly be noticed at all – instead, they should come hidden in the grain of every page, concealed in the illustration on the cover, disguised under the portrait of the author on the inside leaf. Big truths are far too important to appear out of the blue.

I used to be an ultra-romantic but now I tend to side with those who say that it’s all about survival. Of course, then Valentine’s Day comes round and my certainties evaporate... Maybe it could happen to me, maybe Neneh Cherry and her sarky beat, all that street smart give-us-a-dime see-the-month-through-to-the-next-paycheck is fine as far as it goes, the Buffalo Stance posing a little empty, a little too front-heavy if you follow my meaning. A precursor to Lauryn Hill, sure, good for a ten-minute lesson on how to steer your way through the Urban Jungle, wear it as a badge of honour as you get down with the characters of her slice-of-life medley.

How much truth is contained in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet? All of it, lots, just a little or none at all?

If a singer sings ‘Respect’ and the next line goes ‘All you need, I’ve got it’, should we believe her? Isn’t something amiss? Honesty for me, pie-in-the-sky propaganda for you? Does it matter that the song is sung by a woman? Do women need respect more than men? Are women more able to satisfy men’s needs than men women’s? Speaking as a man, I doubt it... so how do we react when women start to get clingy? Should we welcome the affirmative-buffalo stance? Well, what about sex? Ah, the thorny question. Takes us back to our roots. Keeps us in the jungle. Rooted. Grappling with our identities, always the onus on us, the men, to prove ourselves – as men. Ah yes, a slight injustice, felt by all perhaps: no matter how much you may protest, mesdames, your dignity.

It seems important to widen our perspective. One may as a rule be somewhat self-obsessed. I shall focus my attention today on issues which concern us all: a view of the world as a whole... with a slightly Gallic flavour.

To wit: the radio announces that Parisian transport staff wish to be compensated for the time taken to put their uniforms on and take them off again. Depending on our preconceptions, we may arrive at one, or several of the following conclusions:

1) they have a boring job

2) they may be easily influenced by their union leaders

3) they work under difficult conditions

4) they are brainless idiots

5) give them an inch and they’ll take a mile

6) they’re workshy

7) they have keen legal minds

8) they form a powerful corporation

9) they deserve it.

Is it possible for all of the above statements to be true at the same time? Some would appear to be contradictory: 4 and 7, for instance. Some express pity (1 and 3) and some scorn (2, 4, 5 and 6). Numbers 8 and 9 would seem to imply a certain degree of respect for the transport workers. All, to some extent, rest on previously conceived perceptions of the profession in question.

It’s 7.12. I’m sitting on my futon sofa, waiting for some pasta to cook, reading Saltimbanque by Colin Maillard. I shout out (to no one in particular, my flat being empty, apart from me), “I’m a genius, I’m a genius!”. I should explain: I’ve just read that a character in a film being mooted in the book is called ‘Décolletage’. Attentive readers will remember that ‘Décolletage’ is the name of a fashion magazine I invented a few pages back... it was some time around 2000, and no, I hadn’t read a few pages of Saltimbanque at the time. Pure coincidence. How zeitgeist is that? Maillard and me, we are clearly, unadulteredly, undeniably tuned in to the same vibes. Love it. We’re both geniuses. An ocean between us but we both know. How do you explain it? Genius, man, genius. My pasta’s ready.

Now let’s face it, Maillard isn’t going to start writing about public sector workers. Too trendy. Am I missing something? Maybe my range is slightly wider than his (well, I don’t think he’s had the benefit of living in Paris). Now you can’t cover every single issue in a novel, any novel, it just isn’t feasible. But his story-telling is genius.

And the dialogue – sparkling. Great precision, immense. Takes you in, you hardly need to imagine anything. It’s all there. ‘Brilliantly written, hugely inventive and coruscatingly funny’, says the sleave. Well, spot on. It is brilliantly written, hugely inventive and coruscatingly funny. And it’s also hugely written, brilliantly funny and coruscatingly inventive. And brilliantly inventive... and so on. He is a genius. Pure Guinness. No doubt. And I... may be... his equal. The equal of a genius, a genius, brilliant contemporary of the greatest writers of his... generation. Top fiction. The pasta was good, a little pepper, one egg, parmesan. Farfalle – far-fal-le. A glass or two of Chianti, no worries, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux or Rioja if you can’t find any French. No problemo. It’s what you need at that magical point in time when all your ambitions magically fall into place. Genius.

10/02/2002

Are we, or are we not, lucky to be alive? That is the question, I believe, which we would all like to see answered. It is relatively easy to go through life without reflecting on the niceties of quantum chromodynamics, or whether or not the colour green should ever be seen adjacent to a fetching shade of navy blue. Rather more difficult, in my experience, to avoid a passing, fleeting, ever-so-subtle and discreet glance at the inner workings of one’s soul while asking one’s self: do I really want to be here?

What can one do? We have very little choice in the matter.

Chapter 16

27/02/02 – 1.53 am

Boredom. Seven letters, two syllables. Pouting from the cover of a French magazine, the actress Emmanuelle Béart declares, “I like it when I’m bored.” How are we to believe such an obvious lie? How can anyone enjoy the feeling of utter pointlessness which characterises a single moment of boredom? Never mind that the publication’s name is ‘Psychologies’. Another piece of mindless drivel parading as an attempt to enlighten the people while relieving them of their hard-earned pennies?

Perhaps. But if you saw the cover in question, you wouldn’t worry too much about Ms Béart’s pronouncements on the inside pages. Frankly the sight of her perfect features is more than enough to persuade any red-blooded male of the value of his investment (though, paradoxically, most of the purchases will be made by women). Another sexist comment justified only by the fact that the expression, ‘red-blooded’, will soon have faded completely from use and should therefore be recorded on these pages as a matter of posterity.

Pierre shed tears of extasy over Joyce's description of Shakespeare as Hamlet's father in Ulysses.

Never mind the details of the comédienne’s delightful posterior. The nonchalance of that sentence, « J’aime quand je m’ennuie », puts me in mind of... of what, exactly? Of nothing... The sound of the words, as so often in French, is more important than the meaning they convey, and the thought of the diva fluttering her eyelids for the camera and tempting her interviewer with a veiled glimpse of the workings of her subconscious mind is simply... delicious.

English, on the other hand, is a failed language when it comes to literature; It works well solely for the conveyance of comedy. Far better to focus on one of the vibrant European tongues, or better still Latin or ancient Greek, if a talented young author wishes to find a medium to express the depth of his feeling, the sublime interweaving of thought and image, the perfect metaphor to capture for eternity a passing vision of exquisite grace and beauty. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, these are not models to be paraded before our youth in the hope that they will emulate some of their illustrious predecessors’ scintillating exploits. Anyone who pretends otherwise is merely making a cock-eyed attempt to establish the greatness of English culture in the face of our far (far) superior Gallic, say, neighbours. Ask Julian Barnes if I speak not the truth.

Of the consolations of literature in one’s (English) mother tongue, it may merely be said: “here sits one who has successfully evacuated 36 minutes of excrutiating tedium by tapping away at the keyboard of his computer.”

I call it rotten.

I jest called to say I love you, but anyone will agree that it requires far greater effort to produce a literary effect in English than in French. A well-crafted sentence in French (requiring many years training in grammar, conjugation, vocabulary, etc, all scrupulously provided, free of charge, by the country’s schools from an early age) will never fail to lift the reader to heights which he or she might only expect to experience before a painting by Botticelli or during an opera by Handel. It ain’t fair, maybe, but there you are. English is good for other things – communicating, comedy (already mentioned), telling a good yarn, doing a deal, all those other useful little things that keep the world sailing on an even keel. And don’t even start to bore me with the rule about mixing metaphors. It wouldn’t even matter if the language wasn’t so fragile, now, would it?

Not fragile like a butterfly, or a rose petal in a bright April breeze – but like a poorly designed aeroplane, perhaps, destined for take-off but perhaps a little too shaky to be trusted with the weight of a pilot and a navigator... there, I’m starting to get a little bit of that poetic influence onto the page after all.

Chapter 17

Moment agréable, pour Andrew, que cet après-midi du 27 mai 2002, passé seul en compagnie de la radio. Plus tard, il passera un disque sur son lecteur de CD – le Requiem de Mozart. Pour l’instant, il écoute Laurent Cabrol et son invitée, Hermine de Clermont-Tonnerre, parler de ce qui les fait rire... sketch de Coluche, confessions ‘polissonnes’ du type “je fumais la pipe quand j’avais quatorze ans, et j’aime bien la dérision”... pendant ce temps, un flash nous apprend que l’Ecossais David Coulthard serait en passe de gagner le grand prix de Monaco. Andrew, bien sûr, est aux anges. Ecoutant l’émission il songe à Bettina Funck-Brentano, qui s’occupait, comme lui, de relations publiques, actions de marketing en comité fermé, petits fours et compagnie. Exemple : réception au Ritz, en 1990 (ou était-ce 1991) pour une société d’assurances allemande qui préparait je ne sais quelle opération financière nécessitant le concours de tout le beau monde à la bourse de Paris, “zinzins”, journalistes des Echos, individus fortunés éventuellement, et caetera. Et Caroline de la Marnière, qui s’occupait de L’Oréal au moment où cette société traversait un passage difficile, un ancien employé ayant accusé l’équipe dirigeante et sans doute l’actionnaire principal, Madame de Bettencourt, d’anti-sémitisme (et n’auraient-ils pas collaboré avec l’Allemagne, pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale ? Sombre histoire ! du passé tout ça, soutenait Caroline).

Naturellement, savoir que Coulthard menait à Monaco, ça le mettait de bonne humeur... quelques chapîtres de Thackeray pour réveiller la muse: son œuvre commençait à prendre du retard.

12/06/2002 The world is comprised of those who believe that email is wonderful and others who prefer traditional means of communication. The digital divide is just a phrase, pace The Economist. Think about housing, food, medecine and education before you worry about bandwidth. Try not to take abstraction to the point where you forget that human beings are involved along the way. Mundane, perhaps, but important all the same. The poor will always be with us, so Jesus said, so the thing to get right is the dichotomies. Have / have not, yes. Have a concept of the underlying principles behind the launch of each new version of Doors / have not, no. Ah, but The Economist et al, what are they? Journalists. Writers. What do they care about? the computer on which they write. This they know. On this they depend. The internet revolution, for these people is real: if it weren’t, they wouldn’t exist, or so they think (at some unconscious level). And so they peddle stories about it, get home to their dinner parties and bore their neighbours with tales of how they sent this file and that attachment and really they couldn’t – couldn’t dream of surviving without this extraordinary implement, the humble PC – humble, they stress ever so slightly, the arch in their voice muffled by the oyster sauce, but apparent, if we may be permitted to say, in a slight tension or shudder starting at shoulder level and passing down through the body, as they pronounce the word – for this is the post-ironic, post-modern, post-technological, first decade of the 3^rd milliennium, and the computer has advanced in its conquest of man to the point where simple body movements now appear to be programmed, a statement with which any neurolinguistical scientist or philosopher will immediately agree, conforming as it does to the hypotheses and predicates upon which they base their learned study.

Me, I get just as annoyed when my CD skips as I do when my network goes down – one is just as vexatious as the other but there seems to be added harm done when music is included in the mix... the effect seems more visceral than in the event that a message appears on the screen informing me that such-and-such program is no longer responding (error message X:sdzt2) and my computer needs rebooting. On the other hand, all I really have to do is keep my CDs in order and wipe them with a clean cloth from time to time (I usually use a tail of my shirt, or a tissue I have handy), whereas there is no known cure for a fault brought on by the insane-yet-almost-criminally-profitable incompetence of Robin Doors or one of his gang. Sometimes the damage does get so bad that I have to think about throwing the CD away but that’s just life and I’ve never actually quite reached that extremity yet. And besides, I can just leave it at the bottom of the pile, there’s no need to throw it in the rubbish, or skip through the song that won’t play properly, or – this is something I do – press the play button, which places the CD on pause if the record is already playing and press the fast-forward button for a split-second or two, which moves the song forward by a couple of seconds, then press the pause button once more and the CD starts playing again. Occasionally the song still judders (it really sounds like a badly pronounced judder) and you just have to go through the process again; you get a really bad song, seems scratched all the way, and all I can recommend is a shrug and a note to remember not to play it the next time that you have a party (no-one likes a skipper at a party), or if you’re alone and you have the patience, persevering until you reach a point at which the song plays cleanly. Very rarely does a song scratch all the way through, in my experience – and my CDs have had some fairly rough treatment thrown at them. Admittedly, yes, a favourite composition has once or twice been judged unreadable (in a manner of speaking) by the player. As I say, tant pis, you can’t go getting upset about these things. Annoying, yes, but worth losing one’s rag over? Hardly.

Chapter 18

Spring 1999

The Serbian gunman dropped to his knees and spoke very softly.

"Please... Father... I beseech you... give me your blessing."

"Get out of my church!"

The gunman raised hinmself from the ground and turned to leave. At the last second, he seemed to hesitate, a shudder passed through his body. He turned round again, facing the priest. He lowered his machine gun, aimed it at the holy man and pressed slowly on the trigger. The burst lasted barely a second, leaving the priest at the foot of the altar in a pool of his own blood. The gunman slung his weapon over his shoulder and left to rejoin his comrades in arms.

Pierre wrote a letter to M., dated simply Monday 10/6 but never sent. We infer from the mention of his age that it was written in the spring of 1996. Slap bang towards the end of his second engagement. Written on small, square-shaped notepaper, we reproduce its contents for our gentle reader's benefit.

"Dear M.,

Didn't have much fun last night, since I don't think that crying in front of your parents at the age of 26 is really the done thing. Had to leave the table a couple of times.

A little perplexed to see the TV here when I got back this evening [from London to his flat – their flat – in rue Notre Dame des Champs, for which M. still held the key]. Did you really think I wanted it so much, or was it just a convenient way of stopping me from coming round to your appartment? Either way, I found the agressive tone of your note a little disconcerting. A couple of my CDs are still missing – would you like to return them via the same route? Also, I think I'd like the toaster back, though I'd like to leave you the set of dishes and bowls we bought from Monoprix [a supermarket offering a wide range of products, including clothes, kitchen utensils, cosmetics, etc.] together – after all, I did "inherit" your two glass saucepans, first time around.

Hope your friends are treating you well – they've obviously been very good and close to you over these last two difficult months – especially Dominic and Helen, I imagine. It's nice to know you have people you can count on, and rely on to defend your best interests.

Lastly, please don't waste any nervous energy worrying about me. For one thing, I hate pity, especially coming from the person who at the very least shares responsibility for our – dare I say? – joint misfortune – it's all a little too patronising. For another, recent attempts (the sincerity of which, admittedly, I'd rather not comment on) of yours to arrange a "soft landing" have ressembled so many stabs in the back. No doubt they conflicted with your understandable desire to construct a suitably convincing case against me. Although I must say, I credited you with more independence of judgment in the face of your friends' opinions. Did you really need to set about establishing the villainy of my character before summoning the courage to break free of your "engagement"? I use "engagement" in the French sense, I hasten to add, lest you accuse me of overstepping the boundaries of the promise we made to one another. I may be wrong: perhaps you truly believed that my intention was to hunt out your "proches" [friends, family, entourage] as potential rivals, to smother your freedom of spirit, to finally capture you in a glittering cage. If so, you terribly misunderstood the value I have always placed on those qualities of yours that have so clearly placed you apart from all your sex: your incomparable liveliness of spirit, your creativity, the star-like quality that attracts all to you. To attempt to inhibit all that would be to attack the very essence of you. And why should I seek to treasure an empty shell?

And now, what to do with the love for you that continues to fill my heart? Yes, it cohabits with anger, great swathes of anger, but still refuses the soothing transition into indifference. May the burning soon pass! Until then, will you remember, dear M., that I remain the guardian of your dreams?

Pierre"

Characteristically, Pierre ends his letter with an appeal to his tormentor's better nature. Despite reams of evidence compiled during the course of the two and a half years since their initial meeting (the evidence of his own eyes and that produced by family (hers), friends, and the like), he remains unconvinced of the woman's devious, heartless nature and appears unable – or unwilling – to extricate himself from an unwinnable position. He the great chess player! He might have counted his blessings at his luck for escaping from what many men in his shoes would have seen as a fate worse than death (Bertie Wooster in The Pride of the Woosters springs to mind). But no.

One of the mysteries I refer to occasionally: the consummation of marriage. It must be as old as the hills but where does it come from?

A version of English stripped of class, regional influence. Pure English, neither posh nor uncouth, rude nor aloof. An ambitious project.

Donald Turner – out

Paddy Ashdown – should change his name. Out.

If Northern Ireland were French the army would be out in force and the republicans held at gunpoint. Britain, being an island, has mixed views about the use of force. Corsica, as an island, feels very much the same way. Continental France has mixed views about the monarchy. Northern Ireland, neighbouring a republic, shares the same ambivalence.

Strength and weakness mean different things in a physical and spiritual sense. The physical world corrupts thought: as my thoughts come down on paper they are altered slightly and they lose the purity which they enjoyed in my mind a second before. As the act of writing stimulates new thoughts, however, one begins to feel the pleasure of building something, creating an edifice and developing new skills in the process – different skills from those involved in the act of thinking. Keep on thinking and you will eventually come up with an original thought. And if it has no bearing on the physical world how can it be disproven? There is no evidence, and whatever scientists say there can be no evidence, that the human brain has any bearing at all on the spiritual world. That it controls the body, yes; that it allows us to function as people, granted; but these are things which have to do with the physical world and have no relation to the world of thought. Pascal. Descartes. Is thought generated in the brain? Or is the organ a receptor of thoughts, plugging in to a world which exists somewhere beyond – the world of thought? A link to the page is the only physical manifestation of this other universe, hidden from the likes of Socrates. For the link escaped him – perhaps because the humble radio was unknown to Ancient Greece. He was close, no doubt, very close. Given the principle of radio he might have figured it out. Imagine: the radio set, a reproduction of our own brain! Thinking, leaving the receptor in our brain switched on, rather than off, when the brain is involved in practical matters related to the physical world. There is no evidence that we, as individuals, have control over whether the receptor is on or off. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that we do not.

If Karl Marx were a football player who would he be? Stuart Pearce or Zinedine Zidane? If Zinedine Zidane were a philosopher who would he be? Socrates or Wittgenstein? If Wittgenstein were a football player who would he be? Dino Zoff or Ryan Giggs? If Socrates were a philosopher, etc. Add interest by using names with which people are familiar – I don't mind footballers on an individual basis. One at a time. Two too many. Three's a bore. Four is better. Five can do. Seven eleven. Twelve a team. One on the bench. Enough on the subject. A morally upright individual is one whose receptors are in proper working order. But there must be a signal. Test by going to see a film. Good film, good receptors. Bad film, good receptors. Not sure read the review. Good review, good film, bad reception. Good review bad film, bad receptors. Bad review good film, bad receptors. Bad review bad film, bad reception. Good review in the sense of well written.

You get a different perspective on things when you live in a slum. What's another dirty pan when there are already five clogging up the sink? You get time to think, get things together.

The English are a faithless, lawless people. Faithless: they're all Protestant heretics, and all because their king wanted to commit adultery! Lawless: how do you trust a people who think the world of their police force?

Avant garde is a beautiful word. It comes from 'avant' which means before, or in front, and 'garde', which means guard. So, a military term. Another closely associated word is vanguard, which has the same roots but somewhat wider connotations, more closely linked to research in the medical field, etc – though the military aspect remains. In fact, I see no artistic associations with vanguard whatsoever – they've been appropriated by its more obviously french cousin. Would one say 'in the vanguard of modern art'? No, one would say 'Avant-gardist'. Incredibly, the Collins English Dictionary has it wrong, claiming that 'avant garde' comes from the French 'vanguard' when the shorter word does not exist in French.

In terms of interface I would say that email technology is at about the same level of development as DOS compared to Office Windows or Apple – long lists of incomprehensible symbols, phrases like "Content-type: text/plain; charset- 'us-ascii'" which appear across the screen and are of no use to a snowman in the blazing sun. More work please! There's enough information posted across a typical computer screen already!

The Chinese word for crisis, so my old French teacher told us, is made up of two characters meaning individually 'opportunity' and 'danger'. Do they call it 'crisis', or do they say that they are faced with a dangerous opportunity?

Why do people work? Why don't they sit around and fish and have barbecues and sleep in bivouacs and mud huts? Does it change anything? How about: aliens put us on this planet a) as an experiment b) in the knowledge that we'd develop some inventions that they'd find really useful. How do those thinkers survive anyway? All teachers... I like people whose behaviour appears to be slightly irrational. It means that they are not in tune with themselves. These are the great people of tomorrow; they are destined to go on to do great things. Why are... all such great guys? Because they know how to choose their friends? Is it a coincidence that every one of them is amongst the strongest personalities of their class?

I have noticed that Booz consultants are shorter than the McKinsey and possibly BCG crew. So possibly just as intelligent but the pick of the genetically-perfect crop goes to the second two (plus Bain, I forgot). And there's an edge to my writing which never used to be there before. No words can ever be evil – only actions.

EPILOGUE

- Le problème, c'est qu'un jour j'ai cessé de croire en l'amour fou.

(Ce n'est pas vrai. Il ment.)

21/10/02 I wanted to write something about the East End of London. I mean, what can anyone possibly write about the Yeast End of London? Not much to say, is there? Gang wars. Yardies. Jellied eels. What else? Ah, came a thought, the pearly kings and queens. Utterly ridiculous looking. But there all the same. Local culture, as it were. Such as it is. I mean, what else? What grimmer part of the world could one fathom than that section of the capital signposted by names such as Whitechapel, East Ham, and I can't even think of the others? Not very inspiring is it? Not too many positive images? The regeneration of the Docklands. Don't make me laugh. Ever been there? See Canary Wharf stick out like a giant's sore thumb? Not even a pretty piece of architecture. More oblong than élancé. And the rhyming slang. Lor' save us from the rhyming slang. Trouble and strife / wife. Poetry? Not 'ere mate. We got fresh oranges, leeks just in, toma'oes from Spain and Jack the Ripper. Snatch. Good film. Amusing. But a little too modern, hardly seeped in to local consciousness. Before it seeps out again, rejected by that honest mindset, living precariously in sin with the gangster element. Reggie Kray and what's her name from the Carry On films. And Eastenders. All doom and gloom. Ugly women. Fruit & veg stalls. Wheelers & deelers. Li'le bit of this, li'l bit o' that, know what I mean nudge nudge wink wink? (I preclude the dangerous shift towards the slippery terrain of Python et al). Some ugly tunnel that's always blocked, or used to be when I listened to Capital in the morning, cheery Tarrant, bless. On the way to school. Hello, it's Chris Tarrant here on Who wants to be a Millionaire. Me please. Great music as well though Sunday's charts were always better on Radio 1. London's number one, Capital FM! No, I watched Eastenders for a while and came close to being addicted but it's gone very dark from what I've seen of late. Very dark. Not like in Angie and Des' time. Could be that bloke with the chin and no hair... in trouble with his dad (both in trouble). Or that 'orrible redhead. Or Pauline. And Arfur. 'im off Grange 'ill. Phil Redmond off to Liverpool hardly any better. Tucker Jenkins and 'is friend Alan. A right set of lively lads, 'em were, real li'l mischievous monkies. Used to check the station on the Central line. It was east, all right, but north east, Epping Forest, too leafy for that... hole by the river.

Greenwich, Lewisham, West Ham, East Ham, Woolwich, Catford (Catford!), Stepney, Poplar, Dagenham... these are the parts to which we allude. Some sound right, some don't. Greenwich definitely doesn't. So we'll remove Greenwich. Greenwich is now officially moved to West London. Or north. It's up to you. Just nowhere east or by the river (it's catching, travels on water). Blackwall tunnel. Dartford crossing! Oh, yes, we're well in there now though maybe over into Essex (a close relation). Thamesmead's a bit sad, thinks of better times, an elderly gentleman in a scruffy top hat, stumbling along the pavement, apologising to lamposts and drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag... not exactly establishment, never really was, hardly even on nodding terms with local 'stablishment but keen to impress all the same... that's Thamesmead, a grim little cranny stuck in the wrong place in the wrong century. Whatever century that happened to be, unless Peter Pan came along and transformed the riverfront. A cursory glance at the A to Z confirms: riverside golf club slap bang next to a Sewage Works. Bordered by the A2016. That's Thamesmead. There's no smoke without fire, not in East London.

So all in all a rum part of the world with very little to commend itself. And yet... a little too historical to overlook (if that is the right word). Some significance, surely, in being next to the heart of the greatest empire ever to span the globe. The centre of the Capital? Some see the West End as the centre of the Big Smoke but Centre Point attracts a few slatternly businesses and half of Singapore's export trade but very little else. The City, on the other hand, exerts a rather greater gravitational pull. And the City, of course, sits adjacent to its easterly neighbour. Look at the Central Line: the tube map never lies. There is Bank, there is Liverpool Street, and there... is Bethnal Green. We shudder at the evocation of these names and beg most humbly for our reader's forgiveness. 'Tis our subject matter which takes us to places in which we rather would not err (particularly after about six o'clock on a cold November evening). Yes, Bethnal Green, Mile End, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Stepney Green, Limehurst, Westferry, Devons Road, Bromley-by-Bow, Pudding Mill Lane, Plaistow, Upton Park, Canning Town, Royal Victoria (sounds like a pub), West India Quay, Surrey Quays, Island Gardens, Crossharbour, Rotherhithe, Shadwell, All Saints, they're all there. Lewisham doesn't get its own Underground station. Something to do with muddy ground on which the area is built (well, it is by the river). Mud? You have no conception. Why anyone would even have considered placing a world-beating tourist attraction in such a grossly unattractive location is simply beyond all powers of imagination. Mud on mud. MuD on mud. MillenniUmDome on mud. You get the picture. Limehouse. Wapping. Hackney Wick (see – we're moving north). What to do with such unpromising material? Mud in mud out. I've been saving this – you won't believe it. I know you won't. I was thinking about writing to the Transport Commission, but well, someone else might get there first. It's their fault, after all. Got to be cruel to be kind. There's an Underground station... situated on a bend on the Thames... south of Canary Wharf, Heron Quays, South Quay and Crossharbour, north of Island Gardens (a stately part of Millwall, one stop from Greenwich and the Cutty Sark), called... wait for it, you won't believe this... Mudchute. That's right, Mudchute. You got it all right. Mudchute!

Imagine living next to a place called Mudchute. "So, which tube station do you live next to then?" "Err... I'm next to Mudchute." "Oh, Mudchute, eh? I'll err, I'll be popping along then." It beggars belief.

So, what to do with the place? Gangland robberies, suspicious nooks and crannies, pints in pubs underlooking the Thames and the old wharves, shifty side streets and canny neighbours, not particularly promising, I think you would agree. Pierre, my old son, I think you may just 've gone in beyond your depf on this one occasion. Cultural contribution to humanity: zero. Architectural value: went up with the dome, which hopefully puts the finger on it. In other words zero. Artistic community: non-existent. Potential for rehabilitation: endless. Zero. Ever been to the Docklands after ten pm? Social leverage: zero. Commercial hubbub: nil (a couple of corner shops and a market stall in Eastenders). Academic prowess: nil. Limited to a couple of lines of verse. A for 'orses, F for vescent, L for leather, N for eggs, T for two and W for a bet.

Hang on, hang on, you've got something there! Cockney humour! The pearls of wit crackling in the soft summer breeze like yellow moondust on the back of your tongue! Don't believe me? Try a rhyme: 'Said Y, eggs double you fee / you tea is our kew pea/ oh, 'n 'm 'l Kay Jay/ I 'h G if 'e decei' B.A.' Just said the alphabet backwards!

But not much else, I grant you. A reputation for cheek. The cockney alphabet from A to Z. The slang. Hardly a language unto itself. Most probably used to warn the gang of oncoming trouble... however, the pearls, yes, the pearls did ring a bell. The one social event of the year: the pearly kings and queens in procession, broadcast across the nation on national TV. And how they looked ridiculous but my mother loved them. The costermongers of Hackney, Lewisham, Stepney, etc. In top hats and fine long jackets and dresses all covered in buttons & beads. And doubtless the occasional bangle, badge, pin and whatever else they could fit on top of all those buttons. Vaguely reminiscent of bikers at a tea party. Not exactly the upper crust. Not crust at all, in fact. The profession says it all: costermonger. Retailer of fruit and vegetable produce. Runs a fruit & veg stall. Possibly in a very desirable neighbourhood. But a market stall nonetheless. There's twenty pence change love and a lovely pound of fresh ripe mandarines. Gawd bless and see you again on Tuesday.

So not exactly an inspiring lead but what else was there to grab hold of? A gangster movie with witty dialogue, convincing characters and strong performances by Vincent Jones and Brad Pitt (amongst others)? Some sad novel by Peter Ackroyd? A tobacco museum? St Catherine's Docks. Hardly East End. Too upmarket for that. Nice location, though. Very central, just next to the tower. Tower Bridge: a lego creation. The Tower of London: a sinister legacy. The London Dungeon: don't stay any longer than you have to and don't forget to bring a flashlight. St Paul's Cathedral: city. The Tate Museum: a disused power station. An outpost of the city. Canary wharf: already mentioned. The Millennium Dome: a giant blancmange. With spikes in it, lest some fall for the sugary charm. Dog racing. Ship building all gone. Unloading tea and spices from India. No longer. Lines of empty warehouses shifting awkwardly as the Eurostars ease past on their gentle way to the Kentish countryside and beyond to France. Not even the benefit of multicultural aggro. Not like Brixton with its Rastafarians and dope-dodging policemen, its clubbing and its leafy neighbouring suburbs, its quick connection to the city centre. Not Ladbroke Grove with the redeeming charm of Portobello (close though). Desolation. Dereliction. Depravation. Slummy gardens in grubby cul-de-sacs meandering away from deserted thoroughfares. Depredation. Despond. No, this was all there was. Flicking through my dictionary (my trusty Collins English Dictionary) for more on the regal duffers my finger stopped at pearl, and pearly: margaric, or margaritic. Lower down came pearl ash, pearl barley, pearler, pearl grey, pearlite, pearlised, or pearlized, pearl millet, pearl oyster, Pearl River (the English name for Zhu Jiang as well as a large natural stream of fresh water flowing along a definite course, in this case into the Gulf of Mexico, in central Mississippi), pearlwort, pearly, Pearly Gates, pearly king or queen and pearly nautilus. And that word margaritic. Such a seldom used word in comparison to its cousin, earning half a column in the Collins English Dictionary. That word margaritic, if it does not send a tremor of excitement down your spine then you, my friend, are impervious to literature. But how to use the word? A strict as strict could be synonym of pearly? Why use one and not the other? Well, for reasons of esthetics, of course, but never the two in the same sentence. Not to express exactly the same reality. Not 'the margaritic splendour of the city's pearly costermongers in procession through the streets of London'. Cheating to use redundant expressions. Repetitions and pleonasms. Melodious perhaps but altogether unfair on my reader's gentle sensibilities. Perhaps, I thought, but bloody hell, margaritic's a bloody good word. So what 'cha... what are you going to do with it? Margaritic kings and queens might just be obscure and for God's sake they're only costermongers. Sell fruit & veg. So don't get carried away about a bunch of Eastenders who'd probably sell their grandmothers for half a watermelon... No, very true, family values are said to be very strong in that particular district of London (I'm finding it hard not to think of the place as a zoo... well, it is a sort of nature reserve... I mean, Mudchutes! Breed the best hooligans, mind you). Yes, and there you have it: Britain's natural pool of aggressiveness (well, the southern part at least). Millwall and West Ham, London's most notorious football clubs. Where fans still stand and give the nazi salute. No humour in these parts, not if you happen to be black or open-minded or both. Hartlepool of course is said to have hanged a monkey. Or was it perhaps a Frenchman said to be a monkey for reasons of blatant racism? These are the darker sides of human nature which hasten before our pen and hopefully disintegrate into the chasm of man's misguided past. Progress! This is what the world needs most. And there is my chosen subject's contribution to humanity. See the margaritic splendour of the pearly kings and queens in procession through the honest boroughs!

Yes, there is only supposed to be one pearly king and queen at a time but never mind. And I may just have skipped Pearl Harbour earlier on accidentally on purpose.

"You're just getting back at me, and M., and everyone else in the book."

"Look, I don't bear grudges. Against you or anyone else. And why would I want to get back at M.? I'm as much in love with her today as I was seven years ago."

---

[1] uffish, in an 'uff, in a huff!

[2] manxome: vile, putrid, deadly, orc-like.... or what about the following: mangy, minx, manxome!

[3] First line of JK Rowling's Harry Potter book, the Prince of whatever or something like that: "Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

[4] No I haven't

[5] That is to say that the two words can only exist in opposition to one another – they form a couple. Of their own, they have no meaning. The only possible way to escape from the relativism of the judgement 'enlightened', 'benighted' is to allow for the existence of an absolute category for both – impossible since each category is a construct, a hidden virus within the definition of the two words which allows us to decode their meaning and without which we would be obliged to acknowledge the strict equivalence of either term. My thanks to Mr Derrida for pointing me in this direction. Similar thoughts on the dichotomy of occident versus orient, perhaps?

[6] our thanks to Stephen Pinker, The Language Instinct, for that snippet of rivetting lore

[7] xyz

[8] for future reference, '591' to count as five words, whether written in words or digits – eg. the first part of present footnote to count as nineteen words up to and including first mention of word 'digits'.

[9] see Max Weber for further details