bee-bay.co.uk

Everyone was very happy to see me. I brought chocolate. My brother showed me the new three inch scar on his chest. He'd had an operation on a strangulated hernia. I'd been camping in Joshua tree with the Leonids at the time and had returned home to several very tense messages on my answer phone... 'Your brother’s ill...' '...he's undergoing emergency surgery...' '...you should come home...' '...no it's OK he's fine...' He's smoking again and has gained a second dog.  He drove us to Blackpool very fast in his car, playing Wolfmother and The Eagles of Death Metal very loudly on his stereo. Long gone the days of Erasure and Pet Shop Boys. Blackpool was closed but at least we got there fast. We walked down the 'golden mile'. It was covered in graffiti and stank of piss. Many of the hotel signs were in disrepair, letters missing like rotten teeth. 'The Balmoral' was 'a moral'. After the third tramp asked us for money I read the 'Vacancy' signs as 'Vagrancy'. No sun. The donkeys were no longer crapping joyfully on the sand. Gypsy Rosie Lee is blind and can not see. The pleasure beach was closed. Litter everywhere. You could still buy rock and cartoons of jolly fat women and red faced drunks. 'Why didn't they get the Super Casino?' 'Because it's a shit hole.' 'But still...' 'They didn't even give it the nuclear power station...'  I hadn't been there for many years, not since Burnley played them in the old fourth division. My brother hadn't been there since an incident five years ago whern he was ripped off by a street vendor while queuing in his car to patrol slowly through the illuminations on the Winter solstice on a trip out with his son. He wrote a letter to the council, addressed it to 'The City of Thieves'. We got Fish and Chips is Bispham then drove home. In truth it wasn't so much the destination as the traveling, together. My brother, my mum, my new wife and me. We'd felt like riding on the old wooden roller coasters, the big dipper, the Grand National. We were thwarted but my brothers driving provided enough thrills. 

When we got home I baked a cake with my mum. It's a great cake, from a recipe from a book as old as Merlin. Desiccated coconut and eight types of sugar, some of which are no longer produced. 

My old worn passport was creased up in my front pocket like a squashed kidney. Wet with sweat, I flew into the sun rise over Ireland reading the Secret History. I'd not slept for two days. Sleeping was not an option. 

Back home to England for a whirlwind ten day tour. Derbyshire, Manchester, Burnley, Blackpool Disgust, Mallam Cove, Brum, Exhaustion, London, Fish and Chips, Manchester, Phoenix Nights, Burnley. In roughly that order. Lots to do. Lots of people to see.

Busy few days.

House guests. Overtime at the library. Impending trip back over the Atlantic to the homeland for Rodney's wedding. Our one year wedding anniversary.

We can't believe it's a year. It's gone so fast. Time is greased and on wheels.

"What's the one year?"

"Pencils?"

"Flower petals?"

"Shrimp." 

To celebrate we went to Bombay, the local curry house. My wife's been wanting to go there ever since they installed a shimmering waterfall fountain in the middle of the place.

People have asked me to comment on my migration to the States. They often presume there are a great many differences between living in America as opposed to the U.K.

Well, I've been here for fifteen months now and I can confirm that the the only real difference is that 'Bounty Bars' are called 'Almond Joy'. 

They are also smaller and thinner and come with a large whole almond set on top of the chocolate casing.

Of course there are other things, such as High School 'grade' way of counting years, the Harvard system of notion... but these are largely academic.

Saw Razorlight at the Casbah on Saturday night. Great venue, small and intimate.

With the five quid entrance fee and shit lager, it felt a little bit like being back at Rock City (the room down the stairs). High proportion of Brits in the crowd of course. There's a lot of us out here. English men marrying American women. They really do love the accent. Any accent.

The support was a cheeky four piece called Mohair from Watford.

Thanks for all the suggestions for a name for the blog...

Some were good, some were bad, a couple from The Sun journalist Marc Webber were exactly what you would expect of a Sun journalist.

'Newshamism,' from Mr Appleyard is a contender.

Ian McDairmid got excited and offered fifty-two ideas varying from the dopey to the surreal. Here's a sample: Newsham's natter. Newsham's Nausea.The thoughts of a Burnley Boy. Newsham's nourishing nuggets. The view from Burnley boys window.Andy's ambivalent world. Andy's authentic world.Gruesome Newsham. Being John Malkovich being Andy Newsham. The Art Being Interesting in a Lacklustre World and The Owl King Sleeps in the Belly of Jockey Wilson.
 

Restless night.

Couldn’t sleep. Restless legs. Restless mind. Got up out of bed so as not to disturb my sleeping beauty.

We’d spent the evening playing ping-pong on the outdoor patio at the Triple Crown. Great bar but I think finding a ping-pong subculture over-stimulated me…  the stars, the palm trees, the regulars carrying their paddles in leather holsters like gunslingers.

I was out of my depth but I managed to beat a guy called Jeff twice. He was a sort of regular but wasn’t very good. He owns a bonsai shop in Ocean Beach.

There's been a sudden change in my news buffet. 

The metal box from the street corner that sold me the New York Times has disappeared. I suspect it may have been taken by one of the Jawas that comb the neighbourhood at dusk. There's one in particular who takes more than bottles and cans from our dumpsters.  He looks a lot like Van Gogh's postman and I once saw him stroking my old toaster like cat. If he has taken it he's probably using it to store his own, old copies of the NYT. We will find method in his madness.

Had a few people over. A low-key soriee. Drinks, crisps, dim sum pot stickers that I over-cooked so half of them burst open like aborted pod sacks from The Body Snatchers. Some comedian called Ellen DeGeneres was hosting the awards. Never seen her before. Her style was to play it all very low key. 
Kept myself amused by saying, 'Ellen doesn't look like a degenerate...?' in various ways, at various times, varying the tone and inflection of my presumed bemusement.
Pilobolus Dance Theatre kept appearing at intervals to create lame silhouettes. They are probably French.