Ten Reasons Why Nigella Lawson is a God

1. She's hot. (Even from a non-lady lover, she-is-hot.)

2. She literally is the Queen of Food Porn.

3. She makes cooking look so easy and fun. (I am suspicious of this, however.)

4. She isn't a qualified chef, she taught herself.

5. She was originally a book reviewer. (What more is there to love?) 



6. She uses the most insane words! (I can't think of any off the top of my head but look her up and you will be in awe.) 

7. She hates green peppers. (I knew they tasted shit for years.)

8. She has an amazing kitchen. (And I want to live there with her, please.)

9. She likes her drink and enjoys her ladies night. (True woman, woman after my own heart.)

10. She makes me want to cook. (So, let's face it, she's done her job!)

Things I Hate

Every writer is a human. So, it stands to reason that every writer/human has things they love and things they hate. Today I went to Bath Spa University to have an interview for a potential Masters course I will be starting in September. Certain things reminded me of the things I hate so, here's a little list.

1. People that are walking in front of me really slow.

2. People that are walking in front of me and have no idea what is going on around them - usually they stop or point out something they like to their friend.

3. People who walk down the street in groups and take up the entire pavement. Either I'm behind them and have to walk on the road to get around them, giving them a "yes, I'm walking on the road because you," glance back or those that walk ahead and don't move, causing me to stop and look at them as they pass.

(In case you didn't guess, I don't drive, I walk.) 

(I found these photos on Alexander Seedman's blog - http://postbromanticism.tumblr.com/ - it's amazing, check it out but I also found these photos which I thought suited my short rant about walking quite well.)

4. The word "stink", most importantly people that use it. Nothing worse than a friend sitting down, taking off their shoes and saying "my feet stink" - we know, we can smell them!

5. Lateness. People who are late, people who make me late and all the bits in-between. The other morning my roommate decided to take ten extra minutes getting ready. It fucked up the rest of the day.

6. Mayonnaise, butter and possibly all condiments - yes, I know, I'm a freak.

7. Cheese. How have I lived? A cheeseless life.

8. The Catcher in the Rye. I had to mention at least one book.

9. Russell Brand. I really don't like him.

10. Cracking bones. One of my friends, Suller, cracks his fingers all the time. I remember being in high school and hear the long slow craaaaaaaaaaaaaaack, then crack-crack-crack, there is nothing worse.

11. Crazy religious people - not because they're religious, just because they don't listen.

12. Biros - I'm much more a inky pen kinda guy. 

13. Most animals. (OK, I do love a good dog and I appreciate cats just because they're so sinister) but when I enter a house with a pet I'm not the first to go and touch it, mainly because I'm not sure if it's going to bite me or not. I do loathe furry animals (rabbits, hamsters), they shit everywhere.

14. Public banisters. I do it. I put my hand out and I touch it. Guide myself up the staircase to the train station or up the escalator but then I tug my hand away and remember someone else has touched this and where the fuck have their hands been?

15. Sambuca. It's not nice. It's what evil tastes like. 

16. Clowns. There are the scariest mother-fucking things out there.

17. Oh and while we're talking about scary things - spiders! Hate the bastards. Especially that myth about the one running wild around Cathays. 

18. The name Jayden. Sorry all you Jayden's out there. I won't be naming my kid after you.

19. And finally, small talk. Not the kind of small talk you have with a friend - even though I avoid that at the best of times - but more the small talk you have with your family at the awkward family reunions. "Oh wow, you've grown!" Yes, because you haven't seen me in ten years. "What you doing now?" University, dear aunt, I've said this ten times already. "Got a girlfriend yet?" That question doesn't even deserve a response. 

My roommates call me a grumpy bastard. I'm not. I just don't smile very much. 

Inside The Mind

Stephen King said he never keeps a notebook. He said a notebook is a good way of immortalizing bad ideas. I may agree with the latter but I certainly disagree with the first half. Yes, notebooks contain good and bad ideas and I guess, in a way, if you keep jotting down that bad idea you will eventually write a bad story but what happens if you simply forget a good idea? Yeah, sure, we always remember the ideas that excite us but what if we just...forget? 

I've had this idea for a long time and I've probably jotted it down maybe six or seven times in a different format, in the same notebook. Father and son in a boat, something happens, inspired by McCarthy and Hemingway - even though I haven't read him so not sure how it can be inspired by him. Anyway, I love notebooks. When I'm old and crepid and smelling of piss I will have a huge office stacked with my journals and notebooks. Journals and notebooks - like any sort of book really - harbor stories, they make us who we are. I have shit handwriting and not many people will ever understand what my journals say but that's my story, that's my little quality.

I will never stop loving notebooks, and spending my evenings doing what I do best - being a nerd and looking notebooks up online. Here's one of my favourites, by Mr. Guillermo Del Toro. 

Things I Appreciate Today

Imagine a world where you weren't in control.

Reminds me of James and the Giant Peach.

Of imagination.

A classic, right?

The next film I am very excited about.

Findings

New.

I was sitting on a bus today and I was thinking, thinking about a lot of things. One of the things I thought about was this blog or more, lack of blog. When I set out writing it I thought it would be completely about writing, about literature and yes, in a way it was, but as I was sitting on the horrific bus where enthusiastic American kids made me feel even more cynical and miserable, I thought that I could - and do - write about a lot more. Writing is a way of life so why not write about life? My life, people's lives, life as a whole? Writing is a way of making sense of the world, of understanding, so why should this blog be any different? I've thought of new ways I'm going to go at this blog. Neil Gaiman said that the key to a successful blog is consistency, good advice, I may not take it, I may do, we shall see. 

So, new background, new title, new ways of doing this thing. Here goes. 

'Can You Keep A Secret? My Life As A Submissive'

No, not me. Boredom crept up on me while I was wondering around Glasgow airport, aimlessly looking at the limited selection of books in WHSmith. Ammitiedley I had East of Eden in my bag, thirty pages in and it's blowing my mind, but I wanted something easy to read as a sort of break so I glanced over the 'buy one get one half price'. Looking up at me was a book called Can You Keep a Secret? My Life as a Submissive. It shamelessly had the colours of Twilight and the raunch of Fifty Shades of Grey but classed itself as a 'memoir'. I too, shamelessly, picked the book up - much to the disgust of the Scottish elderly shop assistant and the gurgling eyes of a passing woman - and read the back. The book was about an Irish woman and her life as she entered into the underground sex circles of Dublin, starting with meeting guys at a young age for sex and leading onto her later years to become a swinger and join in with forty or more orgies.

I opened the book and the passage that was in front of me described how a man was spooning the girl and slipped his penis inside her rectum - sharp stuff! I glanced further and noticed the font was huge, there was a mistake on page 122 and that the passages were badly written. But hey ho I had three hours to kill and was intrigued about the dirty sex circles of Dublin. I use intrigued as a word loosely as I know those reading - and those in Glasgow airport at that time - could think I was simply being a pervert. Not so. A writer who listens to someone's conversation isn't been nosy but doing research. I, myself, was feeding my academic mind and also my literary intrigue. But this isn't a blog where I defend but more explain.

So 300 pages later and sitting next to a very uncomfortable woman on the plane who peered over my shoulder to see what I was reading - a woman who I may add said to me "well if we crash it's all down to you" when I sat down in my seat next to the emergency exit, cheers - I put the book down and snarled. I snarled because the sexual paragraphs were so badly written that it felt like it had been swiped off a dirty conversation someone sent their significant other from Facebook. I snarled because the sex scenes - the threesomes, the gang-bangs, the virginity taking - were written with no class or interest but a splurge on the page, the hideous cliches that come when you write a sex scene. 

I've had to write some sex scenes for the short stories I've been working on for my project. One story I finished - originally called Savage, now called The Quiet Life - tells the story of a businessman and husband named Benjamin who is a sex addict. My lecturer read it and said "Tom, you write about loveless sex well." I took it as a compliment. I did not snarl, like I snarled at this book. Where I snarled because the entire book was so badly written it felt like a story you tell your friend the morning after a night out. I snarled because the main character - or the woman writing such a memoir - irritated me with her stupidity and lack of intellect. 

One sentence reads "the next couple of weeks, Kevin started being a dickhead" - there was no comma of course, that was missed. Another, "I felt..." - does this woman not know the first rule of writing - show, don't tell. But it wasn't just the bad writing that angered me, it was the fact that if it weren't for Fifty Shades of Grey such a book wouldn't exist. Now we have the Crossfire, the Eighty Days and Avalon books of the world - where are our East of Edens or Grapes of Wrath? 

I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey so the reviews I've had about the books bad writing and lack of plot I cannot comment on and wouldn't throw my nose up to such a book - do people not still read the Marquis De Sade? - but this book, this Submissive book was bad, just plain bad. I get that these books have become the "mummy porn" that the world needs but I just find it irritating that books like these are being published when others are not. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.