Woke up feeling cold and with the symptoms of flu. I can’t get warm and I feel like doing nothing but going back to bed where I would quite happily spend the day finishing the new Frederick Forsyth. Yet the problem with blogging is that you feel obliged to update, and with The Spine, that means thinking of something funny, knocking together a suitable picture, and then writing the story. Some days, it’s a nightmare.  I wouldn’t mind, but I assume most people just look at the day’s picture before they go off to their next blog. It would be so much easier if I could just get away with the writing.

Yesterday, I spent all day trying to think of something to mark Prescott’s last party conference as Deputy. At 11.30 last night, I thought to make him gurn, which wasn’t the most penetrating piece of satire but after watching him run through all his solemn and ‘meaningful’ faces during his speech, it just seemed appropriate… If I’ll miss anything about Prescott, it’s his ability to take himself so seriously. Never has a politician so clearly delighted being in a position of power. I forget who said it first, but at least when you’re ruled by a government made up of aristocrats, they know how to handle the power and responsibility with a certain elan. Prescott is like the slowest child in the class made milk monitor for the week. Or in Prescott’s case, what seems like an eternity.

I’m still trying to get my thoughts around the shock news that John Prescott intends to quit when Tony Blair leaves office next year. Why oh why?! Can’t somebody pursuade him to stay? Because this matter goes beyond politics. It’s more important that climate change or the situation in the Middle East. Since, if we assume that very little that happens in the world is in our control and that it hardly matters who is in power because everything is still heading towards hell in a handcart, then the imminent retirement of John Prescott is a disaster befalling us all.

Few men have brought so much life to the country as our Deputy Prime Minister. I have risen on some miserable winter morning but have been sparked into life by the story of his latest antics. He has fulfilled a vital role in society by being the object of all our ridicule. If Prescott hadn’t existed, that ridicule might have found more innocent victims like cyclists, Nuns or nursery school teachers. And speaking as a cycling Nun who works in a nursery school, I’m worried about my future.

I’m always drawn to the idea of writing in cafes until it comes to the moment to actually do it.

Leaving aside my inability to consume large quantities of caffeine without suffering stomach cramps, I simply mean to place myself in a public space and self-consciously start to write. I find it impossible. Not to sound precious but I think I demean myself when I try to be something that I’m not.

The problem is that I doubt common assumptions about what is to be creative. It’s like the very notion of what it is to be (or attempt to be) a writer. To write is an utterly lonely existence. I cannot think of my life without writing, and yet to choose to continue to succeed in it means huge sacrifice and too many hours in my own company. This is somewhat alien to the public concept of writers (and indeed, any kind of artist). There’s an implied flamboyance at the mention of the act of creation. Artists are slightly odd souls who just have odd ways about them. I walk through my local town on a sunny day and the park is full of what I would suppose are ‘the creative types’; their wrists wrapped heavily in beads, noses pierced, navels glistening. Occasionally, one or more of them will be strumming a guitar. In other words, they are being creative, and creative in a very open and honest way.

I am none of those things. My heroes were none of those things. I read poetry but doubt the form once it lost its form. I enjoy art but, for the same reasons, doubt those people who lampoon its structures. Great art (and great writing) usually amounts to great structure. Da Vinci copied nature to find those structures, and the same is true of much (if not all) of the art that we cherish. Joseph Conrad’s novels are masterpieces of structure. So too those of Virginia Woolf. Our best modern plays and screenplays work because they are structurally sound. The assumption is that ‘art’ is something done by the people with only a slight notion of the real world is ludicrous. Art is not floppy. Art is usually produced by people with imaginations capable of fashioning the apparently chaotic into something that has form. A story is not simply a sequence of words, but has a deliberate shape. Creating shape is the hardest thing a writer can do.

I wish I could grow my hair long, get a tattoo, and live in a commune where we eat nothing but goat cheese. But I’d probably do very little writing, just as I couldn’t write in the café today. I sat there, over my decaffeinated cappuccino, and felt only impotent feelings towards the script I had planned to revise. Writing like that feels like a pose. The acting gets in the way of the work.

Can a day be any less stimulating than one that contains a visit to the dentist and a visit to a job agency?

Didn’t think so. But then I get home to see Smiler giving his farewell performance at the Labour Party shindig up the East Lancs in Manchester. ‘We have changed Britain’ he said, beaming like only Blair can beam. They were the first words I heard him utter as I arrived home and, after my day, I was not for disagreeing with him. He’s clearly changed Britain. Changed it for the worst. My dentist managed to get another hundred pounds from me, chatting to his colleage about the half-hour’s work he plans for this afternoon before heading out to the golf course. I was then informed at the job agency that despite my countless qualifications, the best I could hope for is telesales or ‘data entry’. Apparently doctorates count for very little in the North West, though the woman was pleasant enough as she pushed the dagger into my heart. She seemed genuinely apologetic as I went snivelling through the door, though I don’t think she would have batted an eyelid if I’d given her the go ahead and asked her to measure me up for a headset. I wouldn’t mind but I thought all those jobs were going to India. What would become of me if I changed my life to live in a call centre then I lost my job because of out sourcing? I wonder if my qualifications would mean anything in India?

I’ve just spent three glorious weeks re-reading all the James Bond novels bar the two that Penguin have yet to release in their beautiful gun-metal grey Modern Classics series: The Man With the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me. Within the next month, I hope to have rectified this omission, as the rest of the books are published including the volumes of short stories. I might not have done this had The Book People not been selling ten of the new editions for £10 but revisiting Bond was something I needed to do and I’m so glad to have done it. It reminded why I should retain faith in a hero who has been so poorly treated by its franchise holders in the last decade or so.

Fleming’s books have highlighted how much I have become a lukewarm admirer of the James Bond films, which I have also been revisiting. As a child, my love for the films was nearly fanatical, but as I’ve grown older, it is Bond the literary character that holds my attention. He is a man of enormous likeability; pragmatic, loyal, moral, loving, thinking, and above all, confused about the world and his place in it. Even his pretensions emerge from a deep self-knowledge rather than the smug self-satisfaction it became in the films. Bond admits in Casino Royale, for example, his love for food comes from the loneliness of his job.

‘You must forgive me,’ he said. ‘I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from taking a lot of trouble over detail. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.’ (Casino Royale, p. 055).

It is hard to imagine the preening Brosnon admit to something so mundane yet keenly self-aware. What has also emerged for me is the realisation that Fleming as a writer can be hugely underestimated in the glare of the Hollywood machine. Few authors would choose to write a whole novel from the point of view of a female character, consigning his world-famous hero to a secondary role, as he does in The Spy Who Loved Me. Perhaps it should not be surprising to learn that his final novel, The Man With the Golden Gun, was finished by a figure of such independent literary prestige as Kingsley Amis. Fleming is not what you come to expect based on the films and only when you remember these things do you recognise how much the Bond of the films skews our understanding of the literary character. The movie Bond has been reduced to a cartoon, a man too aware of his own sex appeal and his indestructibility. The literary Bond usually ends up battered and so broken that he would be totally unable to even peck a blonde beauty on the cheek, let along go ten rounds on an inflatable raft. Indeed, Pierce Bronson took the sex appeal to a ridiculous level. He made the Bond character little more than a preening male model. Every time he posed with a gun, he inexplicably began to pout. Once you spot this, it’s impossible to take him seriously as Bond. I only hope Daniel Craig doesn’t carry this through into the new films, although the trailers for Casino Royale make me worry that the pouting will continue for a few more years.

Of course, Brosnon was not the first to alter Bond. Moore may have brought out the character’s humour, but he also made him appear somewhat lecherous. Connery is suitably savage but perhaps too savage, especially towards women. Though I find it hard to believe given my childhood championing of Connery and Moore, my two favourite Bonds are now Lazenby and Dalton. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is probably the best and the only Bond film where I believe the character to be anything like that created by Fleming. Dalton, on the other hand, despite his occasional lapse into a Welsh accent, lacked the superman complex and was a success because of that. There were also fewer of those moments of ‘self-mockery’ that blighted the later Moore films – moments when Bond make Tarzan yodels as he swing through the trees, or a slide-whistle accompanies a car as it flips over in the air.

Which brings me to the fact that I’ve just seen the new trailer for Casino Royale. My criticism is trivial but I can’t help but say it. It doesn’t much matter to me that this Bond is blonde. It’s the nature of the man that has always interested me. It’s the things he does, the things he enjoys, and the things he believes. Which is why I’m stumped as to why they appear to have changed the central game of the book from Baccarat Chemin de Fer to poker. At its heart, Bacarat is simple enough to explain in a few words and poker is relatively complex. Yet what it signals to me is how much Bond has suddenly become a man who promotes a certain lifestyle. He drives what is new and expensive. His playing poker suggests that the film is about marketing online poker palaces or Bond poker scratch cards. It’s about a lifestyle. Like many Bond fans, I yearn for a Bond devoid of glamour. I know they’ll never take it back towards a man more like Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer, but Bond in the novels is really closer to Palmer than he is to this new modern Bond. Unfortunately, Harry Palmer would never sell bingo or tickets on the national lottery. The new improved Bond would leap at the chance. No wonder I find it hard to like this new Bond. He’s become a slimmer and slightly tougher version of Eamon Holmes.

…I would guess that it probably isn’t made out of a real walrus. It’s just a hunch I have. Only, not everybody seems to agree with me… Now that either says something bad about my sense of humour being terribly awry or something really bad about people’s perceptions of poor Natasha. 

‘Poor Natasha’? That’s just it: I’m now feeling sorry for the woman. Is it possible to be a satirist and yet have a heart? I’m beginning to think not. I also blame all these negative vibrations for the problems my PC has started to develop, crashing every time it goes into standby and refusing to play itunes. Does itunes have taste? Is it a protest about the kind of music I listen to? Or is it just XP throwing another strop? It never works like it should and becomes unstable only a month or two after I’ve reinstalled it. I’m also running low on disc space, which means a trip off to the shops to spend money I serious lack. I hate computers… I’d love a walrus though.

On a more pleasant note. The printer has just whirred to a stop and the first draft of my latest travesty is sitting cooling in the tray. I don’t know why I preserver writing this stuff but I guess we all live in hope…

I don’t know why I should be feeling so utterly miserable today. Perhaps it’s the fact that all the scheming, spinning, and slimy slithering is finally catching up with Blair and the days of my mocking Prescott are numbered. I think it’s also a culmination of writing solidly for weeks and not having much of a break. Writing short stories and even novels is much more pleasurable than writing a screenplay where every line has to pay. No wonder it’s making me grumpy.

Did I mention that I’ve also given up coffee?

But what cheered me up a little this morning was a nice new link to my other blog and the suggestion that The Spine is politically neutral. I guess, in this case, neutrality is a good thing. I always intended The Spine to be an anti-blog. Even the 200+ taglines that appear randomly below the title should prove this, though I have already been listed elsewhere (quite worthily) as being ‘top website for Swedish hobos’ and ‘the pocket-sized website’. I love that. But the point is: I have always deliberately avoided giving too much (if any) of my own opinion and certainly no ‘constructive conclusions’ over at The Spine. The order of the day is cheap jokes to keep my spirits up. I guess that I also instinctively rebel at the usual bloggerly habits. Even when I’m being more serious here on this blog, I do so with the intent that I don’t intend to promote it. I just don’t subscribe to the basic belief that everybody has a distinctive voice that’s worth a listen. The best blogs generally have the same values as the best print journalism, but for the rest… Well, there are only so many long worthy essays about the Middle East that I can handle in a day. The problem with the web is that too many people sincerely believe that they’re the next Robert Fisk. I always thought that one Robert Fisk was more than enough. Besides, who’d really want to be the next?

Pinned to my noticeboard, I have a quote from a letter that Jonathan Swift wrote to Pope, where he said ‘I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth’. D.H. Lawrence thought that Swift’s scatological humour was psychologically unhealthy and led to his insanity. It might be true, but Lawrence perhaps ignores the nobler side of Swift, the side that enjoyed great friendships. I think I’ll leave The Spine to continue to gather my spleen and to help keep me sane. I’ll be a better person here and in the things I refuse to post to the web.

Damn, I really want a cup of coffee…

Today has been a day all about second act problems. I think it’s David Mamet who talks about dramatists always having problems with the second act. The foothills of a new script are the opening few pages, where you establish your characters, writer a few delicious lines, and generally feel quite satisfied with your first attempt at scaling some unexplored region of the Alps. Then comes the second act, looming out at you like some dramatic equivalent of K2. The second act is where you need to test your muscles. You have to find the nub of the drama — what’s at stake, the value or thing in peril.

Dialogue is easy to write. Dialogue with purpose is fiendishly difficult. Which is where I am at the moment. I have pages of notes written down about what characters represent, but to get these things within a plot is driving me slightly nuts.

Why is it that when one thing goes wrong, you usually get a day full of mishaps? Today was one of those days. Chairs breaking under my huge bulk, printers not printing, long post-office queues, longer queues in Stationary Box as loud schoolchildren lined up to buy bright pink Playboy endorsed pen sets ready for the new school term. Then I had trains not arriving, bottoms falling out of boxes, email troubles, and being stuck listening to passengers discussing ‘Eric’s problem’ and the fact that ‘the consultant won’t be able to lance it  until it’s the size of a small orange.’ And then I was mistaken for Brad Pit and persuade by scores of adoring young ladies… Well, all that but for the last bit.

The thing is: when life turns ugly, it’s hard not to start believing in a large pair of cosmic scales. It makes me want to get medieval and superstitious, and start seeing the Great Chain of Being. I want to go bend spoons with Uri Gellar. Teach the Pope about miracles. Go burn some witches — I have plenty of names to go at. Against all my better judgement, I seem to suffer the same collective phobia of things scientific as the rest of the country. None of us care much about reason when everything has magic attached to it. We eat good yogurt that fights duels in our gut and listen when Jackie Stallone says she feels something in her water. If Madonna said she rubbed cheese into her elbows to keep her looking young, sales of Cheddar would skyrocket tomorrow. And some great instinct makes us believe that it’s hard to turn a day around once it’s begun to turn bad.

Which brings me to the fact that Steve Irwin died today.

Few people have been portrayed as indestructible in quite the same way that Irwin had over the last few years. It’s a matter of hubris and all that, putting our bad days into perspective, and this tragic event is already being turned into some kind of superstitious episode by sections of the media. It’s already being seen as some great balancing act by a God who had watched the ‘Croc Hunter’ poke his captive handbags with a meaty paw a few too many times. I guess it’s just a way of reassuring ourselves that life is ultimately fair even when it’s being so terribly tragic.

Tomorrow I might just be recognized as Brad Pitt instead of being a failing blogger who struggles to update The Spine each day, thereby creating a site that still attracts a frighteningly large number of people looking for ‘dancing midgets’.

I suppose I should confess that my other site, The Spine, is where I put all my energies. I attempt to update it every day with something ‘funny’. Yet no matter how difficult I find it to post there, I find it even more difficult to post here. Oh, I know it should be easy. I keep promising myself to make this a blog for things off the top of my head. But after working all day, then updating my other site, I find it so damn difficult to be serious. I find it even harder not to polish a sentence once it’s on the screen… 

But I suppose the main reason I find it hard to post is that I don’t actually have many constructive opinions about things. I don’t understand Iraq or Iran. Middle East politics bore me senseless because the whole thing seems to transcend reason. Nor am I totally given to waffling on about things that I know very little about. Professionalism in any field worries me. It seems to be born out of arrogance, ambition, and some rather large and unwholesome does of self-belief. I never feel like I know much about anything, even when it’s self evidently obvious that I do and I have certificates to prove it.

Which is why it annoys the hell out of me when celebrities think I care what they think. These people lack self-doubt. I’m full of the damn stuff. I know I can’t be the only one to feel this way, but what saddens me is that we seem in the minority. And this is my point. What worries me about these single issue referenda is the fear that, for example, more than 50% of the county actually likes Paris Hilton, admires her, wants to be just like her. I guess if more than 50% of the country wanted her sent to a remote Scottish island for the rest of her days, I might be for letting the public have its say on all matters. At the moment, I just don’t trust the public. Does this make me a bad person? A tyrant? Do I have slightly fascistic leanings? Can’t we just form a movement? Begin with Paris Hilton and work our way towards solving the problem of Palestine? I don’t want to be seen as a tyrant but how do we stop these people?