domeheid

The key to a successful sale

2011-09-28T20:43:00.001+01:00

Rule #1: Make sure the person whose house you're offering to sell is the owner.

The unsolicited direct mail shot I received from Carter Jonas.

I received an unsolicited direct mail shot (see above) from Carter Jonas today, addressed to me. Usually it's just "To the Owner". I was amused by their claim of "knowing our local area inside out", so I wrote them a friendly email:

From: Christopher Whalen [email removed]
Date: 28 September 2011 20:25
Subject: The key to a successful sale
To: oxford@carterjonas.co.uk

Dear Carter Jonas,

You sent me a direct mail flyer today. I'd thank you if I was grateful, but I'm not, so I won't. Please remove me from your mailing lists.

You claim: "We pride ourselves on knowing our local area inside out". I guess you don't know it as well as you think you do. I live in a private rented house owned by Lucy Properties, so even if I did want to sell it, I wouldn't be allowed because I don't own it. Surely you know that most of Walton Well Road is owned and let out by Lucy Properties.

How did you get my name in the first place? I'm not on the edited electoral register.

As I said, please remove me from your mailing lists. Thanks.

Yours aye,
Christopher Whalen
[address removed]

My 2010 10Q answers

2011-09-22T00:27:00.002+01:00

This time last year I did an exercise in personal reflection guided by 10Q. Here are the results:

Day 1:
Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

My answer:
I decided not to finish my DPhil thesis on James Joyce at Oxford University. I felt regret and pain, but also relief. I was lucky to get a job at a web design and development company soon after - the first and only job I applied for. I've been much happier and more fulfilled since, although at times the pressure of work tips into stress. I have a busy life and don't find the time to keep on top of all my personal admin, as I was able to do during my graduate studies.

Day 2:
Is there something that you wish you had done differently this past year? Alternatively, is there something you're especially proud of from this past year?

My answer:
I'm proud of the way I have grown up emotionally this year. I developed feelings for one of my friends, and instead of bottling it up and stewing on it for months, I told her quite early on. We went out on a few dates, but she decided that she didn't want a relationship with me. I think I handled the rejection quite well compared to how I've reacted in the past. It still hurt, but I'm trying to move on. It helped that I was open about how I felt and let her know unequivocally how I felt about her. I'm proud that I made her feel good about herself when we were going out. I still wish she could reciprocate my affections.

Day 3:
Think about a major milestone that happened with your family this past year. How has this affected you?

My answer:
My sister gave birth to her third child. I'm much less interested in children than I was when my first niece was born. I really don't enjoy the company of small children much. I don't have the patience. When I'm with that part of my family, I keep a low profile. I don't want to be the kids' favourite because I don't want to be high in demand. I don't have the energy.

Day 4:
Describe an event in the world that has impacted you this year. How? Why?

My answer:
I raised money for the Pakistan flood victims by busking in Oxford with Sol Samba.

Day 5:
Have you had any particularly spiritual experiences this past year? How has this experience affected you? "Spiritual" can be broadly defined to include secular spiritual experiences: artistic, cultural, and so forth.

My answer:
The closest I've had to a spriritual experience is drumming with Maracatu Estrela do Norte in the Notting Hill Carnival. The repetitive rhythm of maracatu can send you into a trance. With the sound systems blasting out in front and behind us during the parade, there were times when I thought I could hear angels singing above our drumming.

Day 6:
Describe one thing you'd like to achieve by this time next year. Why is this important to you?

My answer:
I'd like to have a girlfriend by this time next year. It's important to me because I have been frustrated in love many times. I feel I've got a lot to give, but haven't met someone who is willing to reciprocate it. I think I would feel happier and more fulfilled if I had a girlfriend.

Day 7:
How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you in this project?

My answer:
I would like to become a better rugby referee over the next year. This is my first season on the Southern Federation Development Squad, which is a great opportunity to improve my skills and experience. There's no one piece of advice that will guide me. I will have to be a sponge and absorb all the advice that is offered to me, decide what I want to take onboard, and then wring the rest out. It will help having more regular reports from match observers and weekly contact with my coach.

Day 8:
Is there something (a person, a cause, an idea) that you want to investigate more fully in 2011?

My answer:
I want to get deeper into samba and maracatu - have more experiences playing in big fuckoff batterias. I'd like to spend more time with my friend, Bethan, and get to know her better. I might want to investigate spending some time in Brazil - I'd love to play with Viradouro at Rio Carnival.

Day 9:
What is a fear that you have and how has it limited you? How do you plan on letting it go or overcoming it in the coming year?

My answer:
I'm not really afraid of many things. I used to be afraid of parties, but in the past year I've been to a couple of grown-up parties and really enjoyed myself. It helps knowing most of the people there, liking them, and wanting to spend time with them.

I used to go into my shell at parties and just stand in a corner not talking to anyone, waiting to go home.

Day 10:
When September 2011 rolls around and you receive your answers to your 10Q questions, how do you think you'll feel? What do you think/hope might be different about your life and where you're at as a result of thinking about and answering these questions?

My answer:
I think I'll be glad I went through this process and intrigued by the things that were preoccupying me a year ago. I might be slightly embarrassed by my answers. I hope that I'll have a girlfriend this time next year and will be able to share my answers with her. (If you're reading this, HELLO!) I'm not sure answering these questions will be a catalyst to any change in my life, but I might surprise myself. Maybe they'll reveal something about myself that I'm not fully aware of now. See me next year!

Day 11:
What are your predictions for 2011?

My answer:
Love will find me, I hope.

Want to do this yourself this year? 10Q begins 28 September 2011.

Song from "This American Life" 218: "Act V"

2011-07-25T23:56:00.005+01:00

I've just been listening to a podcast of This American Life and I was wondering what the song was from the end of episode 218: "Act V" (at 56:11 of the 58:33-length podcast; originally aired on 9 August 2002; recently aired on 1 July 2011).

I searched around on the TAL website, but couldn't find a track listing. Then I remembered I could use Shazam on my iPad. Turns out it's "Desperado" by The Langley Schools Music Project on their album "Innocence & Despair".

Stream episode
Skip to 56:59 to hear the song in context.

Grooveshark
Listen to the song on Grooveshark.

How to get an invitation to Google+

2011-07-09T00:13:00.002+01:00

Ask me!

Google Easter eggs

2011-06-01T00:14:00.012+01:00

Type the following searches into Google and see what you get:

the answer to life the universe and everything
anagram
askew (using a smartphone browser)
tilt (using a smartphone browser)

On an almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated note, here's an old Google bomb for WMD.

Type the following into Microsoft Word and press Enter:

=rand(X,Y) [where X = number of paragraphs and Y = number of repetitions of the sentence]
=rand.old()
=lorem()

According to Wikipedia, these are not Easter eggs.

Update (Sunday 10 July 2011)
(Thanks to my Notting Hill Carnival 2010 Maracatu Estrela Do Norte colleague, Karen Brownlie, for sharing these.)

Driving directions from China to Taiwan on Google Maps include the direction "48. Swim across the Pacific Ocean":

Driving directions from China to Japan on Google Maps include the direction "27. Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean":

Driving directions from China to USA on Google Maps include the direction "92. Kayak across the Pacific Ocean":

Update (Monday 19 December 2011)

Google Chrome to Phone error

2011-05-27T00:32:00.001+01:00

For the past couple of days I've been getting the error message "Device not registered to user" when trying to send webpages from my Chrome web browser to my Android HTC Desire phone. To fix it, do the following:

Check you have the most recent version of Chrome (spanner / About Google Chrome).
Uninstall Google Chrome to Phone extension in Chrome.
Reinstall Google Chrome to Phone extension in Chrome.
Clear data from the Chrome to Phone app on your Android device (Menu / Settings / Applications / Manage applications / select Chrome to Phone from downloaded applications / click "Clear data" button).
Open Chrome to Phone app on your Android device (Menu / All apps / Chrome to Phone), click "Next" and select the account you want to use (I chose my Gmail account), click "Next", chose your link action preference (I chose "Automatically launch links"), click "Next" and then "Finish".
Send a test webpage from your Chrome browser to check it works.

I suspect doing steps 4 and 5 would have been enough.

Google London Site Clinic: a review

2011-04-06T01:57:00.002+01:00

I attended the Google London Site Clinic at TechHub this evening. As I was expecting/fearing from the blurb on their site, I thought the talks by Christoffel Hiltermann and Lucyna Janas for the first half hour or so were pitched too low: very basic stuff that you can learn from the obvious channels: Google Webmaster Tools, Google Webmaster Guidelines, the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Help Center, Webmaster Help Forum, the Google SEO starter guide, and so on. So I didn't learn anything new here.

My sentiments are echoed on the #Siteclinic Twitter hashtag, which we were encouraged to use:

proactivepaul: Maybe need to check out Google guidelines #Siteclinic or maybe not? This talk needs to step up a notch for a @TechHub audience!

eagerterrier: If you're thinking about going to a #siteclinic probably don't bother unless you're a web junior. Shame.

Where it got interesting was when they did a Matt Cutts-style site review.

When we signed up, we were asked to submit a site for which we were the webmaster. The panel from the Google Search Quality team worked through half a dozen or so of these pointing out areas that could be optimized. I made a few notes about the things I learned:

Use web-sniffer.net to check the HTTP headers of a URL. This will help you determine if your redirects are functioning as expected. The Google Search Quality panel pointed out a few sites which had "soft 404s" i.e. error pages that were not in fact 404s, such as this one from the Surrey Police, which web-sniffer reveals returns a 200:

"Soft 404" page on the Surrey Police website with a nice customized Sherlock Holmes message: "Apologies, we will send out the search dogs to look for the missing page."

In Chrome you can type cache:URL into the address bar to see the cached version of a page in Google's index. For example, cache:http://www.domeheid.com shows the cache of this blog. This is a good way to see how recently your site has been indexed. It's also a good way to view the site structure if you view the text-only version, which gives you the opportunity to check if you have a proper h1, h2...h6 hierarchy with your headers.
Use a 301 redirect for www and non-www canonicalizaton. Some of the sites we looked at weren't redirecting from the non-www version of their page (e.g. example.com) to the www version (e.g. www.example.com). I knew this already, but it reminded me that this should be one of the first things you check in an SEO audit as it splits any link juice between the two versions of the domain. I need to follow this up with a few of my clients...
There's no penalty for duplicate content. The Google team refuted the SEO myth that there were any penalties imposed by Google on duplicate content from the same domain. Google merely hides duplicate content in its SERPs so that users aren't served with multiple versions of the same page (see the screenshot below). If, however, you are a content farm scraping (i.e. plagiarizing) content from other domains and nesting it amongst affiliate links and ads on your own domain, that's another matter. (Read more about the Google Panda / Content Farmer update, which was announced on the Google Webmaster Central Blog on 24 February.)

The duplicate content message displayed in Google SERPs that hides repetitive results from users (with the option to display them if desired).

For cross-posting use rel="canonical". If you are cross-posting content on multiple sites, use the rel="canonical" meta tag to identify the original version of the post (e.g. one member of the audience was republishing blog articles on his site that were originally published on other blogs, with the authors' permission - a type of syndication. I'm not entirely sure if everyone understood each other on this question, so be wary about taking this advice as gospel).
Use the source attribution meta tag for syndicated news content. This came up during the discussion of the previous point about syndicating blog content. At the moment the source attribution meta tag is aimed at Google News publishers.
Working with multi-regional websites. There's a blog post about this on the Webmaster Central Blog.
Google Base. Someone in the audience who was interested in e-commerce mentioned this. I noted it down just because I hadn't heard of it before. It seems to be a way for merchants to add their product feeds to Google Product Search.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the webmasters of these sites that were named, flamed, and shamed go off to fix these issues. Maybe by the time you read this post, these SEO errors will have been rectified.

The overall impression you get from listening to Google employees is that SEO is pretty easy, common-sense stuff. There are no secrets if you follow their guidelines. Just produce good content, think about your user experience, and work your way through their SEO starter guide to make sure you're not doing anything silly. Don't try to game the system.

My main SEO checklist will be as follows:

Title tags
Description meta tags
www and non-www canonicalization with 301 redirects (also check for duplicate variants of the homepage e.g. /home.html, /index.html, /index.php, and so on).
I'll then work my way through the other things listed in the Google SEO starter guide.

Another thing I noted was that most of the Google team's analysis of a site started with checking the HTTP headers and viewing the site: search using the site:URL query e.g. site:http://www.domeheid.com. This is a good way to review your title tags and snippets. Looking at my site: search, it makes me wish Blogger improved its SEO tools so that I could optimize my title tags and meta descriptions without doing it all manually in the HTML.

Incidentally, it was great that the wi-fi password was posted around on the walls at TechHub, along with the Twitter hashtag. But that's to be expected nowadays when you've got a techy audience.

How to cook rice: the Delia Smith method

2011-04-03T20:45:00.008+01:00

My good friend, Roman Krznaric, once showed me how to cook rice the Delia Smith way. Since then, I've never done it any other way. I taught my mum, who's an accomplished cook, and she was thrilled by the results. What's so good about it? It makes perfect rice every time. It doesn't waste any water. There's no need to rinse out the starch. You don't end up with leftover rice having made too much. It doesn't stick to the pan. Here's how to do it:

Measure out half a mug of rice per person.
Add three-quarters of a mug of cold water per person.
Add a couple of teaspoons of olive oil.
Put the lid on the pan and swirl it around to mix in the oil.
Warm on a high heat until it boils.
Remove the lid and stir with a wooden spoon.
Replace the lid and leave untouched on a low heat for 7 minutes.
When the 7 minutes is up, stir with a wooden spoon until the remaining moisture has evaporated.
Serve up your perfect portion of rice, cooked with Delia's method.

Measure out half a mug of rice per person

Add three-quarters of a mug of cold water per person.

Add a couple of teaspoons of olive oil.

Put the lid on the pan and swirl it around to mix in the oil. Warm on a high heat until it boils.

Remove the lid and stir with a wooden spoon.

Replace the lid and leave untouched on a low heat for 7 minutes.

When the 7 minutes is up, stir with a wooden spoon until the remaining moisture has evaporated.

Serve up your perfect portion of rice, cooked with Delia's method.

The story of the shepherd with the talking sheepdog

2011-03-24T00:52:00.001Z

The shepherd said to the sheepdog, "I've got some sheep in the valley. Will you go and round them up and put them in the pen?"

And the dog went, "Alright."

And he went away and came back an hour later. And the dog went, "I've done it."

And the shepherd said, "How many sheep were there?"

And the dog went, "40."

And the shepherd said, "That's strange! There were only 38 this morning."

And the dog went, "You said 'round them up'!"

(Source: Duggie Brown, "Act Your Age", BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 23 May 2011)

Which trainers should I buy?

2011-03-21T22:05:00.000Z

Dear lazyweb,

I'm undecided about which pair of trainers I should buy. Please help me decide by voting in the poll above this post. Here's my shortlist of three:

Puma Speed Cat

New Balance 577

Fred Perry Dobie

How to convert an existing Google AdWords account to My Client Center (MCC)

2011-03-11T23:56:00.003Z

At Torchbox I am developing my search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) skills. Yesterday, for example, I passed my Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam, which is part of the Google Certification Program.

It's annoying that I couldn't use my existing Google AdWords account (which was attached to my primary Gmail address) to set up a My Client Center (MCC) account, which makes managing multiple AdWords accounts much easier because you can do it all through the same login.

It's not simple, but there is a way around this...

I found this helpful blog post about it: How To Set Up Google AdWords My Client Center (MCC). Following these instructions, it took me a couple of hours, but I've managed it. You will end up with multiple Google accounts at the end of it, but I minimized the hassle by using existing email addresses (which are all linked to my main Gmail address anyway) to create those Google accounts.

Now I can manage multiple AdWords accounts (both personal and for my clients at work) through my preferred Google account, which I made my top-level MCC.

Multi-tiered My Client Center structure. Source: webguru-co.com.

Blogger's help page about missing files host...is missing!

2011-02-20T02:55:00.000Z

While fiddling with my Blogger settings, I came across this ironic (in the Alanis Morissette sense) broken link (click on the images to enlarge):

Missing files host? Learn more by clicking on this link...

...D'oh!

More things that suck about my iPad

2010-08-10T00:49:00.000+01:00

It won't charge over the USB of my Dell Inspiron 1525.
Some text boxes, e.g. when you're editing a Wikipedia entry in Safari, don't have a scroll bar when the text extends below the fold.
Google Apps email accounts are harder to set up than they should be.
How are you supposed to send email attachments e.g. if you want to email yourself a number of screenshots you've taken using the iPad's nifty screenshot function do you have to send them one by one using the Photos app and the Mail client?
The iPod app doesn't let me sort my podcasts by release date or title - or if it does, I haven't figure it out yet. (User experience, anyone?)

The list has grown from six to eleven! On the whole, I am pretty computer savvy and usually don't have too much trouble figuring out how to use things, but the iPad (and Apple generally) aren't as intuitive as I was led to believe they were.

Things that suck about my iPad

2010-08-06T00:35:00.009+01:00

I was given an iPad my employer, Torchbox (yay! and thank you very much indeed!). I've been playing around with it for the first time this evening. I do like it and I don't want to seem ungrateful...but...I have found a number of things about it that bug me:

It can't play Flash. Duh!
iPhone apps look stupidly small on it.
Every time you click "Show More" apps in the App Store on the iPad and then install an app, you are forced out of the App Store and have to click "Show More" again to get back to where you were on the list of top free iPad apps.
The Twitter and Facebook apps sucks. I much prefer TweetDeck for iPad, although when I first installed it, it repeatedly closed itself down before I could eventually set up my Twitter account.
The keyboard labels don't toggle between lower and uppercase as they do on my Android HTC Desire.
Worst of all, iTunes thinks I have authorized more than 5 computers and doesn't make it easy to deauthorize old computers that I can't deauthorize individually because I don't have them anymore! Besides, I've only ever authorized iTunes on two laptops. I'm nervous about deauthorizing all of my computers in case I wipe stuff I want to keep or can no longer play music I downloaded on iTunes.

I thought Apples were supposed to give a brilliant user experience. Can't say I'm much of a fanboy yet. I expect this list to grow from its original six items.

Cornbury Festival

2010-07-31T15:21:00.004+01:00

Very happy memories of a wonderful day spent at Cornbury Festival with my parents to celebrate Kidney Independence Day, the second anniversary of their kidney transplant, when my mum gave one of her kidneys to my dad. (Click on the photo to see the whole album in Picasa.)

Was that apartment in "Manhattan"?

2010-07-07T00:47:00.006+01:00

Near the beginning of Woody Allen's new film, Whatever Works, in the scene when Boris talks to his first wife at 4am, the spiral staircase reminded me of the apartment in Manhattan (0:10:45-0:12:20) in which Isaac and Tracy (Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway) have a long conversation about their relationship in an apartment which also features a spiral staircase.

The two scenes are shot very differently: Whatever Works has a moving camera with various different angles; Manhattan has a single, static long take in long-shot.

Did anyone else make this connection? I thought at first it might be the same apartment, but now I don't think it is.

Manhattan (1979)

Update: OK, so it's not the same staircase. Compare image below.

Whatever Works (2009)

Virgin Media and easyJet respond to my Twitter critiques

2010-04-29T01:56:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I blogged about corporate Twitter accounts. I followed it up by tweeting @virginmedia and @easyJetCare with my criticisms. Here are my tweets and their responses:

@virginmedia Are you aware that your feeds are hidden in the sidebar of your Twitter background? Screenshots here: http://bit.ly/8YF37R
12:59 AM Apr 28th via TweetDeck

@domeheid There's a lot of information we need to put on there, will pass on your feedback all the same so thanks =) BMc
about 13 hours ago via TweetDeck in reply to domeheid

*****

@easyJetCare Are you aware that your Twitter background is pixellated? Screenshots here: http://bit.ly/8YF37R
1:00 AM Apr 28th via TweetDeck

@domeheid Thanks for your comments. We will have this checked. ^DB
about 15 hours ago via CoTweet in reply to domeheid

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes them to actually fix the glitches - if they even intend to. Watch this space. Or better still, follow me on Twitter!

What makes a good corporate Twitter account?

2010-04-28T00:38:00.011+01:00

My first homework assignment for the IAB social media practitioner programme is to write a blog post critiquing two corporate Twitter accounts: one who gets it and one who doesn't get it. Examples that Henry Elliss gave in his talk at the first session included @twelpforce (25,542 followers), @easyJetCare (6,048 followers), and @virginmedia (10,775 followers). All three of these companies use Twitter for customer service - a brave choice. The nice thing about this is that they are able to respond quickly to their customers. Virgin Media and easyJet initial their tweets to that you can trace them back to a particular employee.

One thing I noticed about Virgin Media was that their background image is too large so that some of the information is hidden unless you view the page fullscreen.

Green rectangle highlights hidden information. Note the right-hand scroll bar is at the bottom (background image is fixed). (Click to enlarge.)

And this is what you should have seen.

Whereas easyJet's design has no such problems:

Although there is a bit of pixellation (meh):

Don't quite get it
The Highways Agency (@HighwaysAgency) uses Twitter like an RSS feed. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Are you supposed to read through all their tweets in case you spot any roads that might affect your journey? It might be more useful in a mash-up or if you set up a custom search to find all tweets referring to specific roads, e.g. A34 or M40. But then you might as well just go to their website; unless you're on the move and accessing Twitter through your phone. Maybe it isn't so bad then. But then again, only 196 followers. This is an indictment that they don't interact at all with their followers. We are after all talking about social media, which implies that you should have a two-way conversation, not a lecture.

Whilst the Highways Agency is guilty of over-tweeting, the Midcounties Coop (@MidcountiesCoop) has only tweeted three times in 2010 so far and has no sort of branding whatsoever. They haven't even uploaded a profile picture. No wonder they only have 41 followers. Maybe they just figured "if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all."

Gets it
Quidco (@quidco), "The UK's no.1 cashback & voucher site", has a nice balance between highlighting their best deals and sharing consumers' feedback by retweeting their success stories. They also use it as a quick way to respond to customers' concerns and refer them on to their support team. 3,105 followers prove it's at least more popular than the Highways Agency and the Coop. These figures are quite good compared to big corporations like Virgin Media and easyJet.

One thing to note about Twitter accounts that are used for customer service is that followers may only stick around while they have a specific query. Once their issue is solved, they may stop following (I know I would). If my brother is anything to go by, Quidco users are quite loyal and always on the prowl for a bargain.

What have I learned?

Don't over-tweet.
Respond directly to followers.
Get your branding right.

I'm interested to know what corporate Twitter accounts my fellow Rising Voices in social media are blogging about. Let's get these pingbacks going!

Note: The company I work for, Torchbox (and in particular Rob Salmon, Director of Digital Marketing), encouraged Jonny Grum and me to attend this course at the IAB in London so we could develop our social media skills. By the end of the course, I will be a certified Rising Voice in social media!

Geek, dweeb, dork, or nerd?

2010-04-24T01:54:00.002+01:00

Image source: BuzzFeed.

I'm coming to terms with the realization that I'm a geek. This nifty Venn diagram makes me feel a little better about it since it could have been worse: I could have been a dork! Although I'm at times socially awkward, I don't quite reach into social ineptitude and - falling heavy objects permitting - I at least have my intelligence. I'm tickled by the fact that a Venn diagram is such a geeky way to display this information, but it does describe the subtle differences between these social categories so much better than words can. I wonder, however, whether this Venn diagram was designed by a geek, since geeks come out of it so favourably.

Thanks to @Dr_Whut for sharing this on Jabber team chat at work.

How to make a screen capture in Windows

2010-03-20T10:20:00.001Z

This should work in any version of Windows. There's no need to download any special screen capturing/clipping/grabbing software. I wish I'd figured this out before!

Navigate to the page/screen you wish to capture.
Press the Prnt Scrn (Print Screen) button on the top right of your keyboard. This will capture the whole area of your screen and place it on the clipboard.
Open a graphics program such as Paint.
Paste the Print Screen image from your clipboard by pressing Ctrl + V.
Crop the image as desired and save.

Turning out the light in bed

2010-03-16T22:23:00.001Z

Is what defines the life you lead:
The last thought in light[1]
Before you are left in the darkness
Of the recesses of your head.

Pledge allegiance to your latest loved one:
They don't know you do it
Nor that you can't
When you speak to them by day.

Daily ritual; or rehearsed argument:
Say the things you want to say
But never have the courage
Nor the wit to pull off.

Open your heart, express yourself,
Be honest, plain and true;
Be the person you want to be:
The one they fail to see.

Or unplug your care-free life,
Disconnected from the current.
Delve immediately into drowsy sleep
And ignore, once more, the open door,

The welcome waiting, watching, waiting,
Talking to you with silent eyes,
Silent sighs, silent lies
To himself and all the other fantasies
That he has dreamed up in waking sleep.

Charisma crush, wishful want,
Wont of company: to be,
But not to be, the thing it is
I know you see: the want of me.

[1] "The last word on today's news and sport, and the first on tomorrow's!"

[Tuesday 31 May 2002: after a day of not revision]

Written words on the page

2010-03-15T22:37:00.004Z

Written words on the page. Act your shoe size not your age. Why are you looking at me, freak? Everyone must think I'm such a geek. Sitting here all alone. John Peel playing, next to the phone. Eyes catching something they cannot see. Mind flowing and nothing going. I want to be a writer, he says. You have to have talent. But I have. No you don't. You talk to yourself. You have no friends. If you did, you'd give them the bends. Like the Radiohead play: "My baby's got the bends" well take it away. That is no thing for a kid with to play. Lexical grammar, words messed up. The chokey bits at the bottom of a tea cup. I can write this shit without a thought. Words flow like the champagne I bought. The pain taker-awayers that come in a packet. You give it a push and it goes pop. You pop too as you pop them in. Swill them with water. Let the pains begin! No, dumbass. Motherfuck. The pain goes bye-bye, you go pop. The brain splatters upon the page. Act your shirt size not your age. Oh fuck. I'm forty-eight. You didn't tell me, waiting at the gate. I always get the wrong one. The train at the station. My reading mum. There she was reading a book. There was the get off she was supposed to took. Isis. Si, sis. Next week: Brighton, the bright town. Seaside memories of a black gown. Sitting in front of the Oxford Don. Blink and you'll miss it. There, it's gone. Gone to see whom, to see what, to see her? I don't remember. Can I confer? Paxman, taxman, humpty who. Hold on a minute, I'm married to Lou. Writing is easy. It's all for a lark. You look into your mind and read the dark. I don't think. My fingers do. They do it all. I type for you. You being me and being being it. The writing's on the wall, they say. Clichés abound. They're not actually true. The writing's on the screen. In front of me. (And you if you read this.) But what if it's printed. Well, then it's on the page. Act your breast size not your age. So I'm a male. I white Caucasian not-blonde. A non-bimbo Baywatch watcher in the past. The days of bad telly in the land of multiple bacteria. Gibberish. Jobberish. What a job this would be. I write the words so that you can see. I see the sign of a pound pop up. Popping pills to stop the hurt. The pain in my shoulder, my arm, my leg. The pain in my heart, before you start, is the one that I want to take away. My heart used to be there, before a girl with a stare, on the stair, came and punctured it. Oh look at him. All up himself. Up the stairs and onto the shelf. That photo of her you still keep on display. One part of you hope that return one day, she won't, she will, to make another kill. I am the rabbit, you are the hare, the hair, I remember the smell, the taste, the waste, oh the waste of time, of heart, don't start. Just stop. The rot. The pain. Start again, with a new refrain. Take a new line, turn a new leaf. Think of something stupid: the Queen Mother a thief. Royalty plays about in your head. No it doesn't. I couldn’t care less. The blue aristocracy, they make us regress. They eat our money in a caviar pool. They've never lived the life, you tool. The tools are my fingers. They do the work. I'm the one sitting here. Schizophrenic jerk. Clerk. Kent. Country Antrim. Isles of Scilly. Shepherd's Bay. Think of something amazing to say. But don't tell me just yet. Write it down. Red is the colour they will paint the town. Red in honour of your honourless blood. Noah's Ark rode the flood. No it didn't. It didn't exist. My word makes more sense than the word of the Word. Capital letter. What if I call him a Turd? An Irish threesome, but God was a Jew. He knew, he knew, he knew. He kneed the feller in the balls. String him up, the soldiers obeyed the calls. The might of the crowd. The might of the maybe. The starlight glittering above the new born baby. Or so the story goes. Once upon a time, there was blasphemy. And the word made God. He really meant Dog, who still isn't here. I'm starting to get pissed, she said. The bloody cheek. I'll give her a bloody cheek! Just you give me my childhood memories like you said last week. You don't even have to pay for it, bitch. Pitch it in the post, let the boat do the rest. Give it a rest, and I'll give you a rest. That's all I want from you now. I've had enough. I'm taking my bow. The war is over. You've won, I lost. I used to have a heart. I met you, at a very great cost. The phone bill, the presents, the post, the guilt. The amazing little memoirs packed into the silt. The silt of the sand on the beach on the sea. The sinking sun and the watching gaze. The haze of hilltops on a clear-skied night. We walk home in heaven. I ask you. You said we might. I couldn't find a place where they sold. These things at school we weren't told. I'm bored. I see bed. I leave alone the voices in my head. The Ayrshire, the pride, the post and the past. The written words forever will last. So Shakespeare said. So why not me. I know who I am. Did he? I know my name and how it to spell. He didn't. Though on it did he dwell. Not. Grot. Sick. Poor Jen. Three and a half bottles of wine? I doubt it. But then I wouldn't know. I tasted it once. I had a go. It's rank. It smells. It rings like the bells. The New-lawn singing. The hey watcha cock! The Skinhead Hamlet. The Polonius grim. Helen of Troy. Troy's R Us. Bed. Go. Now. Mate. Get some sleep, before it's too late.

[7 March 2002]

Tuesday at The Union Library

2010-03-14T22:49:00.000Z

As the annoying drizzle soaks with stealth outside,
A lonely reader seeks a change of scene
To unpack Pope's epistle against learning.
The doors swing him through into the auditorium
Of neglected dust. The Battle of Books ensues,
But no one's fussed. Old, fat, haggedy hag,
Slumps in chair with papers of Tory trivi'l.
Armchairs, stained with port and mud from the stirrups
Of Charlie's twenties sport. Jolly good ol' chap.
Sweeping round the cosmos of soiled volumes,
The reader spies a table side, with dim light
Wasting its breath. Lecteur no. 2 spreads his broadsheet
Of sloppy student stories, peering at the crossword
With microscopic wit through his greasy specs. He sniffs
And snuffles, and fidgets and fuffles -
The street would suit him better -
But his life-fee was paid in sixty-three.
His critical career took a period and never went up
After he went down. (Now working on a barmy monograph
Of some political obscurity.) How sad, how miserable!
And the reader thought he was lame!
The grizzly hack still chastes his youth,
But the yellow stain creeps up his long tooth.
The reader makes his nest at the oaken top,
Only for his legs to be violently attacked 'cos the chair
Don't fit. Typical. Some useless Librarian Elect (by one)
Must have watched his budget on the horses run.
Uncompetence is this place's speciality.
The seat of learning and future government? My Rs!
Craned over, the Pope sets sail, but sense appears to no avail.
Meanwhile the street-spirit snorts away, shifting chair
And leg and nose and bag, making more noise
Than the greasy-spoon hag. The odd turn of Tory-graph
Is all, perhaps: no chance of nap for Mr Reader.
Another comes in - no one looks up. Papers too -
Just a quick check-up. Too quick for grizzly
Green-shirt, who spouts with corrupted breath,
"Do you think you could make less noise with the papers?"
The cheeky cunt! How dare the little runt rule
The roost - it's not as if he was defaming Proust.
The Popish lines still waste away, while memory-man
Lives back in his day. Old hag now haggered off
To mingle with some barred toff, they sit alone,
Side by side, a few worlds apart: some sorry urchin
And a lonely Hert.
Book II all done, no room for legs on either side
Of unmatching chairs, reader moves his stuff
With quiet care, to share a table with bio-Eden,
O'ergrown with moss, but within, some hacking sprite
Seeks secrets to the Downing world, the forgotten life -
Needless to mention off for a break. Alas!
No room at the inn on this side of the Oval either.
Just one more book then it's so-long-farewell,
Wicked, conniving, book-selling hell.
It looks quaint and feels as if it's stuck in time
With photographs of Asquith - or whoever it was
Who was erie before. Ploughed shelves, plundered,
Blundered - SOLD! for a pound, a priceless volume
In leather bound. The shelves will wait, falling
And forgotten, but The Union will remain forever rotten.

[Tuesday 11 February 2003]

One, but not the other...or perhaps not

2010-03-13T01:09:00.000Z

Dazed and confused,
Fond, but not in love,
Blinded by the moonlight,
Overshadowed by the sun,
Together in an emptiness,
Alone in a crowd,
Awake but not aware,
No eyes but still a stare,
Close to nothing,
Far from anywhere,
Thoughts without a meaning,
A blankness that tells all,
Living life in miniature,
When you should be ten feet tall,
Beckoning to the mist,
Of a pale and listless sea,
Resting in the rush-hour,
Rising above what?
Ants scuttling scattered,
In a world that turns to rot.

[14 September 2001]

Seeming

2010-02-24T22:46:00.013Z

"Seems, my lord? I know not seems."[1]
For nothing ever as it seems is.
You look at something, like an unknowing colour-blind,
And fail to see that which you know not is there.
You translate the confounded babble of everyday life:
You assume what is meant by trouble and strife;
Yet daily you are unaware,
The true nature thereof, the things at which you stare;
It might sound the same (to you at least),
But even when you borrow someone else's headphones,
It is still in your head the tones you hear:
You list only with your own ear.

"Seams, madam!...I know not seams."[2]
My engineered genes® curl round
my leg:
Serpents of Capitalism (made by a workers' co-operative).
How it does fall apart at them [...]

When, even though they sell on High Street hell,
They do not seem to be what they are:
Seams, it seems, bind our society together,
While seaming women and children seem to live,
But rather daily seem to die, seaming well
For little, which seems more than it really is
In this, our World of Appearances, where it seems
All is not as it seems: the seams do s t r e t c h and _w^a_v^e_r.

[1] Hamlet, Act I Seam ii.
[2] Ibid., Act I Seems ii.

[23 October 2002]