I’m at home. This doesn’t happen. I’m never at home. I never have time to look in all my cupboards and dust. (As it turns out, there’s quite a lot stored in my dust.) I’ve been in my own flat for almost two weeks. Good God, this is unheard of and had I not been strapped into my big black typing chair and imaginary places for almost all of this – I did have an outing to Perth for a reading – I would probably be deep into cabin fever by now.
Then again, I may have just spent the small and larger hours of every day battering out allworkandnoplaymakesJackadullboy over and over. I’m not really in a position to judge. I have an impossible amount of work to do and in order to finish the short stories, the newspaper bits, the emails, the drama fragments and treatments and films to which I have committed myself (quite possibly to no avail) I have to behave impossibly – which is to say, by not sleeping, typing, eating toast, typing, doing Tai Chi and (I didn’t know people genuinely did this) pulling my hair out and typing. My chair is surrounded by a ring of fallen hair, scribbled-over manuscripts and discarded mugs. And, strangely, I’m having the time of my life. It’s exhilarating: all this pacing and typing and puzzling and skin-of-the-teeth deadlines and shouting at my walls – and when I meet real live people in the streets on the way to buy more toasting bread I TEND TO SPEAK VERY LOUDLY AND FAST BECAUSE OF THE CAFFEINE. I may have a stroke quite soon.
And, of course, I’m entirely pleased by the election results in the US. For the first time in three presidential races, a majority of the American states has voted for a Democrat and actually ended up getting one. Who knows by what margin he really won, given the shameless voter purges and rigged ballot machines?
The senate race has also been dirty and dodgy: for example – oops – 50,000 suspected Democrat voters have been reported as blocked from voting in Georgia. Ain’t democracy a grand thing? But I’m still cheery – despite the possibilities of Republican philibusters to come – any man who mentions giving a puppy to children in his presidential acceptance speech is okay by me. And if I see that puppy crapping on the Whitehouse lawn I will believe those campaign promises and good feelings for at least a month or two. And I will be able to ignore the never-ending references to the Kennedy brothers whenever Obama appears. We all know these are just mediaspeak for “We think you’re going to be shoot in the head soon. Sorry. And sorry for unsubtly suggesting this so very, very often. But it will be a great story. For us. Not so good for you, or your kids, or your wife, or that puppy. Is the puppy cute ? Will it be in the funeral cortege?”
Oddly a UK pal of mine wrote me an email on Wednesday morning that mentioned being “exhausted by hope” after watching Obama’s victory. How appalling is it that we should find hope exhausting – even when it’s second-hand?
Less of a big huzzah when I found out that my local Scottish politicians have just decided to bend over and let Donald Trump do whatever he wants with a huge and rather lovely chunk of Aberdeenshire.
I’m amazed that an SNP government would be so intent on turning our country into some kind of heathery play park for the super rich and plausible. Not that Trump is that plausible – if we wanted to get into bed with a millionaire couldn’t we have picked one the other millionaires didn’t laugh at? – one whose millions were a little more, shall we say, convincing and whose current business schemes were not rumoured to be quite so dependent on future business schemes in what looks horribly like an over-leveraged and apocalyptic chain of fiscal dominos. And what have we just learned about those, boys and girls ? Nothing apparently. So, well done, Mr. Salmond. Next time I see your noble visage and melting brown eyes I shall hear the delicious and perfectly sane Mel Gibson’s voice yelling,”They will never take our freedom!” Yeah, right. We’ll just sell it them for pocket change and promises and a couple of photo ops. Can I see that puppy now, please? – I’m getting depressed.
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