Bloodied, Broken And Everything Else

There’s a scene in The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson where there is a large queue of customers, none of whom wish Barney to cut their hair, and they all sit and shake their heads as he desperately tries to get one of them to acquiesce. It’s a slight exaggeration of a scene I witnessed in my local barberhsop a long time ago.

In the middle of scene there is the following line: Beaten, but not yet bloodied, Barney nodded.

I noticed this yesterday whilst proof-reading. Beaten but not yet bloodied? What does that mean? That he’d had a heart attack but at least there was no blood? Obviously I’d meant to write bloodied but not yet beaten.

At first I presumed I’d copied it wrongly when I’d been transcribing the book into its current form. However, a quick check of the Piatkus edition showed that it’s been there all along. So I originally wrote the line in the summer of 1995, tucked away from the African heat in the air conditioned Arctic circle of our apartment on Boulevard de la Republique in Dakar. I read the book who knows how many times back then and never noticed. I re-wrote it a year later and never noticed. It was picked up for publication. The editor never noticed. The copy editor never noticed. The proof reader(s) never noticed. Maybe some readers noticed and thought, this guy’s an idiot... And then I converted the book back to its original state and didn’t notice. And now, on my fifth, and last, proof read, I finally noticed it.

In itself, it’s a point of little significance. The worrying thing is how many more there are out there. The Long Thomson of Barney Midnight, coming to a shop near you.

There was an item on the Yahoo news page the other day headlined, Man Reads All 59million Words Of Oxford English Dictionary. I stopped myself clicking on it. It’s the kind of story that you start reading, then halfway through you stop and think, I’m reading this... Without reading it I thought - because I was still thinking about it - that maybe there was some other remarkable feat attached to it, such as he did it underwater holding his breath the entire time, or he did it while sailing solo across the Atlantic in a sink. As headlines go it seems to be on a par with those little personal headlines that make up everyone’s life on a daily basis. Man Burns Toast. Man Goes Two Days Without Shouting At Kids. Man Falls Asleep Watching TV.

I finally cracked and read the story. It was a story about a guy who’d read the whole of the OED. The nub came at the end. He’d written a book about it... Man, 38, Reads Long Non-Narrative Book, Writes Own Book.

There’s the thing. It wasn’t actual news. It wasn’t a story about a guy who’d read the whole of the OED, had just finished it that day and wanted everyone to know. It was a story about a guy who’d written a book. Another ten seconds’ research revealed that the book had in fact first been published in July this year.

So why is it being presented as news in the second week in October? Why were some of the news stories - I ended up reading more than one - saying that he'd spent the last year reading it? The guy hadn’t just read the OED, he’d obviously read it long enough ago to write a book about it, get the book edited, copy edited, proof-read etc. (hopefully better than The Midnight of Long Barney Thomson), placed into the schedules, printed, distributed to bookbuyers and reviewers, published. The dude didn’t finish reading the OED this week.

The only answer is that this is how news works. Publicists write copy, they send it to news organisations, the news people pick stuff up and put it out as news because they’re so strapped for time that they can’t check for any actual stories, and before you know it, Bob’s your Builder.

Man Writes Blog About Man Writing Book About Reading The Whole of The OED.

1 of 800,000

I was discussing blogging with one of my ethnic Polish friends (EPF) - actually, I only have one EPF - and she suggested that I could write about Poland. During the course of the discussion, I realised that in many ways I'm not cut out for blogging. I don't want to give strong opinions, to try to provoke a reaction; I'm very wary about writing a blog on a subject about which someone out there is going to know more than me. I don't have the inner spunk to cope well with someone writing to tell me I'm an idiot. It wouldn't take many e-mails like that to have me retreating to a dark cave to hide for months amongst the troglodytes of pusillanimity.

(So, for example, when I wrote my blog about how the Israeli/Palestinian conflict could be solved if America gifted Israel a large part of Texas, so that Israel could move to North America, lock stock and religious artefact, freeing the land for the the rest of the Middle East to fight over, well, I just deleted it...)

So, I always end up writing about subjects that I'm guaranteed to know better than anyone. My kids, my books, the way I work, what kind of marmalade I had on my toast that morning. Writing with a giant safety net. (Which is probably pusillanimous in itself.) Someone can still write to tell me they think my blog is mince or that I'm a fat bastard or that I can't string two sentences together. But they can't say, no way did your kid say that, or Thick Sliced Olde English, pull the other one, chief!

So, for the moment, I will probably just stick to doing what I do. I'll write about Poland one day. One day in the near future. However, back on my home planet...

Spent yesterday morning working on a reading to put up on YouTube for Lost in Juarez. However, after a lot of fruitless tinkering at the Mac, I ditched it all. A few hours down the stank or all part of the process?

I first of all created a nice introduction for it using the start of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, the song where the Juarez lines comes from. Managed to fade the song out and blend in a suspenseful backing track, almost like you'd get in a movie. However, the next bit, the reading, was rubbish. And of course, I couldn't use Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues anyway, because I'd get sued. If anyone ever noticed it. But it would be pointless to do it of no one noticed it, and then costly if they did. So I ditched Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues and replaced it with the ring of an old-fashioned telephone, which then blended into a creepy, suspenseful backing track. It kind of worked, but not as well as Tom Thumb. But then the reading was still rubbish, so I ditched it all anyway.

If I'd used the actual Dylan line for the title, the book would have been called Lost In The Rain In Juarez, which isn't nearly so snappy. Have just listened to the Nina Simone version, and interestingly - (well, this is probably stretching the definition of interesting) - Nina doesn't mention the rain in Juarez, she just sings When you're lost in Juarez... and changes the phrasing so it fits.

I may have another go at the reading next week, but I feel that this was a small window to do it, before an avalanche of other things require attending to, so it probably won't happen.

Off to Krakow for a long weekend, to play the How Many Drunk Brits Can You See In The Old Town Square game.

That was sort of writing about Poland.

The Laws of Gravity

TPCKAM bought a magazine at the airport this week in case the chic-lit she'd taken to read on the plane was mince. She brought the magazine home last night. National Geographic Adventure. Tag-line: Dream it. Plan it. Do it.

There's an advert in the middle somewhere, a full page, at the centre of which is a photo of a mountain biker, at least thirty yards off the ground, obviously having just ridden off a mountain, with the sun setting behind him. The line at the top reads, The laws of gravity don't apply to euphoria.

Hmm, wonder what that could be an advert for. A bike? Too mundane. An adventure holiday? Not even close. Some illegal performance enhancing drug perhaps?

It's an advert for a biscuit. Well, an energy bar, but the effect is much the same. It is apparently, the energy bar nature intended. The energy bar nature intended has been registered, so you can't go using that phrase at home or you'll have an east coast lawyer on your tail.

The laws of gravity don't apply to euphoria. May be. But I bet they apply to energy bars.

Which brings me to The Final Cut. Started the long process of re-writing the book today. Didn't actually do any work on it, but I did download it onto my laptop, which will allow me to start it at some unspecified date in the very near future.

The story, first written as Limited Edition, is set amongst a firm of marketing executives in London, bright young things who come up with lines such as the laws of gravity don't apply to euphoria when they're talking about biscuits. At the start of every chapter there is a small piece of marketing copy for some imaginary product, which may or may nor be related to some product discussed in that chapter. Having read through these again, four years after I first wrote them, I'm kind of disappointed that they're not as funny as I thought they were in the first place. And certainly, there's nothing as stupid as the laws of gravity don't apply to euphoria when talking about a biscuit. I have some work to do.

Nevertheless, here's one that I still like:

Winnie The Pooh
Your kids have seen the films, they’ve watched the classic animated tv shows, they’ve watched the puppet tv shows, they’ve watched the computer generated tv shows, they’ve read the books, they’ve played with the soft toys, they’ve used the toothbrushes, they’ve worn the t-shirts and pyjamas and trousers, they’ve ruined your PC whilst using the CD-Roms, they’ve played with the gazillion or so cheap plastic toys, they’ve eaten the food, they’ve eaten off the plates, they’ve eaten with the cutlery. Now, Rolls Royce, in conjunction with the Disney Corporation, introduce the new range of Winnie The Pooh Heavy Engineering Equipment, including generators, diggers, plant machinery and power tools. Starting from the low low price of $17,000, Winnie The Pooh Heavy Engineering Equipment is all you’ll ever need around the building site.

The Edinburgh Fringe

Contemplating taking Barney Thomson to the Edinburgh Fringe next year. Having said that, I've contemplated taking Barney to the Fringe on several previous occasions and have yet to do it, however it could be that the time is right.

I did the official Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2002. TPCKAM wrote to the director, Catherine Lockerbie, and asked if they'd take me. I'd been interviewed by Lockerbie for the Scotsman when the first Barney came out, and it may well have been her who wrote their review with the wonderfully quotably line "Gleefully macabre...hugely enjoyable black burlesque." I've used that one a few times since.

I appeared with Chris Brookmyre and Mark Billingham, and I was definitely the undercard, but it was fun. I didn't think I was too mince, however they haven't had me back. I ask every year, the first time they said no, but since they've just ignored me. I guess I don't blame them, it's not like they don't have a host of magnificent authors queuing up to appear. I need them a lot more than they need me. Still, it's hard not to harbour a grudge, and if ever the situation arises where I turn out to be the bad guy in a Bond movie who steals a nuclear submarine and targets somewhere populated with a nasty missile, I'll probably stick Charlotte Square on my list of potential destructees.

Anyway, in an effort to rise above petty jealousy and thoughts of reprisal, every year I contemplate doing the Fringe. Now, I don't contemplate sitting in a seat, reading from a selection of my books, while the audience - if there is one - doses quietly in the cheap seats. Although reading is obviously what I did at the Festival all those years ago, the thought of listening to an author reading his own book just seems slightly barmy to me, and really not a lot of fun.

My idea for the Fringe would be to perform The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson as a one man, one hour show. I'd narrate some bits, play all the parts when appropriate and when action was required. I think it would work as a show. Whether I'd be able to pull it off, thespianly, I'm not sure, but it's something I'd feel I'd have to try for myself.

The thought of appearing on stage for an hour doesn't scare me particularly, but it doesn't excite me too much either. I'd be doing it as a career move, to try to advance the Barney Thomson franchise, to make it more marketable. And so, every year, I talk myself out of it on the basis that if at some point in the six months between me booking the hall and actually having to perform the thing, something interesting like a movie deal or big publishing deal came up, I'd be stuck doing something that I didn't want to, and didn't need to.

There comes a time, however, when I have to give up on the big movie or publishing deal. Face the unacceptable facts. The movie might happen, but it's not around the corner. The publishing deal just isn't going to happen. If Barney's going to advance from the Lower Blue Square South 5th Division, then I'm the one who has to try to generate the interest. And so, once again, as I regularly do at this time of year, I'm contemplating the Fringe.

Contemplating spending a few months working on a stage adaptation, contemplating several months rehearsing, contemplating getting up on a stage for a week. With no people in the audience. There's a thought, and another thing to cultivate my inhibitions every year.

This time, though, I might just do it. For the moment, however, I'll probably just have a cup of tea and think about it for a bit longer.

The Long Rewrite of Barney Thomson

Working through the final proof read of The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson. Have announced the publication date of the new version - 15th November 2008 - and placed the order at the printers. Now all I need to do is get the text straight and get the cover... The cover is due any day, apparently. I'm protected from writing to my cover designer and asking for an ETA by the fact that she doesn't speak much English and any e-mail would likely just lead to confusion. So I do my bit and will have to wait for the cover before I can do the high-budget promo for YouTube.

Have disconcertingly found rather a large hole in the plot, which I've never noticed previously. Well, not so much a hole in the plot. More of a goof. In the beginning everyone is talking about the serial killer who's on the loose. However, the killer has just announced him/herself by dispatching a body part of the victim to their family. With the obvious exception of the family who get their son's head returned to them, how does anyone actually know that any of the victims are dead? There are no bodies, obviously, as they're all hidden in a freezer somewhere. There might be a reasonable presumption that the victims are dead, however it's not a presumption in the book, it's taken as fact.

So, having spotted this, it would be an easy enough thing to alter for the re-release. However, despite changing the tense and the dialect, I feel that this would be going too far. Having written two film scripts based on the book and investigated all sorts of different plot threads, I could completely rewrite the entire thing.

I had this great idea of making Barney's mum much more of a Nigella type character, with a great joy in food and recipes and taste. She would get Barney to taste test all her stuff, maybe she'd even be a celebrity chef. Only with hindsight would we realise that Barney had been taste testing human flesh, and even then we wouldn't be absolutely sure that was what he'd been doing.

I love that very cinematic idea, which would also have been great for the book. The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson is a good story, but it could have been developed much more. However, I have to draw the line somewhere, and when deciding to reprint, long ago made the decision to draw that line at changing the story in any way.

And so I will treat the minor goof regarding the presumption of death on the part of the police and the media in the same way and leave it as originally written, as I will with anything else that occurs to me as I go through.

And so sadly, 'Is this your husband's penis?" the great first line of the film script that will never be made, will also not make it into print.

The Amazing Fusionman

So Fusionman just flew across the Channel dressed as Buzz Lightyear. He was going to do it yesterday but had to say, 'Not today, Zurg,' because of the weather.

Fusionman. Hmm. And this guy is a grownup. As if jumping out of a plane at 8,000 feet and flying isn't cool enough. Because it is. What he is did is cool beyond words. I couldn't even do a stupid bungy jump. Millions of people wouldn't even consider doing a bungy jump. This guy jumps out of planes and flies, in a way that no one has ever flown before.

And yet, it's not enough. When someone says, 'Hey, that was incredible, who the fuck are you?' he can't just say, 'The name's Yves.' He looks them in the eye, straightens his shoulders and says, 'I'm Fusionman,' for all the world like Michael Keaton in Batman. (Apart from the fact that Michael Keaton obviously said 'I'm Batman' not 'I'm Fusionman'.)

What is he thinking?

Maybe, I'm thinking to myself on this sunny day in early autumn - (it's finally stopped raining in Warsaw. After dumping eight feet of water on the city, all in drizzle, in the last ten days, the clouds are empty.) - maybe, I'm thinking, this is what I need to get some respect. I don't mean professionally, it's too late for that. Too late for AuthorMan or The Amazing Mr Write. I mean, as a Dad.

Maybe the kids would have more respect if, rather than just being plain old Dad, or Daddy, or Oi You, Can I Have Another Sandwich, maybe if I had a supercool name everything would be better. There might be some respect around the house, rather than disdain, discord, accusation and war.

DadMan probably won't cut it. Neither will Mr Dad or Major MiddleAged. The Incredible Captain Dad stands a better chance. I might go for that one, if I can get it all on a t-shirt. I could try a few out, see which one works best. I could be BreakfastMan before school, Commander Lift Home after school, and The Amazing GetToBedAndStopTalkingGuy after dinner.

And then there's the outfit. I'll be turning up at the school with a big pair of red y-fronts over my trousers. Well, that'll get me the respect of my kids.

Fusionman, at least, kept his y-fronts in their rightful place.

Gel Scissors Quaff Perm

As I wrote last week, the original title of The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson was The Barber’s Surgeon’s Hairshirt. I confess that I arrived at the title The Barber Surgeon’s Hairshirt by going through the dictionary, writing down every word that I could find that related in any way whatsoever to hair or barbershops, threw them up into the air and picked the ones that looked the most interesting when they landed. (In the end it was between The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt and Gel Scissors Quaff Perm, and I went for the former.)

The entirely arbitrary nature of its conception aside, it’s a pretty good title, which I only ditched as I was sending the book to publishers who had already rejected it, and I wanted the manuscript to pass the initial check against a database of Rejected Mince From the Slushpile. (Actually, I don’t know if publishers keep a database of Rejected Mince From The Slushpile, but I was working on the basis that they did.)

So when the second Barney Thomson book came around I used the title again. This time it actually had some relevance, given that Barney ended up in a monastery, he was consumed by remorse, and the subject of hairshirts even came up without it being a stretch. Piatkus didn’t like it however, and asked for a new title.

The obvious title would have been A Prayer For Barney Thomson. Unfortunately I didn’t think of that as a title until the third book in the series, which was odd given that the reason I thought of it was because I had read, years earlier, A Prayer For Owen Meany and really enjoyed it.

Piatkus asked for a title that included Barney Thomson and referenced hairdressing in some way. Oh for God’s sake, I thought at the time, you don’t have to treat the audience like they’re that stupid. But I didn’t say that. I went away and thought up twenty other titles and sent them an e-mail. I can’t remember most of those titles, although I knew that they were all rubbish. Thirty-Three Murders and A Funeral I think was one of them. Genocide of the Monks, that was another. They would have been terrible titles. In the middle of all this mince, I threw in The Cutting Edge of Barney Thomson. I thought it was terrible as well, but I knew they’d take it, as it met the conditions. Which they did.

Should I ever need to publish another edition of Barney no.2, I think I'll go back to my original intention and call it The Barber Surgeon’s Hairshirt. That’s a title worth keeping.

For that second book someone at Piatkus did actually suggest the name The Final Cut. We rejected this, as The Final Cut seemed a bit premature for the second book in the series. I’m now using it for the seventh book, which makes more sense. This book, when I originally wrote it for the German market, was known as Limited Edition, as the story is set amongst marketing executives in London.

I thought of all this today when I saw in the shop just along the road from our house in the Warsaw suburb where we live, a packet of beer flavoured crisps, marked Edycja Limitowana.

Beer flavoured crisps. The culmination of thousands of years of civilisation. Must be time for First Contact.

Another Wet Day in Warsaw

Do you think the guy who invented the phrase ‘credit crunch’ gets paid royalties every time someone says the words ‘credit crunch’ on tv? Every night he sits in front of the news and as soon as the newsreader or correspondent says ‘credit crunch’, he turns to his family and says, ‘I came up with that. Yep, that baby’s all mine, I don’t mind telling you.’ And his wife and kids all roll their eyes and make vomiting noises and curse the day their dad invented the phrase.

I remain, and always will, a novice at the Bob Dylan game. I listen to the music and that’s about it. Don’t read the books, don’t travel the world watching the concerts, don’t collect unofficial bootlegs. I’ve seen him twice in concert and have 430 Dylan songs on my iPod. Since it’s the case that two years ago I had no Dylan songs on my iPod - well, to be honest, I didn’t even have an iPod two years ago, but if I'd had an iPod, it would’ve had no Dylan songs on it - it’s slightly freakish to have so many now, but not that freakish.

When I was making the lead character of Lost in Juarez a Dylan addict, I exaggerated my own Dylan obsession. Turned the 430 iPod songs into 1256, and the two concerts I’ve been to into 157. This seemed freakish enough for someone who was supposed to be genuinely addicted to Dylan, in the way that people are addicted to alcohol or fish suppers. Typically for me, at the time I didn’t really do much research. I didn’t check out how often your average Dylan freak goes to see him in concert, or how many Dylan songs it was possible to have on your iPod if you were a ferocious bootleg hunter, much in the way that I’m not. Typical authorial laziness on my part.

(The spellchecker on my laptop says that authorial isn't a word, but it is. The spellchecker on the Mac acknowledges this.)

There’s a strand running on the Dylan message board All Along The Watchtower at the moment, discussing how many times people have been to see the man. There’s someone on there who has seen Dylan over three hundred and fifty times. Another guy says that he met a bloke at a recent gig who had been close to 500 times. To see Dylan. Live.

Holy crap! Those are scary numbers. And it’s made me realise how un-addicted to Dylan Lake Weston must appear to any Dylan fans who read the book. Non-Dylan fans, of course, would read it and think, ‘Wow, a character who’s seen Dylan 157 times, that’s freakish, what a weirdo.’ Of course, however, real life is much, much weirder.

For the second edition - which at current rate of sales will be due some time in the third millennium - I’ll be sure to alter the text so that Lake can have a gazillion Dylan tracks on his iPod and have seen the man in at least one thousand concerts. As Dylan has averaged over a hundred a year for the past eighteen years or so, this isn’t impossible.

There’s probably a lesson in all this about properly researching a subject before writing about it....but I just can’t work out what it is...

The Low End Of The Quarterback Rating

I’ve been wondering how to make the website more statistical. Men need statistics. They need things ordered and numbered. They need league tables. They need averages. Batting averages, bowling averages. Number of goals scored. Strike rate. Quarterback rating.

The NFL quarterback rating is a great one. The calculation itself is some ancient algorithm combining all the definite stats they can take on a player in a game, throwing them into a computer and then arriving at a completely useless arbitrary number. You can’t just look at the way a guy played and decide if he was any good or not, you need it quantified. They can’t be too far off introducing the same thing to our football. Number of passes on target, shots on goal, strength of shot, quality of faked facial injuries, head butts, number of occasions caught mouthing fuck on tv.

It’s probably the main reason why soccer has never challenged baseball and American football in the US. It just doesn’t lend itself so easily to statistics.

The obvious way to quantify a website is to have a counter off to the side somewhere. This site has a counter facility, but on its own it seems pointless, so I’ve never turned it on. At the moment the invisible counter is running at 35,495 hits since last October. On one level that doesn’t seem so bad. On another, it averages out at just over a hundred a day, which seems rubbish. Then again, even if it was 350,495 or 3,500,495, unless it was being quantified against other sites, as a figure it’s completely useless.

There would need to be a crime writer’s league table, but then I’d probably be embarrassed. Rankin and all that lot probably get that number of hits in a day. I’d be near the bottom, or in the equivalent of the Blue Square South Lower Fifth Division. I’d have other crime writers calling me and taunting me with chants of what a shitey home support.

I could have a table of the number of books I sell each month, but that would only be adjusted twelve times a year, so wouldn’t exactly make for enthralling, end-to-end statistical fun. And I’d also have to admit how many books I sell each month...

The Amazon rankings are the great, instant writing statistic of our time. Constantly changing and an inescapable draw for the desperate author and publisher. A worthless task transferring that information to the website, however, and it’s not as if Barney Thomson ever troubles the top 100. Hard to get excited about moving up 1,345 places to number 4,312. Briefly, last week, however, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson was ranked one place above the last Rebus novel, Exit Music. I know this because they were both in the top 100 Mysteries chart. I immediately sent Rankin an e-mail saying, ‘you fat bastard, you fat bastard...’

(There are two explanations for that last statement. One is that Rankin and I are great buddies and are always having a bit of a laugh. The other is that I’ve never met Rankin in my puff, he will likely never even have heard of me, and of course I didn’t send him that e-mail... And yes, it’s the latter...)

So, all in all, for the moment the site will probably remain a statistical desert, unencumbered by ratings, counters, charts or numerical analysis. And even if sales and number of hits were worth reading, I still wouldn’t put them on. No, I need to find something more insubstantial, like quantifying my mood or the weather or the quality of the toast that I’ve just eaten with my first cup of tea of the day.

Don't Mess With You Don't Mess With The Zohan

Rubbish Parents Take Kids To Completely Inappropriate Film Shock. I’m no stranger to taking the kids to the cinema to see something they probably ought not to at their age. When all the kids films are dubbed into the local language, generally you have to stretch the parameters. I draw the line at Saw IV and Hostel perhaps, but anything with a 12 certificate is usually fair game. I am also occasionally suckered in by the trailer.

Nearly happened with Wanted. From the trailer Wanted looked like any old action movie, not unlike Jumper perhaps, from earlier in the year, which the kids had been to and enjoyed. As it turned out, Wanted was only similar to Jumper in that it was total mince. Fortunately we checked it out first, realised it was an 18 with more blood than Terry Butcher had on his face in that game against Tunisia, and the kids never got anywhere near it. A load of utter nonsense, anyway. All that loom stuff. A loom? And Angelina Jolie? What were you doing making a film that encourages young men who are bored at work and who haven’t achieved anything with their life, to pick up a gun and start shooting people? That’ll be the UN Ambassador in you.

So this weekend’s disaster was You Don’t Mess With The Zohan. The most cringe-inducing hour TPCKAM and I have sat through in parenthood. We left long before the end of the movie, but long after we ought to have done. Kept thinking/hoping that the scenes of outrageous sexual innuendo would end shortly and they’d get back to the Israeli/Palestinian gags. (Like you take your kids to the cinema for the cutting edge Middle Eastern humour.) But you know you’re in the wrong movie with your kids when you’re hoping that the terrorists are going to turn up and start shooting, just to get away from the sex.

However, the innuendo kept going. I think we were both probably embarrassed walking past a packed cinema, our kids in tow. Here we were, the obviously rubbish parents, with the eyes of the audience on our backs, judging us for being irresponsible enough to have taken them there in the first place. Finally, however, we put the innocence of our kids ahead of our own mortification and left. Not before time.

Fortunately, conversations since have indicated that they didn’t really get any of it. That would be conversations which they started. TPCKAM and I instantly went into denial and pretended that we’d never been to the cinema. No way were we starting any conversations. "So kids, when the white shampoo dribbled out the bottle onto the woman’s tongue, you know what that meant?" No, heads in the sand from now on, and get in the queue for Bambi 3. "Zohan? Don’t know what you mean. Nope, don’t remember any film with no stinkin’ Zohan."

So there are two things about You Don’t Mess With The Zohan. The first is that it’s my own dumb-witted stupidity that we took the kids. That wasn’t Adam Sandler’s fault. The second thing, which is attributable to Adam Sandler, is that the film is really, really dreadful.

I suppose it takes balls the size of Zohan’s to make a puerile comedy about the Arab/Israeli conflict, but good movies are not made by large balls alone.

Not any more.

Bob Dylan #45

I think it's fair to say that Bob Dylan is like Marmite. (I mean that you either love him or hate him, rather than that he's gooey brown slime that tastes strongly of faeces.)

Despite the similarity, there are many differences, and here's the most crucial. If the person across the table from you is eating Marmite, you just have to sit and watch them eat Marmite. You don't have to taste it, you can't smell it, all you have to do is look at them like they're weird.

On the other hand, if while the weirdo across the table is eating Marmite, you happen to be listening to Bob on the cd player without headphones on, they also have to listen to Bob. They have no choice.

That's why it's better to like Bob Dylan than Marmite.

I've added a Dylan Song of the Week page to my website. I acknowledge that this is entirely gratuitous Dylanism. In all likelihood I will update the Song of the Week much more regularly than once a week, but I thought Song of the Day might be pushing it a bit and Song of Every Three or Four Days seems clumsy. As did Song of this 72 Hour Period or Song of the Half-Week or Song Of An Indeterminate Period Which Is Likely To Be In The Region Of Every So Often But Not Quite As Much As Really Regularly.

I've started with You Ain't Goin' Nowhere because, I reckon, even people who like Marmite like this song.

The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson (10th Anniversary Edition)

Having delayed the release of The Final Cut until next year, I really ought to be getting on with the task of turning the original manuscript - which was known as Limited Edition, then published in Germany as Der Herr Der Klinge - into the last book in the Barney series. Before that, however, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson needs to be reprinted, as the previous print run is almost over.

When I first wrote the book in the summer of 1995, the prose was in the past tense, there wasn't too much Glasgow dialect and the book was entitled The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt. Sent it around every publisher on the planet, got some decent reaction, but it wasn't picked up. However, I was encouraged enough to give it another go, so repackaged the whole thing. Changed the title, changed the tense to the present tense - because I had just read a book in the present tense, no recollection of which one, and had enjoyed it - and upped the dialect content.

The tense and dialect stayed for the next two books, although I grew to dislike them. For the fourth, I returned to little dialect and the past tense. Not sure if anyone really notices other than me. Anyway, I have wanted for several years to get the first three into the same shape as the remainder of the series. With the reprint of Long Midnight, the chance has come to start the process.

I have already rewritten the book, converting it back to its original form. Everything is more or less the same, except most of the verbs, of course. And the gonnae and dinnae and wisnae, they are mostly gone. I hope that the dialogue still has the flow and feel of Glasgow chat, that's what I'm looking to achieve. So I've left in the heid the ba's and dunderheids and bampots.

There will be a new cover too, although it has yet to be produced. This is the original new cover idea, but it's not really bold enough.



Noticed that Brookmyre and Bateman and the like have a particular type of cover at the moment, which is obviously in vogue. As an illustration, this is the cover of Brookmyre's latest.



My cover designer took a look at them, hated them and thought she could do better. So, we wait and see.

The new/old version of The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson should be released before Christmas, that's the plan. It will more or less be the tenth anniversary of it's initial publication, but I just can't bring myself - despite the heading on the blog - to do the marketing and call it the Tenth Anniversary Limited Edition, or add in a new chapter and call it the Writer's Cut or Long Midnight Redux.

It just is, as Bill Belichick likes to say, what it is.

I won't be reverting to the original title. However, having not used the title with the first book, I then used it for the second book, only for the publisher to refuse it and insist on the much blander Cutting Edge of Barney Thomson. Possibly, I may revert to The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt for the monastery book - as it's appropriate after all - if and when the time comes.

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The Loneliness Of The Part-Time Football Manager

Sunday afternoon football has taken over our lives, and I don't mean slumped in front of the television, drinking Carlsberg and watching whatever game happens to be on at that moment. Two of Two is playing in a league for the school team. Three twenty-minute games every Sunday, stretched over three to four hours. Different time every week. No more planning what to do on Sunday, not for the moment. You hunker down in the bomb shelter of expediency and wait to discover what time the first game is going to kick off.

There are twelve teams, each of which has been given the name of a country which they are nominally representing. Sadly Two of Two's team was landed with England. On the plus side, the strip doesn't particularly look like England's. (On the negative side, his grandparents just bought him an England strip for his birthday, and he wears it all the time. We call it the Strip of Shame.)

The kids enjoy the Sunday afternoon football league, the parents have far more angst. Now I had a small moment of epiphany a few months ago when watching One of Two playing a mini soccer tournament on a Saturday morning. The following day was the NFL AFC Championship game between the New England Patriots and the San Diego Chargers. I've followed the Patriots religiously for the past twenty-two years. I've travelled to Boston several times to watch them; I sit up through the European night when they're playing an evening game in the States; when their games aren't on tv I following this absurd little helmet graphic online, as the helmet moves up and down the pitch with every play. I'm that sad: I watch an online helmet graphic for three and a half hours, starting at 2.30am. However, that epiphanic morning - I was bound to get to the moment of epiphany eventually - I realised that despite my obsession with the Patriots, I cared far more about my kid playing in a pointless soccer tournament than in my sporting obsession playing in the NFL semi-finals. And it was more fun to watch. And I don't just mean more fun to watch than the helmet - because there are a whole host of things which are more fun to watch than the helmet - but just plain more fun to watch.

One of Two's team won the tournament, but that wasn't the thing that made it so great for me watching in my position as Dad. It was just getting involved in watching a game that really mattered to my kid, and realising that that was far more important than a bunch of absurdly overpaid sports stars who I'll never meet.

If that's not an epiphany, then I don't know what is. Well, apart from the manifestation of Christ to the Wise Men of the east...

The drawback of caring this much about your kids' sports teams, is that it's equally and oppositely rubbish when they lose. Last Sunday Two of Two's team lost their first game 4-0, to a bunch of giant Polish kids who are obviously stretching the age-limit to breaking point and cheating horribly. I mean, some of those kids have beards. Not wanting to be an Angry Soccer Dad, I kept my Soccer Dad Rage to myself and stopped myself sticking a leg out onto the park and tripping up one of the six foot behemoth "eight year-olds" who were holding my kid at arms' length away from the ball.

For the second game we were up against the other team from our school, so really just playing against their mates. This was a no-stress game, as generally both sides - and both sets of parents - root for either team. For this game, the coach had to go off somewhere, and for some reason I was placed in charge. I seemed to be bestowed with this honour by a committee of soccer mums. Maybe they thought, Ah, he's Scottish, he'll know about football....

I really, really, really didn't want to do it. If it happens again I'm going to pull the classic faking an aneurysm manoeuvre so beloved of dads in this situation. I hate being in charge of other people's kids. Never know what to do with them. Can't shout at them, can't order them around, can't whack them, so what's left? I just get the feeling that they're looking at me, thinking who are you and why are you giving me orders? Where's the coach? Have you actually got anything to do with this team or are you just some strange man who's wandered in off the street? My mum told me about people like you. So, no, I'm not going in defence, and you can bugger off!

Well, that's what I presume they're thinking.

In that type of situation, you have to hope that you don't have too many players. Unfortunately I was two to the good, so had to have two kids on the sideline, looking pathetic and constantly tugging my sleeve asking when they were going to get on. I rotated of course, but kids don't care about rotation, they just want to be playing football NOW. I didn't shout instructions at them either, just let them wander aimlessly around the park, kicking the ball in whatever direction they were facing. They were rudderless, an even more random collection of wandering wildebeest than normal. Fortunately they escaped with a 1-0 win and I didn't have to face the opprobrium of other parents for my weak and pathetic managerial style.

That said, I have been informed by the Parental Collective that the next time the coach is forced to leave early, I will be relieved of my deputy managerial duties and placed in charge of the socks. As long as it doesn't involve having to interact with Other People's Children, I don't care.

Bob

On our recent family holiday to New Zealand, there was one clear standout moment above all others. We were on the shores of Lake Tekapo in central South Island. The weather is typically so clear here, that it is the location of the Mount John Observatory, which sits on the hill just above the town. It was a gorgeous early evening. The lake is a most wonderful and incredible blue, we were booked to go on a sightseeing tour of the southern night sky that evening at the observatory, after a day when we had driven up from Queenstown, past azurine lakes, over incredible moon-like plains, with a stop for lunch at a vineyard, the mountains of the Southern Alps in the near distance, and a stop at Lake Pukaki to take photos of Mount Cook. A breathtaking day, and you're thinking, it can't get any better than this.

And then it happened, the defining moment of the entire trip. We got a text from a friend in Warsaw saying that Bob Dylan was coming to town in June. To be honest, I just got on the plane that night back to Poland and set up camp outside the venue, where I have lived for the past three months.

There was a bit of a stramash over the tickets. My friend ordered them, they got lost in the post, she had to turn up at the ticket office and stand before them armed with several pieces of heavy artillery and a battalion of paratroopers before they would issue replacements. And much to her chagrin, she couldn't go to the concert and instead I took TPCKAM. About which TPCKAM was also fairly chagrined 'n all.

Dylan tours all the time, playing over a hundred gigs every year for the best part of the last twenty years. Always on the move. Saturday in Warsaw, Monday in Prague, Tuesday in Vienna, Wednesday in Salzburg, Friday on to Croatia. The guy was sixty-seven last month, but you can't really say that he's worn it like Mick Jagger. There's no leaping around the stage, no grabbing microphones, nothing athletic. He shuffles on, he stands at his keyboard, he shuffles around in the dark between songs, he shuffled off at the end. You wonder if he'd fall over if he didn't have the keyboard to lean on, but presumably if it was that bad, he'd be sitting at it. His voice is kind of shot, but you know, the guy was never Elvis, so it still works. He does a lot of songs from his most recent studio album - Modern Times - mixed with a random collection from the back catalogue. He tends to reinvent songs, either to suit his mood or the state of his voice.

He played a small venue for an international rock icon. An audience of 1500 or so. The concert was great, but what else am I going to say? Even TPCKAM enjoyed it, and she hates listening to Dylan. A few too many songs which are basically twelve-bar numbers and which blend into one another - The Levee's Gonna Break and Summer Days, that kind of thing - but more than enough other great stuff to compensate.

He has a different set-list every night, someone who would reward following around on tour. I said to TPCKAM that we could up sticks, bung the kids into the back of a winnebago and follow Bob around the world. In the past year we would have been to Uruguay and Canada, America and Russia, Australia and Argentina, Estonia, Iceland... An endless list. He's in Andorra this weekend. TPCKAM is still considering this as a life plan. We probably won't do it. Maybe when the kids have left school. But by then Bob might be in a old people's home in Saratoga Springs, and all we'd be doing was parking the winnebago at the bottom of the driveway.

A Grand Day Out

It's school trip time of the year. One of Two has had two in the last few weeks. Parental volunteers called for. I went both times, sucked in by the expectations of my daughter. I wonder if other parents are expected to attend by their kids, or whether the kids don't even think for a second that their mum or dad will pitch up and spend their day with twenty other rampant spawn. I think by going once, whenever the first time was, I set the standard, and now I meekly acquiesce and troop miserably along to the school bus.

A few weeks ago we went to the local Big Park in Warsaw, to look at squirrels and the old royal palace. Two days ago we went on a much more fundamental school trip, sitting for hours on a bus to go somewhere for a few minutes, before hopping on the bus again to sit for hours on the way back. There were two other mums on the trip. At the start of the day one of them said to me, "I thought you were the only other parent coming, so I brought my iPod..." They sat next to each other, and I made One of Two sit next to me, so that I didn't have to sit next to another adult I wouldn't be able to speak to, or a kid that I'd want to give a skelp round the ear.

We didn't come prepared for a long trip, and had to talk to each other and play I-spy and the like. Eventually I produced my phone and we played eight hundred games of bowling. Other kids were much better equipped. iPods, portable DVD players... one of them even had his own iPhone. Is that normal? A ten year old kid with an iPhone? Whatever happened to endless choruses of The back of the bus they cannae sing, and every third kid throwing up into a poly bag? Happy days...

The purpose of the trip was to see life in Poland in the old days, a neat contrast with the plethora of new technology evident on the way down. Making rope, bread, butter, washing clothes, old windmills that kind of thing. The collective seemed interested and milled around in the sun sending text messages about how 200-years-ago they were being. They trooped off to lunch, to eat rolls which had been freshly baked in the 18th century. I sat outside, far away from the madding crowd. The chap who was showing the kids around the low-tech facility, wandered over for a chat. He asked me if I was the guard. I said I was a parent. You look very tired, he said. He was going all out to strike up a warm friendship. He offered me a sandwich. I said yes, but was dubious. We were in the heart of ethnic Poland, and the chances of me liking the cheese, sausage or ham that was likely to be in the sandwich were virtually nil. Ten minutes later the bread appeared, fortunately not delivered by my new friend, which meant I didn't have to eat it. It was covered in smalec. Smalec is a classic peasant food, lard, filled with bits of bacon and any other bits of the pig and maybe a bit of onion. But basically it's lard. There was a lot of lard. A giant, open-faced, square-cut lard sandwich.

I went and beat up one of the rich kids with an expensive phone and raided his lunchbox.

The trip home was about five minutes shorter than the trip out there, possibly because one of the kids had brought along their own satnav and told the driver a quicker route to take. We made it back safely which, on Polish roads, is no small achievement. About half an hour at the low-tech detention facility, six hours on the bus. A grand day out.

As the kids played on the grass after school, I wandered down to the changing rooms to collect all their things that they'd forgotten. i.e. everything. I became aware that there was a mum from the PTA walking behind me carrying a large box. She didn't seem to be having too much trouble, so I didn't rush to help her, but eventually, since we were approaching a couple of doors, I thought I'd better make an offer of some sort of assistance. She handed me a couple of keys, and I led her through to the room at the back, in the very bowels of the school, where the PTA keep their stuff. Suddenly she said, 'I have the leaving presents for the headmaster and the head of Key Stage 2, would you like to see them?'

Well, no, not really....

'Sure!' I said, hoping I hadn't overdone the faked enthusiasm. She put the box down on a table and started slowly unwrapping cups and saucers. There I was, thinking that the worst part of the day was over, and suddenly I was in the bowels of the school, alone with a mum from the PTA, looking at crockery. And if I was not mistaken, she was after my opinion.

I stared gobsmacked, as cup after cup, saucer after painfully unwrapped saucer was placed on the table. I thought, what on earth am I going to say? I'm from the west of Scotland. I don't have an eye for crockery. I couldn't care less about crockery. I can tell when it needs washed, and I can tell if there's something in it that I can drink or eat, but as for patterns and styles and designs... Eventually I found the words, several cups in. 'They're lovely,' I said. The PTA mum smiled. 'Oh, I'm really pleased you like them, because we weren't sure what people would think.' It appeared I was the voice of the parents.

I could imagine her later, when other bitchy mums were scowling at the cups and being brutally and frankly honest, saying, 'Well that miserable Scottish bloke liked them.'

She continued to unpack cups and saucers. I wondered if she was doing it all for my benefit, or whether she was unpacking them anyway. So I stood there in silence with the mum from the PTA in the bowels of the school wondering whether or not I could leave.

That was two days ago. And I'm still there. And she's still unpacking cups and saucers.

Bungy

When you go to the bungy jump site and then decide that you just can't throw yourself off that bridge, you have to choose your moment to make the call.

You can't do it when you're standing there on the precipice, that would be too humiliating. You can't really do it after you've bought the ticket but before you've stepped onto the bridge, because then you'd have to stand in the queue to ask for your money back, which would also be humiliating. You can fake an aneurysm, but that's going to attract a lot of unneccesary attention. And most of the staff have probably seen it before and would just be standing around saying, 'Too scared, going down the aneurysm route...'

There is always, of course, not going to the bungy site in the first place. Just getting up in the morning and doing something else, like watching tv, painting still life or eating prunes. But then you will never have looked at the scale of what's before you, you will never have faced your fear.

It's perfectly sensible to never face your fear. Me, I'm scared of heights, and decided I needed to face my fear. I went to the bungy site. Back to paragraph two.

We were in Queenstown, New Zealand. Home of the bungy. Ever since watching the LOTR trilogy and then completely over-reacting to being bored at the February holiday by deciding to travel to Middle Earth itself for the Easter break, I had been thinking that I ought to make the jump. To do something adventurous, that would absolutely scare my pants off, but which would have the advantage of lasting just under five seconds.

There are three bungy sites around Queenstown. The one where you jump from a platform one hundred and thirty-four metres above a river. Just looking at the photograph makes my insides curl. The one where you jump off a platform over solid rock, the whole of Queenstown in front of you. It's only forty-seven metres, but the solid rock thing has a strong psychological effect. And then there's the original bungy, the forty-three metres over - and into - the river. That was the one for me.

I thought about it for a while, didn't mention it to anyone else. Then, as we were mincing around Queenstown, I casually tossed the idea into conversation, as casual as leaping into thin air. This, sadly, caused much excitement with our children, who loved the idea of their father plummeting off a bridge. The day before we left Queenstown we were watching the solid rock bungy, when a company man called Shane came for a chat, to ask why we were watching and not jumping. He asked me a few marketing questions, during which it seemed to become established fact that the following day, as we drove north out of the town, I was going to stop and make the jump at the Kawarau river site. He began using phrases such as 'When you've made your first jump,' and 'It's a shame I can't talk to you after you've jumped...' I began to realise that deep inside, I had no intention whatsoever of jumping off no stinkin' bridge.

We arrived at the site on a pleasant, out-of-season Saturday morning. This original bungy site is now a visitor attraction in itself, as they try to cater for and attract people who aren't intending to plummet from high over the canyon. We mooched in, we stood on the viewing platform, we watched a couple of sacrificial lambs throw themselves at the alter of adrenaline. We went back inside for a coffee.

'Are you going to do it?' asked TPCKAM.

'I'm thinking of faking an aneurysm,' I said. Having been against me throwing myself off a bridge in the first place, she looked understanding and relieved. The kids, on the other hand, were crushingly disappointed, and started exhorting me to have some balls. This climaxed in One of Two saying, 'Just do it, Dad, then you won't have to think you're a wimp for the rest of your life...' She may have continued talking after that, but I couldn't hear her because I had my hands over my ears and was singing Nessun Dorma as loudly a possible.

The family wandered off to watch a young Japanese chap throw himself into oblivion for the benefit of his large touring party. I sat in the cafe drinking rubbish coffee, watching the goings on. I wanted to participate, I wanted the positive adenalin-induced feeling that I'd get from the jump, I wanted to get out there. But, in the blessed words of Elvis, from the frankly mortal Old Shep, 'I just couldn't do it, I wanted to run, I wished they'd shoot me instead...'

It was sitting there that I realised the best place to decide not to jump. Sitting in a chair at a table in the cafe, drinking coffee. I just looked like a guy passing through, rather than someone riddled with strangulating pusillanimity at his inability to tackle his own fears. I had made my decision, and like Elvis trying to put a bullet in the napper of his old dog, I just wasn't going to do it.

As we were leaving, the children's cries of disappointment ringing like bells of doom, a group of eleven year-old girls came in to sign up for the jump. There were about six of them. This didn't make me question my decision at all. There are lots of things that don't frighten young girls that frighten me, such as rollercoasters, the Sugababes and eating too much sugar. Now, had a group of middle-aged blokes come in, that might have been the peer-pressure push that I needed. But a group of giggling wee girls? I just looked at them and shook my head.

The bungy jump at the Kawarau River isn't going anywhere. (Unless it gets hit by a stray American missile aimed at a block of flats in Tehran.) I have pinned the brochure to the noticeboard in the kitchen, so that I can look at it every day. It's still out there, calling me, waiting for me to go back. And one day, one day soon, just as soon as I can afford to travel to New Zealand first class on Singapore Airlines, I'm going back...

Tonight We Shall Feast With The Appetite of Many Men

The February mid-term break just passed. We made the executive decision to not go anywhere. Everybody else with kids in Warsaw went skiing. Everybody. All week, while stuck in the bleak city, nothing to do but the usual rounds of swimming and movies for kids in Polish, I kept receiving texts from friends in the Alps or the Dolomites, saying how wonderful it was. Blue skies, beautiful snow, best week's holiday anyone had ever had, why are you lot stuck in the city, you poor bunch of sad sacks?

All the shopping malls of Warsaw, not just the one closest to the school, are havens for the ex-pat and diplomatic communities. Hard to go five minutes in one without coming across someone you know, or don't like. Last week the malls were deserted. They were the shopping malls of a zombie movie. Occasionally we would be passed by a white-faced miserable old soul, a wizened old woman in her black beret, who would scowl at me and say, 'Dlaczego te dzieci nie są na nartach?'

Instead, we went to Middle Earth. Foreign Office travel advice; beware pickpockets, cave trolls, giant spiders, wizards, the Dead Marshes, Mount Doom, Dark Lords and orcs who will remove your head and impale it on a spike. On the plus side, the mountains are nice.

We watched a disc of Lord of The Rings every night for six nights. The kids hadn't watched it all the way through before. It seemed like a good idea for the holiday - and it was - and cheaper than a week's ski pass in Switzerland. Roaring fire, bowls of ice cream all round and we'd all snuggle down on the sofa to watch Gandalf. At nine and seven they're at the right age. Old enough to watch orcs without getting freaked, young enough to still consider it a treat to sit down with their parents to watch a long movie. Give it a few years, and we'll have the same idea again. 'Hey kids,' one of us will enthusiastically say, 'let's all sit down and watch Lord of the Rings (or some other lengthy movies series, Harry Potter or Nightmare On Elm Street...) and they'll look at us like we're some lower life form, turn the volume up on their iPod and mooch off to the bedroom, locked door and black walls.

Lord of The Rings, like every other art form on planet earth, Middle or otherwise, is there to be loved or loathed. I think it's ok myself, although I feel it takes about six hours to get going, and could do with finishing just after Aragorn gets crowned; and I hate the fact that he snogs Liv Tyler in public - come on, man, you're the king, start acting like one - and I hate the protracted fifteen minute homo-erotic fellowship reunion sequence on Frodo's bed. Oh, and I hate the fact that Sam bursts into tears every ten minutes in the last movie. Apart from that, Return of The King is all right.

But here's the thing I hate most about the entire LOTR movie saga. It relates to the jokey bonhomie between the dwarf and Orlando Bloom during the Battle of Helm's Deep. All that, 'I've killed six!' 'Ah,well fuck you, because I've killed ten!' stuff that goes on. As Legolas kills orcs, one, two or even three at a time, he happily reels off his head count. He gets to fifteen or so in the blink of an eye.

The battle lasts all night. All night. So, let's call it eight hours, as it starts after the hours of darkness. An eight hour battle. When we see Legolas killing orcs, he does it at a rate of about ten to twelve a minute. Let's call it ten for ease of calculation. In eight hours that would mean he killed four thousand, eight hundred orcs. Now, that's obviously excessive, he couldn't keep that rate up for the entire time. So, let's give him a more realistic kill rate of four a minute, plus two half hour coffee breaks in the middle of the night, and we'll throw in a one hour sleep as he must have been getting tired. That still makes one thousand four hundred and forty orcs he should have killed.

So how many orcs does Legolas actually claim to have killed the following morning? He and the dwarf get together, amidst a pile of dead orc flesh, to happily recount their deeds in battle and boast of their killings. Legolas' final head count?

Forty-two.

Forty-two? Forty-flippin' two! Holy crap! What was he doing all night? Did he only kill orcs when the cameras were running? Is he some prima donna elf dude who works for five minutes at a time and then has to have three hours sleep? Did Orlando swan off to his trailer every time the cameras turned away?

Forty-two, for crying out loud.

That's it, I don't hate anything else about LOTR. Apart from all the rest of the elves who are so miserable, so unrelentingly bleak in their outlook, so gloomy and filled with dejection and despair that they could all be old Polish women in berets. Never a minute of the film passes without an elf popping up to say something along the lines of, 'The time of men has come, and men are shite, so the world is going to end,' or 'We're all going to die and there's nothing anyone can do about it,' or, 'It's not our fault, we're elves and we're cool, it's all you, you lot, you're all rubbish, we rock, you suck. That's why the world is going to end and we're all going to die,' or 'Did I mention that we're all going to die? Well, that's not the half of it...'

And then there's also the line in the first movie when Aragorn says to Liv, 'When I first saw you I thought I'd walked into a dream...'

Oh, please... I said to One of Two, any man ever says anything like that to you, run a flippin' mile.

We all await The Hobbit in 2010 - law suits permitting - with great excitement.

A Description of An Incident While Bowling With Two of Two

Another pre-Christmas event that I'm only just getting around to describing.

There is a shopping mall not far from the school which owes its continued profitability, I'm sure, to its proximity to two international schools. The mall, a dark place of little imagination, is inhabited mostly by international women, as being the nearest port of call where they can spend money/drink coffee/get their nails quaffed, while waiting for their kids. Equally, it's the place to go with your kids after school, if you're looking to keep them amused for half an hour for some reason.

I, like many international women, inhabit this shopping mall on a regular basis. I have my own parking spot, and just like Roger Miller in King of the Road, I know all of the security guards on all of the lanes, all of their children and all of their names. On the top floor there is a children's play area for the purposes of plundering the parental purse. In the last week of school before the Christmas holidays, Two of Two and I went there to go bowling. I limited him to half an hour, as he tends to get bored after that and starts doing little boy things like whinging and walking off and trying to stick the bowling balls up his nostril.

When we arrived there were only another couple of occupied lanes out of twelve, and we set up in lane 6 for our thirty minutes of father/son ten-pin bonding experience. After about five minutes or so, the other lanes finished their games and suddenly we were alone, the only players at the alley. This suited us both perfectly, he and I being of the type of character which prefers solitude than a crowd.

Our solitude did not last long, however.

About twelve minutes in and everything seemed normal. We were zipping through our first game and already getting towards the end. Neither of us was playing like a god-king of the lanes, but we were having fun and there was quality bonding all round. It was the kind of moment that would make up about three seconds of a Hollywood montage scene from the point in the film when the father and son were getting on really well. But, of course, those montages arrive just before the gloom, just before the dream crashes and the zombies march onscreen from stage left.

And so it happened.

The noise levels increased, and suddenly we realised that we were no longer alone. A group of teenagers had arrived, to occupy all the other lanes. At least a hundred of them, possibly upwards of a hundred and fifty. They swept in, like a plague of locusts, like a swarm of demonic bees, like a zombie horde, a-chomping and a-munching. They quickly took up residence in the other eleven lanes, nine or ten youths to a lane. This was an instance of mass bowling on an unprecedented level.

Two of Two started giving me the eye, the look of a small boy who is no longer comfortable. I reassured him. Then two of the horde came and sat down in the curved comfy sofa by our lane, and dumped their bags and coats on top of our bags and coats. I looked at them, the two youths looked back at me. No words were said. I presume they thought we were with them. After all, I'm forty-three and Two of Two is seven, it's perfectly understandable why they would think we were with a group of teenagers.

I kept on bowling. Two of Two had started to vocalise his desire to flee to the safety of the coffee shop.

'Stand firm!' I said. 'We'll be fine.' He didn't look convinced.

We played on while the two glaikit youths sat watching our every move. Our bowling, hardly top-notch to begin with, began to deteriorate under the intense gaze of an audience. I wondered if they were trying to intimidate us out of there, but then they didn't look even remotely intimidating. They looked more like Muppets. No one was ever intimidated by a Muppet.

Nevertheless, with one ball left of our first game, I was contemplating heading for the doors. Whatever weird thing was going on with this post-pubescent collective, I didn't really want to be in the middle of it. Two of Two stopped me as I reached for the bowling ball and once more implored me to get him out of Dodge. I noticed that Bert and Ernie had moved to join the giant swarm of gangly kids at the neighbouring lane - lane 5 - who were happily bowling away with no notion of who was scoring what. I once again spurned Two of Two's advances to get out of there, and turned to bowl the final ball. And there was Bert, of Bert and Ernie - who had, less than twenty seconds earlier, been sitting staring at us like we were the weird ones - clutching a ball in our lane. And before I could say anything, he'd let it rip. Six pins to Bert!

I still didn't consider that there was anything intimidatory about it, I just thought he was being stupid. I marched up and started gesticulating wildly, pointing to Two of Two and myself, saying things like, 'Our lane, me and him, us, him and me, this is our lane!' I probably sounded like Shrek.

Bert looked as if he didn't quite understand the concept, then without a change in expression he minced off to stand eleventh in the queue next door. It hadn't been pleasant, but I had fought off the zombie.

'Come on, Dad,' said Two of Two, 'let's get out of here.'

Having been considering it before, now there was no way I was going anywhere. 'Two of Two,' I said, 'we're flippin' well staying. We will not be chased out of here by this mob. We're staying until our time runs out, and not a second before! I see you stand there like a greyhound in the slips, straining to leave. The game's afoot; Follow your spirit, and, upon this charge, Cry God for Two of Two! Scotland and St Andrew!'

'What?' he said.

'You know, Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war, all that stuff.'

'You're mixing up your plays, dad,' he said.

'Whatever, we're just not flippin' leaving.'

I invoked Dunkirk, Rourke's Drift and Winston Churchill and he reluctantly agreed that there was nothing he could do about it if I wasn't going to take him. I turned, ball in hand, and sure enough, bugger me, but if there wasn't another of the zombie horde standing in our lane lining up her ball. Two of Two gave me that, 'see, there's nothing we can do about it, it's like Day of Dead' look. I ran full pelt and dived in front of her before she could get her ball off. If my gesticulations had been wild before, now there were excessive.

'Our lane!' I cried again. 'Me and him. Our lane.' I indicated the lane, myself and Two of Two repeatedly with wild, exaggerated movements.

She at least had the decency to look a bit embarrassed. This caused me to suddenly come over all British, so that I felt a little embarrassed too, and I thought that maybe I should just have coughed quietly at her shoulder, like Jeeves, and politely pointed out that she was encroaching into territory that was rightly, by all UN conventions, ours for the next fifteen minutes.

'You're embarrassing me,' said Two of Two when he spoke to me next, confirming that everyone was now embarrassed.

The game continued, and thereafter we were mostly left alone, despite still being surrounded. I had to hire a full machine gun emplacement from the bar staff to keep the status quo, but the rest of the bowling passed without incident. A girl from the lane next door did fire one of her balls down our lane, but she was bowling from two yards behind the line and I think the ball just came out at a bit of an inappropriate angle.

We bowled on until our time was up, and then we left. The father-son bonding had been shattered, fundamental damage had been done to the id of Two of Two, but we did at least, and we can be thankful for this, get out of there with our lives...

A Quiet Night Out

Mid-January. The flattest time of the year. Cold and bleak, nothing just around the corner to look forward to. The kids are asking how long it is until their birthdays, the summer holidays seem a long way off and even then those very holidays will be blighted by the descent of eight thousand apricots in the back garden. Only eleven and a bit months until Christmas. And then Christmas will probably be crap...

I'm writing a book at the moment - Scottish author Douglas Lindsay, 43, has turned his hand to writing an explosive political thriller which meets the full force of the rising government police state head on - so not blogging much. It's not that the kids are not by turn cute, interesting, frustrating, unbelievably annoying etc., but time is short. For example, last week Two of Two asked us one of those questions which every parent dreads: Would you rather eat a live scorpion or lick peanut butter off Gordon Brown's naked butt?

Hmm....tricky. In the end I think we agreed on a compromise solution of licking the peanut butter off the scorpion's naked butt and taking your chances with the stinger.

I could write about much these last few weeks, but the thing I'm going to choose has nothing to do with the kids. Just need to get it off my chest.

The Harlem Gospel Choir...

The Harlem Gospel Choir have been in Poland every December since we got here, so that's three years running at least. Maybe they've been coming longer than that. Every year TPCKAM says she wants to go and see them, and I nod and say, yep that sounds good, and then leave it to inevitable lack of inertia knowing that it won't happen. This Christmas, unfortunately, her thought of going to see the Harlem Gospel Choir coincided with her being in the vicinity of the ticket booth. The show was on a Sunday evening, but since the New England Patriots weren't on tv that night, I agreed to go along.

Before the event, I got to thinking about the fact that the Harlem Gospel Choir seemed to be coming to Poland every year, and wasn't that a bit odd. You'd think they'd want to do, I don't know, Harlem for example, some Christmas. I wondered to TPCKAM if the Harlem Gospel Choir might be a franchise. Like McDonalds or Krispy Kreme. Checked on-line, and sure enough, while the Harlem Gospel Choir are not located on every street corner in the world, there were four different choirs under the same name, touring in December, albeit one of them has a permanent residence at Disneyland Florida, which isn't so much of a tour as, well, a residency. Clearly we weren't going to see the Harlem Gospel Choir, but a Harlem Gospel Choir. One of the Harlem Gospel Choirs.

And, as it turned out, one of the smaller ones. The runt of the litter. To me the word 'choir' says fifty strapping Welshmen, or several hundred pallid youths singing in Westminster Abbey. In the eastern European version of the Harlem Gospel Choir there were nine. If they'd been British they would probably have apologised when they walked on stage. 'I'm sorry, but our people keep dying and management are cutting back and have a policy of no replacement in the event of death.' Being American, however, they just sang more loudly and hoped no one would notice.

They could belt out a tune, no doubt about that. Sister Veronica and Brother Bob and Sister Sledge, or whatever they were called. However, generally each song consisted of one of the brothers/sisters taking centre stage and doing their thing, effectively with eight backing singers. That's not a choir. That's a singer with eight back singers, that is. They opened up with 'I Believe I can Fly...' It never got any better. After a duet, one of the brothers stepped forward and said, 'A big hand for Sister Veronica!' Cheers all round. 'And a big hand for Sister Agnes!' Cheering and whooping and the like. 'And a big hand for Jesus!'

I genuinely hope that if that had happened in Britian, that remark would have been greeted by a stony silence. You can believe, or not, that Jesus is the son of God. But seriously, he had not just been singing 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. The Polish audience duly applauded.

Later on we were exhorted to give 'handpraise' to God.

Last Saturday morning, Two of Two scored a wonder goal from twenty yards. First time shot, top corner, an absolute beaut. Unthinking, I just automatically got to my feet and let out a Homer Simpson-esque whoop. Which is exactly what I found myself doing when, after forty minutes of the Harlem Gospel Choir, Brother Shenanigan stepped up to the mike and announced a twenty minute recess. Two thousand people turned and looked at me. They all looked pissed off, but then they're Polish. The whole nation looks pissed off. I reckon most of them were probably thinking, I wish I'd done that.

The twenty minute break became half an hour, and there were murmurs of hope in the audience that maybe the Harlem Gospel Choir had remembered they had a dinner engagement at the corner of 135th and 7th. Sadly, however, they eventually reappeared, having been unable to rustle up any new members during the interval. At least none of them had died. The second half wore excruciatingly on. At one point they dragged a poor old woman out of the audience to get her on stage, so they could sing to her and give her a present. They built up and up to the announcement of the present, like it was going to be a big THING. Maybe this eighty-seven year-old Polish woman who spoke no English had been selected to be the newest member of the Harlem Gospel Collective? Instead, they presented her with a signed cd. And a signed cd of the Harlem Gospel Choir to boot, not, like a signed cd from Bruce Springsteen or someone worthwhile. As prizes go it was on a level with Bullseye. The Sister Veronica said something along the lines of, 'Now y'all, don't go beating her up and stealing this, you can buy your own copy in the foyer...'

Handpraise to God!

Later still - I think maybe the concert had been going for three or four hours by now - they dragged people form the audience up on stage to sing-a-long with Kool And The Gang's Celebrate. Dear Christ..., as Sister Veronica might have said. To be fair to the debacle of the old woman being dragged up on stage, it wasn't quite as toe-curlingly embarrassing as that, but by God it was up there.

Eventually they put us out of our misery, packed up their nine microphones and trouped happily off stage. The Harlem Gospel Choir were gone. The evening was over, and we all, the beleaguered audience, trooped out into a cold December evening in Warsaw, spiritual vacuums one and all. Perhaps they will be back next Christmas, although by then they might have been renamed The Harlem Gospel Trio or the Stevie Wonderettes. This time, however, I will employ someone to run ahead of TPCKAM wherever she goes, tearing down the bill posters before she can see them...