Pitching the World

In a way this is my first post. In another, more accurate way, it’s not my first post: it’s my eighty-second. But in yet another way (wow, this is going well) it feels like my first proper Pitching the World post. I feel like a pitching machine, a pitching orchestra. And it’s only taken 19 trouble-free months. Yes, earlier today I pitched 50 magazines. How do you like them apples? Because I like them apples, I like them apples a lot.

Not that it’s been easy. I’m officially homeless, officially of No Fixed Abode. Glamorous, aren’t I? How do I like them apples? Not loads. They’re rotten apples. Being homeless poses a series of problems and has wreaked havoc on my hairline, jawline and blood-to-alcohol levels. Homelessness, in case you’re wondering, also isn’t the best place to be if you want to conduct a thriving sexual relationship with someone. My relationships tend to be brief. Colourful, but brief.

Homelessness is also a royal pain if you want to conduct a thriving working relationship with an internet connection. My Nan doesn’t have an internet connection. My associates – and I do have a number of associates down here in Boscombe whom I stay with from time to time – don’t have internet connections. As such, I’ve felt corralled into using BTFON. Have you heard of it? Used it? Jesus, it really does make you want to end it all. From what I can gather, BTFON is something by British Telecom that is supposed to connect you to the internet but in fact does no such thing. Wireless? It’s about as wireless as I am. Connect to the internet? Fat chance. Go fuck yourself? Definitely. In fact, that should be their slogan: “BTFON – Go Fuck Yourselves”. They can have that one for free.

It seems to work like this: you pay £5 on your credit card (although I’m homeless I have a credit card. In fact I have three. They’re all ruined), then you enter an email address in the URL. Just before the page you want is about to come up, the connection cuts off. You try again. Same thing. You try again and you perhaps get to read one email and then click on another email to read that and the internet connection goes off again and you repeat this for what seems like years but is probably only minutes and by the end of it all you either curl up into a ball or threaten inanimate objects or chainsmoke. Personally, I plump for all three at the same time. You should see it. You should see them dramatic apples.

That said, being without a reliable internet connection is excellent for thinking. Oh, I’ve been thinking all right. You want ideas? Stare at the ceiling. You want more ideas? Stare at the sea. Stare at anything, in fact, other than a computer screen. Nothing good has ever come from staring at a computer screen*.

Who have I pitched? Well, a lot of sports magazines (Athletics Weekly, Golf Monthly, Rugby World etc.), a handful of publications that are keen on life (Dorset Life, Essex Life, Kent Life, Surrey Life and so on) and others that are keen on tits (Zoo, Nuts, Loaded). Plus plenty more. Pitches, replies, and emails telling me to go and make love to myself will be put up soon but after such a concentrated burst of work I’m feeling simultaneously elated, mad, sweaty and angry. I think I could do with a lie down. And a drink. And perhaps somewhere to live.

* This might not be true. It probably is, but it might not be. Please don’t write in.

About a month ago I was drunk in a pub in Wivenhoe, Essex, and I went to the toilet and stared at my face, a face that has begun to take on the look and texture of a washed-out red flannel. What a face. You wouldn’t want that face. I wouldn’t want that face. I’ve got that face. As I stood and stared I thought: “I’m going to drink myself to death.” I may have even said it. I wasn’t planning on drinking myself to death that night, but over a period of months and years, I thought, possibly said, I was going to increase my alcohol intake to the point where it would one day end up killing me.

Sometimes you have to make a decision and stick to it. That’s not a decision I’ll be sticking to, I don’t think. Nor, probably, is this: on Wednesday I applied to join the French Foreign Legion. I say applied, although that’s a slightly grand way of putting it. I made an enquiry though, and asked the administrators to clarify one or two of the enrolment guidelines. For an afternoon I was whisked away and seduced by the idea of joining up, of relinquishing my identity and emerging in five years fit and strong and, in name at least, a different man. That dream evaporated over the following evening and died yesterday when I received a reply. It was in French. I couldn’t understand it. There’s a lesson there, somewhere, and I don’t think it’s that I should learn French.

Adieu. Enjoy your weekends.

Write about what you know. That’s what fellow writers reckon. “Write about what you know” they say “Go on. It’ll be good, promise.” And if I’m ever unlucky enough to pick up a book on How to be a Writer or read something in the Guardian’s Review section about How to be a Writer it’s the same advice: Write about what you know. But it doesn’t stop there, it never does. “Write about what you know!” people shout at me in the street. At least I think they do. Yet when I go back and ask them: “Did you just tell me to write about what I know?” they go all quiet and claim they didn’t say anything.

Write about what you know. Problem is, I don’t know very much. I’m 35, an alcoholic, and I live in my Nan’s dining room. Unless Alcoholic, 35, And Living With Nan Magazine exists (and it doesn’t, I checked. If it did, I’d be a shoe-in for editor) then I’m a bit stumped.

But not that stumped. Recently I assembled and varnished a bird table for my Nan. This procedure began at the end of January and was completed yesterday. That’s a long time, you’re probably thinking, why did it take so long? The reason it took so long is that I had to attend to my job in Mayfair as a report writer where I spent a lot of time not writing reports and a lot of time smoking and working on my Daniel Plainview impression in the office toilets and practicing negative visualization. It was a heady month or two. Anyway, as I was applying my second coat of varnish yesterday it occurred to me that in my Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook there might well be some magazines about birds that I could pitch. So I checked and indeed there were: Bird Watching; Birding World; Birdwatch; and British Birds. What saucy titles, I thought, in a depressing 1970s kind of way.

Write about what you know, I thought, but then realized that just because I was varnishing a bird table, it didn’t really mean I knew about birds and the finer points of bird tables. A feature on “How to Assemble and Varnish a Bird Table Over a Seven Week Period” wouldn’t really cut it. Nor would “What is a Bird Table?” – I imagine the majority of readers would know that. Unless, perhaps, I went for “What is a Bird Table?” and approached the issue in a deeper, more philosophical sense. The thing is, I’ve never really approached anything in a deeper, more philosophical sense and if I were to ever begin approaching things in a deeper, more philosophical sense, my starting point wouldn’t be a bird table.

I do know about being nuts though. And I thought perhaps I could write about how this bird table (that I’m beginning to hate, beginning to hate more than writing ‘bird table’ all the time) has cured my alcoholism or night terrors or occasionally debilitating bouts of depression. Problem is, it hasn’t. Not yet anyway. But if it does then I thought I could adapt the below – something of mine published in the Guardian – and send it out to Bird Watching, Birding World, Birdwatch and British Birds. In fact, fuck it, I’m going to adapt it now.

Thanks for reading everyone.

I Convinced Myself I Was Going Mad

With hindsight, dosing my brain and liver with huge slugs of brandy or lighter fluid wasn’t the best way to deal with what I believed to be the onset of schizophrenia. But I had read that people suffering from psychotic illnesses tended to self-medicate, and anyway I was scared. Days spent in the pub – and later, as money became scarcer, the park – made me less scared.

The catalyst had been a panic attack one Sunday night two years earlier. Panic attacks were far less talked about back then, so I had no idea what was going on. Actually, that’s a lie: I had one idea about what was going on and that was I Am Going Mad. This one idea went mantra-like around my brain in the days after my first attack, so, perhaps predictably, I had my second, third and fourth attacks within a week of the first, which only reinforced the idea. Soon I found myself in a vicious circle.

Brief respite came from an unlikely source. Reading a discarded tabloid on the bus one evening, I came across a letter sent in to the medical expert, describing exactly the symptoms I had experienced: shortness of breath, palpitations, a feeling of losing control and losing my mind. I read the expert’s reply with relief: these feelings were quite possibly the result of a panic attack. They were harmless, common, could be treated easily and were not a sign of mental illness. This person was not to worry. I was not to worry.

I should have left it there, but I wanted to know more, so I turned to the family health encyclopedia. Again, I was comforted to read that these things were harmless and treatable, but then I came across the words that were to change my life for the next two years: “Less often [panic attacks] are part of schizophrenia.”

I flipped to schizophrenia. “Can begin insidiously,” I read. “Likely to occur in late teens or early 20s … individual becomes more withdrawn, loses motivation … outlook poor … relapse, neglect, vagrancy, prison.”

Had I been more withdrawn? What of the brighter colours and distorted appearance of people when I was in the throes of a panic attack; could these be the “visual distortions” mentioned? Of course they could.

Over an afternoon spent with the medical encyclopedia, I managed to convince myself I was suffering from schizophrenia. Now at least I had a new mantra: I Am Going Mad became I Am Schizophrenic.

Within a few months I had pretty much covered all the symptoms I’d read about: everything became drenched in meaning, I felt tingling sensations on my body, objects appeared larger or smaller than they were. Until I started hearing voices, though, there was still some hope.

This hope evaporated when, one grim night, I heard a voice in my head, whispering vague gibberish. Brandy shut it up for a while, but soon it became two voices (such third-person hallucination occurs “exclusively” in schizophrenia, apparently). I had the impression they were the two puppets on the balcony in the Muppet Show. Steadily they became nastier, less vague and more critical of my behaviour. Finally I found myself in A&E at five o’clock one morning and shortly after full of chlorpromazine (typically used for schizophrenia). I admitted myself to a psychiatric hospital.

Within hours I had checked myself out. Perhaps it was the relief of being able to share what had been going on without being labelled insane, perhaps it was seeing the far more serious condition of most of the people on my ward, or perhaps I was reacting particularly well to the pills that punctuated my days, but whatever the reason, I began to feel well. After a few months, I felt good enough to come off the medication.

Various diagnoses had been bandied about – depression, bipolar disorder, prolonged psychotic episode – but none stuck. I still don’t know what was wrong, but my favourite self-diagnosis is medical student syndrome: acute hypochondria affecting medical students or readers of health books. Basically, I tricked myself into having schizophrenia after reading about it. And telling myself hundreds of times a day I was going mad didn’t help.

Now, 10 years later, I am much better. I still have the occasional panic attack, but I have a new mantra now: I Am In Control. It seems to be working – except when I am doing too much and not sleeping enough. That’s when the two Muppets on the balcony come back.

At least they did come back until I erected a bird table and was cured by the sight of sparrows, blue tits, parrots – even the odd penguin or two – flocking to my back garden. Well, my Nan’s back garden.

Not sure if any of you have noticed but I’m now officially a £3 a word man. I say officially, but I don’t think it’s official at all. I’d like to make it official though, but don’t know how. Any ideas? Perhaps this counts. Anyway, the copy has been filed, pronounced “Brilliant!” and paid for. Who’d have thought that writing forewords to architecture books would be so illuminating, lucrative and trouble-free?  Not me, and probably not you either. But it is, and perhaps I’ve found my forte.

There are, however, problems with finding my forte. Regular readers will know that there are always problems with finding my forte. First, there’s not a lot of it about. The work, that is. There aren’t an awful amount of architecture books being published and those that are published usually have forewords written by other famous architects, people who are well known for writing about architecture, or famous people who have a relationship with either architecture or the architect. I am none of those things: none. Second, I have Pitching the World to write and after 18 or 19 glorious, carefree months I’ve finally set about pitching with some sort of discipline. Crazy, isn’t it? Yes, after writing this (not at all award-winning) post I’m pitching 25 magazines. Nuts, isn’t it? An update will be waiting for your lovely eyes tomorrow. Probably.

But, Jesus, have you seen how much some of these animals pay? Or rather, how little some of these animals pay? Take the D’s. Darts World (“Articles and stories with a darts theme”, unsurprisingly) offers a far-from-attractive £40-50 per 1,000 words. Now, as a £3 a word man (which I am, I definitely am) I would struggle to write for that amount. I’ve never written for such a low fee but my love of all things darts coupled with my new found enthusiasm for the beast that is Pitching the World could see me – assuming I could think of, write, and get commissioned a suitable idea – working for (wait for this bit, it’ll knock you out) up to a bullseye per thousand. I could do it, just.

After Darts World however, things take a dip, financially speaking. You’d think that after 4-5 pence a word that things couldn’t take a dip, financially speaking, but you’d be wrong. Oh, you have no idea. Hanging out below Darts World looking all ashamed sits Day by Day. Although Day by Day offers a wonderfully barmy mixture of features – “Articles and news on non-violence and social justice. Reviews of art, books, films, plays, musicals and opera; cricket reports” – the rates stink. How much do they stink? They stink to the tune of £2 per 1,000 words, that’s how much. Now, I may not live the rest of my life as a £3 a word man, but I’m certainly not a 0.2 pence a word man. Not yet at least. That said I’m going to give Day by Day a whirl. I love all things cricket and love the idea of getting a cheque for £2. I’m assuming Day by Day pays by cheque.

Finally, and as I seem intent on beating up the D’s, The Dickensian; a publication that “Welcomes articles on all aspects of Dickens’s life, work and character. Payment: none.” Love that, and love the brutality of that colon*. No doubt those brutes at The Dickensian do indeed welcome guff on Dickens’s character at payment:none per word. In fact, I’d welcome articles on all aspects of Pitching the World’s life, work and character if anyone feels up to it. Payment: Booze and Fags per word.

* Please excuse me writing how I “love the brutality of that colon”. It was entirely out of character and I can only assume that I must have watched the Late Review  by mistake one evening when drunk and something has seeped in. If I’m not careful I’m going to start chucking words like Dickensian about and then where will we be? Fucked, that’s where.

Remember when I said I was going to be paid £3 a word for writing the foreword to a book on architecture? If you don’t remember, perhaps you’ll want to have a look at A Walk in the Park where I go into thrilling detail about it. If you do remember, do you also remember when you thought ‘There’s no way this is going to happen. No way is this fool going to get £3 a word. He’s off his chump’?

Well, off my chump I may be, but writing for £3 a word I most certainly am. I’ve already been paid. I’ve started my research. I’ve read countless (four) introductions to other architecture books for inspiration. I’ve been walking into rooms and staring at pillars like I’m subnormal. Oh, I’ve been up to stuff all right.

Mainly, I’ve been up to being terrified. What if I fuck it up? Not that I’ve ever fucked up anything before, not even remotely, but what if now was the time when I started to fuck things up? I’ve only got 400 words to write but each one has to sing. Or at list hum. Making words sing – or at least hum – sometimes isn’t easy.

But today it’s easier than most days. This is partly, I think, because I’ve adopted a new exercise/morning routine. Have you adopted a new exercise/morning routine recently? You must. Mine is simple. Rather than wake up and grunt and play with myself whilst chainsmoking then falling back to sleep for a few hours before resuming my punishing schedule all over again, I simply sit and meditate. This lasts for about an hour. When I’m done meditating, I do press-ups. I do as many press-ups as I can, then add one more. This adding-one-more eventually reaches the point when I really can’t do anymore and then I do one more then collapse. Post collapse, I do more press-ups. When I recover, I do some more. Next up, I take a block of wood and screw screws into it. Then I unscrew the screws and screw them back in. This screwing and unscrewing was inspired by my assembling a bird table for my Nan at the end of January (told you my life was glamorous) and I remember that when I was done I looked down at my forearm (which had been screwing in a lot of screws) and thought Jesus, who’s forearm is that? If I was the sort of person who made love to forearms, I’d have taken it out to dinner right there and then and then tried to have sex with it in a park on the way home. As it was, I simply stared at it for a long time. You should see my forearms now. They’re like hams. If you have a forearm fetish, I suggest you stay away from me for a while.

The final bit of my new exercise/morning routine sees me just bounding around eating fish and berries with my ham-like forearms, generally feeling good about the world. If you’re a 35 year old man living in your Nan’s dining room you need to feel good about the world. Pre Forearms-of-Ham I thought that quitting an illustrious job in Mayfair and going back to my Nan’s to live in her dining room whilst pitching pitches that probably weren’t going to get commissioned signaled me out as a failure. Not any more. Pre Forearms-of-Ham whenever I used to see a man or a woman my thoughts, respectively, would be “Could he beat me up?” and “Would she sleep with me?” My answers to these thoughts used to be “Yes, probably” and “No, probably not”. Thanks to my new exercise/morning routine however, I’m looking at a pair of maybes.

P-Day begins in less than a week. I’m feeling ready.

Frank McGrath’s forearm, earlier

Someone once said:

This is very important – to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything. Whether you’re an actor, anything, a housewife…there has to be great pauses between highs, where you do nothing at all. You just lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling. This is very, very important…just do nothing at all – very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That’s why they’re all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

Good, isn’t it? Well I think it’s good. And although I might be slightly mad and occasionally frustrated, I’m not angry or hateful and put this down to a lot of time staring at ceilings. I spent a lot of time staring at ceilings both recreationally, and for work. Once, whilst painting a ceiling in Spain several years ago I decided that I didn’t want to paint ceilings and walls for a living anymore and decided to become a writer. There were lots of reasons why I wanted to write for a living rather than paint people’s houses for a living, but I’ve forgotten them all. I think one of the reasons might have been that I thought more women would want to have sex with me if I were a writer rather than a house painter. So far this hasn’t been borne out, although I had a certain appeal when a house painter.

Why all this nonsense? God knows. I suppose I’m preparing for P-Day (regular readers will know what P-Day is; for those who don’t, it’s where I try and take a piss for a whole day) and trying to work out what I like about writing and, more specifically, about journalism. I’ve made a list. The list is composed of two parts: (1) “What I like about journalism”, and (2) “What I don’t”. Regular readers will know that I give good names to my lists.

Under (1) I’ve written:

– Unable to do anything else really

– Financial Times at the weekend

– Lifestyle

– Simon Hattenstone, mostly

– That, potentially, you could make a fortune/live comfortably & help change the world

What a pathetic list. It’s like it was written by some dickless piece of shit 16 year old*. Part (2) isn’t much better, “What I don’t” reads:

– Having opinions for money

– Outrage

– That Times writer on Mondays

– Lack of money

– Julie Burchill

– Writers who pick on Julie Burchill

– Tony Parsons

If P-Day and the aftermath of P-Day is going to be a success, I’m going to have to get equipped with better reasons. If anyone can help, please let me know. Why – the journalists among us – do we do this?

* This isn’t me being angry or hateful, by the way.

I’ve been preparing for P-Day. Despite what you may be thinking, P-Day isn’t where I spend the whole day pissing (although this is precisely what I’d like P-Day to be) rather it’s the day when I knuckle down and start pitching like a mad thing.

Yes I’ve said this before, but two things are going in my favour. One, I’ve given it a name – names help. More importantly, in a breathtaking display of stupidity (bravery) I’ve quit my job, allowing me the necessary space to execute P-Day successfully. Actually, there’s a third reason: I’m stupidly (bravely) moving down to Boscombe for a month. Screw Paris, there’s too much to do there. Bar dodging the scallies there’s not much to do in Boscombe except to pitch and write. Oh, we’re all writers and pitchers down here. “But you’re broke, you’re always bloke, you’re nothing, where in Boscombe will you live?” I hear you cry. “In my Nan’s dining room” I cry back, then cry.

Sexy, aren’t I? As a 35 year old man, living in your Nan’s dining room is definitely the sexiest thing you can do. It’s especially sexy if you’re writing a book that’s unlikely to get published and you’ve stupidly, not bravely, quit your job. But sometimes you have to give up the good to go for the great as I (not John D Rockefeller) have always said. Besides, Dorset has a rich literary history: Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy and John Fowles have all written their finest work here and all have done so – surprisingly – from their Nan’s dining rooms.

Expect P-Day to start in about a week. I’ve decided to pitch at least 40 magazines a day until I’m done. That the phenomenon that is Pitching the World is around 18 months old and I’ve probably pitched no more than 40 magazines in total is no way an indication that I’m going to fuck this up. There’s no way I’m going to regret this. No way.

Regular readers will be well aware of my deep and profound attraction to Stoicism. Having such a deeply held – not to say profound – philosophical doctrine to live by means that I can swan through life with ease. It doesn’t always work: witness that time I swore at bottles of brandy in East Horsley (last month) or that time I collapsed and had to go to hospital after drinking for 30 hours straight (this month) or that time I ground my teeth down to nubs through stress, and then tried to counteract that stress by chainsmoking in the toilet at work (this month/every month).

But my world isn’t always this glamorous. Neither, I imagine, is most people’s. Recently though, and in line with my deep and profound connection with the Stoics, I’ve been practicing something called negative visualisation. Sounds shit, doesn’t it? Well it isn’t, it’s shitting brilliant. According to William B Irvine, author of A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, “The practice of negative visualization is a powerful antidote to a phenomenon that will otherwise deprive us of much of the happiness we could be enjoying: negative visualization prevents us from taking for granted the world around us and the people in it.”

This I like. And I like William B Irvine and his work. “When parting from a friend,” he says, “I might make a mental note that this could conceivably be the last time that I see him.” He goes on, “Once I’ve made that mental note I decide that the best thing to do would be to kill that friend, thus reflecting the idea that I’ve built in my head. After killing my friend, I feel excellent.” He doesn’t really say that last bit. But what he does say is interesting: “Stoics don’t advocate that we dwell on bad things but that we contemplate them, a subtle but important difference. As the result of negatively visualizing, we might find ourselves taking delight that we still possess the things that only moments before we took for granted, including our job, our spouse [fat chance, Bill], our health [fatter chance, Bill] – indeed our very existence.”

I’ve been trying out this business of negative visualization and – for a while at least – it’s changed the way I look at this beautiful world. As I got into the lift at work earlier I thought, “This could be the last time I get in this lift, or any lift. Aren’t lifts something: the mechanism’s pretty special but it’s astounding how we, as a species, managed to create such a thing that is synthesized from stuff that’s been lying around on this planet for billions of years before we got here. How extraordinary.” I enjoy my ride in the lift more than usual. Then, when I get out of the lift I bump into a work colleague. “This could be the last time I see you”, I think, “Isn’t your skin nice and firm. Your hair’s not too shabby either. If this is going to be the last time I see you, perhaps I should try and kiss you.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Says my work colleague.

“I’m just trying out some new stuff.” I say.

And then I’m off in a cloud of cigarette smoke to the Halifax in Mayfair to pay a stinking credit card bill. This being Mayfair, everyone’s taking out huge amounts of money in fifty pound notes and acting like they own the place, which they probably do. I begin to hate them all. This could be the last time I begin to hate them all, I think to myself, so let’s really hate them all. After hating them all for a while – and I don’t really hate them, I just want to be them – I’m called up to the counter by a woman who looks like she needs some sort of medication and she tells me that she can’t tell me what the minimum payment is on my credit card and then looks at me as if to say but whatever it is, you probably can’t pay it.

I leave in a bit of a huff, but I don’t think anyone notices. This could be the last time I leave somewhere in a bit of a huff without anyone really noticing, I think. I could phone up and pay the stinking credit card bill, but after a brief internal wrangle I decide that my credit card bill can take a hike. I’ve had enough of paying my credit card bill, I think, my credit card bill can go and fuck itself, I think, I wonder what William B Irvine would think if he could see me now, I think.

After so much excitement I come back to my office (via the lift – not as special as it seemed a few minutes earlier) and think about pitching. For some time now I’ve wanted to pitch this feature idea where I get to shadow a team of private detectives for a week. I’ve been offered generous access, I can be one of the team as we follow people around London recording them and eavesdropping as they go shopping or go to bars, I can even take photos. It’s the only feature I’ve ever really wanted to write and so my pitch has to sing. This could be the last pitch you ever write, I think, make it as good as you can.

Yet twenty minutes later I’m still staring at a blank screen and I think: You can’t write the fucker can you – you’re the Eric Bristow of pitching. And, for the first time in a long time, I realise I’m right.

Someone who may or may not be about to get into a lift, earlier.

Occasionally I drink. I don’t know if I’ve written about this. Occasionally I work too and I’m pretty sure I haven’t written about this, and if I have I haven’t written about it in any great length. Part of my thinly-disguised anonymity you see – “Journalism’s rubbish answer to Banksy,” according to one idiot* – allows me to hold down a relatively well paid, prestigious and, yes, sometimes important job in a very grand building in Mayfair. From this very grand building in Mayfair you’ll occasionally find me writing reports on findings in, predominantly, the field of social psychology.** These reports have – over the last few days in fact – been variously described as “Excellent” and “What the fuck is this shit?”

Anyway today, whilst conducting my banana-sharp research, I came across a pair of boners called Ackoff and Emshoff who, in 1975, identified four types of drinkers, each with different motivations for drinking. These apparent ‘types’ are as follows:

1. The Oceanic Drinker: Tends to drink so as to become more gregarious and extroverted.
2. The Indulgent Drinker: Tends to drink in order to become withdrawn and introverted.
3. The Reparative Drinker: Tends to drink in order to wind down from work and ease into leisure, and also reward themselves for all their efforts.
4. The Social Drinker: Tends to use alcohol as a social lubricant

So, which one are you? More importantly, which one am I? Just kidding: which one are you? I’d love to know because from where I’m sitting – a very grand building in Mayfair – I’m all four, and often all four at the same time. I can’t work out if this is good or bad: it could be that they’ll all eventually cancel each other out like double negatives and I’ll become ‘The Non-drinking Drinker: Tends to not drink’ but somehow I doubt it.

* That idiot being me, about two seconds ago.

** Although this is a rarity. If you were to ever visit this very grand building in Mayfair – and I’d love it if you did – you’re more likely to find me (1) smoking in the toilet, (2) practicing my Daniel Plainview impression in the toilet, or (3) sleeping in the toilet.

Back in 2001 I was young and broke and trying to make it as a writer. Now, I realise that ten years later I’m old and broke and still trying to make it as a writer, but I have had one or two slivers of success. Back then I’d had no slivers of success. This lack of success lay mainly in my ability to cleverly disguise any ambition by working on building sites, spending most of my waking life drunk and not doing any writing. It also lay in me cleverly disguising any ambition by not really having any ambition.

Oh, but you should have heard me. Really, you should have. If you had been working with me on a building site back in 2001 you have thought that I wasn’t just someone working on a building site; no, I was a writer working on a building site. Yes, I was an idiot then and I’m an idiot now – albeit a slightly braver and tougher idiot after ten years of living like a tramp.

Where were we? Ah yes, we’re in 2001 and I’m working on a building site and one day I pick up the Euro Weekly News, a free English language newspaper – we’re in Mallorca by the way, I should have mentioned that earlier – and read in the classifieds that they are looking for columnists. “Brilliant”, I think, “I could do that.” Normally when I think “Brilliant, I could do that” I tend to imagine doing whatever that thing is over and over again in my head and polish it to such a level that, when it actually comes round to doing that thing I feel as if I’ve already done that thing hundreds of times and so the thing never gets done. This time, however, that thing got done. I came back from work one day and hammered out two columns about a young, broke writer in Mallorca who was working on building sites whilst writing a novel – and not only a novel, but a dreadfully important novel. I say hammered them out but because I didn’t have a computer at the time I hammered them out by hand and then went to my ex-boss’s house and hammered them out on her computer. As bad luck would have it, my ex-boss’s internet connection was down and so I had to fax over the columns.

This next bit is good, this next bit is where I fuck up.

So, two or three days after faxing off my columns I get a call from the editor of the Euro Weekly News saying that he “loved them”. The columns, that is. And not only did he “love them”, but “everyone in the office loved them”. And not only was there a lot of love going around the office with regard to my columns but they wanted to offer me a regular gig as one of their columnists. Well, I was bowled over. The only problem, said the editor, was the format: could I, instead of sending them over by fax, send them by email? Could I? Of course I could.

Except of course I couldn’t. At the time I was chronically computer illiterate and after spending hours trying to send the columns by email I just sort of gave up and then refused to answer my phone for a few weeks. That, I’m afraid – and here I really must apologise to all the people in the English speaking world who were deprived of my copy for the next five years – put the breaks on my writing career (if you can call it a career – which you can’t, not really) until late 2006 when I started to eke out a living as a journalist.

And we all know what’s happened since then. You don’t? Oh, well then let me regale you: I got married, got semi-divorced, had a series of breakdowns, drew some excellent pie charts, ate some beetroot, had a trial for Colchester United and swore at some bottles of alcohol in East Horsley, Surrey.

Which leads us rather unseamlessly onto last night when I was mucking around on the internet wondering where I’m going to move to next. Out of this month’s favourites – Paris, obviously; Buenos Aires; Bali; Canada; Somerset – I think I might have to move to Mallorca for a while. And if I do move to Mallorca for a while then I’m going to have to get a job in Mallorca for a while. And after looking at the opportunities for writers who happen to be in Mallorca for a while, it appears that my best bet lies in applying for a position at – wait for it, because this is fucking brilliant this – Euro Weekly News. How wonderfully cyclical. It seems that EWN want people. And I’m people. What sort of people do they want? According to their selection criteria:

At EWN we are rather choosy about who we employ.

This bit is worrying. But:

We are not afraid of those with ambition, just as long as they have the talent to back it up.

This bit isn’t too bad: I have ambition. That my ambition is to do more than nine kick-ups with a tennis ball and to get through the remaining 30 minutes of this morning without nipping to the off-licence downstairs from my office for a can of super strength lager can be overlooked – I won’t put that in my application. I’ll put about wanting to be a real good EWN employee and that – they’ll probably like that.

The next bit though, is pretty bad. It reads:

For our part, we do believe in developing our staff where possible.  Hard work and commitment will always be recognised and rewarded.You need not apply if:

You are all mouth and no trousers

You have a drug or alcohol problem

You have a criminal record

And this is where the dream ends. First, all that talk of hard work and commitment being recognised and rewarded leaves me cold. Second, I’m worried that I’m no mouth and all trousers, or perhaps no mouth and no trousers, or possibly some mouth and some trousers, but whatever I am, I’m certainly not all mouth but also with trousers, which I assume is what they want. Is that really what they want? Meek people with massive dicks shuffling around the office? I’m not sure. But regardless of where I fall in the relationship between mouth and trousers, it’s all painfully academic as I fall woefully short on point two.

So, it seems my promising ten year career at the Euro Weekly News (if you can call it a promising ten year career – and you can’t, you really can’t) comes to an end. Next stop: the Majorca Daily Bulletin, quite possibly the worst newspaper ever produced.