Pitching the World

I sit in my big tower and watch people. This is what I do. And this is what everyone else does in Dubai: they sit in their big towers and watch people. At least I imagine they do, I could be wrong. Yesterday if you were in one of those big towers watching people you would have seen me. I was trying to find a supermarket, but in typical fashion I was trying to find a supermarket badly. Someone had told me that this supermarket was opposite the big tower I’m staying in, ‘it’s just there’ they told me, but when I crossed the busy road in front of my big tower and looked ‘just there’ I didn’t see a supermarket. I didn’t see anything. So I crossed back over the busy road and asked the man who works at the bottom of my big tower where the nearest supermarket is. He looked at me as if I was mad, as if I’d asked him to walk to the moon with me, and then told me it was there, just there, just across the road. So I crossed the road and didn’t see the supermarket so walked for a bit with my hangover up another road and stopped after a while and pretended to check my phone as people were beginning to look at me peculiarly. I thought if I stopped and checked my phone then I could turn back down the road and look like I suddenly had some important business to attend to, rather than look like a 35 year old man who is unable to adapt to the heat and unable to find a supermarket.

Eventually I found it. I crossed and recrossed the road several more times and pretended to check my phone lots and spent a lot of time wondering whether or not I should go back to the man who works at the bottom of my big tower and ask him again where – just tell me where – the fucking supermarket is, but in the end I found it. And there was nothing unusual about it, despite the 300 or so preceding words suggesting that there might have been. Actually, there was one thing that struck me: the price of cigarettes. Cigarettes cost about six dirhams a pack, roughly one pound. Everything else costs more then six dirhams. I saw a yoghurt – not, despite having an umlaut just thrown into the name somewhere, a particularly good yoghurt – that cost 18 dirhams. That’s three packs of cigarettes in my money, not 18 dirhams. I don’t see things in terms of money out here, just in cigarette terms. I went to buy a banana milkshake today (a rubbish one, one from a shop) that cost three packs of cigarettes and refused to buy it, reasoning – quite rightly – that I would rather smoke three packs of cigarettes than drink one banana milkshake. Last night I bought a friend a glass of wine that cost ten packs of cigarettes and I begrudged her every sip.

The point is, and there is a point to all of this, that I’m smoking lots. The other point, is that all this smoking has done wonders for my head. Made my lungs that little bit itchier, perhaps, but it’s sharpened me up no end and cleared my mind. And I’ve realised that it’s been a long time since I’ve done any journalism of the sort I used to enjoy – finding things out that not many people know about and writing about them. And here, in Dubai, there’s plenty going on that not a lot of people know about. I could go undercover, I think, and expose something. Anything. I could find the seedy underbelly of Dubai. I could go searching for the hidden Dubai that no one really knows about. This is what I think. Then I realise that it took me about an hour to find a supermarket across the road from me – a supermarket that I can see clearly as I type these words – and wonder if I should give it a day or two before I go searching for a Dubai that probably doesn’t exist. In the meantime, if anyone fancies dropping by to chainsmoke with me I’ll be sitting in my big tower writing a book.

My wife is seeing someone else and I’m going to Dubai on Thursday. My wife is seeing someone else and I’m going to Dubai on Thursday. My wife is seeing someone else and I’m going to Dubai on Thursday. My wife is seeing someone else and I’m going to Dubai on Thursday. My wife – my wife – is seeing someone else and I’m going to Dubai – Dubai! – on Thursday.

Actually, I’m pretty happy about both things. That my wife – my own wife – is seeing someone else shouldn’t really be discussed publicly. That I’m going to Dubai on Thursday should. For a start, going to Dubai on Thursday provides ample opportunity for me to stop drinking on Thursday. Alcohol in Dubai isn’t as freely available as alcohol in London and, from what I hear, it’s considerably more expensive. This should help me stop drinking. And I could certainly do with stopping drinking. When I thought I was drinking before, I wasn’t really drinking. I was flirting with drinking. Now I’m really drinking: now I’ve stopped flirting with drinking and I’ve taken it round the back of a supermarket to have sex with it in a bin.

Frankly, it’s fucking brilliant. No longer do I drink coffee, I drink brandy coffee. No longer do I drink tea, now it’s rum tea. Have you tried rum tea? You really should. Of course there are the cans still – it’s impossible to walk around east London without buying a can of lager, they’re fucking everywhere. And so cheap. And so splendid – and the wine with dinner and the night caps and the morning caps (while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil for my delicious rum teas) and it all has to stop and where better for it to stop than Dubai where I can swim and go to the gym (I’ve never been to the gym. Can someone tell me what happens there?) and work on the book, and try to get over the breakdown of my marriage (my wife is seeing someone else. He’s fucking dead) and do my best to ignore the prohibitively costly and not-widely-available booze?

And where better to get the sinking ship that is Pitching the World back to where it belongs? Yep, Dubai. All I have to do is go back over some of my previous pitches and add IN DUBAI at the end of them.

Regular readers – who I love – will remember me pitching Men’s Health with an idea about becoming a better person through adversity. The crucial paragraph in that killer pitch read:

So how about a feature on how your readers can deliberately put themselves through testing situations – physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, financially and so forth – and come out of the other side better people?

Yet once I get to Dubai, I’m going to resend the pitch drawing on my experiences of living in a foreign country to give the pitch a more colourful angle. Once I become established in Dubai, I imagine the rejigged paragraph might read:

So how about a feature on how your readers can deliberately put themselves through testing situations – physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, financially and so forth – and come out of the other side better people? In Dubai.

Or perhaps even:

So how about a feature on how your readers can (in Dubai) deliberately put themselves through testing situations – physically (in Dubai), emotionally (in Dubai), psychologically (in Dubai), spiritually (in Dubai), financially (in Dubai) and so forth (in Dubai) – and come out of the other side better people? In Dubai!

Right fuck this, I’m off for a rum tea. Will write more from Dubai (in Dubai!).

So, last night I was sitting in my Nan’s lounge in Bournemouth talking to my Mum (since splitting up with my wife my life has become one glamorous experience after another) about the book – and subsequent film –  Eat, Pray, Love (told you). And it got me thinking. It got me thinking that although I’m going to Dubai next month to write a book and although I’m working on the research and writing of some chapters of a book at the moment for an ex-military big cheese, that I’d like to write a book for myself. About myself. And I’d like to call it Puke, Fuck, Cry rather than Eat, Pray, Love and instead of it being ‘One woman’s search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia’ it would be ‘One man’s search for nothing across Clapton, the motorway down to Bournemouth and Bournemouth’.

And rather than set over months or years or however long Eat, Pray, love is set over – I can’t be bothered to find out – it would be a day in the life of Pitching the World.

The first part of the book, Puke, would see me in Lower Clapton puking up last night’s booze. Despite AA meetings – okay, one AA meeting – and countless resolutions to give up drinking I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing that will get me through life is alcohol. Lots of it. All the time. So this bit of the book will see me discussing the benefits (loads, everything) of drinking and the downsides (none – well, can be expensive and drive you a bit mad, but essentially none) of drinking. This will be the best bit of the book. And subsequent film.

The second bit of the book, and subsequent film, will be Fuck. This bit will see me trying to book a National Express coach down to Bournemouth. It will be a sombre yet at times hilarious reflection of my life to date and why, at 35, I’m having to book coaches down to Bournemouth. I’ll fuck up the booking several times. There might also be a bit about why I don’t mind paying an extra 50p for an m-ticket. The actual fuck bit of the Fuck Bit will be me ruminating on the fact that despite having to – and I have had to – take hundreds of coach journeys in my life, I’ve never seen anyone on a National Express coach who I’ve wanted to fuck.

The final bit of the book, Cry, will see me down in Bournemouth in my Nan’s lounge crying into a Cumberland pie. Whilst I’m crying into my Cumberland pie, my Nan will be watching television in the background with the sound off. Readers should love this bit of the book and subsequent film. This bit will also give me the chance to write a bit about other food that I have cried into which includes – but is in no way limited to – sardines, hamburgers and tomato soup.

If anyone wants to be my agent, let me know.

This is the first of a five-part series. Remember a year ago, during the very first entry in fact, when I said I would write about the writers I would most like to fight in a pub car park? Well here it is. Kind of.  Each entry will feature two journalists. That means over time – I don’t know how long it will take, probably years – there will be ten journalists in total who I’d like to kick the fuck out of. But who knows, I might get on a roll and find hundreds more journalists who I’d like to kick the fuck out of. Let’s start with ten though. Or, rather, let’s start with two. And don’t worry, I’m on the list as well and although I’ll probably put myself at the end, it doesn’t mean that out of the ten people featured I’m the journalist who I’d least like to kick the fuck out of. I’m probably at the top, along with these two:

1. Alexis Petridis

Alexis Petridis, earlier

The inspiration behind this series – a series that is going alarmingly well so far – lies with my brother. On Saturday I bought the Guardian. I stopped buying the Guardian some time ago. Actually that’s not strictly true, I bought one this morning, but generally speaking I stopped buying the Guardian some time ago. I stopped buying it on the grounds that I began to find it a bit shit. Yet occasionally I’ll buy one or steal one and think ‘actually it’s not bad at all, I’ll start reading it again’ and then as soon as I make an effort to regularly buy (or steal) the Guardian again I gradually come round to the opinion that it is, in fact, a bit shit.

Anyway, Alexis Petridis. He writes for the Guardian and every Saturday in the magazine section he writes a column about fashion. I rather like Alexis’s stuff on bands and music but at the same time am of the opinion that any man who writes about fashion regularly is a dick. This week Alexis was writing about hiking boots. Pitching the World’s brother recently bought some hiking boots to yomp up and down Snowdon in and has taken to capering around town in them too. He reckons they’re comfortable (and looking at them I can quite believe him) and wears them for purely practical reasons. Yet after reading Petridis’s column – a column in which he writes about ‘the current vogue for wearing hiking boots in town’, and chucks around phrases that make you want to cut your own throat open, like: ‘you can always rely on fashion to bring you the WTF? factor’ – he got a bit irked. His beef lay with  Alexis Petridis writing: “Given that my idea of an outdoor activity is smoking in the doorway of a pub…”. I don’t know why this annoyed him – and I don’t really think he was annoyed, he was being funny with it – but he ended his mini-rant by saying he would “love to kick the fuck out of” Alexis Petridis. And this got me thinking. It got me thinking that maybe I too would like to kick the fuck out of Alexis Petridis – and not only that, but there were probably loads of other writers and journalists who I would also like a piece of.*

Incidentally, I think I saw Alexis Petridis in a north London newsagents about a year ago on a dreary Monday night and he struck me as a nice man, albeit one who looked as if he was coming down from a load of Class A drugs. It might not have been him though. But it probably was. In fact, it definitely was and he had definitely been taking loads of drugs all weekend. His employers might want to have a word.

2. Neal Butterworth

Neal Butterworth, earlier

About ten years ago I was broke and depressed and sleeping on the floor of my Nan’s dining room. This might not surprise some readers. As well as being broke and depressed I was also incredibly frustrated as my dreams of becoming a writer had never been realised. They had never been realised because I didn’t used to do any writing. Or much of anything else, really: I would read books and smoke and drink and try and make women have sex with me (but not on my Nan’s floor, we had to do it round the back of supermarkets. In bins), but I didn’t do any writing.

But one day I became inspired and wrote a letter to Neal Butterworth, the editor of the local paper which, I think, is called The Evening Echo. Yep, the name sucks. Yep, the name sucks. Yep, the name sucks. etc. In this letter I pointed out that I was mad and poor and sleeping in my Nan’s dining room and having sex in bins round the back of supermarkets and, to get me out of this dire situation – although writing about it, it seems ace – could Mr Butterworth allow me to do some work experience at the paper. I told him that my employment and education history was patchy but that I had changed (I hadn’t. I still haven’t.) and needed a break.

He gave me that break. Well, he offered me three days work experience at his paper which I gladly snapped up. And then fucked up. A week before my work experience was due to begin I wrote a letter to Neal Butterworth complaining about one of the features in the paper which I assumed had been written by a freelance. It was poorly researched, I said, clunky, hammy, unfunny in the bits where it was supposed to be funny and vice versa. You should have seen the letter. It was a good letter.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the feature had in fact been written by the deputy editor. And what I also didn’t know at the time was that Neal Butterworth was away and that the deputy editor had taken to reading and answering his mail. So when I turned up for my work experience – dressed as if I had just been released from prison – the atmosphere was frosty and although I offered my apologies to anyone who would listen and said I was mad, broke, having sex in bins etc. it stayed frosty for the three days I was there and I can’t remember really doing much work beyond skulking around outside Asda trying to conduct vox pops on people who couldn’t give a fuck.

About a week after my bleak work experience, I got inspired again. One evening I sat down and – without having any idea how to do it at first – did a mock up of a tabloid front page. The headline was something like ‘DEPRESSED MAN ENJOYS WORK EXPERIENCE SHOCKER!’ and then the main bit of copy was about how I had messed everything up by writing this letter (although it was a good letter) and that I’d learnt invaluable stuff at my three days on the paper and, once again, I wanted to apologise to the ed and deputy ed for my behaviour. I used quotes and all sorts and made it look good. Anyway, I sent it to Butterworth and he just wrote back saying something like ‘You shouldn’t have sent that letter.’

So, I sort of want to kick the fuck out of Neal Butterworth. But at the same time I sort of don’t. He seems like a good man and I think he was in the right; if I had had me hanging around and writing insulting letters I would have been pissed off. And he also offered me work experience when he knew that I was old and had shown no previous enthusiasm for journalism. He gave me the break I wanted. So I don’t want to kick the fuck out of Neal Butterworth.

This, by the way, is where the series goes downhill. It’s already the opposite of what the series set out to do. Perhaps the series should be called ‘Journalists [who are in fact editors] who I quite like.’

*Although my beating-people-up abilities have been in decline since the breakdown of my marriage (I’ve lost a lot of weight) and my once muscular arms have atrophied. I think if I did try and kick the fuck out of Alexis Petridis, he would end up kicking the fuck out of me. And although I can put up with a lot, I think being kicked the fuck out of by Alexis Petridis might just be the last straw.

It’s almost a year now since the spectacularly unpopular (yet multi-award winning) Pitching the World came into being. Over the year we’ve seen several nervous breakdowns, borderline alcoholism, chronic alcoholism, divorce, a football trial for Colchester United, me eating some beetroot, a pie chart and precious little else. Maybe a handful of pitches, but that’s about all. But Pitching the World isn’t – and never really has been – about pitching. Nor is it really about the world. Rather – despite me stressing on numerous occasions that the whole idea behind PTW was to pitch all the magazines listed in the frankly terrifying Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook – it’s always been about the life of a freelance journalist. 

And if Pitching the World is about trying to give an honest and accurate account of the life of a freelance journalist, then I suppose it’s been a success. And it’s nice to have been a success in one aspect of my life because every other area of my life – financial, matrimonial, professional and plenty more – has been a colossal fuck up. But I’m beginning to think that colossal fuck ups could become a thing of the past.

Since the breakdown of my often-wonderful marriage and my divorce from the always-wonderful booze, good things have started to happen. I’ve been asked to write a book for someone in Dubai. I’ve been asked to go on a covert mission with a team of detectives and write about it. I spend a lot of time reading philosophy. I also write really dull posts – much like this one – and completely neglect the idea of pitching or putting up pitches. But if Pitching the World is going to survive for the next year – and survive it will – perhaps this is the way of the future. Little talk of pitching, much talk about the life of a writer whose life has fallen to bits. Not that much of a deviation, then, from the previous year.

Thank you.

“My name’s Pitching the World, and I’m an alcoholic.” Yep, this was me earlier this morning at AA in Belsize Park, London. Good, isn’t it? And perhaps not too much of a surprise for many of my regular readers. What I thought was a pretty laboured comic device and simply a prolonged (15 year) period of heavy drinking has actually turned out to be good old fashioned alcoholism. I realised this on Tuesday after starting the day with two Valium washed down with a Pernod and brandy cocktail, although ‘cocktail’ is used in a very loose sense. It was then, really, that I realised I wasn’t simply a heavy social drinker as my Tuesday morning party was a sad, slightly scary one-man affair.

So I’m off the booze. For a bit at least. Good news for my pitching, bad news for what was an often colourful blog.

Wish me luck. Oh and I’m no longer in Bournemouth, I’m living in Clapton. At least I’m living in Clapton until Monday when I become homeless. Wish me more luck.

Readers may be stunned to hear that my shabby-as-hell travel pitch has received a reply. It reads:

Hi, there; So sorry to hear about your wife. Not sure that self-improvement
is such a great idea but do come up with some travel thoughs and you could
always weave in your personal situation etc.

Readers may be less stunned to hear that despite assurances I was going to be updating this blog daily with pitches, I failed on day two. And although I promised to take down Pitching the World if I didn’t fulfil my promises, I’m not going to. And I’m not going to because the only reason I didn’t put a pitch up yesterday was to prove a point. Pitching the World, you see, is concerned not only with pitching a very small part of the world not very regularly, but also with the life of a freelance journalist. And this freelance journalist has been simultaneously working as a researcher on a documentary and being sort of homeless and hasn’t had a great deal of time. Hence no pitch being posted.

I do, however, have the time to give an insight into the sort of readers this award-winning fucker attracts. Today, people found themselves on Pitching the World after searching for:

‘pictures of egg’

‘crack houses’

‘egg’

‘pictures of a egg’

‘pitching the world’

‘egg pictures’

‘egg images’

‘living in bournemouth’

‘pic of a egg’

‘cath boundy’

Most of my new readers, it seems, are fans of eggs or pictures of eggs and not fans of grammar. I don’t know how to take this.

Dear Guardian/Daily Mail Travel Ed,

I’m in a tight spot. I thought I was in a tight spot before, but I wasn’t. I am now. I had been planning a holiday this summer with my wife, but recently my wife has done the decent thing and left me. The decent thing for me to do in this situation is still go on holiday. But I’m in a tight spot. First, because over the last eighteen or so months my soon-to-be-ex-wife and I have, in one form or another, been across most of the planet and I’m reluctant to go somewhere where the memories are still too raw. Second, I’d like go somewhere and improve myself, not just get drunk, get involved in meaningless romantic encounters and get imprisoned, no matter how attractive that might sound.

What I’m proposing for a feature then, is this: I find a suitable holiday where self-improvement is key and write about it, perhaps under the umbrella of “Holidays for when you’ve just broken up” or something equally as catchy. Perhaps something where I learn to sing for a week, or work in the favellas of Rio or study philosophy in Greece. Something, in short, whereby I come back a better a person.

Now, I realise this idea sounds rubbish but it only sounds rubbish because I’m a bit drunk. The idea itself is beautiful. Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK split up with long-term partners every year and they all still want to go away and come back better. I’ll tell them where to go, so to speak.

Yours Sincerely,

Pitching the World

PS Believe it or not I have plenty of clips from travel magazines and newspapers, including your own, should you wish to see them.

* Except, of course, it isn’t. In fact, it’s the worst pitch I’ve ever sent and that, truly, is saying something.

If you’ve come here to read about a massive fuck-up pitching magazines, then look away now. I’m becoming less of a fuck-up by the second and, for the time being at least, have stopped pitching magazines. I’ve stopped pitching magazines not, as some of you might suspect, because I don’t have the stomach or the inclination, but because my dog eared copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook is in London, and I’m down here, in Shitmouth.

That is the only reason: the absence of a book. Not the absence of ideas, nor the absence of enthusiasm, but the absence of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. Those of you who have witnessed me fumble around and fuck-up over the last ten months or so will know that when I’ve got the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook by my side I’m unstoppable. I’m a machine.

Now, I’m well aware that a lack of copy from Pitching the World could well throw the publishing industry into a funk from which it never recovers so with that in mind I’ve decided to direct my efforts towards the swill that is British Newspapers. Yes, I thought this morning, why not give newspapers the privilege of rejecting my ideas time and bastard time again rather just magazines? Why not spread it around a bit?

I’ve written for newspapers before of course. Oh, of course. I’ve written for The Guardian (three times), The Independent (once), The Daily Mail (twice) and the News of the World (once). A paltry amount, but if you were ever unfortunate to hear me talking about my ‘career’, you would think that I was far more prolific. When people ask me what I do and who I write for I tell them: ‘Oh, you know, I write for The Guardian [the last time was in January this year, the time before that in June 2008], The Independent [one feature in spring 2007], The Daily Mail [one feature I wrote for The Guardian which was bought by the Mail in June 2008, another late last year that was originally a 2,000 piece that they cut down to 400 words] and, well, sometimes the News of the World [not even really true this one. One feature for the News of the World’s Fabulous magazine which hasn’t run yet]. But most of my stuff is for magazines [this bit it true. It needs to be].

But I’d like to write more for newspapers. And it is possible for me to write more for newspapers, clearly I haven’t really written that much for newspapers. This week then, I’ll be pitching at least one newspaper per day, starting tomorrow of course. And, from tomorrow, I’ll be putting up a pitch a day until Friday. No more talk (for a bit), about going bald and mad or about beetroot or ballooning alcoholism or the time (yesterday) when I listened to Clair de Lune and fell to bits. Instead, just pitches with no fluff. And if I don’t do this – and there’s definitely no way that I won’t do this – then on Friday I will take Pitching the World down, never write another entry, and go and work on the bins for the next decade or two. This, it seems, is what it has come down to.