The Writer is in...

The writer is in.

Do you remember those scenes from Charlie Brown? Lucy is the dr, she has a wooden booth, and Charlie Brown goes to visit her.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I feel so alone.”

Or the relationship between Snoopy and Woodstock? Or my favourite, Lucy’s relationship with the school. She used to go and speak to the school building.

Canongate are releasing all the Peanuts books, right from the beginning up until the end. Schultz always felt himself a failure, even to the end when he was so famous.

I loved Snoopy.

Reading Don Quixote, as I am, I am realising how much it is like Winnie the Pooh. Harold Bloom missed that in his introduction. That’s the problem with literary criticism these days. They can’t see the wood for the trees.

Winnie the Pooh is Don Quixote. Piglet is Sancho Panza. Read the one in which Pooh and Piglet go in search of the Heffalump, or to find the North Pole.

Don Quixote is so funny, and sad. I love it. I thought I would struggle through it. But I keep picking it up, wanting to read the next paragraph.

I wrote eight 200 word stories about arse licking this week. Then I wrote a sad nostalgic piece about the place I grew up in being pulled down. And about other stuff. The arse licking ones are funny things, about a football team who kind of get addicted one by one. The sad one made me cry.

I imagined performing them on a stage. Back to back. The former is a result of the latter you would see. It would be a great exposition. There would be applause, I thought, as I strutted around the front room with a bottle of beer.

Only it wasn’t a bottle of beer. It was champagne. Presented to me for being so wonderful.

Or a fool.

I am pleased at least that Leon won X Factor. I knew the writing was on the wall when Don Quixote was more appealing than Rhyddion. Actually I had the snooker on too, on my computer. O’Sullivan got a 147.

I went to see Terry Griffiths play Cliff Thorburn in 1979. That was the year Terry Griffiths was World Champion. We got told off by the referee for eating crisps. I was 8.

For those who are counting The Penguin Variations is going well. I’ve edited up to page 101 now out of 128. I go over the plot in my head over and over. I don’t know if it’s any good but I like it. It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked at anything.

And I’ve started writing a new short story. It’s about a man whose wife is sawn in two. The man goes in search of the magician who did it via his father who is a ventriloquist with a talking penis.


It’s about the breakdown of a relationship.


The writer is in.

Currently reading - Don Quixote (alright already)


Currently listening to - Kate Bush, Lyra