I'll start from the beginning, and I'll explain things this time, so that you feel ultra-comfortable. Treat this as an open letter to the one person who'll never read this, who cares so much for my sanity and who so enjoys reading sentences that run from left to right, from the top of the page to the bottom. This is an example of a genre that can only be described with the most hideously long title, whose punctuation creates headaches for anyone who wants to insert it in the middle of another paragraph. The genre is: "Hi, I'm normal. Look: this email smacks of normality, I do normal things and everything is fine. The 'i's are dotted and the 't's are crossed, the sentences have stops and there is a beginning and an end to all this. It's complete, just like me."
Understood? Stop reading here if you want the emotional excitement of the magical nonsense-producing machine, and continue if you think you can be entertained by something more straightforward.
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I start my days these days by asking the coffee-master at the coffee-master's house in coffee-master-wannabe central for three shots of coffee in a large cup, with a little frothy hood that they call a 'cappuccino'. This is what I like. The coffee-master has worked hard at his art and, unlike in the amateur chain establishments, his three shots will not make a worried mind turn to insomnia and crime, but will merely sharpen the senses so that they are balanced with the nonsenses, putting the drinker of such coffee in the perfect frame of mind to carry out his day's business with good humour and calmness.
In the coffee house this morning, I pulled out my book with every intention of trying to read some more before work, but was distracted by a newspaper headline about Statins. This was not the article for me, nor were the others that I skimmed past: such stories tell me little that's worth brooding on, although they're worth scanning for the one or two useful points that they may raise. The article that made me stop and think that little bit more was one about a fictitious book that has become real. This may sound like the work of a Borgesian scholar, but it's actually the latest money-spinning idea to have been dreamed up by the marketing maniacs who will not rest until every last cent has been squeezed out of Sex and the City.
Out of the many thoughts that this commentary spawned, the one that I brooded on while walking from the cafe to the office was related to the admission: "I know a woman who won't date a man if he has an apostrophe in the wrong place". This made me laugh, because a few years ago I was having dinner with an educated and erudite female friend, and she told me that she didn't think she'd be able to go out with a guy if he didn't know how to use the possessive correctly. I laughed long and hard when she said that, and had she not had a boyfriend, I probably would've asked her out on the spot for being so passionate about the technical aspects of language. The comment stuck with me, and anything that sticks with me ends up being analysed and criticised until I understand why it's stuck with me...
Crimes against language take a bit of getting used to, but if the perpetrator of the crime is pretty enough and entertaining enough, then you start to look upon the crime in a different light. After being utterly horrified at first by just how appalling the grammar of one of my "pen-pals" was, and squirming as she used the occasional "clever" word in a very unusual context (like our beloved celebrities do) in an attempt to seem intelligent, I gradually warmed to her lack of knowledge of the finer points of language (yes, she was incredibly pretty, and very entertaining). In some cases, the dodgy punctuation would give the text a certain rhythm that I liked, or a certain cheekiness that I'd never seen conveyed by well-regimented language. I labelled the style "naked writing", and I've been obsessed with it ever since.
But, that said, I've had at least two pen pals tell me: "your lovely", and that will never look nice. The first time I read that, I expected more words to follow. And then it just seemed awkward. To be fair, one of the nicest emails I've ever received was from potentially the most intelligent girl I know, who writes perfect English. But anyway, getting back to the point... This new Sex and the City spin-off book... Well, it's a load of shite, isn't it? That's the conclusion of the Independent columnist as well. I could say so much more, but I'm saying no more. If I see anyone reading that book on the train...
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That little excursion took longer than I'd expected, and I've now led my thoughts so astray that I'm going to have to spend a little time here getting back to where I expected to be going...
Had the front page of The Independent not grabbed me so, I would've continued to read "Adriana Buenos Aires", which is a terrible book, but it's intentionally bad. Or so Macedonio Fernández would have us believe. Subtitled: "Última novela mala" ("The last bad novel"), it's about as interesting as this blog: mimetic and static, and just another love story. It's the counterpart to "Museo de la novela de la eterna", the "Primera novela buena" ("The first good novel"), which is an altogether different kettle of beans.
I'm not mentioning these names to lose you or to elevate myself here, but to explain my next move, which baffled the recruitment consultant that phoned me up today. There reaches a point where you just have to laugh at these fools, and I reached that point a few weeks ago. Now, I'm having fun with them. The recruitment consultant will conquer or destroy. I can't speak to one without remembering the time when some dense lads at my table at the pub one night pulled out an email of laddish chat-up lines and their counter-lines: you know, the ones where you get knocked back but then retaliate immediately by insulting the girl you just hit on (i.e. the ones that probably work). If they sense that you're not interested, they'll go on to try and undermine you. But why would you want to try such a trick on me?
Anyway, the recruitment consultant... I said to him: "No, I'm not sticking around". And I'm saying this more frequently now, because my mind's made up: I'm going away next year. I've given myself the target of six months, or sooner if my current employer ceases to require my talents before then. I'm going to Argentina, and I'm going to become an even better plagiarist of Macedonio Fernández. This has always been the plan, as it goes. I always knew that writing the loveliest emails in the world wouldn't get me anywhere, and that Argentina would be my next destination. It's been on my destinations list since I read an article about the country one day when I was 17, and it was accompanied by a picture of a pretty blonde girl, and I thought, for no well thought-out reason: "I'm going to go there". But I didn't know at the time, and then had to stumble upon it again. And then again. And then again. And again. It's a recurring theme, and it can't be ignored, I'm going to move to Argentina next year, because it's been calling me for a long time.
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Working in Brighton is lovely, because on a day like today you can finish work and go down to the beach, sit on a deckchair and take off your shoes and socks, pull out a book, and sit and wonder what it is that makes everyone you ever meet seem to think that you're strange.
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