I was idly listening to BBC Radio 4 this afternoon, while contemplating my total failure to finish my Christmas preparations.   Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice.

It was my Myspace friend, David Benson, who seems to be popping up everywhere at the moment.   He was appearing in a Saturday Play called "The Wooden Overcoat" -- his co-star being the current Doctor Who, David Tennant

You can hear him if you click "The Wooden Overcoat"

This is well worth a listen.   David has a great radio voice.   (Note I didn't say a great face for radio...)

I've just acquired a ventriloquist's dummy.  I know, I know, but I've always wanted one.   I think they're pleasingly sinister.   Here he is.

Blame eBay.   The only problem is, you think you can stop at one... Then you get the craving again...and again...

Aaaaaargh!

Going into work yesterday I was reflecting on the unfairness of literary dispensations.   There's Clayton, sitting in his shop in the middle of Soho, with the most amazing characters almost forcing themselves onto his attention.   I, meanwhile, have to travel on the Metropolitan line.   When I go in for an early shift, almost all my fellow-travellers are painters-and-decorators.   I don't know why this should be so, perhaps there's a special guild in north-west London.   They're recogniseable by their paint-spattered boots, and the pathetic little boxes of sandwiches in Sainsbury's carrier bags.

But this was a later shift; it was about 1030, and the station (which is on a ridge overlooking Northwick Park) was packed.   When I arrived, I thought a fight was in progress.  

A woman's voice was shrieking. "I never f***ing ignored you.  I'd lost an earring, Michelle, so I couldn't see properly."

I peered at the speaker.   A chunky looking girl, early twenties, was yelling into a mobile phone.  Her hair was cut in an uneven wedge, dyed red and blue.   Jeans, jumper, bomber jacket.   She looked, and sounded, like a black Jade Goody.

"You spend more on that f***ing bloke than on yourself," she bellowed, saying it several times.  "And he smokes most of it."

The row progressed, and I tried not to listen.   But then the voice insinuated itself into my consciousness again.  "I did try to see you.  I DID.   But when I went round to your house, you weren't there.   And your mum didn't want me to go back out onto the streets.  So your f***ing mother gave me so much f***ing booze I didn't know what was happening..."

In my old fashioned way, I thought, "At least there are no children listening to this rant."   And I moved forward on the platform to look at her properly.   Sitting on the bench near the loud lady was a small girl.   She must have been about eight, a beautiful child, clutching a carrier bag and watching her mother with wide eyes.

*sigh*   I think I'd rather live in Soho.

On Sunday I went to see the exhibition of paintings of Holly Woodlawn, one of Any Warhol's Superstars.   They are extraordinary, not at all what I expected.   The artist, Sadie Lee, has captured Holly as she is now, frail and aging, but with undiminished star quality.

Beforehand, there was a conversation with both the artist and Holly herself, skilfully conducted by Rupert Smith.   Holly was wonderful, anecdotes flowing, tangential, funny and raunchy.   A thoroughly entertaining afternoon, and great to see in the flesh one of the icons of cinematic and social history.

The exhibition of paintings of Holly Woodlawn by Sadie Lee is on at the Drill Hall until 11th November.  Well worth seeing.

I've been quiet because I've been in France.   Two weeks which I intended to devote to writing, eating and drinking.   The weather was excellent, except for one very wet day.

But in the second week one of the dogs -- the older one, Eliza -- became very ill.   The Vet was wonderfully kind, and my knowlege of obscure French veterinary terms has increased enormously.   But nothing they did had any effect.   A thorough examination indicated some kind of problem with her liver. Eliza was clearly deteriorating.

On Tuesday, we went for lunch to a river-side restaurant in the medieval port of  Dinan.   Eliza got out of the car, took a few faltering steps, and enjoyed a pleasing sniff at the bank.   Then I put her back in the car with the other dog.   Later we went to the Bar-Tabac in the main square of the village near the house.   Eliza walked with us and settled down in the sun outside the bar.  She stretched out comfortably.  I was stroking her and talking to her as she shuddered a bit, took a few panting breaths, and went still.

I am desolate, but comforting myself with the knowledge that she was 12 years 8 months old, had had a life of constant love and comfort, and that falling asleep in the sun outside a Breton Bar is probably the best way to go.

The story I submitted to a Torquere competition has appeared on their website.

It's called 'Welcome Down Under'.

Have a look at it if you get the chance!

http://www.torquerepress.com/contest/second.html

No, not the dodgy musical.  Mine.   I went to the hairdressers today.   Regular readers of this blog (all two of them) may remember that I like going to the hairdresser about as much as I like having teeth pulled without anaesthetic.

Entering the salon in my usual befuddled state, I thought the place had been taken over by a gang from the Baltic states.   Or the Balkans.  

The sulky girl at the desk spoke a foreign language. "Yersrite," she said, when I told her my name. "Kaertoo siddow?"

At what they quaintly call 'the backwash', she asked "Swater twat?" I yelped a bit as she blasted me with scalding liquid.   Then "Djoouant condishna?"

Later, she approached me again, a malevolent expression on her face. "Djoouant teeor kofee?"

"Yes please," I said, getting the hang of this.  "Milcno shoogerplis."

I don't go near shops as a rule.   If you were an alcoholic, you'd be ill advised to spent too much time in a pub.   But unleashed on a suburban town centre, I lost a little of my iron control. 

From the hairdressers (where I resisted the urge to buy 'product') I went to the health food shop and bought all sorts of vitamins plus something called 'Superfood Mix' which I think I need.  

Then to what I still, in my old-fashioned way, call the building society, but which shows off about now being a bank.   I only wanted to pay in cheques, and the queue was huge.   An assistant urged me to do it at the machine.   "I'll show you," she said.  "You'll get a receipt."  As I'm a technophile, and I've done this before, I rejected her offer of assistance in a lofty manner and went to the machine.   It ate two cheques and said, "Sorry, we are unable to issue a receipt at this time."   Someone came over and opened the machine and fiddled with the roll of paper inside it.   I tried again.   The assistant bounced over to me to tell me to put all the cheques in at once, just as the machine rejected cheque number five, which was from the same payee as two of the other ones which had gone through.   I pressed a button and it spat out the previous two cheques, but not the original, unacknowledged ones.  Quite ratty by now, I allowed myself to be led to the back of the 'bank' where I sat and waited while my remaining cheques were paid in the old way, and I got a print-out proving the earlier ones were in there somewhere.  It took about five times longer than if she'd left me in the queue in the first place.

Next stop, Waterstones, into which I walked muttering, "I must not go into this bookshop, I must not go into this bookshop!"  But I only bought one book, and that was half-price, so that's more or less saving money, isn't it?

A clothes shop next, where they insisted on me taking out a store card.   I've already got one, but they said it was probably out of date.   This one would give me 10% off and points!   There followed that long agonising wait when the assistant is on the phone and you know she's going to come back frowning and say, "Sorry, they say no."  

Not this time though, so I bounced out with my nice new purple sun dress and went into another shop which has some very nice designer clothes.   I've been buying them a lot from e-bay; other people's mistakes, new dresses with the tags still on, but much cheaper.   It was with much relief that I found several of 'my' garments in the shop, at much higher prices than I'd paid.

Then Marks and Spencers' food hall.  I hadn't had breakfast, so I'll leave the rest to your imagination.   Fortunately my collection of carrier bags was now so heavy that I had to head for the car-park and home, pausing only to get my pedometer fixed, because I'm developing a seriously anal-retentive desire to know far my various parking places are from the station when I go to work.

Whew!   Damage not too severe; hair, vitamins, nuts, book, dress, battery, food, wine...

And I no longer look like an elderly Grouse-sodden sheep.   I look like a young, aspiring hedgehog, with fashionable Grousy colours on its quills.

I can't let the date of August 12th go by without recording that it's the anniversary of the death of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, in 1822.

An Anglo-Irish politician who became Foreign Secretary, he was closely involved in the battle against Napoleon.   He fought a celebrated duel with George Canning.

In 1822, he became convinced he was about to be implicated in a homosexual scandal.   He had an audience with the King and told him he was being blackmailed.

The King told him to see a doctor.   It seems likely he was suffering from brain fever.   He went down to his house at North Cray, in Kent, where his family, sensing his desperation, removed all razors and sharp implements.

One story says he came across an itinerant peddlar selling penknives.   Another says he used a letter-opener.   Whatever it was, he cut his throat.

He was fifty-three.

When I had mad thoughts of doing a doctorate, Castlereagh was my subject.   A brilliant, flawed and interesting man.

'Animal Attraction' is out!  

This anthology of gay romance is edited by Vincent Diamond and is available now from Torquere.

There are lots of brilliant stories involving a host of interesting animals.

Mine is called 'Bungalow Bill'

Do have a look...