The
Call of the Porcelain
By
Dominic Horton
Apologies
if the standard of this week's edition is even worse than usual but I
am ill with my ongoing mild-graine difficulties and associated issues
so I feel more drained than the Pirate's glass shortly after opening
time. The illness is getting
me down now due to its enduring (yet fluctuating) nature and also due
to the fact that the doctors (I use the plural as I have consulted
more than one GP) have yet to properly diagnose what it is. As
previously discussed Dr Mangolatta
seems to think that I have post-viral fatigue, which may well be true
but it sounds a bit vague to me; I would be a little more convinced
if he had diagnosed post-Flagon fatigue. To extend my gloominess I
also have diarrhea, not the verbal sort as found in this column but
your actual.
 |
| A Kindle (all pictures by request of Toby In-Tents) |
On
my insistence Mangolatta has finally referred me to a consultant but
on investigation I have discovered that he is primarily a
rheumatologist, dealing with conditions such as arthritis and
inflammatory rheumatic disorders. Given the consultant's specialism
I strongly challenged the doctor on the referral but he
was adamant that a rheumatologist was the right consultant to see and
he did not waiver from this view on further questioning from me. I
envisage visiting the consultant only for him to state,
“unfortunately I cannot help you with your illness Mr Horton as I
do not advise on such complaints. But while you are here I might as
well tell you that on first sight of your hands it seems to be the
case that you have the beginnings of rheumatoid arthritis in your
fingers.”
To
compound my woe there has been another defeat in the romance wars
this week when I suffered heavy casualties at the Battle of Bartons
Arms, where I took a young lady to dinner. She is an auditor by
profession and she obviously quickly audited me and was not impressed
with my Lowlifian drollery and later that evening after she had
retreated back to her trench she sent an expertly aimed shell to
finish me off. And who can blame her. So as 1930's football
commentators used to say on the radio it is back to square one. At
least to soften the blow it is two courses for a tenner at the
Bartons Arms on a Tuesday evening; if I had paid the normal menu
price for the meal I would have had to instigate a steward's enquiry
into the whole sorry affair. Although the auditor seemed to enjoy
the evening I knew that the writing was on the wall when I dropped
her off at her house as she was out of the car in the blink of an
eyelid and dashed homeward quicker than Usain Bolt with a rocket up
his ar*e, without so much as a peck on the cheek or a “thanks for
the memories.”
 |
| A Greek Adonis |
The
dating game is thoroughly demoralising and depressing, especially
when you try to meet someone via the internet. Although I know I
am no Robert Redford in his pomp I at least possess the basic
requirements of adequate boyfriend material of not being fat, having
my own hair and teeth (despite a few being in absentia and most of
the remaining hosting metal), being able to string a sentence
together (whilst sober) or not being bankrupt or impotent (though
things seem to be slowly going south in that regard or more
accurately not going north as quickly and as frequently as they used
to – Nottingham is an achievement most times and Barrow-in-Furness
is a bleeding miracle). As a suitable date for a lady, in Premier
League terms I would say that I am Swansea City or Hull at the very
least; I am not going to qualify for Europe but at least I am not
going to get relegated.
There
must be an army of Greek Adonis supermen infiltrating internet dating
sites snapping up all the ladies in their wake, as despite me sending
potential suitors tasteful, thoughtful, attentive and mildly amusing
messages I am lucky if they have the decency to reply to tell me to
f*ck off and crawl back under the stone from whence I came. I
might be better off giving internet dating the cold shoulder and
reverting to more traditional and organic methods of meeting a lady
in the flesh, as used to happen in the days when knights were bold
and women were happy if you bought them a drink prior to a bit of
slap and tickle. The only issue with this tack is that there is more
chance of the Pirate becoming teetotal than me meeting a suitable
young lady in the places that I commonly frequent, being the Flagon &
Gorses and the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeaway.
Being
on my own is one of the reasons that summer is my least favourite
season as when the sun comes out and the weather turns clement there
is such a big expectation that everyone gets out and about to have
what is universally perceived as fun. But as I am alone I much
prefer the winter where you can hide in the dark and retreat from the
cold and hibernate, whether that be in my Codger Mansions dwelling or
in the Flagon & Gorses. Anyway summertime can lead to hay fever,
feeling clammy, being bitten by midges and other beasties and having
a headache caused by the heat, so it is often not all what it is
cracked up to be. And the price of sun lotion makes the “free”
pastime of sun bathing almost prohibitive, and I need at least a
factor 50 with my pasty, Nordic skin. Give me a crisp day in
January any day of the week.
 |
| The Antithesis of a Greek Adonis - DG Depardieu |
One
of my jobs for this summer is to lock myself away from all the
oppressive fun and move my writing on a bit. I found out about the
success that some authors have had publishing work strictly for the
Kindle market via Amazon self publishing, whereby no advance is paid
but the author receives a royalty from “books” sold. Like a lot
of artistic people I am happy to do the creative bit but I am fairly
oblivious to all of the other considerations of actually getting work
out in the public domain and all that it entails. To that end I
wrote to my writing crony DG
Depardieu (writer of rodent based children's literature) to ask his
expert opinion on the Amazon publishing lark.
DG
posed me a number of questions, such as: a) How will you publicise
the work? My answer: I will put up a notice in the Flagon &
Gorses of course. b) Who will professionally edit the book? My
answer: I
am sure that Willy Mantitt would edit the work as long as I buy him a
bottle of his favourite tipple, the superlative Sicilian spirit
Limoncello; in practice he will get one of his Polish underlings at
work to undertake the task, who can barely speak English let alone
read it; c) Would your current readers (and would prospective readers
of the kind of things you write) be amenable to downloading books
onto a Kindle or would they prefer traditional paper books? My
answer: My first thought was to challenge such an assumption and
state that I have a cosmopolitan and modern readership who are more
than au fait with modern technology such as Kindles. But in
actuality most of my readers think that a Kindle is a chocolate egg
with a surprise gift in the middle which can be purchased from most
reputable newsagents. I do know for a fact that Jolly D has a
Kindle as his missus bought him one for Christmas. I am not sure
that he has ever actually used it though. The height of technology
in the Flagon (where my readership base is) is a little word device
that looks like a calculator that the Pirate uses to cheat at
crosswords.
One
bloke (I forget his name) uploaded a book onto Amazon and sold
200,000 copies and this lead to a proper publishing deal and he is
now a full time writer. That said the main difference is that
the author in question's work is well written and popular and not
amateurish vignettes on misery and pub life in a small Midlands town.
Together
with my dear son, Kenteke, I have started to read DG's latest book,
My Hamster is a Spy, which is
part of his excellent ongoing Stinky & Jinks Hamster series. As
DG must be getting bored of writing the Hamster books I have offered
to ghost write his next offering which I will entitle My
Hamster is a Borderline Alcoholic; an
adult theme I know but after all DG's readers are not going to be
kids forever and they will need to be introduced to the harsh
realities of life sooner or later. And that brings to a close
another edition of this incongruous missive which is just as well as
with some urgency the porcelain calls ….......
©
Dominic Horton, May 2014.
(See
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Dave%20lowe%20hamster
if you are interested in DG Depardieu's
books
.)
*
EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.
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