The BoxRoom Boy

I wake up on Sundays and it ain’t some kind of perfect young couple awakening where I leave the flat looking slightly unshaven but well turned out to some popular tune that invokes a sense of additional coolness to my life.

I don’t nod to a friendly newspaper seller, shake hands with a safe looking local, help a sweet old lady across the road before giving her a roguish kiss on the cheek. I don’t go into a superb looking café, order fresh coffee and various awesome breakfast foodings.

I don’t get back to the flat to the girlfriend still languishing beautifully in bed with all the good stuff I just bought and we don’t end up having a slow-motion pillow fight with our clean bright pillows, surrounded by gorgeous bed linen and awesome-cool-retro bedroom furniture.

No.

I wake up on Sundays and I invariably have a hangover. I make a big mug of strong, sweet black coffee and this is all I see for a good while:

Then, depending on whether I get my eyesight back swiftly enough, I slouch in front of the telly for a bit before putting the Xbox on and giving some aliens a good punch up the bracket.

A bit later Jen awakes and before long it’s her turn to indulge in alien bracket punching.

Bacon sandwich.

Pub.

Dinner.

I fucking love those Sundays.

When the Elders of Dark Fiction Magazine cornered us we begged, pleaded desperately, even went to the bar to get the drinks in. They spared our lives but tasked us with running DFM as they wanted to take a step back and leave things in hands deemed capable.

I looked at my hands seriously, and thoughtfully, to emphasise my responsible nature.

Then Jen and I went for beers, ciders and sausage rolls in our local to discuss whether we could feasibly do this thing.

Could we?

We have so many other things to do, we just don’t have the time.

So we agreed to do it anyway. We’d find the time.

And we did.

Our first issue at the helm, Issue 11, is now done. It’s out there (or in here) and it’s a beauty.

Great stories, great narrations, great artwork too. All the things you would expect DFM to deliver and we really hope people like it because The Elders wouldn’t take kindly to us mucking it up. We signed in blood, see, and that’s like well serious and stuff.

It was a good challenge learning how to put everything together for this, so many fiddly bits to click, arrange and wonder where it’s disappeared to… There have been quite a few hours put into this as Jen might agree. Now it’s done we’re working on the next issue and hoping that in time it all becomes as familiar as an old black cat.

So please, enjoy! Enjoy A LOT. Or… or… something.

The day started well at least. I woke up! Always a good start, hahaaa! It was 3.30am mind, a time only my younger self was familiar with when he could get away with staying up all night and then going to the pub again the very next afternoon, usually playing catchup too.

6am we arrived at Euston, trainway to the stars, to see that the stars had gone out and were replaced with the across-the-board indication that all transport in the country had been cancelled and used as clothes hangers or something.

Not all was lost. We were a bit though. But light at the end of the tunnel proved to be the end of the tunnel, so we got through that tunnel via about, roughly, ten or eleven different trains and arrived no later than three hours late to the event we’ve already sold our kidneys just to get to. The SFX Weekender.

We mooched around, had a cup of tea, bumped into familiar faces that we love and cherish and sometimes punish with tough love and elbow grease and we could start to relax.

Time for a beer then! Lovely. Beer. After such a horrendous journey navigating various locomotive companies, traps and peril (and sausage rolls of dubious intent) a beer would be most welcome indeed. Although halfway through said first lovely pint I started to develop what can only be described as a migraine because that’s exactly as factual as you can get.

I lasted as long as I could and then went for an early night to die quietly to myself, crying softly into the night until oblivion took me and stuffed me into pain-filled dreams of harsh despair and needles and shit like that.

Saturday saw me struggling to arise but I did it, magnificently too I might be proud enough to add, and I went out to use the alcohol method of migraine reduction (not advised at all… really… but it bloody helped!).

I enjoyed myself, I met more people I knew, I met people I didn’t know. I marvelled and goggled at the excellence of people and their creativity and imagination and drinking skills. I had enough change to buy a book I was that taken with it all. Still haven’t read it. It seems to be made of paper and doesn’t turn the page when you press the side of it. I’m at a loss quite frankly!

The bad side of the event itself was fewfold although the only whinging I heard on the days themselves were coming from my own hallowed gob which, exclusively, referred to the food. The fallout whinging is being done online and quite frankly there are a fair few disgruntled knobends as well as disgruntled righteous heroes. 

There were other troubles encountered of course, a train got derailed by Steven Seagal and Bruce Willis (something about terrorists stealing egg covered diamonds, plenty of wisecracks apparently and also the world was saved) which caused our own travel woes as well as better important people that were supposed to be on stage telling us anecdotes about when they threw up over Paul Daniels or something similar. There was the Pontins Effect which states, in all the volumes of The Life Manual of Life that have ever existed, that it sucks your soul through your urethra, even if you haven’t got one, and then spits your hopes and dreams into the anus of a disgruntled toss monkey stuffed up a dead tiger’s nose hole. And there was, most heinous of all, the food.

The food, to be fair, was illegal. But also a secret government testing ground for germ warfare and bum tolerance. Also doubling as a rat killing drive as tonnes of infected geek shittings flooded the sewers of North Wales. Still waiting for the results on that one but I reckon they’re quite significant.

I conclude with a conclusion: It wasn’t a convention really. Not really, in the end. It was a bunch of great people at a convention-like event that was conventionishly conventional. Everyone I saw (later damning moans and pissing contests aside) looked like they were having a good time and despite my lack of eye patch to shield my raging ocular pain, feeling like the devil’s own testicle was lodged in my eye socket, I had a really, really good time.

Mind you, we had hot water.

“Fuck off! Those cunts are more evil than I am!”

I’m not an idiot. Mostly. I’ve done my fair share of idiocy in my life, that’s not ever a matter for dispute. I’ve fucked up, got it wrong, acted the Benny, fucked up some more, ridiculed my ancestry, offended innocent mortals, fucked up even worse and also streaked in front of a couple of teenage girls (so my mother tells me, I was 2 at the time).

Every so often I’m standing outside or by the back door just staring into space while inhaling nicotine into my system and not even reflecting on my past and how much of an idiot I was and then out of the blue there’s something like a slide show that *click* damn *click* damn *click* damn well reminds me of completely stupid, idiotic, cringeworthy things that have occurred to me in my life that have been my fault.

Thanks to a friend that has become a sort of official biographer of me and my good ol’ core group of college origin band of friends, I won’t mention his name (Mike), some of this facepalm cringefest is actually available on video, DVD and possibly now even Blu-Ray.

To be fair to the unmentionable fellow (Mike), over the years he has certainly assisted in filling in a whole hell of a lot of memory blanks! Whether we wanted to remember or not… that’s irrelevant…

But, I hear you ask, What’s for tea? Well I don’t know! Stop thinking about your stomach for a few seconds and carry on reading please. Bloody hell.

You should be asking: Marty, what the bloody hell are you talking about? What’s the point of this?

The point is… I guess it takes an idiot to know an idiot. Therefore if I get stressed at the idiocy around me then I’m probably thinking that I was like that once or, at least, I pretty much understand where that idiot is coming from. Possibly. Either way, stop being an idiot, it causes me flashbacks.

Ta.

I would like to state for the record though that Mike is awesome. He’s the fella that let me use his music for the intro and outro for The Bearcast (and Lost Bearings, the audio comedy/drama thing) and that without him I would be a lesser man. There. I said it.

He has no business being in a blog post about idiots so now the record is set straight.

Thinking about it… I should have done a completely Mike focussed post to explain that but then all my friends, of which I have at least… some would have wanted their own blog certificates of glory.

Stuff that!

(but I do love you all nonetheless!)

“Dear God,” I say not for the first time this week in response to yet another show of evidence of the general stupidity of the general conduct of what is currently labelled homo sapiens sapiens, so good they named it twice. But there I stop. Why don’t I continue this verbal letter I just started to the beardy cloud lord that lives in one of the greatest works of fiction ever known?

Well, why not indeed? I need to find a religious nutter’s soapbox, push him off it and start dictating my letter to this fictitious deity so many people seem to think actually exists and looks down upon them with fatherly love and guidance akin to the legendary Papa Smurf of medieval songs, books and videos (Betamax probably).

So I start. I start very well too! “Dear God,” I begin again. “Look at this idiot for a start.” I get distracted by a jaywalking, sauntering, oblivious chap either unaware of the danger of the metallic beasts that pelt down the road or, more disturbingly, putting his faith in The Lord of all things to see him safely across to Morrison’s with minimal horn beepage and even less leg loss. Somehow he makes it over the road and his aura of self-centred, smug invincibility gives me pause for concern. “Look,” I glare at the sky. “I know you don’t exist but still, that berk had it coming! How is it that he made it safely across the road and didn’t cause an accident or get broken? He was ripe for it!”

As I grumble on about how God is rubbish by letting this sort of thing happen, I go to step down from the soapbox, twist my ankle, fall and squash my sandwiches.

I limp after the surviving sauntersod and decide to follow him to see him eventually fail at something. Anything.

“This isn’t over, God. You non-existent buggerflip.” I vow and continue upon my way with a fiery new purpose. “Amen.”

Artist’s impression of what a God might look like when ignoring things

Travel chaos hit London today as all buses in the city were sent home to think about things and figure out where they went wrong.

Posh-schooled Mayor, Boris Wankstein, backed the move as something terribly important that needed shaking up and reforming as a revolution in the wheels of industry.

The trouble started on the back seat of the 176 which was found to have a battered box of half-eaten fried chicken hailing from one of the grubbier, cheapo type lesser fried chicken outlets allegedly from somewhere along the Walworth Road in the South East of the capital. The bus carried on regardless towards Oxford Circus while being hampered by low-witted sauntering jaywalkers, drivers on their mobile communication devices weaving to and fro in search of low-witted jaywalkers, the bizarre bell-ringing bus travellers cult that fray the senses of anyone with ears who are shouting in the privacy of their skulls, “Stop ringing that bloody bell! The driver heard the first one!” and ultimately slowed to a crawl by school-run mothers jamming rush-hour traffic up because their precious little one needs a chauffeur to their place of educational torment and back again in time for fish fingers and peas.

“They’re the worst of the lot,” a bus driver said once. “Traffic flows like a honey-filled dream at half-term. And honey that flows really fast, not the kind that takes ages I mean.”

Boris Wankstein asked for volunteers in the bus driver world to take up the reins of offering a school bus service but none of them looked at him in case he chose them anyway and then talks broke down as they all voted to go and have a comfort break and a bun before heading to the pub for the day.

“Obviously I’m disappointed,” Boris commented. “I was hoping someone would bring me a bun.”

In the meantime all buses are sulking at home and refusing to come out again.

Artist’s impression of what a bus is like.

Since last I updated this place there have been a few things going on that are very much well worthy of your ears.

In Dark Fiction Magazine - Issues 8 and 9 - There are these two beauties:

Issue 8, Voices from the Past,  I read Paul Cornell’s story A Map of Lychford

Issue 9, Heroic Fables, I read James Barclay’s story Twain. Issue 9 is a six story edition including 3 regular length short stories as well as 3 flash fiction stories that were the winning entries of the competition we ran.

The Bearcast has made a triumphant return for a further 7 shows this year. As I type we are only a day and a bit away from the finale of Series 3! Danny and I have had a great time doing this again and will shortly be reigniting the heating system that powers the Soldiers of Tangent podcast back for a second run sometime very soon indeed.

There’s plenty of other stuff in the pipeline that pipes concentrated awesome around the globe, it’s all just a matter of time really!

Apart from all that, how are you? Are you well? Has that thing cleared up that your doctor told us all about when he got drunk?

Also your payment is overdue regarding those negatives I’m due to post to the press and the authorities in the next day or so, just a gentle reminder…

Do you fancy yourself as a good reader? We are always looking for good voice actors who are willing to perform readings of Dark Fiction stories.

http://darkfictionmagazine.submishmash.com/submit/4402/account

What is Dark Fiction Magazine?

http://www.darkfictionmagazine.co.uk/

It was a brilliant idea, legendary even, and I was just drunk enough. Matt suggested doing a reunion gig of our old band before we all hit 40 and I enthusiastically agreed, got even more drunk and then slept the sleep of the mighty.

When I woke up the next day I was:

a) Hungover
b) Curious as to where I was
c) Regretting agreeing to the reunion gig

It was around 20 years ago we last played together, I hadn’t played bass for over 10 years, I had forgotten all of the songs and I had forgotten how to play the bloody bass too.

There was a great turn out, a lot more people than I was expecting. Some old faces, friends and even family were there which was great just for seeing them again. Now though I had to proove myself, show them that I can play the bass and do it rather well despite having to pretty much pick things up from scratch.