WRITING FOR FUN
The 2015 Man Booker Prize winner was
recently announced, so with great relief I thank the judges for not including
my wroken and spitten words on the short list.
Chapter 1
Who Knows?
Some say that Mukha
Mubarach-Blenkinsop is a very mixed up man, but only on his parents’ side. However
he is called Shirley for short. Others
say he is not mixed up or mixed down, and if anything more likely to be mixed
sideways. But who are the they who say
these things and think these things behind open eyes? Are they from somewhere up t’North or from
somewhere down t’South, East or West, when depending on western imperial global
orientation?
Other others will use virulent viral verbotics to say at the end of the
day, moving on, going forward, in the final analysis, the Heseltine fact of the
matter is – Mukha’s mixedupedness is the outcome-uppance of obviously absolutely
clearly challenging challenges, challenging clearly absolutely obviously
counter-intuitive indicators of genitally transmitted unculminatory multi-culturalisation.
Even eminent philosophers can only pose
questions about who morrises the Morris Men and who queens the Queen, but
that’s not what we are discussing here.
By we, I mean you and I – the reader and the writer, who hardly constitute
a critical mass of postmodernist psychological erudition, philosophical truthisms
and neuro-scientific ideas about the human condition. Yet there are other other others who may now
be trolling and twittering on about their notions of Mukha, derived from what
they think they know about what they don’t know about the unknown.
“Wait a minute” you may say for the
first time. “I am reading these words in
one part of the world, and you have written these words in another part of the
world. So where’s the discussion? Does it take place in some sort of cyber
space or are you being patronising and presumptuously inclusive?”
We will discuss this more briefly in
Chapter 6. In the meantime, let’s not
forget to remember to respect a serious writer’s rights to display his academical
credentials by repeatedly cross-referencing his writings in his writing – that
is, if he is a he and not a she. Although
shes do do it. But let’s not muddy our
minds at the moment in a quagmire of sexually correct political innuendo.
More on this coming up later – to use television presenter-speak.
As I was about to say before being interrupted – me myself and I, to name
not four, know no thing about Mukha’s Shirley for shortness. And I suspect that you also know no thing
about the chap, unless you happen to be his older half sister Malady
Braithwaite (once wedded) or the woman from the Post Office, who only works
part-time most of the time on odd days of the week in any two consecutive
fortnights.
Having said that rather than this, which is one of my European Human
Rights entitlements, I am still somewhat vicariously curious, with no
particular vested interest in the vestry, about Mukha and those who allegedly
allege his mixedupedness on their phart smones.
Do we know for example, if he
Shirley is married to a one-legged light-brown LGBT activist lesbian amateur
pole vaulter and much loved surrogate mother of seventeen legitimate
children? Is he interested in her amateur
pole vaulting or professional gold-medalling pole vaulting? If he has no interest even in three-legged
pole vaulting, is that in itself contributing to his being mixed up, down,
around, sideways or diagonally? Or is it
all after all, all on his parents’ side?
We just don’t know. Nor do we know who does know, and whether
they would want to know those of us who might want to know. The obvious question here is – why would
anyone want to know? Well, we just don’t
know.
Is
there more to know about the unknown than is known about the known?
Who knows? What we do know is that there are always
people who want to know, and you and I could be two of those people. We would need a lot of information perhaps from
the woman at the Post Office – who is said by some to polish her moustache with
thick brown hand-picked ear wax – in order to form an informed opinion about
Mukha’s life and times.
As to whether he is mixed up down
around or sideways, is arguably only of similar importance to splitting hairs
on a grasshopper’s knee which, as we all well know, is a lot less dangerous
than splitting the hairs on a helicopter pilot’s legs.
You may be beginning to think this
is getting a bit too serious, especially when it gets to splitting hairs on a
helicopter pilot’s legs as he’s hovering his chopper over a storm-stricken ship
on the rocks. It really would be risky while
his plucky new winch wench Wendy Fairweather is harnessed to a hook, dangling on
the end of his winch wire, bravely rescuing 14 Pethuanian merchant seamen
rocking at nautically jaunty angles awash the wheelhouse, trying to re-light
their sea-salty soggy cigarettes.
New
EU regulations state that British winch women must refuse to rescue smoking
sailors – despite the number of stormy Mondays in a month of Sundays.
Most cargo shipwrecks near the shore,
be they lucrative for looters and Lloyds loss adjustors, almost always leave us
longing for more information about the whereabouts of Frogman Bates. His exact whereabouts are of course well known
by his fellow frogmen who call him Sharky for short, but what Shark has got to
do with Bates, only they know – it must be one of their underwater in-jokes.
Moreover, Frogman Bates has rarely been seen without wearing a one-piece
skin-tight black rubber wet suit, mask and flippers, with heavy oxygen bottles
strapped to his back. Yet with all that
protective rubberwear, he may still be hiding under water giving a wide berth
to pedantically enthusiastic leg hair splitters.
Perhaps the only person who really knows where he is, is Frogman Bates
himself – but where is he? In a flock of
frogmen, is he in that black wet suit mask and flippers, or in that black wet
suit mask and flippers? Or is he
somewhere else, secretly seeing Chesty Nell from the Frog and Nightgown?
The Playgroup
Something not so dissimilar could be
said about Mukha, pronounced Mukha.
Surely he, Shirley, should be aware of his own whereabouts and whether
or not he is mixed up inside, or mixed up in something outside down by the
canal.
Unbeknownst to us, he could be enjoying
a well-earned week off work at the Way-on-High Book Festival. He could be in the Authors Wet Tent sipping
champagne with George Monbiot, Joan Bakewell and Melvyn Bragg, hushedly
discussing the country girl’s perennial porn book “Let the Dog see the Rabbit”.
They could be hotly discussing George’s
pet subject global warming, warming up the limp libidos of hundreds of Joan’s
favourite silver-haired senior citizens – many of whom are suspected by the
Lake District Constabulary of recklessly riding their turbo-charged mobility
scooters up Melvyn’s beloved Cumbrian mountain sheep tracks – in pursuit of
some hot dogging on globally warmed sites.
It says without going, so I’ll say
it in accordance with conventional contradiction, that these new-age born-again
wrinkly old swingers and babyboomers, who prefer to be called The Playgroup,
are not able to frighten the horses at 1,000 ft above sea level. But what about the sheep and little lambs you
may ask, who gaily gambol at that altitude with no need for mobility scooters, face
masks and oxygen bottles strapped to their backs.
Might not those innocent sure-footed
sheep be frightened by the sight of Viagra virilised voyeurs and vicarious old
doggers and doggeresses engaging in fresh air sexercises with strangers at high
altitude? Perhaps yes, but possibly
no. Though thankfully for The Playgroup,
no more flooded car parks, lay-bys and woods at lovers lane level. Doggers never did take kindly to PC police
patrol men who, while wearing fetching uniforms of authority and brandishing
hand cuffs and hard rubber truncheons, were always too shy and sheepish to join
in the fun.
Chapter
3
Frogman Bates
Frogman Bates on the other hand,
wears a waterproof watch which never gives him enough time to use his moral
compass to get a bearing on The Playgroup’s high altitude dogging. This may be because he spends most of his
time below sea level. And, because his
spare time is devoted to diving deep down into the murky depths of Derwent
Water, dredging up the crashed remnants of dead doggers’ world water speed record-breaking
jet-propelled mobility scooters.
However, if he spent less time on
Chesty Nell’s charms, he would have more time on both hands. He could then easily
climb up to a 1,000 ft Cumbrian mountain dogging site by breathing oxygen from
the bottles on his back. The irony is
that he may not make this climb in speed-dating time, due to the weight of the
oxygen bottles and the floppiness of his frogman’s flippers while running up
the steep sheep tracks. But with the oxygen
bit between his teeth, combined with dogged determination, he could get to the
top just in time to take a very dim view of the doggers – possibly due to
global warming and heavy breathing steaming up his cold water face mask.
He could of course, by removing his
face mask and both his floppy flippers, get a much brighter view of dogging and
want to do it with The Playgroup. But in
the time it would take to extricate himself from his zip-stuck skin-tight
sweaty onesy wet suit, the old doggers would have done it, raced back down the
mountain and be home for a hot cup of Horlicks – no pun intended.
Anyway, Frogman Bates would be too
young and wet behind the ears for mountain dogging according to The Playgroup’s
criteria, which is strictly for the over 80s, or just under, who must at least hold
a provisional licence for 50cc mountain walking frames, fitted with
hand-assisted steering and wind-powered wolf whistles.
The
dear old dog in the sky would mess up his breakfast if he knew his human best
friends were running free, without dog collars’ barking mad moral dogmas, and
having a wonderful time up on the immoral high ground.
Chapter
4
Sheep Shagging
For years and years, if not years of
yore, it has oft been said in uncertain circles and squares that warm woolly
sheep are groomed and seduced into innocently providing unlicensed sexual
services for certain men of a certain persuasion, albeit at not so certain
times of the day and night in any four weeks of the month. At the time of writing, without importantising-up
what we discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, it is certainly uncertain as to whether
women are of a similar persuasion.
A recent government funded, scientifically
conducted, anecdotal sexual survey reveals that 47% of women have a preference
for rabbits rather than sheep. The other
53% of those interviewed were less sheepish than the police about outdoor sex,
but more sheepish when questioned about their abiding affection for dogs and
riding horses bareback. Putting side
saddles to one side, a few more than just over 8.9% of the 53% of females, started
giggling when asked about the shape and size of some vegetables. Nonetheless, without probing questions about
optional anal ticklers, certainty is certainly uncertain in certain sexual
surveys.
Is
there a Nobel Prize for alliterative literature?
Chapter
5
WWW.
It’s too soon to footnote-up
what we might not be discussing in the index and glossary after Chapter 9. So let’s continue uninterrupted, without
coming up with what’s upcoming in Chapter 6.
People living in towns, cities and the suburbs are known to name
sheep-shagging as sheep-shagging, and as far as we know, which might not be
very far, is done by men and seldomly by women, especially on special
occasions. Whereas country folk and
folkesses, including the only LGBT carrot-crunchers in the village, are known
to name this somewhat rural pursuit as sheep-shagging.
Nouveau riche footballers and their wags are also happy with the words
sheep-shagging, but not within earshot of their darling daughters Fulham and
Chelsea, and their beautiful boys Heathrow and Gatwick. However, in old money upper class country
house parlance, both above and below stairs, sheep and their shaggableness are
affectionately referred to as www. Woolly Willy Warmers and some far less
conventional forms of willy warming can, in the tourist season, be purchased at
all good woolly sheep shops from Kendal to Cockermouth – floods permitting.
Chapter
6
Wroken and Spitten Words
“Listen up” – in the language of uptosser flabber ghastards. All this chapter hopping, up-tossing and the
ludicrous phrasing below, is only pokey joking about dirty pillow talk on a
badly made bed – often tossed and turned on by super self-indulgent promiscuous
non-fiction writers to sex-up and seduce us, innocent readers, into
sophistrifical fore and after play between the sticky sheets of their literary
licentiousness.
In other words, they risibly write – “the former and the latter and the
latter and the former are this and that and that and this. And the latter and the former and the former
and the latter are that and this and this and that.” Oh my boggled brain! Better go back and forth and read it a few
more times – don’t want to get the former mixed up with the latter and the
latter mixed up with the former.
As
the old saying goes – “If it won’t go into a septic tank, put it in a book.”
Chapter
7
Rubbish
In short, the short, medium and long
term global warming of cold, wet and windy mountain sheep shagging sites will
diminish the demand for four-legged woolly willy warmers. Rising global temperatures will also warm up cold old mountain doggers and so adversely affect the livelihoods of
hard-working hot dog salesmen, Viagra vendors and Dogging Today Festival ticket
touts.
Furthermore, and possibly to the point of conjecture, hotter high
altitude dogging raises crucial questions about the conservation of pristine mountain
environments. What is so newsworthy
about the Pope’s recent encyclical which re-cycles “The world is going to the
dogs” story of ancient times? Why does
his vaticanised high holiness make no mention of the 21st century environmental
benefits to be derived from re-cycling the rubbish tossed aside on The
Playgroup’s mountain dogging sites? Doesn’t
the Pope know that re-cycling won’t work without rubbish?
Chapter
8
Question Time
“Wait a minute” you may say for the
second time. “What about the whereabouts and mixedupedness of Mukha Mubarach-Blenkinsop
on his parents’ side? What about winch wench
Wendy Fairweather and the 14 Pethuanian sailors? What about Frogman Bates being dumped by the
doggers, and his late night liaisons with Chesty Nell in the car park behind
the Frog and Nightgown? What’s going on down by the canal and at the Way-on-High
Book Festival? What has upward mobility
scooter dogging got to do with the European Union legislation on sheep shaggers’
human rights? What about the sheep’s four-legged
animal rights to be believed, by two-legged sheepish policemen, about being
bent over a dry stone wall with their back legs stuck in the front of a sheep
shagger’s Wellington
boots?”
These are very good questions, as
public speakers say in very short Q and A sessions. But these very very questions may turn out to
be unanswerable, not only by twin sisters Amnesia and Dementia Chakrafarhta,
but also by their other brother Morny Hodgekiss whose long-term foulweather
friends call him Shorty for short, when they’re cavorting around on glamorous
Bollywood film sets near the terror-torn Pakistan border with outer Muslimland.
“Wait a minute” you may say for the
third time. “What’s all this about the
Chakrafarhta identical twins, one or the other of whom is not known to suffer
from Sitar Affective Disorder? What
about Molly Maidment’s fat ankle and the greasy goose? And where’s the method
for mixing mayonnaise with a lavatory brush? Aren’t you supposed to be a
writer?
“Where’s the eloquent narrative, the gripping story, the plot, the sub
plot, the sub-sub plot, the back story, the front story, the morality tale, the
dark dank dungeons, gothic attics, murder scenes and
unanswered answerphone messages? Where
are the fully formed characters and their emotional entanglements? Where are the corpses in morgue drawers and
the clues to who dunnit?
“Where’s the war, the family feud, the rags-to-riches refugee, the hero,
the heroine, the anti-hero, the romance, the bedroom scene, the damsel in
distress, the good-hearted harlot, the city at night, the journey, the foreign
landscape, the coming home, the flashback, the dream scene, the sci-fi future
and the mysterious disappearance of superfluous characters?
“Where’s the most evocative first sentence of all time, the
page-turnerness, the psychological drama and the unexpected ending? Where’s the benefit of all those creative
writing courses? Where’s the writing
about what the writer knows about? Where’s
the forensically researched zeitgeistical past and post-modernistical present
in which the author’s semi-autobiographical fict-fact notions and prose, after
years of writer’s block in a garden shed, give rise to a Booker Prize?”
Chapter
9
Playing with Words
By now, you might also chide – “No it’s
not Mukha who’s mixed up, it’s you and your writing. Dear Mukha aka Shirley, bless him. He could be a very happy wholesome healthy
well balanced un-mixed-up man.
“For all anyone knows, Mukha could be manned up, made up, pumped up,
backed up, geared up, joined up, spruced up, dressed up, sexed up and next up
for successfully successing up his success-ups.
“He
could also be up-loading, up-scaling, up-grading, up-cycling, up-dating,
up-nexting, up-texting and skilfully up-skilling his skilful set of skill-ups.
“He could be parking up, meeting up, voicing up, chatting up, listening
up, wiseing up, heading up, looking up and going up the downside of his
upside.
“He could be up-front, up for up-coming and coming-up, well up on the up
and up, up on his uppers and up on the up-take for upping-up his upt-up upness.
“Call yourself a writer? You
couldn’t even write 50 words of crap copywriting for a widgets-we-don’t-need
advert in the back pages of The Oslo Follower!”
Well, I don’t call myself a writer.
I don’t call myself anything, except a human being, being. Although I do admit to a bit of quirky wordplay
with proper writers’ writing, and their backwards and forwards confusing self
cross-referencing that ‘we discussed’ earlier in Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter
4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 8 and now in Chapter 9.
Besides, when under the spurious identity of musician / writer, I can
play with the rhythmic repetition of stupid sheople-speak, and have fun satirising
the ridiculous tricks of the trade employed by serious professional writers.
Thank goodness I am not a proper or professional writer. Nor am I secretly desirous of, or ambitiously
motivated by fame, money, power, prizes, awards, honours, prestige or peer
group approval. So with no aspirations,
I am free to enjoy playing with words – just writing for fun. I also enjoy playing tennis for fun, fucking
for fun and drumming for fun – fun-da-mental for mind body and spirit.
Writing for fun is salubrious
silliness and seriosserty – the felicitous fecundity of which naively
transcends the coercive conformity of the specious literati.
This freedom allows unknown energy and un-asked-for ideas in my head to flow
down my arm, and magically move my hand to make spontaneous inky pen marks
between the lines of feint lined A4 paper.
And then, on a day not conducive to tennis, I tell my favourite
typochology lady – who prefers to remain anonymous under the non-misogynist
pseudonym Fuckslut – to brace herself for the rough thrust of a few more
thousand words.
With much ensuing mutual mirth and some real fore and after play, she
diligently transforms my didacticatiously dictated words into a beautiful digital
blogstone – to last forever and a day, and the day after.
By
the way, who really knows who the they are who say they can extend forever with
only one extra day?
Universal
energy and nature’s life force provide people with the wherewithal to abuse the
natural world and make a mad human world in which someone’s got to do it,
whatever the ‘it’ is – and somewhere somehow someone always will.
“All
my books have been pulped” – said the writer.
“Perhaps
they don’t burn well” – said the wise man.
Bravo, dear boy. Been wondering when we could expect some more output. I look forward to our next lunch.
ReplyDeleteHi Michael. We met and bantered at the tennis club. Have you really not added anything since 2016!! I'm shocked.... ))
ReplyDeletehttps://hubpages.com/@vrdm
Best wishes,
Martin