Saturday 7 June 2014

Fatman


Weave has just mentioned - almost in passing - the irritation caused every Saturday morning, when she scans the 'chatty' column of a local countryside magazine, written by someone who cannot resist using every alternative word instead of the one which describes it most simply. (I had a hard job composing that sentence, and it's still bloody clumsy - maybe I have become a bit self-concious).

Quite often, my Blogger Dashboard tells me that I am not following any other posts than my own, which I know is untrue, and so do you.

So to fill the space on the screen which is normally occupied by all your latest posts, they give me handy hints as to how to compose my own, not realising that I have had quite a lot of experience doing just that over the last few years.

They give a realistic example of how a post looks on the dashboard, after it has been given a title by a writer, and the title it has been given is 'About Kittens'.

I think this shows two things: a weary sense of humour in the technician whose job it is to impart these bits of helpful information, coupled with an even wearier understanding - based on experience - of what  appeals to most non-literary contributors to Blogland.

I don't consider myself a literary contributor, but I do try to maintain certain standards here, and they have nothing to do with the quality of the photographs of kittens that I have posted up purely in order to garner a few hundred extra hits. You know this is true, especially when I put up a photograph of our night-scented stock which was so bad, that I didn't even think it worth re-taking, let alone editing.

This has always been a word-heavy blog, so there is always the strong chance that the photo at its head bears no relation to the content, which must be very confusing for anyone with enough time on their hands to read it.

I used to get complaints from people about how many words I used to make one post, as if I was abusing Twitter or something, but now everyone knows that if they want to write in sonnets or Haiku, then Twitter is the place for them.

I've got words coming out of my arse - I even produce them in my sleep - so I might as well put them to some use, even if the end result is of no use to anyone. The funny thing is that I am not what you would call a 'chatty' sort of person.

We have a couple of local, glossy magazines which come flopping - unsolicited - through our letterboxes every month, and there is a contributor to one of them called David Flatman, who is a recently retired Bath rugby player who writes a very laddish page of rubbish about how thick his neck is, and how fat he is getting ever since he stopped training and got paid for writing reviews for restaurants which specialise in steaks.

Bath - for some reason - hero-worships all its rugby players, no matter how dull and boorish they are off the field. Just so long as they are about a foot taller than everyone else and weigh about five stone more than any normally fat person, then they automatically become the darlings of beer-drinkers all over the county.

There are certain women who just love thick legs, I suppose.

I like these magazines, simply because they are so undemanding. My favourite time for 'reading' them is first thing in the morning, over a couple of cups of coffee. I start by scanning the pictures to see how many people I know in the society pages, then I scan the pages again to see how many good-looking women there are within them, and how much flesh was exposed when the photo was taken.

After the second cup of coffee, I will begin to read some text. This is also an undemanding exercise - until you get to bloody Flatman's page.

He ran out of words after the first two contributions, but this does not stop the editors from paying him to write them all over again, month after month.

I stop reading him after the first, predictable line, as this line sets the tone for the rest of the entire piece, and I am utterly sick of hearing about how his wife is trying to get him to lose weight by attending poncey yoga sessions, or how he sneaks out to his favourite burger joint - which just happens to be run by a couple of his ex team-members... etc. etc.

He invited everyone up to a black-tie event in London last year as part of his 'Testimonial', money making exercises. £1000 bought you a small table in a seedy joint to watch a couple of rugby-players pretending to be boxers.

I wonder if my skinny legs make me a better writer than him, and - if so - why don't they pay me to write this bollocks?

I have seen him in our local pub before now. I wonder if he reads this blog? Wish me luck...

39 comments:

  1. Rugby players, and ex-Rugby players, are certainly heros over here. Being an ex-Rugby player myself, I trust you will understand my total approval.

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    1. I now understand your preoccupation with food as well.

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    2. But I don't have fat legs.

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  2. So many good lines in this post!
    I've thought about getting paid to write my own drivel and you know, I reckon it would end up being the same second rate stuff your ex rugby player churns out. The age old conundrum ... Do it because you love it and remain poor or turn tricks using your fame/infamy/talent/connections as bait?

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  3. (I would have written more on this and maybe parsed it better but my smart phone is stupid.)

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    1. I have a friend who regularly writes a page for the other magazine, and I came right out and asked him why it was so bloody boring. He said he was constrained by the 'style' and the universally inoffensive subject matter that the editor insisted upon, due to the nervousness of its advertisers.

      I still think that is no excuse for being boring, though.

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  4. Tom - your blog is by far the longest I read every day, and also one of the very best. You always make me think and often make me laugh (rarely make me cry). I get just as much fun from reading the comments and your replies too. I'm hoping flattery will get me everywhere.

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    1. It has, Weave, but I don't know what good it is going to do you, other than my abiding respect for your good taste.

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  5. This post is a classic example of you using too many words, jumping about from one thing to another and resulting in me getting bored before the end and then desperately trying to find something worth talking about in order to leave a comment and then ending up being accused by you of being difficult.

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    1. But if I'm honest I like reading them.

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    2. But if I'm honest I like reading them.

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    3. Talk about too many words - I heard you the first time. I know I repeat myself, but not as soon as I have written something.

      I didn't bother to state the obvious in the above, which is that there is always the option of the 'off' button, but I did state the obvious fact that I have never asked anyone to pay me for writing this boring shit.

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    4. And if you had followed me right from the start, you would have seen an advance apology for one of the dead men (John Aubrey) that Joanne talks about, being my all-time literary hero for flitting from one subject to another, often writing up the margins when another tangential thought occurred to him.

      At least I take a breath between paragraphs to allow you too as well.

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    5. AND - I have long since given up on you finding something worth talking about which is worth saying in the first place.

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    6. The off button observation occurred to me which is why I added the second comment. Of course I don't have to keep coming back but I like to. I write with a fast momentum and it is not the momentum your writing displays. I cant help my spontaneity but it makes for a quick read which from my experience of blogs like yours is not a bad thing. If I cant find something worth talking about I don't take responsibility for that, I put the ball in your court.

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    7. I am trying very hard not to be as rude to you as you always are with me, but I am beginning to fail.

      Your writing has the 'momentum' of a stone being dropped down a well.

      You write any old shit which comes into your troubled head, and you do not even go to the bother of applying any structure to it whatsoever.

      What does come into your head is the sort of rubbish that most art students grow out of by the time they reach about 25 years of age, but it seems to have lingered a little longer with you than is dignified in a woman of your years.

      Do you think that just because you write with the fluency of a bad attack of diarrhoea, that it adds any artistic merit to you ramblings?

      I don't want the ball in my court, thank you. I am chucking it back at you and I don't want it returned.

      If you don't enjoy reading this rubbish that I write, then just fuck off and leave me alone.

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    8. You're right. (I didn't go to art school until 2002),

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    9. I've lost the will to fight. But if you think I write such shit then ditto why do you bother to read it? I don't know why this developed into the fight it did. However, I'll fuck off and leave you to entertain your other 131 followers and count your 2000 page views and see if I care. Honduras are ranked 33 in the world and lightning has just stopped play in case you were wondering. And you are about as much of a grown up as I am.

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    10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    11. You've lost the will to fight because I have knocked it out of you.

      Never let it be said that I am magnanimous in victory - especially if it was you who picked the fight in the first place.

      All I am trying to do is amuse myself and hopefully others at the same time.

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    12. Oh, and if anyone is wondering what was deleted in between the above comments, is was a carbon-copy of the comment above it. She must have been making another observation about the 'off' button.

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    13. It got more out of control than I was expecting it to. I was merely trying to say that we have a different writing style. Yes, you have knocked something out of me tonight.

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    14. That was a bit nasty about the deleted comment.

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    15. I am not in the mood for your excuses tonight. If anyone comes around here pretending to make observations about 'differences in styles' when - in reality - they just want to wind me up on a bad night with a load of stupid, meaningless shite designed to gain attention for themselves, then it's going to happen again.

      I meant what I said - either stop getting up my nose as a sport, or just fuck off. I am sick of losing my sense of humour over a silly cow like you, and tonight it has happened again for the second time.

      If you or anyone else turns up here on a regular basis pretending to be a sweetly ringing bell, then I am going to tap you very hard to see what you really sound like.

      (A small prize goes to the first person to say where the bell-tapping analogy came from.)

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    16. Second time, more like third or fourth. You are always riled. Goodbye.

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    17. Next morning. Just off for counselling.... .....I mean shopping.

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  6. I had no idea blogger slams other folks with that block of nonsense. I look at it with foreboding, wondering if it's an omen they will take this access away, too. When I have to hit the refresh button many time to get my list back, I can get pissed enough to leave.
    I've noticed that most of the men you admire are dead, and the women you admire alive.

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    1. Well thank fuck for that (says she who is alive)

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    2. I can't wait for Sarah to die, so I can tell her what I really think of her.

      You might remember quite a few living men who I have expressed admiration for in the recent past too - I have been known to be too gushing when it comes to some living playwrights.

      I suppose what I am saying is that you are mistaken in this case, Joanne.

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    3. Well, thank goodness for that!

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  7. A great many people seem to be paid to write things that aren't worth reading. It's a depressing state of affairs in some ways, but I suspect not being mainstream is of more value in many more ways. My husband and I were having this very same conversation this morning, running along the lines that when too many know about and therefore consume something they change it, and often for the worse. Keep writing Tom.

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    1. I am nothing if not inconsistent. I know how to write a focussed and strictly structured bit of trash, but since nobody pays me for this discipline, I just try and have fun.

      What I hate more than anything else in this voluntary, unpaid and un-asked for business is losing my sense of humour, which has just happened with Rachel above.

      I suppose the upside of this is that my mind becomes truly focussed and I waste no words in ripping the living shit out of anyone who has the audacity to tell me that I don't write like they pretend to.

      Hell hath no fury like a cunt scorned.

      I feel better for that - my sense of humour has just returned.

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  8. The only mag I read anything like regularly is Private Eye - and that for the cartoons. (oh, and Practical Wireless if I can get it - for the circuit diagrams).

    OK, you write longish posts - but there's nothing wrong in that and they're very readable so one doesn't notice. Some people write tweets I can't be bothered to finish.

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    1. H.I.'s father used to read Practical Wireless, and he's been dead for about 20 years now. That is one magazine which I don't think you could get away with talking bollocks in, even though the truth might be really boring.

      Of course I write longish blogs, and there is a good reason for it.

      I am not clever enough to do away with half the words that I use, and I cannot afford an editor - or at least an editor who can afford to spend any time here.

      I am also not clever enough to keep a linear thread going for longer than about 1000 words, or at least not motivated enough to try.

      I would even go so far as to say that I would find it a challenge to be an essayist, now that pamphleteering has gone out of fashion.

      That's not to say that I don't believe I can do absolutely anything that my bodily condition will allow me to do - this is how I have made my money for the last 40 years - blagging my way through things I know fuck-all about.

      In one way, I am quite successful, believe it or not.

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    2. I do (believe it). I wouldn't worry. I'm of the opinion that when someone thinks they ARE clever they've probably ceased to be so.

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  9. In the art of concise language, Yeats is a great teacher.

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  10. I think you have written more in the comments section than the main post! I have been enjoying your writings for quite a while now, so just keep on doing what you do. I much prefer reading men's blogs . Have a lovely sunny Sunday in Bath.

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  11. I don't know how you do it Stephenson. Have a lovely sunny Sunday in Bath. I fucking hope it lashes with storms all bloody day.

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  12. Fat legs leave me cold.

    You're one of the few wordy blogs I can be arsed to read so keep it up please.

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