Diary of a Somebody

by Brian Bilston

  I learnt all this while cyber-slacking with her for much of the day, in between ram raids on the stationery cupboard (from which I took flight with inordinate amounts of Post-it notes and paper clips) and sabotaging the photocopier by feeding sheets of labels into it all askew.

  I’ve practically gone feral. These are the last days of Rome!

  May

  Tuesday May 1st

  Fifty Shades of Red

  Semi-colons I shall abuse for you.

  Parentheses I shall lose for you.

  Correct me like you know you want to.

  Repossess my nouns.

  Cover me with red ink.

  Slap my words around.

  Infinitives I shall split for you.

  Apostrophes I shall omit for you.

  The mistakes I make are just for you,

  Each greased-up grammar slip.

  Let me feel the hardness of your edit,

  Your disapproving nib.

  Participles will be dangled,

  Accents wrongly angled.

  So lay me like a transitive verb.

  Drip your ink upon my blotter.

  Bore me rigid with your rules.

  Fix me good and proper.

  The erotic dreams have returned.

  I had misused a semi-colon. Liz kept me behind for corrective therapy. I was to go through a set of uncorrected proofs for a new book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series and for every mistake I found, she’d remove an item of clothing, and for each one I missed she’d put on an item of clothing. I woke up just as she was putting on a third cardigan over her blouse, tank top and pullover.

  Wednesday May 2nd

  In my lunch hour, I quickly whizzed over to the bookshop to get my copy of Martin Amis’s Money for this month’s book group. I left, two hours later, having stocked up on a few other books that might come in handy one day: Oxford Modern English Grammar; The Penguin Guide to Punctuation; Kingsley Amis’ The King’s English; Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves; the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language; and Copyediting & Proofreading for Dummies.

  Thursday May 3rd

  It feels less like a reorganisation here than a Stalinist purge. A leaving card circulates on average every thirty minutes. It takes me forty-five minutes to write a message in one; by the afternoon, my in-tray was creaking under the strain. The comments within are accompanied by such a curious vocabulary, one far more suited to a book of remembrance: ‘You will never be forgotten’, ‘No longer by my side but always in my heart’, ‘You go to a better place’.

  It seemed fitting that I should return home to find an invitation to a tarot reading next Thursday from Mrs McNulty. I can already guess what card she has lined up for me.

  Friday May 4th

  Star Wars Love Poem

  Compared to you, the Diathim,*

  beautiful winged sentients of Millius Prime,*

  are worth not a druggat* or dime.

  I would climb

  the Gallo Mountains of Naboo*

  without crampons to be with you.

  If only there were

  a Mon Calamari cruiser* at my service.

  I would explore your surface,

  gliding over

  your two moons of Tattooine**

  before plateauing

  to lose myself

  in the undergrowth of splendour

  that is your Forest of Endor.*

  I feel the throb of my lightsaber.

  This poem is unlikely to be published

  by Faber and Faber.

  I discovered through Twitter that today is Star Wars Day. That’s because ‘May the Fourth’ sounds very similar to ‘May the Force’; the latter phrase, I discovered, being a line of dialogue from that popular film franchise.

  Liz, it seems, is a fan. She tweeted:

  Her name was Yoda,

  a showgirl she was.

  This is very funny because Yoda – who is a character, I discovered, from the aforementioned box-office smash – frequently forms unusual speech patterns, based around an object-subject-verb word order. Liz takes this anastrophe and applies its logic to – what I discovered to be – the opening lines of the 1978 Barry Manilow song ‘Copacabana (At the Copa)’, substituting the name of the original protagonist, ‘Lola’, for that of ‘Yoda’, in a perfectly applied feminine rhyme. And that is why I found it so instantly funny.

  I joined in the fun by posting up a Star Wars poem. I confess that I don’t know a huge amount about the films, but it’s amazing what five short hours on Wookiepedia can do.

  I noted privately to Liz that Toby Salt seems rather aloof from the whole May the Fourth/Force thing, having not so much as mentioned it on Twitter all day. He seems far more concerned with advertising his forthcoming book and festival appearances. He has nearly two thousand followers now. I have fifty-two.

  Saturday May 5th

  Breaking Bard

  English teacher turns

  Shakespearian drug chef,

  cooking and selling

  crystal macbeth.

  Dylan has been making me help him revise again. Sometimes the commitment of being a one-day-a-week father hangs heavy upon me, like a thick wool cardigan weighed down with a manual on responsible parenting in each pocket.

  He’s studying Macbeth. Stuart is taking him to a performance tomorrow night at the Globe, with Bryan Cranston in the title role. They’ll be standing in the pit, he tells me, rather than watching it properly from the comfort of seats, as they would have done in Shakespeare’s time, and which I think is a little bit cheap of Stuart, if I’m honest.

  Sunday May 6th

  I’ve now received more than two hundred messages on Twitter informing me that Tatooine has three moons, not two. And that I hadn’t even spelt it correctly. Some people really need to reassess their life choices: Tatooine isn’t even real, for heaven’s sake! It’s just a stupid made-up planet from an exploitative, merchandise-driven film franchise cynically developed to extract as much money as possible from the pockets of children and adults who never quite managed to grow up. Given that, how many moons it has or doesn’t have is something of a moot point.

  Liz has kept her copy-editing impulses in check and remained silent on the whole issue.

  I posted up a poem entitled ‘Pedants’ in revenge:

  Foot soldiers in the War on Error,

  they’re here to save us from ourselves

  with Fowler’s Modern English Usage

  (first edition, nineteen twelve).

  For these Crusaders of Correctness,

  beloved Guardians of Grammar,

  hunt down blunders big and small

  upon which to wield their hammer.

  They hold no fear that in doing so,

  they will deprive the thing of life:

  for it does not matter what it says,

  what’s important is that it’s right.

  Ten people have already pointed out to me that Fowler’s Modern English was first published in 1926 but that didn’t rhyme so the joke is on them really.

  Monday May 7th

  This Bank Holiday weekend has had a face on it like a wet Bank Holiday weekend. In theory, these should be the perfect conditions in which to tackle the Problem of the Dripping Tap in the Downstairs Bathroom but instead, I worked on a poem for Poetry Club. It picks up some of the themes of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and represents what future scholars of English literature may well describe as ‘a significant departure from Bilston’s previous work, signalling a new maturity as this promising – but often wayward – poet finally comes of age’.

  Tuesday May 8th

  So much for new maturity. Future scholars of English literature will be giggling in their twenty-fifth-century senior common rooms.

  The evening had started promisingly enough. Chandrima had got us underway in her characteristically serene fashion as she ruminated on the restorative power of the peace lily before Kaylee took us in a different d
irection with a powerful spoken-word piece concerning institutionalised rape in an Alabaman women’s prison.

  Douglas followed with what he claimed to be a ‘found poem’ concerning the Battle of Stalingrad, but which I’m pretty sure was just a lengthy extract from Antony Beevor. Mary then read a very moving poem concerning her fifth husband’s dementia. As she sat down, Kaylee grasped Mary’s hand in sympathy; her grandad had suffered from ‘Old-Timer’s Disease’, she said.

  We were then ‘treated’ by Toby Salt to a new experimental piece based on a re-reading of an Ezra Pound canto that he’d been commissioned to write for Radio 4, presumably as filler for some ungodly-houred early morning programme. And then it was time for Liz. As ever, she filled my metaphorical basket; this time with a clever critique of contemporary consumerism in a poetic exploration of sex and shopping entitled ‘Unidentified Item in My Bagging Area’.

  I was the last to go. It was only when I reached into the pocket of my favourite cardigan that I realised I wasn’t wearing my favourite cardigan, nor indeed did I have the love poem that was in its pocket. Mildly panicked, I reached for my phone. I was pretty sure there was a near-final version on it.

  I announced the title – ‘Love in the Time of Cauliflower’ – and, with a deep breath, set about it:

  ‘Please marrow me, my beloved sweetcorn,

  Lettuce beetroot to our hearts of romaine.

  We must follow the courgette of our convictions

  And transform our love into Great Artichoke.’

  I am not a natural or confident performer. My primary aim when reading poetry in public is to get the words out without stumbling. I am so fixated on this that I often have no sense as to what it is that I’m reading. And that’s why – even as the sound of the audience’s laughter began to percolate my consciousness – I was oblivious to the fact that I’d inadvertently left my phone on its Auto-Courgette setting.

  I pressed on:

  ‘Such lofty asparagus can’t be ignored.

  You make my head spinach, for goodness’ sake.

  Don’t make me go back to the drawing broad beans,

  My magical Lady of the Kale.’

  I could hear Toby Salt sniggering in the background. I admit to being a little surprised; this was a love poem, not one written for cheap laughs. I continued:

  ‘Love is chard and can hurt shallot;

  Our emotional cabbage not inconsequential.

  But I need you as my parsnip-in-crime

  And together, we’ll reach our potato.’

  I heard myself read the word ‘potato’. This puzzled me greatly: there were no potatoes in my poem. I ploughed on regardless:

  ‘I am a prisoner, trapped in your celery;

  Without you I’m broccoli, defenceless.

  For only you can salsify my desire,

  And I, in turnip, will radish you senseless.’

  No, that didn’t sound right at all. I looked up, confused. Liz was blushing. Toby Salt was guffawing and wiping tears from his eyes. I peered down at my phone and read the poem once more, this time in my head. Feeling stupid, I hastened back to the comfort of pistachios. Liz told me that she thought it delightful and it was my turn to blush. I played along with the pretence that it had been a deliberate ploy on my part.

  Toby Salt, of course, was insufferable. He kept making jokes about it for the rest of the evening, at one point asking me whether I was familiar with the work of Seamus Auberginey. But the joke was on him; as everyone knows, the aubergine is a fruit rather than a vegetable. I held my tongue but I’m pretty sure that this fact was not lost on Liz and the rest of the group, and that Toby Salt must have looked very foolish indeed.

  Liz came over to me as we were leaving. She had a spare ticket to see a play written by a friend of hers. It was for Thursday evening if I was interested.

  ‘It’ll be awful,’ she said. ‘Two and a half long hours of biting social commentary and hard-hitting political critique.’

  It sounded wonderful. But then I remembered Mrs McNulty and the penis-shaped crop circle that had appeared on my back lawn the last time I had turned her down.

  ‘Sorry, I’d love to, but I can’t make Thursday,’ I replied. ‘I have to go to a tarot card reading or the evil spirits will become angry with me again.’

  Liz gave me the kind of look that I was used to receiving from Sophie, one composed of disappointment and bemusement in equal measures.

  ‘Oh, well, maybe some other time, then,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I’d like that very much,’ I responded, smiling flirtatiously. ‘How about . . .’

  How about what exactly? A drink? An evening of cribbage? A day out at the Derwent Pencil Museum? And when? Next Tuesday? Tonight!? Three years hence?

  It suddenly occurred to me that while my brain was rifling through the options (of which there were many and yet absolutely none at all), I was still smiling flirtatiously – except that by now it must be coming across more as a fixed grin or an unsettling leer, as I noticed the puzzled look on Liz’s face. My main priority had to be to bring my sentence to an end.

  ‘. . . some other time?’ I finished, lamely.

  ‘Y-e-s,’ she said slowly.

  I was saved from further embarrassment by Kaylee.

  ‘What’s this I hear about a ticket going spare?’ she said.

  ‘A friend of mine has written a play,’ answered Liz. ‘But be warned, it’s all rather gruelling stuff: poverty, depression, suicide et cetera.’

  ‘Sounds perfect,’ said Kaylee. ‘We’ll just have to grim and bear it.’

  Wednesday May 9th

  Nietzsche Abhors a Vacuum

  the

  will

  to

  power

  a

  hoover

  was

  not

  a Friedrich

  manoeuvre

  ‘You see, Brian, when a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.’

  Thus spoke Tomas of Nietzsche, after he’d hoovered up the crumbs of today’s Twix from under my desk. I had confessed to him my crush on Liz, alongside my creeping despair that she might only like me for my poetry. It was a conversation I had been trying to have with the cat for several weeks now but having received very little by way of advice, Tomas was the next best thing.

  ‘All this Twitter nonsense can only get you so far. You must talk to her properly,’ he urged. ‘Ask her out on a date.’

  ‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘Every time I try to talk to her, I end up with paralysis of the brain and tongue.’

  ‘But you must try, Brian! What is the worst that could happen?’

  ‘She says no? Or laughs in my face? Or, worse, agrees to meet up?’

  ‘Stop worrying about such nonsense. You must believe in yourself. Do not live your life in fear of rejection.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.’

  Tomas shrugged.

  ‘This is all very well, Tomas, but how do I talk to her? What do I say?’

  ‘Only you can figure that one out,’ he said. ‘As Nietzsche once wrote: “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.” ’

  Brilliant. Thanks, Nietzsche. You’re about as much help as the cat.

  Thursday May 10th

  Mrs Nostradamus

  It began like this:

  I knew you were going to say that

  he’d snapped,

  after I told him to shift his arse

  and look lively with the laundry.

  I could see him cogitating

  as he separated the whites.

  Then, slowly: There will be rain.

  And he was right, there was.

  Three days later.

  At first, he played it safe.

  Kept it small. Local.

  There will be a wedding before the year is out.

  M. Bouch
oir will rear a prize pig.

  Crystal Balls, they called him.

  He was clever, though.

  Thought about the future.

  Figured there was profit

  to be had from prophecy.

  He went for it big time.

  Plagues and earthquakes.

  Famines and floods. Wars.

  The kings and queens

  and their courtesans and courtiers

  couldn’t get enough of it.

  By that time, I’d had enough

  and run off with M. Bouchard and his pig.

  The end of the world it was, to him.

  Poor Crystal Balls.

  He didn’t see that coming.

  She turned each card over slowly, only pausing between them to open her eyes wider, and let her jaw drop further. The Lovers. The Hermit. Judgement, and then, finally . . . David Beckham.

  ‘Death. He represents Death,’ said Mrs McNulty quickly. ‘I can’t find the original one so I used one of Kenny’s old football cards.’ Kenny is Mrs McNulty’s son and visits her rarely.

  ‘But what does it all mean?’ Dave asked, looking up from his phone. His cards had been read, too. Among them were The Emperor (wisdom) and Temperance (moderation) – so I knew it was all baloney. He’d also had The Hierophant but Mrs McNulty had passed over that one quickly. I don’t think she knows what a hierophant is.

  ‘We must remember that the tarot do not predict the future; they only show us the pathways that the future may take, and can be interpreted in many ways,’ she declared enigmatically. ‘But no matter how you read them, this doesn’t look good. This doesn’t look good at all.’