Sunday March 11th.
Greetings from a very tired man this Sunday eve, as I wind down from the penultimate, or conceivably ANTEpenultimate, lap of my weird novel. So weird is it in fact, that it hasn’t yet got a title, although there are a plethora of contenders for the honour. None seems just right, though. It might be ‘Grand Guignol’. I’ve liked that for a long time. It might be ‘The End of Things’. I like that too. But it suggests, to me at least, something that it isn’t. ‘The Secret Fauna of Nightmares’ – a phrase from my very own The Locked Ward is good. But… well … I’m not sure. And ‘Eurydice’, also very VERY good, is … well, likewise.
But we’ll let that hang for the time being. I’ve been on Twitter this week a fair bit, too. And there’s one writer who Tweets about his book nonfuckingstop. Now, I know we all do. All we who have aspirations to making a living from writing. I do it myself. But this guy – and I’m sure he’s a nice guy – just does it constantly. “940th five-star review on Amazon… 941st five-star review on Amazon…” It’s actually got to the stage of being the Tweet equivalent of the pub bore. If he hasn’t tweeted about his book in the last hour, I’ll be surprised. I actually tweeted myself, once, that I hadn’t read a bulletin about it for over two hours. What was wrong? Had he died?
Like I say, I’m sure he’s a decent enough stick. I just wish he’d lay off for a while. His book is about taking kids on holiday. And how some places weren’t welcoming or friendly. Or weren’t hip to the groove about how to treat kids on holiday. It’s actually given me an idea. I could write a companion piece for it. From the other point of view. I did something sim’lar years ago when I wrote a column for the Scotsman. And this may even be a part of it:
Because what I hate most of all about holidays is other folks’ kids. Sartre wrote “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” He was almost right. It’s actually les enfants des autres. Rich pickings would accrue to the first hotelier to announce a brat-free establishment. Nothing gets up my snitch more than torn-faced midgets running up and down when you’re trying to mellow out over a snort of the hard stuff and the latest bodice-ripper.
It doesn’t matter a Dundee damn to me whether they and their parents are entitled to a holiday, too. Fine. Just let them holiday far away from me. Round them up onto cattle cars and choo-choo them away to St. Kilda or somewhere. Whether we’re on vacation abroad, or just having a break in Britain, I don’t want to see other folks’ sprogs eating with their mouths open or hear them whining because there’s nothing to do. Nothing to do is what I like best and, while I’m not doing it, I resent having to hear five times a day, at ear-shredding volume, that this place is crap because there are no TV’s, computers, hi-fis or play-stations.
There are such things as hotels which advertise that they welcome children. Needless to say, if we turn up at one such, we waste no time diving back into the car and wheel-spinning off in a luscious slide of gravel, as if there were a convention of double-glazing salesmen, or an outbreak of beri-beri, inside. A roar of the engine, an inch of tyre left on the tarmac and we’re off into the wide, blue yonder.
What I’m looking for is a hotel that welcomes curmudgeonly old crabs like myself. Or, at the very least, one which promises that all brats will be chained up in an oubliette and fed spaghetti hoops and pizza, out of the sight of human beings, until it’s time for their unfortunate progenitors to take them out for their daily girn. Now that I think about it, an even better plan would be for all children to be placed, on arrival, in the hotel pillory. That way, the soul could be soothed by lobbing an occasional projectile in their direction as you passed, on your way to the theatre or opera. Suffer the little children, after all.
No, what I want is a hotel where there are no play-areas and no high-chairs available on request. I want one with a quiet study, furnished with leather armchairs and shelved with classic novels and belles lettres. I want an aged penguin to bring me a large Courvoisier on a silver salver and a prime Corona, rolled on the dusky thigh of some Habanera lovely. I want the Palm Court orchestra tootling away just within earshot. I want peace; I want quiet; I want space to myself. And I don’t want little Tracey, Stacey or Casey anywhere in a five-mile radius of me. Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Here’s to the next time.
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