This blog covers from August 2007 to January 2008.
After that, I wrote 15 posts between mid-January and May 2008 which appeared as articles on Gutshot.com. The articles are still there in the Articles section, but after a recent site redesign I'm not sure quite where.
My blogs from late May 2008 to January 2011 appeared in that site's blog section. My first post is I Knocked Somebody Down and the last is This ain't a wishing well. Click 'next' to go to the next post.
I hope to resume my blog at some point, but I have either too much or too little to say.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Monday, 21 January 2008
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Today due to financial necessity I woke at the time I've grown used to going to bed, pulled out my crumpled suit, attempted to tidy my hair, and cycled to some law firm where I'm to work as a temporary secretary. The day started with a happy surprise - I'm to have three days of I.T. training. Three days of being paid £16.50 an hour to drink tea, eat biscuits, and stare out the window while someone tells me how to turn on a computer and open a document. I suppose I might be there a month.
My landlord visited the other day to fix a light switch. He's from New Jersey, I think of Middle Eastern descent, and I asked how he'd found himself in London. He said after being in the paras and working in early computing he'd settled in Majorca in the mid-1960s, where he'd had a wild time, briefly sharing a flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. He used to play in big dealer's choice poker games out there, he said, and if it'd been him with three queens against three jacks rather than the other way round he'd have won a nightclub and his life would have turned out differently. As it is, he ran a publishing company with a woman he went on to marry, then settled in England and started buying property.
He told me about how most of the crew he used to run with in New Jersey had met violent ends. This one guy, he said, drank a bottle of bleach because he thought his wife had left him, when actually she'd just gone to the bank to get money for their holiday. There was another guy who inherited $250,000, ten shops and a share in Meadowlands Racetrack, but lost it all to the Mob and ended his days on $150 a week and the girls gone from his arms.
Boy, can my landlord talk. He said he'd visited 82 countries and his son wanted to write his memoirs. He thought everyone should have a life like he'd had. I think he's too old and too pleased with himself to be able to listen to anything anybody else says, but it was fun hearing his stories.
Meanwhile I've been using my empty credit card to play poker, and though I've not been losing I found to my horror it takes two weeks for me to receive money I've withdrawn. Because of this, several times recently I've been broke to the point of looking hungrily through the cupboards for food left by the last guy who lived here, though I struggled to make a meal from red kidney beans, sweetcorn, ketchup and peppermint tea.
I've enjoyed the last few weeks, however, since I've been making better use of my days and have appreciated not having to be in an office. I feel like I managed to briefly reclaim ownership of my time and my mind. The tedious work I spend much of last year doing for no purpose whatsoever now seems like madness. I've been cycling everywhere, so I suppose am getting a little fitter. I've enjoyed being able to meet friends in the afternoon, and have spent a lot of time in cafes or pizzerias. Have I been idling? No, quite the opposite - it's been time well spent.
There has been an exciting development concerning the future of this blog. I was taken for lunch by Barry Martin of the Gutshot club, who put to me an attractive proposition. So from the end of the week my blog as well as other articles I'll write will appear at http://www.gutshot.com/. This last month I've been visiting the club regularly since it's near where I'm now living. I've not been playing in their live games, but I hang out and also use their computers to play on their Prima skin. I know a lot of people there and enjoy being amongst fellow degenerates - some much worse than me! But more about that later.
My landlord visited the other day to fix a light switch. He's from New Jersey, I think of Middle Eastern descent, and I asked how he'd found himself in London. He said after being in the paras and working in early computing he'd settled in Majorca in the mid-1960s, where he'd had a wild time, briefly sharing a flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. He used to play in big dealer's choice poker games out there, he said, and if it'd been him with three queens against three jacks rather than the other way round he'd have won a nightclub and his life would have turned out differently. As it is, he ran a publishing company with a woman he went on to marry, then settled in England and started buying property.
He told me about how most of the crew he used to run with in New Jersey had met violent ends. This one guy, he said, drank a bottle of bleach because he thought his wife had left him, when actually she'd just gone to the bank to get money for their holiday. There was another guy who inherited $250,000, ten shops and a share in Meadowlands Racetrack, but lost it all to the Mob and ended his days on $150 a week and the girls gone from his arms.
Boy, can my landlord talk. He said he'd visited 82 countries and his son wanted to write his memoirs. He thought everyone should have a life like he'd had. I think he's too old and too pleased with himself to be able to listen to anything anybody else says, but it was fun hearing his stories.
Meanwhile I've been using my empty credit card to play poker, and though I've not been losing I found to my horror it takes two weeks for me to receive money I've withdrawn. Because of this, several times recently I've been broke to the point of looking hungrily through the cupboards for food left by the last guy who lived here, though I struggled to make a meal from red kidney beans, sweetcorn, ketchup and peppermint tea.
I've enjoyed the last few weeks, however, since I've been making better use of my days and have appreciated not having to be in an office. I feel like I managed to briefly reclaim ownership of my time and my mind. The tedious work I spend much of last year doing for no purpose whatsoever now seems like madness. I've been cycling everywhere, so I suppose am getting a little fitter. I've enjoyed being able to meet friends in the afternoon, and have spent a lot of time in cafes or pizzerias. Have I been idling? No, quite the opposite - it's been time well spent.
There has been an exciting development concerning the future of this blog. I was taken for lunch by Barry Martin of the Gutshot club, who put to me an attractive proposition. So from the end of the week my blog as well as other articles I'll write will appear at http://www.gutshot.com/. This last month I've been visiting the club regularly since it's near where I'm now living. I've not been playing in their live games, but I hang out and also use their computers to play on their Prima skin. I know a lot of people there and enjoy being amongst fellow degenerates - some much worse than me! But more about that later.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
On New Year's Day I went to see a Neapolitan DJ friend play in the main room at one of the best nightclubs in London. It was a minimal techno night put on by the Ibiza club where he has a residency. The night before he'd played in Valencia, and on the 5th he'd be in Milan.
I arrived before midnight and was on the guest list. I found it a shock to go from playing poker in silence in my room to fighting my way through beautiful people in a crowded club. A few other Italians turned up and we hung out in the VIP bar until he arrived and, at 2am, started to play. The people behind him in the DJ booth were snorting lines of coke from a record sleeve, but he was doing something much more rebellious. Oblivious to the recent ban, he was smoking.
Later in the week I was to meet him and his girlfriend at a club near where I live after midnight, but I couldn't get in. They said they were only letting in mixed groups, not guys on their own, and anyway the club was full. But I didn't worry - queues disappear and bouncers fall back when my friend turns up. One quick phonecall and we were inside. We stood by the DJ booth and looked onto the dancefloor. He and his girlfriend danced with a perfect balance between enthusiasm and restraint, whilst I nodded my head arhythmically.
We first met ten years ago when we were both 19. He spoke fluent English, and even had an English sense of humour. Even then, he was making his name as a DJ, had released a few records, set up a label, and had his own recording studio, though he slept in the next room. He's from a well-off family, which freed him from the pressure of conventional work, but his success comes from his own talent and unwavering application.
The year he left London, I stayed with him for three weeks in Naples, and again for a fortnight the year after. I did what he did, went where he went, made friends with his friends, was treated as family by his family. The first trip we went everywhere by scooter, me clinging on for dear life; later, he got a BMW. The first two times, he lived with his aunt, who delighted in feeding me enormous plates of home-made lasagne. Later he got his own apartment round the corner. These trips were the best days of my life. It felt like an awakening - so this is what it means to be happy! I was radiating in someone else's glamour, but the experiences became part of my life, too. I went back to Naples for shorter periods in the following years, joined him in Amsterdam when he had a Dutch girlfriend, and also visited him when he moved to Barcelona.
I remember staying with him in 2003 when my drinking was out of control, two weeks before I got myself to AA, and once he'd left me at the airport I cried my first adult tears, weeping all the way through check-in. I didn't want to go back to my life. Six months later, sobered up, we spent New Year's Eve together. Accompanied by an American girl he'd picked up in Barcelona, we drove from Naples to an enormous villa in Florence, packed with oil paintings and overlooking olive groves, which belonged to a girl from a thousand-year old Tuscan aristocratic family whose name you'll find on many Venetian palazzos. We met some other people and that night we went to a lavish (though rather dull) villa party up in the hills. Since I wasn't drinking I spent much of the party playing with an Afghan Hound.
At 4am we drove back into Florence and went to a minimal techno club. Just before breakfast we drove to the aristocratic girl's family castle, which was at the entrance to a small Tuscan town at the end of a cypress-tree lined road celebrated by the poet Carducci. This great adventure was a normal couple of days for him. Notice how throughout this post I drop names and seem obsessed with status. This is because I have no status, whereas to him such things seem unremarkable.
It is perhaps pertinent to note how our fortunes have differed. He has had great success, and deservedly so. My failures have been equally well-deserved. While I've lost myself in petty addictions, cigarettes are his only vice. He'll have one or two drinks, perhaps a couple of lines, but is not interested in excess. A true hedonist, he's spent the last ten years travelling round the world from Bogota to Seoul to New York eating the best food, sleeping with the most beautiful women (and also having serious relationships), going to the best parties, earning a lot of money, and making an unimaginable number of friends, while staying true to his family and friends back in Naples. He makes life look easy.
Last week was the first time I'd seen him in two years. I'd held off seeing him because I was ashamed of how far I'd fallen, and how little I've been able to apply what I've seen of how he lives. He has respect for himself, for his friends, for his family. He doesn't get distracted from who he is and what he should be doing. He has succeeded for all the reasons I've failed. Frankly I'm delighted that we're still in touch. He's told me in the past that I'm his best English friend, so there must be something I offer him in return. Perhaps he likes my sense of humour. Or maybe he just hasn't met many Englishmen.
I arrived before midnight and was on the guest list. I found it a shock to go from playing poker in silence in my room to fighting my way through beautiful people in a crowded club. A few other Italians turned up and we hung out in the VIP bar until he arrived and, at 2am, started to play. The people behind him in the DJ booth were snorting lines of coke from a record sleeve, but he was doing something much more rebellious. Oblivious to the recent ban, he was smoking.
Later in the week I was to meet him and his girlfriend at a club near where I live after midnight, but I couldn't get in. They said they were only letting in mixed groups, not guys on their own, and anyway the club was full. But I didn't worry - queues disappear and bouncers fall back when my friend turns up. One quick phonecall and we were inside. We stood by the DJ booth and looked onto the dancefloor. He and his girlfriend danced with a perfect balance between enthusiasm and restraint, whilst I nodded my head arhythmically.
We first met ten years ago when we were both 19. He spoke fluent English, and even had an English sense of humour. Even then, he was making his name as a DJ, had released a few records, set up a label, and had his own recording studio, though he slept in the next room. He's from a well-off family, which freed him from the pressure of conventional work, but his success comes from his own talent and unwavering application.
The year he left London, I stayed with him for three weeks in Naples, and again for a fortnight the year after. I did what he did, went where he went, made friends with his friends, was treated as family by his family. The first trip we went everywhere by scooter, me clinging on for dear life; later, he got a BMW. The first two times, he lived with his aunt, who delighted in feeding me enormous plates of home-made lasagne. Later he got his own apartment round the corner. These trips were the best days of my life. It felt like an awakening - so this is what it means to be happy! I was radiating in someone else's glamour, but the experiences became part of my life, too. I went back to Naples for shorter periods in the following years, joined him in Amsterdam when he had a Dutch girlfriend, and also visited him when he moved to Barcelona.
I remember staying with him in 2003 when my drinking was out of control, two weeks before I got myself to AA, and once he'd left me at the airport I cried my first adult tears, weeping all the way through check-in. I didn't want to go back to my life. Six months later, sobered up, we spent New Year's Eve together. Accompanied by an American girl he'd picked up in Barcelona, we drove from Naples to an enormous villa in Florence, packed with oil paintings and overlooking olive groves, which belonged to a girl from a thousand-year old Tuscan aristocratic family whose name you'll find on many Venetian palazzos. We met some other people and that night we went to a lavish (though rather dull) villa party up in the hills. Since I wasn't drinking I spent much of the party playing with an Afghan Hound.
At 4am we drove back into Florence and went to a minimal techno club. Just before breakfast we drove to the aristocratic girl's family castle, which was at the entrance to a small Tuscan town at the end of a cypress-tree lined road celebrated by the poet Carducci. This great adventure was a normal couple of days for him. Notice how throughout this post I drop names and seem obsessed with status. This is because I have no status, whereas to him such things seem unremarkable.
It is perhaps pertinent to note how our fortunes have differed. He has had great success, and deservedly so. My failures have been equally well-deserved. While I've lost myself in petty addictions, cigarettes are his only vice. He'll have one or two drinks, perhaps a couple of lines, but is not interested in excess. A true hedonist, he's spent the last ten years travelling round the world from Bogota to Seoul to New York eating the best food, sleeping with the most beautiful women (and also having serious relationships), going to the best parties, earning a lot of money, and making an unimaginable number of friends, while staying true to his family and friends back in Naples. He makes life look easy.
Last week was the first time I'd seen him in two years. I'd held off seeing him because I was ashamed of how far I'd fallen, and how little I've been able to apply what I've seen of how he lives. He has respect for himself, for his friends, for his family. He doesn't get distracted from who he is and what he should be doing. He has succeeded for all the reasons I've failed. Frankly I'm delighted that we're still in touch. He's told me in the past that I'm his best English friend, so there must be something I offer him in return. Perhaps he likes my sense of humour. Or maybe he just hasn't met many Englishmen.
Friday, 4 January 2008
I'm up £360 since my last post, but it ought to be twice that. I deposited $40 to PartyPoker, got up to $400 at a $0.50/$1 then sat at $3/$6. I got up to $750 but was too greedy to leave, and lost a $1155 pot with my KJ98 versus his KJT9 on a KJ5 rainbow flop, with a grotesque Q on the river. A nasty beat, but I should have waited for a better spot.
I've made no effort to find a job, and haven't been in an office since 14th December. I've spent most of my time playing poker whilst smoking in bed. And so each day passes.
I've made no effort to find a job, and haven't been in an office since 14th December. I've spent most of my time playing poker whilst smoking in bed. And so each day passes.
Monday, 31 December 2007
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Christmas shopping yesterday accompanied by a friend, we found ourselves caught in Oxford Street's madding crowd and fought our way through the department store Selfridges, whose founder Harry Selfridge reduced himself to penury through gambling and fast women. This store always makes me feel unfashionable and alienated, and tells me that the only way I can feel better is through credit card therapy. I can patch my wounds with designer labels.
A few nights recently I've bought myself a bottle of Bordeaux to drink at home. I am, as I write this, near the end of a bottle of Chateau Le Boscq 2003 which was the best the local Co-Op has to offer. In my alcoholic early twenties, before I ever gambled, this was my way of feeling normal. A bottle of red and I would be woozily contented, at peace with myself. That was how I wanted to feel all of the time; but then the second bottle and a darker place.
Meanwhile I've bought books by Borges and Runyon, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and, rather optimistically, one called "The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich". Well, wouldn't that be nice? I know, at least, that in 2008 I must try to find more interesting ways to earn money than being a reluctant legal secretary. What use earning £400 a week if it requires the sacrifice of my mind as well as my time? I would rather be writing or even tutoring. I am thinking to apply for a year-long MA in Journalism from next autumn.
I have won at poker on four of the last five days. I'm up £655 since my last post having played no higher than $0.50/$1. My best result was sitting at a table with $60 and leaving it with $740. Setting £50 a day deposit limits on each site seems to have worked. I've paid January's rent ten days early.
Tomorrow I return to my parents, leaving my laptop behind for a few days without poker. On Christmas Eve I will visit a pub in the small town where I went to school for the annual ritual of mingling with people I didn't like then and don't like now. On such occasions, alcohol will be a blessed relief.
A few nights recently I've bought myself a bottle of Bordeaux to drink at home. I am, as I write this, near the end of a bottle of Chateau Le Boscq 2003 which was the best the local Co-Op has to offer. In my alcoholic early twenties, before I ever gambled, this was my way of feeling normal. A bottle of red and I would be woozily contented, at peace with myself. That was how I wanted to feel all of the time; but then the second bottle and a darker place.
Meanwhile I've bought books by Borges and Runyon, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and, rather optimistically, one called "The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich". Well, wouldn't that be nice? I know, at least, that in 2008 I must try to find more interesting ways to earn money than being a reluctant legal secretary. What use earning £400 a week if it requires the sacrifice of my mind as well as my time? I would rather be writing or even tutoring. I am thinking to apply for a year-long MA in Journalism from next autumn.
I have won at poker on four of the last five days. I'm up £655 since my last post having played no higher than $0.50/$1. My best result was sitting at a table with $60 and leaving it with $740. Setting £50 a day deposit limits on each site seems to have worked. I've paid January's rent ten days early.
Tomorrow I return to my parents, leaving my laptop behind for a few days without poker. On Christmas Eve I will visit a pub in the small town where I went to school for the annual ritual of mingling with people I didn't like then and don't like now. On such occasions, alcohol will be a blessed relief.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
This afternoon I went to see my friend at his vintage clothes store off Brick Lane. He introduced me to his new assistant, a well-spoken bob-haired girl in her early 20s. When he went next door and left me alone with her, I nervously went to the back of the store and pretended to be interested in leather jackets, whilst eating a beigel and trying not to get mayonnaise on my chin. Realising my friend would be away a while, I took the brave step of talking to her. I was glad I did - we had a nice conversation. Talking to girls isn't that difficult, or needn't be.
I was in a good mood. I had my towel and trunks on me and was finally going to go swimming. I walked back to the beigel shop on Brick Lane where I'd locked up my bike. It had been knocked to the ground. Fine. I picked it up. But oh no, the front wheel was buckled! Somebody must have stamped it, some feral yobbo.
I didn't have the money on me to take it back to the bike shop. I found if I undid the front brake, the badly warped wheel would just about turn, though the bent part banged into the frame on every rotation. If I went fast enough it was just about rideable. I cycled dangerously to the pool, more out of spite than anything.
A Neapolitan friend of mine had his BMX stolen from outside his flat on a council estate in, of all places, South Kensington. A few weeks later he saw one of the local ruffians riding around on it. He didn't think it worth asking for it back. Had this happened in Naples, he said, he'd have been able to go to the neighbourhood Camorra boss who'd have it dealt with. What a pity one can't do that here, he said.
That may be how they do things in Naples, but here the judicial system should be enough, although stronger sentences are needed. I believe that for a first offence of stealing or vandalising a bike, the miscreant's arms should be hacked off at the shoulders, and their eyes put out with a blow torch.
Repeat offences, of course, would be dealt with much more seriously.
I was in a good mood. I had my towel and trunks on me and was finally going to go swimming. I walked back to the beigel shop on Brick Lane where I'd locked up my bike. It had been knocked to the ground. Fine. I picked it up. But oh no, the front wheel was buckled! Somebody must have stamped it, some feral yobbo.
I didn't have the money on me to take it back to the bike shop. I found if I undid the front brake, the badly warped wheel would just about turn, though the bent part banged into the frame on every rotation. If I went fast enough it was just about rideable. I cycled dangerously to the pool, more out of spite than anything.
A Neapolitan friend of mine had his BMX stolen from outside his flat on a council estate in, of all places, South Kensington. A few weeks later he saw one of the local ruffians riding around on it. He didn't think it worth asking for it back. Had this happened in Naples, he said, he'd have been able to go to the neighbourhood Camorra boss who'd have it dealt with. What a pity one can't do that here, he said.
That may be how they do things in Naples, but here the judicial system should be enough, although stronger sentences are needed. I believe that for a first offence of stealing or vandalising a bike, the miscreant's arms should be hacked off at the shoulders, and their eyes put out with a blow torch.
Repeat offences, of course, would be dealt with much more seriously.
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