Dancing the Polka With Miss El Cajon

My island of rain, bitches

2009-07-13T22:45:00.002+01:00

Dude, it's mid July. How did that happen? This was supposed to be the Summer of Clothes Making. Or, well, in my case it was supposed to be the Summer of Writing Lots of Shit Down. But somehow whole swathes of this blessed season have burned away with very little of it having been recorded for posterity.

Yet.

Someday, though, I will tell you the story of my life-changing trip to the United States, and all the stories within. You will laugh and cry and disown me.

For the moment, though, I am focused on a story already written. My book, Cwrw am Ddim: A Rhesymau Eraill Dros Ddysgu'r Iaith(a) is now available for pre-order through Amazon, Waterstones and Gwales. Please buy one if you speak Welsh.

If you don't speak Welsh, please don't feel an obligation to purchase several hundred pages of illegible mess. As I was travelling around these past few months, a few of my friends said they planned to buy the book just so they could have it on their shelves. I appreciate that sentiment, but, you know, that money could be spent on beer. As Brendan Brehan famously noted, Guinness makes you drunk. But books you can't read do little for you. Except perhaps postpone the inevitable burning of the Bible for warmth once the revolution comes.

Still, even though you can't read it (b), I am pretty excited about the whole thing. I get to put that word, Writer, next to my name and not feel that I'm stretching the truth. Chris Cope, writer. Put it on my tombstone.

And as a result of the book I get to do all sorts of writer-type things like get interviewed by newspapers and have people talk to me at literary festivals. This Sunday, 19 July, I will be in conversation with Nici Beech at the Gwyl ARALL literary, art and music festival in Caernarfon. I'm not sure what we'll be conversing about, exactly. Nor when exactly we'll be conversing (either 14:30 or 16:00 -- I've seen both times listed). But I'm looking forward to it. I'll let you know more as soon as I know more.

One of the beautiful things about Welsh life is that we tend to throw this sort of shit together at the last minute. The nation's arts community acts as if it were in an old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney film: "Hey, let's put on a show! My cousin Timmy will build us a stage, we can use Mom's old drapes for curtains and Uncle Ron can run the lights. Sure, he's only got one arm, but his heart's in the right place!"

I've got to say I missed that. I missed Wales and all its quirks while I was on the road. The Old City, especially. If you use the metaphor of life as a bare-knuckle street fight, Cardiff feels like that swarm of supporters which envelope a fighter when he's been knocked back on his heels. They block out the challenger and give their man that much more time to breathe, to gain his strength, and to remember who he is before stepping forward to swing again in outrageous hope.

I am glad to be back in my corner of what Dani calls my "island of rain." Glad to be back home.

-----
*I added "bitches" to the post title just for Lia, who may or may not be reading. Apparently she thought it was funny that I do that and I am shamelessly trying to get in her good books

(a) "Free Beer and Other Reasons to Learn Welsh"

(b) A handful of people have asked if I plan to translate the book into English at some point. The answer is no, for two main reasons:
1) I'm not sure I like the insinuation that the book is not legitimate unless it's in English.
2) It contains a handful of criticisms of Welsh-language society which I think are best kept "in house". I'm not trying to give ammunition to critics of the language.

Available for pre-order

2009-07-12T20:02:00.001+01:00

Via Amazon, Waterstones and Gwales.

In front of the Texas state capitol, under the shade of an oak...

2009-07-02T17:12:00.001+01:00

2:1

2009-06-24T20:45:00.002+01:00

In yet another example of the small nature of the Welsh world I learned my final university status today thanks not to a letter from the university but a text from a friend.

The Welsh department has apparently posted the degree classification (similar to a GPA, for those of you playing along at home) on the wall outside the department office. With me in Austin, Texas, at the moment everyone else knew my grade before me.

At least it's good. A 2:1, according to a lazy internet search, is roughly a 3.5 - 3.8 GPA. I've got to say I'm happy with that. And it means that I will now definitely be doing the master's degree next year.

Friday Night in Santa Fe, NM

2009-06-13T06:40:00.000+01:00

And the pizza was good, too

2009-06-12T07:42:00.003+01:00

When a drunken midget shows up offering to take your picture you know you've found the right bar.

Thanks again to Lucky and his lovely wife for giving me a bit of the flavour of Phoenix. As tends to be the case when I meet people, I talked nonstop.

Why irony doesn't work in certain parts of America

2009-06-09T17:51:00.000+01:00

This is an actual letter to the editor found in the Tuesday, 9 June 2009 edition of The Spectrum ("Southern Utah's No. 1 Information Source"). Really, I am not making this up:

Don't allow rapper to perform
Why must we allow someone to bring in such a salacious, disgusting and demeaning hip-hop rapper to our city? Have we lowered our moral standards so low that we have lost all control over what our youth, in particular, are permitted to see?

The organizer says that booking such a high-profile performer is a good thing for Southern Utah. Now is the time for honest citizens of our community to step up to the plate and hit a home run for the Gipper right out of the ball park. We have it within our power to nip this in the bud. We've already lost 99.99 percent of our republic to the clowns in D.C.

Surely we have enough upright citizens left in our city to stand up and say "no." If we don't make a stand now, then we had better buy out the remaining inventory in our local gun stores because the proverbial end is at hand.

Leland Tate
St. George

Still on the road

2009-06-08T08:31:00.001+01:00

Too busy to write

For fuck's sake, Barclays

2009-06-02T04:18:00.004+01:00

This is going to sound like a right-wing complaint but, honestly, Barclays needs to hire people who speak English to man their phones.

Because sometimes the person calling really needs some help. Like, oh, say, let's imagine a bloke who's in Seattle and has lost his debit card. So he calls to cancel the card, but also to ask if there's any way they can get a new card to him in the U.S., or if he can get access to his account from Seattle, because he's not going to be at his house within 10 business days so when his new card arrives at his Cardiff address it will be fuck-all useless to him since he's 6,300 fucking miles away, where he'd kind of like to be able to pay for cool things like food and petrol. In that case, Barclays, he really, really, really needs to speak to someone WHO FUCKING SPEAKS ENGLISH so that he can ask questions that aren't on some fucking cheat sheet and get answers that are intelligible.

And when he gets stuck talking to a woman who is probably lovely in every other way but whose English is insufferably far from adequate, it makes him kind of angry.

Stop the car

2009-05-27T13:49:00.000+01:00

If you met Paul, you might not immediately put him in the Adventurous category of people you know. That's not really the vibe that he projects.

Stalwart. Person I Can Always Rely On. I have to admit that those are the first descriptors that come to my own mind. But Paul is, in fact, far more adventurous than myself. Or, if not more adventurous, more inquisitive, which is often the same thing. As we wandered about Boston and the Massachusetts coast, Paul would often see something and ask aloud "I wonder what that is," and in the time it took to ask himself the question we would be redirecting to find its answer.

"I'll bet there's a beach over here..."
And suddenly we step out onto a sandy postcard beach, complete with salty leather-skinned New Englander casting into the water, all ours to play football and get sunburned on.

"Did that sign say ice cream?"
And the car is spun round; within minutes we are sitting with massive cones of some of the best ice cream I've ever had.

"Hey look, lobsters for sale."
The car skids to a halt and that night we are eating like kings.

Paul asks questions and pursues their answers. Unlike me, he is not happy to fill in the blanks with pessimistic assumption. This is the way we are supposed to live. I am endeavouring to remind myself of that as I carry on across the country.

Or, as, Bao-Kim simply put it, as I looked suspiciously at the mochi she had bought me: "It's good to try new things, Chris."

Westward.

The spirit of America

2009-05-25T14:33:00.001+01:00

"Howlayalivaoasee?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Howlayalivaoasee?"
"Uhm. I'm sorry, what?"
"Clearly long enough that you don't speak English anymore. How. Long. Have. You. Been. Living. Overseas?"
"Oh. Three years."
"Like it?"
"Yeah, it's alright. I'm excited to be back, though."
"Yup. Welcome home."

In a single action, the customs agent flicked my passport back to me and motioned for the next person in queue. I was released into my home country, and into the city where so much of the country began. Boston.

If you grow up in Texas and Minnesota, as I did, you develop a healthy distrust, if not outright distaste for the East Coast. I have long said that a major post-9/11 challenge for many Americans was that of reconciling their long-standing hatred toward New York City with their feelings of patriotism inspired by the tragedy that affected that city. In the last election cycle it was clear that Sarah Palin had gotten over it, returning to the belief that the East Coast as a place full of cold, self-involved elitists who have no understanding of nor desire to understand the majority of the people who make up the United States of America.

I like to think that I'm a wee bit more rational now, but I'll admit that the emotional foundation of that line of thinking is still there in my own self. Like Roman ruins in Barry, Wales. No one ever visits the Roman ruins in Barry. You could easily mistake them for the foundations of a abandoned block of flats. But they are there.

Boston, however. Boston has long been an exception to my anti-East Coast-ism. I love Boston. When I list off the American cities I'd like to live in, Boston always comes first or second (usually switching places with Chicago). I even like the name. Boston. Bahstun. Baaah-stun. Saying the name fires of a flash of indistinguishable image and smell and taste and feeling. I am unable to properly identify exactly what it is that I like about the place, only that I do like it. A lot.

It helps that one of my best friends live here. I first visited Boston in 1995, when Paul was an undergrad at MIT (a). Indeed, that was, until now, the only time I had visited Boston. And yet I am in love with the place. I suppose I have a history of that sort of thing; I had visited Wales only three times before deciding to learn its language.

Have you seen that sketch where Smithy gives a pep talk to the England football team? When he first walks into the team's hotel he shouts: "Hoo-hoo! This'll do!" That's the phrase that kept repeating in my head as I walked around Boston Thursday. Yeah, this'll do. I'd live here. I'd take on this life. I love this city. I love its look, I love its character, I love its people.

I spent my first full day in America walking the Freedom Trail. That sounds like a patriotic sexual innuendo but is, in fact, a large red line drawn into the Boston pavement designed to lead tourists past myriad points of historical interest. A 2.5-mile wander through the foundations of American history. It is tourism genius -- no map is needed, just follow the big red line, dummy. And it struck me as a good way to reintroduce myself to this country; I am starting here, where everything started.

On this tourist-laden path you can also get a feel for some of the Boston mentality. This will come as a shock to peoples of the Real America, but people here (when they're not in there cars) are shockingly friendly. I keep being thrown off by the number of people who will say hello to me, who will strike up little conversations with me, who will offer to help me find my way.

In American terms, Boston is a complicated city to navigate. It curves and zips and offers less signage than most Americans are used to. In other words, it has the feel of a well-planned British city. It was built by British people and retains some of that look and feel. It seems perfectly lovely to me. But here in America, it is god-awful impossible to understand. It hurts the American brain and causes any number of its visitors to simply stop, stare up into the sky and plead with the Lord Our God for the sweet release of eternal sleep rather than having to suffer another moment in this anti-intuitive mess.

True Bostonians, then, take immense pride in knowing their city. They carry their own version of The Knowledge and are keen to show it off whenever possible. So as you walk the Freedom Trail if you stop and look even slightly confused within seconds some old dude will run up and ask if he can help you out -- eager to have his skills put to the test by your query. Since I wasn't really going anywhere, it was impossible for me to be lost, so I would thank them and then we'd have a wee conversation about how hot it was and then bid each other a pleasant farewell. This is not the East Coast that I was raised to despise.
-----

(a) He is now Doctor Paul -- his dissertation and defence having taken place last week. Congratulations Paul!

I may not leave

2009-05-23T15:06:00.002+01:00

I'm shipping up to Boston

2009-05-21T19:41:00.002+01:00

Dropkick Murphys: 'I'm Shipping Up To Boston'

All week I've had the song "Shipping Up to Boston," by the Dropkick Murphys, running through my head. Odds are you've never heard that song. It's about a pirate (or, at least, a sailor who communicates through the medium of screaming) who's on his way to purchase a new wooden leg -- Boston, apparently, being home to a fine selection of prosthetics.

On the whole, then, the song is totally irrelevant to my life. Except for the fact that I am going to Boston.

As I write this, I am tapping away on my laptop aboard a Great Western train quietly gliding its way toward London. The green of countryside flashes past under typical cloud-laden British skies. A bloke from Newport sits uncomfortable in his seat, unsure as to whether it is his.

For those of you playing along at home, it used to be that riding a train in Britain was a first-come first-serve experience. You got on the train, you sat down. If there were no seats, it meant you had to stand (and that you were most likely travelling through Wales). In truth, that system still exists. But if you purchase your tickets online you will be arbitrarily assigned a seat, which is lovely and convenient -- because it's always nice to know that you'll actually have a place to sit -- but causes all sorts of trouble for the British.

Contrary to popular perception, British people function quite well without rules. They will apply their own little systems to whatever situation presents itself and for the most part everything works out grand. But if you give British people rules, their brains lock down and refuse to think outside of said rules, regardless of their necessity.

So, you have a train carriage that is mostly empty but for a bloke with a laptop and an Asian lady with a rather pungent sandwich. Throughout the carriage there are a number of seats with little white scraps of paper indicating that someone will be sitting there at some point, but there are a great deal more seats with no strips of paper at all, indicating that he who dares sits. Our man who boarded at Newport found his appointed seat but his female counterpart decided that she wanted to sit facing the other way and promptly established herself in a row of unticketed seats.

"Here," Newport said. "Those aren't our seats."

"They are now," said the woman.

He stood for no less than five minutes, staring at the seat, before finally giving in. With each new station he swivels uncomfortably, expecting someone to come along and not only eject him from his seat but quite possibly the train. Perhaps even the country.

Maybe he'll end up on my flight.

As I say, I'm going to Boston. Flying there Wednesday from Heathrow, spending several days with Paul and BK and then setting out on my own across the American expanse. Physically I will at least pass through Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Some places will get more of my time than others.

The ingrained desire of Americans to tear across the incredible distances of our country is well-documented. It is Manifest Destiny. This is what the Lord Our God ordained. And people have been doing it for years. I'm not breaking new ground; walk into any American coffee shop, throw a brick and you'll hit someone who read On The Road in college and has romanticised their own similar journey ever since. The road trip is written onto our souls.

But shockingly few Americans ever get a chance fulfil that destiny. Some of us are lazy, most of us are tied down by jobs and finances and every other thing. I am able to go because I am equal parts lucky, stupid and impractical. But, the point is: I'm going. And I am really excited.

Scatterbrained

2009-05-07T14:55:00.002+01:00

"You're certain to graduate now," one of my lecturers said to me about a week ago as we walked down the stairs from Humanities room 5.18, site of my last ever lecture.

"Ha," I laughed, before questioning the wisdom of laughing in the face of a lecturer. "You would be amazed at my ability to screw things up."

First off I had to complete some six essays before noon 5 May, the last of those -- a not as-strong-as-it-could-be argument against the concept of the Gaeltacht (a) -- being printed out just 12 hours before the deadline. I suppose it could have been worse. When I was on campus to turn in said essays (a process which delightfully involves shoving papers through a wee mail slot and into a wooden box, a system which has always struck me as antiquated and built to be exploited by American deviousness [b]), I ran into a girl who half stared at me as if not 100-percent sure whether I was actually there.

"I just finished that Cymdeithaseg paper 20 minutes ago," she said. "I haven't slept."

With my papers safely turned in I was able to relax for an evening and join in the celebration of Llŷr's birthday (by the way, the girl on the left giving the thumbs up is Elain, who likes it when I mention her in blog posts). But before I can properly enjoy my summer I have just one more academic hurdle -- an exam next Thursday. Appropriately, it is an exam for my Things You Don't Understand Nor Give A Toss About module. Of course I couldn't finish on something easy.

So there is struggle ahead. I am spending these interim days desperately trying not to stab myself in the eyes while struggling to retain what I can about Welsh-language literature of the middle ages. Many years ago, a friend of mine famously enraged a girl when he responded, "You lost. Get over it," in response to her talking about her downtrodden nationality. An evil part of my brain keeps bringing that moment forward as I try to decipher poetry about forgotten and defeated kings of Wales. Yes, I know, it's a part of this nation's rich cultural and historical tapestry. It is important because it shows a literary tradition that extends back to before those damned English types showed up and ruined everything. And anything that proves you are better than the English in any way, at any period of time, has inherent value. Everyone knows that and accepts it as fact. But sweet dancing baby Jesus in a bouncy castle, it's so very not interesting to me.

It possibly could be, in another time, in another place, if all the information were being delivered by Redd Foxx. But now, with that two hours of an exam as the only hurdle to my earning a bachelor's -- and by extension a secured place on my master's degree programme and by extension another student visa allowing me to stay in Britain -- I am struggling to focus. Especially since most of my brain is being used in thinking about my pending trip to the United States.

From May 20 to 9 July I will be bumbling counter-clockwise across the country of my birth. So endless thoughts of travel and planning and organisation and how to pay for it are what fill my head. On top of this, I am supposed to be sorting out funding for next year. And writing a magazine article. I should probably get to those things...
-----

(a) My basic argument: It's a lovely idea, but so is the idea of living in that cool Mexican restaurant at Epcot. Neither, however, is all that good an idea in practice.

(b) For example: Don't have your paper done? Toss some burning item into the box and all the papers go into flames -- including, theoretically, your own. And suddenly you've bought yourself at least an extra day.

And that pretty much explains why rugby is so awesome

2009-05-06T21:06:00.003+01:00

Watching the Blues-Dragons match Wednesday night I just barely overheard Nigel Owens reprimanding John Yapp and a Dragons prop (both of whom had come on late in the match as replacements) for failing to scrum down properly: "I can see now why you two are not starting."

Brilliant. I laughed for about five minutes.

For those of you playing along at home, the above paragraph is probably so full of unfamiliar vocabulary that it's best to just ignore this post.

Ciudad de México

2009-05-01T14:42:00.003+01:00

I love this picture. It comes from the Flickr photo stream of Eneas, showing that life carries on in a surreal way in Mexico's capital city.

I can't quite put my finger on what I like so much about this picture. I just really do. It is strange wonderful sci-fi-esque. If I were to make a film about some far-but-near dystopia, it would start with this shot and we would follow the girl through her day.

Mexico City has long held some sort of strange draw for me. Who knows anything about Mexico City? It's ginormous, with 20 million people living in its metro area, but what do we ever hear about it? Usually it's only bad things -- it is woefully polluted, crime is rampant, corruption is farcically out of control, its infrastructure is crumbling, it doesn't have enough water (clean or otherwise), it's hot, it's prone to earthquakes and most of its citizens are dismally poor -- but something about it draws me.

In the late 1990s, when I was studying Spanish in Nowhere, Minnesota, there was a picture of UNAM's central library in my text book. Something about how ugly-pretty that building is stuck with me. I dogeared the page and would go back to it. For a very long time I would daydream about improving my Spanish enough that I could go and attend university in Mexico City.

But learning another language and then moving to another country to attend university there? Who does that?

Well, yeah. If that was my name

2009-04-27T15:12:00.002+01:00

Overheard on University of Cardiff campus:

Slightly camp bloke with pseudo-posh English accent: "...and she goes by 'Steph.' Can you imagine people calling you Steph all your life?!"

Oh, well that clears it up

2009-04-22T18:01:00.003+01:00

Here is an actual unedited response from the UK Home Office to a question that we had about visas:

"You cannot switch from a student dependant visa to Tier2 visa in the UK and require entry clearance from your home country abroad."

Huh?! Suddenly in my head I hear Samuel L. Jackson, screaming that iconic line from "Pulp Fiction"...

A requirement of the UK's immigration system is that the applicant have a command of English. Apparently, though, one does not need a command of English in order to work for the UK's immigration system.

Actually, my mother doesn't sound like this

2009-04-14T17:24:00.002+01:00

I'll be honest and admit that the impersonation of my mother in this video is woefully inaccurate. Well, she does actually say things like this, but not quite as I've said them. Or something like that.

(Also, I'm not sure why you would want a higher-quality version of the video, but it can be found here.)

Russell T. Davies, you hurt my soul

2009-04-12T12:07:00.001+01:00

Here's an incomplete list of things that bothered me about Saturday's Doctor Who, in no particular order (Yes, I know I'm a geek):

- How lazy is the name International Museum?
- Why did the bus not pull over when it was being tailed by a convoy of police who had their lights and sirens going?
- The bus was a different model and in drastically different condition depending on what side of the wormhole it was on.
- Michelle Ryan's flying away in the bus was, as Elain pointed out, straight out of The Santa Clause.
- Why was everyone taken with the concept of a flying bus but not terribly shocked by a rip in the fabric of reality?
- That woman's Caribbean accent.
- How is it possible that UNIT could be so inept?
- The Doctor at one point dismisses the explanation for something as "spacey stuff," which is reminiscent of 10 years ago when Steven Moffat took the piss of the franchise in "The Curse of Fatal Death." In that comedy episode, the Doctor frequently dismisses things by saying "I'll explain later." So RTD is so lazy he is stealing from his replacement's piss-take.
- Why did the Doctor, upon getting in touch with UNIT, not simply ask them to drive a large tank through the wormhole to come pick them up?
- Giant flying metal stingrays things.
- Giant metal stingrays are able to create holes in space by flying about really fast. Huh?
- How exactly were the stingray things flying? They didn't have wings.
- The Doctor forgot UNIT's phone number on the first try. So, the Doctor, who knows every language that exists, can't remember a small string of numbers? Really?
- Lee Evans.

Well, that's next year sorted, at least

2009-04-08T10:40:00.000+01:00

Just got this e-mail today:

Cardiff University is pleased to offer you admission to the programme detailed below:
School: Ysgol y Gymraeg, Prifysgol Caerdydd
Programme: MA YN Y GYMRAEG
Commencing: 21 September 2009
Attendance: Full-Time

Here

2009-04-05T19:03:00.000+01:00

The significance of purchasing a bed, a quality one, especially, is the permanence of the act. It implies that -- with my three-year university experience nearly complete -- I intend to stay here for a while longer. At least until I've used up the five-year guarantee on the bed.

I've been doing a lot of that sort of thing, lately. A new bed, an 18-month phone contract, an expensive hoover, talk of new bookshelves. These are the simple domestic acts of a person who isn't planning on upping sticks any time soon.

But have you ever had a friend who has gone through divorce? They will suddenly ramp up the praise for their significant other and then two months later it is mentioned offhand that, oh, Helen won't be joining us down the pub because, uhm, we've split up.

So I lie in my new bed and stare at the ceiling and find myself thinking about all the places I would rather be than here. London, Dublin, St. Paul, Chicago, Boston, Austin, and on. I picture my life in each of these places, walk down the streets that I know, eat at the places I know, hang out with the people I know.

This week Houston has been high on the list. Which is a strange one. No one dreams of Houston; people in Houston are reading this and wondering if perhaps I'm talking about some other Houston. The Scottish village near Glasgow Airport, perhaps. But the combination of longing for legitimately hot weather, of looking forward to my summer trip to the United States (which will entail a visit to family in the Houston area), and seeing pictures of Dani's back yard have all strangely combined to leave me thinking "Golly, I'd kinda like to move back to Houston."

This is similar to what I used to do when thinking about Cardiff, before actually moving here. I don't know if you do this, but I am always guilty of slightly altering my socio-economic status when picturing myself in different places. I have a bad habit of picturing a different me in that different place.

For example, let's say you're wherever you are and dreaming about life in New York City. Of course you place yourself square in Manhattan, and of course you assume that you will be going to art galleries and eating at cafés and on and on. Conveniently ignoring that you do not now have the money to live in the poshest part of whatever town you're living in. And you haven't been to an art gallery since that time in high school when you went solely because you thought it would help in your effort to get up Emma Carrbridge's blouse. So, in fact you are imagining a physical move, a social/intellectual move and an economic move.

I do that. I play this ridiculous game of creating The Life Ideal in some other locale in which everything is already in place. Because it's the building that I don't like. Establishing is boring and challenging. And a part of me rebels against it. Some men can't commit to a woman, I can't commit to a place.

"Does unman yn debyg i adre'
Ond mae adre'n debyg iawn i chdi..."

But that said, I am establishing. Slowly. Not just in buying a load of appliances that would be useless in the States, but in real ways. There's the master's degree, of course. About a month ago I interviewed to do a master's in Welsh with an emphasis on creative writing, at Cardiff University. I've yammered endlessly about this on my Welsh blog but I'm not sure I've mentioned it here. I am still waiting to hear back on the decision. According to the university's website, the decision "can take anything from two weeks to a few months." And I wasn't really able to read the mood during my interview.

When I was talking about the whole thing with Owen, his general feeling was that it would be silly not to accept me. But then, Owen's my friend. And he had had a few pints. And, if you were part of the decision-making process, and perhaps Owen's line of thinking had occurred to you, wouldn't some part of you seek to deny me just to prove a point: "Ha, ha, Chris Cope. We are not beholden to the inevitable. We choose our destiny at Cardiff University and you, my Yanqui friend, are denied!"

The foundation of Owen's thinking is that I have a book coming out in summer. Arguably being a published author is good qualification to do a master's in creative writing. We'll see. Either way, work on the book carries forward. I got my contract about a week ago, which outlined all my rights in terms of how much money I get for this thing or that thing. If someone turns my book into a screenplay I will score the bulk of the profit. But in the world of reality, of advance sums and royalties on sales, it is not what you'd call amazing.

I'm not really complaining. A first book is a first book. That's what I'm most happy about. And with the existence of the contract there is an obligation for the publisher to print within six months. I don't really care about dates, simply that it is real. Assuming no major snafu, the book is going to be published. And that is really cool. As far as I know, however, we are still aiming to publish in time for Eisteddfod.

In the meantime, I have six essays due in less than a month. I have thus far only finished one.

to rachel, my wife, whom i slept with*

2009-04-04T18:25:00.000+01:00

There are probably all sorts of reasons to not tackle your wife with a running spear onto the bed -- not least of which being that if you do, it will likely snap five of the bed's support slats. You would think the average university-educated adult would be smart enough not to do such a thing. But, as Dr. Handy used to frequently point out, I just don't think. So, we found ourselves buying a new bed Saturday.

We weren't immensely upset. Our previous prison-like metal bed frame was too small for our gigantic American selves. And it had a tendency to squeak any time one of us moved, or when we breathed, or when the Earth rotated. Remember that I live in Britain, where all the houses are packed together and we do not have air-conditioning. Our windows are almost always open and I can hear when the woman across the road sits and has tea in her garden. You don't want a squeaky bed in that kind of setting.

Our old bed was accentuated by the shittiness of its mattress, an insufferable spring-loaded number that was not entirely unlike sleeping on a cooling rack. Its only positive came from the fact that when I went to visit people overnight, wherever they put me was sure to be more comfortable than what I had back home. Really. The night spent in Annie's back garden was bliss. For the next month I would lie in bed, metal digging into me, staring at the ceiling and thinking: "I wish I were sleeping in Annie's garden."

"Sleeping in Annie's garden" sounds like a euphemism, doesn't it?

Anyway, we decided that since we had to buy a new frame we might as well fork out the dosh (a) for a new mattress. A trip to ~~Sioux Falls~~ Newport Road (b) ensued, £600 was parted with, the delivery of a bed frame was promised, and a fancy rolled-up mattress was tossed into the back of our 306 (c).

But the whole reason I sat down to write this post is to sing the praises of Cardiff Council. No one ever sings the praises of their council. Go ask Dewi Prysor about his council's ability to replace doors in a timely manner. Ask just about any English person about their fortnightly rubbish collection. Councils get a bad wrap. And certainly Cardiff Council leaves room for improvement (who approved all those flatpack-trendy flats along the Ely?), but if you've got a bed (and old printer and busted vacuum) what needs gettin' rid of, Cardiff Council provides a lovely waste centre where you can chuck it all for free.

And if you don't have a 14-year-old French car in which to load all your junk, the council will come pick it up for free. How cool is that? Huzzah for you Cardiff Council.

Hmm, perhaps I am far too easily impressed.
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*The post title is reference to Bill Cosby's album, "To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With," which contains a 27-minute story -- probably one of the best spoken-word performances I've ever heard** -- that tells of himself and his brother, Russell, jumping on the bed and then breaking it.

**I have long maintained that Bill Cosby is far greater a genius than people are willing to give him credit for.

(a) I'm pretty sure that is the first time I have ever used "dosh" in a sentence. It will likely be the last.

(b) Newport Road is possibly the most American stretch of pavement in Britain; it is about a mile of straight road with box stores and fast-food restaurants on each side. If I were a spy, I would tell Russia that Britain's nuclear weapons are stored on Newport Road and then try to provoke a confrontation.

(c) Best car ever made. We've got the diesel and it will not die. French cars for the win. Who would've guessed?

Overheard on Danescourt train

2009-04-03T12:52:00.001+01:00

Early teens boy #1: "That's cool, though, like, that Obama is the first what-you-call, Arabic ever in the White House."

Early teens boy #2: "Jamie, you are a stupid twat."

Beginnings

2009-04-01T23:20:00.000+01:00

I find myself being challenged by beginnings. For example, I don't know how to begin this blog post; I don't know how to begin the six essays that want writing on or before 5 May. All of these things I feel a need to do -- in one sense or another -- but none of them can I imagine beginnings for.

This happens to me a lot under stress. I am not a multitasker. When faced with the need to do several things at once, I have a tendency to do none of them. If it weren't for my deep personal aversion to killing Native Americans, I would have been the ideal sort of person to serve under Gen. Custer.

I once saw a programme about the Battle of Little Bighorn that claimed many of Custer's men went into such a ridiculous panic upon seeing so many Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne coming to fuck them up that they simply started firing straight into the air. There were so many people to shoot at that the cavalrymen couldn't choose who to shoot at. And so instead shot at nothing.

So, here I am taking on the easiest challenge -- ye olde blog. It is insufferable to complain about modern life (oh, boo-hoo, I don't have rickets), but I will say that blogging can feel like a chore at times. It is because I have allowed to worm into my head that stupid line of thinking that sees a blog as a tool of self-promotion.

It can be, I suppose. Theoretically -- I'm not exactly sure how -- my blogs and Twitter and Facebook pages could all join forces, a la the Wonder Twins, and form a tremendous PR tool that would help me sell more books. But then, writing in English would help me sell more books. And there are few things I hate more in this world than selling or people who try to sell to me.

But every time I think of deleting my blogs (about once a month, these days) someone will insist it is a bad idea because they are good for self promotion. Bah. I don't care. But that idea has gotten into my head, see. So I start to feel that each post needs to have a certain quality to it. And then it all starts to feel like work. And the blog sits idle for several weeks while I consider deleting it.