All the Way Home
Hello Everyone,
I’ve been far too busy this year. It’s not my way. Not my way at all. I mean, I’ve been in the Idler magazine no less than 35 times.
Thankfully, things are slowing a little. In fact, I’m blowing off creative production altogether next week when I go travelling in Europe and Canada until the new year.
Next year: no new projects and, as Beethoven used to say, chillaxing to the max.
Creative Production
I run a small press magazine called New Escapologist. I’ve been working on the all-new Issue 17: All the Way Home. It’s almost ready to print and can be ordered for shipping later this month. So. You know. Do that please.
Related to the above, I was interviewed about WORK by Appraisal magazine this month. It prompted me to archive some old interviews at my website as an extra way to explain myself.
Work continues on the film I’m making with Mark Cartwright and Anthony Irvine. We’re turning my book about the Iceman into a documentary and it’s been tremendous fun so far. Our most recent shooting block took place at Clowns International, the Bill Murray Club, and the University of Kent’s stand-up comedy archive. It was the most fun I’ve had with the film so far (which is really saying something) and Mark has been sending me frequent rough edits, all of which look amazing.
The Bill Murray shoot was a live performance, which will be used in the film but also released separately as a live performance video. Mark made a genuinely exciting trailer for it.
Reading
The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes (a very early New Escapologist contributor, fact fans) is incredibly good. It’s unapologetically magical, but he’s also done the seriously hard and boring work of diving into law and statute. Recommended.
I read Watership Down for the first time last week (I think Hayes mentioned it in his book). I blasted through it over three days because I couldn’t put it [Watership] Down. It’s the best fantasy book I’ve ever read.
Comics: Woman World by Arminder Dhaliwal is very beautiful fun.
And I’ve just started The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada and Escape to Life by Erika Mann.
Travel
After not travelling very much this year, I’m preparing for mega-trips (starting next week and until the end of the year) to Paris, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Zagreb, Belgrade, Athens, and Montreal. Beat that.
The Montreal trip is booked for December, but I might not be allowed into the country… because I’m a resident there. Get your head around that one.
Cultural Highlights
I saw Seymour Mace live for the first time last month. He’s an incredibly skilled stand-up comedian and a seemingly lovely man. The very same day, I was blown away by pole-dancing writer-comedian
(pictured above) whose show I can’t recommend highly enough. Bloody brilliant. Both of the shows I saw were recorded will be released as videos by GoFasterStripe soon, but just go and see these artists wherever they turn up.My pal Marcus Brownlow has an art show at the New Glasgow Society and recommend popping in if you’re local.
I’m looking forward to seeing Michael Cumming’s Oxide Ghosts at The Stand in Glasgow, but Michael’s touring this show so see if he’s local to you.
I’m similarly looking forward to seeing the Necks three times in Europe because they’re an amazing band of deeply-skilled Australian jazz improvisers currently touring.
I saw The Substance recently at the GFT. If you like horror films, don’t miss it like a flickin’ idiot would.
For horizontal bone-idle telly gawping, I’m trying to get into The Expanse but it’s a bit too straight for me so I’m cheating on it with favourite ’90s telly comedy and Porridge.
In Eczema News
I’ve been getting phototherapy three times a week for my eczema. It’s really weird. I have to stand in a sort-of up-right sunbed-like booth with a welding mask on my face and a jockstrap on my precious dinklage and nothing else. I’m then exposed to UV light and heat for a couple of minutes. It gives me a day or two of sunburn, during which I moisturise three or four times a day. It’s exhausting. I think is working but I can’t be sure. It’s hard work but hopefully I’ll be handsome and olive-coloured instead of red and gory.
I walk to the hospital for these appointments. It takes about twenty minutes. Google Maps takes you up some partially overgrown steps, which seems wrong, but takes you to a staff car park behind the hospital and then to a back door. Once you know this, it’s fine and perfectly direct, but it’s a bit confusing if you haven’t done it before. Every time, I help someone find their way up those steps to the hospital. It’s like a job. I even helped a refugee couple carry their pushchair up the stairs this morning. I have no idea how people will find the hospital once I’ve finished my course of treatment. I might start going there each morning voluntarily, just to feel useful.
Tetra-Pak Trudge
Readers of New Escapologist will know about my demented commitment to recycling.
For instance, I save all of my Tetra-Pak milk cartons (which can’t be recycled in our regular home recycling bins) for five or six months and then walk them (yes, walk them) to the dump.
I did this today.
It’s a 90-minute round trip, but I enjoy the exercise and the sense of moral superiority I get from going the extra mile (or six) for recycling.
Another thing I like is how the walk becomes increasingly familiar. I’ve been doing this walk for over three years now, so probably seven or eight times.
Because I wrote about the walk in New Escapologist Issue 14, I remember a lot of the things I wrote about. For example:
I have a moment of mild anxiety when a woman is coming towards me, knowing that we must pass. I think it’s someone who worked as a barmaid in my local pub and that she probably doesn’t like to be recognised by old punters. Unsure how to behave, I decide not to say hello nor to ignore her. Instead, I will rest my face in absolute catatonia. As we’re about to pass, I realise that saliva is pooling in my mouth and I really must swallow. I gulp nervously as she passes. Then I notice that it isn’t her at all.
That spot is now “barmaid corner” despite, in reality, having nothing to do with that person whatsoever. I probably only remember the incident because I wrote about it.
The walk takes me through the grounds of a hospital:
I pass the hospital. Thoughts of coronavirus testing days and a couple of x-rays and ultrasounds flit briefly through my mind.
What I always see but didn’t mention in the original report is a plastic human spine through a ground floor window. It must be an osteopath’s office or something.
I saw the spine today and, strangely, it was being snuggled up to by a lovely golden retriever. 🎵 “Goldie and Spiney / working the whole day through / Goldie and Spiney / criminals, watch out.” 🎵
There’s a juncture where I must choose to stay on the main path and pass some shops or to walk behind the shops down a back alley where only bins dwell. If I take the former, my state of mind is public-spirited and I imagine myself walking down an Amsterdam boulevard. If I take the latter, I feel like Batman or Angel, staying out of the light for maximum brooding.
Today I took the back route but I thought of this: I choose between Netherworld and Netherlands.
Deep, Deep!
I dump my tetra-paks, a handful at a time into the correct dumpster. They fall on top of everyone else’s. I notice that most of the tetra-paks are soya or almond or coconut milk like mine, none of them dairy milk. I suppose only the most devoted of hippies bother to recycle their tetra-paks.
And this is where I noticed something truly remarkable. Oh boy. As I opened the dumpster I was confronted with several milk cartons (same brand as the ones we buy) squashed flat-as-a-pancake just like mine.
Anyone who has seen my super-flattened Tetra-Paks will remember it. I flatten them to get as many into the bag as possible, delaying my walk to the dump for a little bit longer. Nobody else does that. Or so I thought.
Who is the other person who flattens their cartons like this? It could be love. My real soul mate, sorry Samara.
The one thing that troubles me is how few of them there were: maybe 20. This person isn’t keeping them for five or six months like I do. This suggests that they drive to the dump like a muggle. You have to walk, you idiots, or your commitment doesn’t count. A trip in a car obliterates the benefit of any effort you make to recycle.
Even so, I’d love to know who else is doing this. Were they inspired by the sight of my own perfectly-flattened Tetras when they opened the dumpster six months ago?
Or were these flattened cartons, quite simply, my own perfectly-flattened Tetras from six months ago? Surely not. Surely the bin is filled and emptied more often than that.
I will never know. And that, my friends, is a tragedy.
The walk back takes exactly the same time as it took to walk out, but it always feels a shorter walk in psychogeographical minutes.
Not this time. This time, I was troubled by what I’d seen in that bin. And the walk home seemed to take ages.
Bin:
Help me to keep moving 💸
I’m probably going to take a break from New Escapologist next year (you heard it here first), so I’m not quite sure where my income will come from. As such…
Please consider ordering New Escapologist Issue 17: All the Way Home. It’ll be printed and shipped very soon.
You could also buy Before I Go, the excellent book I edited for legendary comedian and hero of Factory Records, John Dowie. Comedian Mark Thomas read it this week and said:
“John Dowie is an artist I always admire, respect and often like. He is a one off, a living celebration of uniqueness. He is an artist who follows his instinct to create rather than conform to the business models of comedy and thank god for that. Before I Go is part memoir, part meditation on kindness, beautifully honest, poignant and laugh out loud funny. Another slice of uniqueness from a true original.”
My own funny novel, Rub-A-Dub-Dub, was tragically overlooked for the Wodehouse Prize, which means it’s probably come to the end of its life as a commercial entity, but I do stand by it and you can buy it here if you fancy it. Outside Left called it “an extraordinary first novel, comic and poignant” while Fliss Kitson of the Nightingales said “True greatness. A murky, pungent, beautiful tale. I 🩷 Mister Bob.”
Or, if you like my blogs and whatnot and you’d like to buy me a coffee and/or some eczema cream, you can do so here. Thank you. x
Physical Form
So you can continue to monitory my ongoing decay, here’s a cheerful pic of me at the Bill Murray club, taken by Spencer Wakeling:
Until next time. Your friend and neighbour,
Robert Wringham
www.wringham.co.uk