Imagine that instead of stacked up copies of the metro there were paperbacks. Just inside every underground station a library trolley with a selection of novels. You just take one and then, when you have finished it, put it back onto another shelf at another station.

But anarcho-realism tells us that people are lazy shits and will forget to put the books back, or will just steal them and throw them in the bin. Like the white bicycles of Amsterdam that were taken and repainted one by one; padlocked, property.

Three books today, five metros, two writers, one slack-jawed watching TV on an iPod. To my left, something in Polish, to my right mass market s&m porn in the form of fifty shades of doodah: The Story of O for the post-Twilight Generation.

Work continues to be more crazy than it has ever been. I don't think I have had a full day off - one where there hasn't been an urgent email or call - for three months. Hopefully though, this week will see the delivery of one of my biggest projects and I will be able to draw a breath.

Right now I am rushing into the office; cutting it a little fine for my 8am meeting, but I can dial into that from the station if I need to.

Underneath all of this low level grumbling, though, I am having fun. I think the life:work balance is a little out of kilter, but that is nothing that can't be adjusted once this project is out of the way.

Joshua continues to be amazing. Yesterday evening he handed me book after book, carefully putting them into my right hand and closing my fingers around them. He loves stories, you see. The look of focused joy on his face when he decides which story he wants to hear is quite incredible. Perhaps it is inherited. Perhaps it came from our nightly adventures with Beowulf, but Joshua seems to appreciate the written word.

I hope that, when the time comes, he can pick up a novel at the station on the way to wherever he is going.

I rarely write about things to come on my LJ. I set myself a rule a while back that I would use it to record things that have happened rather than to discuss potential things. It is a rule I break on a semi-regular basis without really noticing it.

I am planning to go to Slimelight on Saturday.

Given that there is no chance of a Kit Kat revival (the legendary sibling of the Batcave, and forerunner to Slimelight,) it represents the earliest of my clubbing memories. Back then you brought your own booze, followed the line, ended up watching Road Runner cartoons with the sound turned down.

I am not sure what to make of this decision. However I mention it here in the vague hope that I see some of you there. If I were on friendface still, I could do an invitation. But I am not, so I can't. If someone else did it you could call it a surprise party. I hope the music is good. I could do with a dance.

* * *

The weekend has been busy; although not necessarily for the right reasons. Swimming with Joshua on Saturday morning continues to be one of life's pleasures. He's almost walking now and fair drags me into the pool holding one of my hands for balance.

Kickboxing next - sans Josh - but he and Jules were waiting outside the Dojo for me as I stumbled into the heat. (The Dojo has air conditioning - unlike the one where I used to train Aikido)

It would have been a lovely day for a spin in The Shark. But it is still in the garage, waiting for a new radiator to arrive from Japan!

Errands, a bit of work - sorting out some remaining issues around a business case for my key project for this year - and suddenly it was 7 o'clock.

Juliet went out to Sally and Tom's leaving do. I stayed home to look after Joshua. I ordered a take-away, watched television, surfed the net, went to bed early.

Sunday morning, four thirty am. Did I sleep? I remembered Jules getting in, but not a lot between then and now so must assume I was out for the count. Couldn't get back to sleep though so I got up and typed random stuff into google scholar about non-linear narratology and reactive plot. There is next to nothing there. So either I am using the wrong terminology or there is a gap in the sum knowledge of mankind.

Juliet was having a 'sleep until she wakes up' day. A rare thing since Josh was born. I gave him his breakfast (which he threw onto the floor.) Then we sat in the living room and I gave him a stack of books so he could choose one for me to read to him. He chose "Wow, said the owl."

He chose it six times in a row. With one break for "Green Eggs and Ham." My throat was getting a little hoarse with all of the "wow"s, so I took him over to the tree house where he chased up and down having an explore. He adores the grandfather clock - Grandfather Henry - which was an important part of my childhood.

When we got back, Juliet had surfaced. I handed over the remote control to the toddler and went back to the Dojo. Strangely enough it was all people I knew in the class. Almost immediately it turned into a competition. Even the warm up became a race.

Strangest moment was during the random interval training that Alex likes to drop into the session. You had to lie on your back and launch a medicine ball into the air and your partner had to catch it. It was like a trust exercise with the possibility of a face injury. How we laughed. And we did, Team Easy, or something.

Boom.

Broken and battered I lowered myself into a hot bath. Should have iced my right foot where I kicked the base of the punchbag with a mis-timed roundhouse, ate a risotto, almost fell asleep in front of the angry bees.

The afternoon saw me back at work. We managed a quick scoot round Muswell Hill before tea time, and then I treated myself to a second bath, a glass of wine, another glass of wine...

Suddenly it is Monday again. I am behind. There is too much to do this week; too many tasks that have to be finished and signed off before June 1st. Not enough working hours in the week. Barely enough time to prioritise and plan.

And I have no idea what I am going to wear on Saturday!

The Northern Line is b0rked this morning. I suspect the burning smell in the tunnel between Kentish Town and Camden that we smelt yesterday has now crossed the line from being a smell and has become smoke and flames. Either way, the alert I got this morning used the phrase 'severe delay.'

Severe Delays on the Northern line are sticky, hot, and packed in a tomato sauce of stress. Instead I walked down the hill into the village. Crouch End in the summer is glorious. The cafe's are open, the artisan bakery is hard at work making brioche, and there is a bus every sixty seconds (seriously). I waited outside the vintage clothes shop for just long enough to see that they have changed their hat display over to 'summer' and then the bus turned up. That is where I am now. On the bus. I have a seat. There is warm sunshine. There is Stroud Green. There is the squat where that Russian Countess Speed Dealer lived in the '80s. There is the shop that used to sell maggots to fishermen where we sourced the maggots for Bel's Faire. There is Finsbury Park, where they make the frozen pancakes.

* * *

Work never seems to end. We have a major release coming up and a lot to do in order to get it out of the door. We have legislative change across Europe. My team are keeping a lid on it - just.

The last work email I received yesterday - not including automated emails or mailing list digests - was sent at 3am. Today I have shipped one of my team off to Panama so that we can have a "follow-the-sun" management.

I was supposed to be out on the lash with writers last night. Drinking wine and shouting about metafictions in some Shoreditch ruin. Instead I was checking through a presentation and answering questions.

I did manage to make it to the Dojo. Quite comedic in that Jules went to the early session with Emma. Dave went to the middle one. I went to the extra bastard hard one at the end. And do you know what? It was extra bastard hard. But I did it. I even did the 60 press ups and 60 sit ups at the end. All of them. And I managed a spinning back kick.

One of the things about having a shaved head is that when you sweat, you sweat a lot. There is no hair to stop it dripping off you. I am hoping that a month or so down the line I am not going to be analogous with a Frankie Boyle punchline somewhere inappropriate. It is slightly embarrassing being so unfit.

Pah. I feel better for it. I want to go again. Except the Dojo is closed on Friday. I emailed Andy at LAC last night, to find out about going back to some of his classes.

* * *

"When are you going to sort out that thing for Babylon?" Juliet asked me.
I was eating a curry. The first curry she's ever made I think. It was delicious. My only contribution was to caramelize the onions into a golden toffee which she mixed into the rice with sultanas, almonds, and turmeric.
"I did some work on it yesterday," I said, "I put it on LJ."
"I know, but when are you going to finish it? It has been almost a year."

It has, of course. The first draft was completed in June if I recall correctly. A series of tutorials with Rob in the National Theater bar - bouncing ideas, pointed yet constructive criticism. The first draft I was willing to show to people came later. I focused on the third act, because that was at the heart of my dissertation, but then went back and made sure the whole novel followed the same structural rules.

"I don't know," I told her, "this weekend I guess." I cut a piece of chicken with a spoon. I was too tired from the training session to get up off the floor and fetch a knife [1]

We ate in silence for a while. My blackberry pollinated the room with questions. My mind shifted gear; out of narrative mode and into a place where I needed to resolve some work problems. I left Babylon behind.

* * *

Perhaps if I were to play the soundtrack again. It's good weather for Dub. Maybe I should take a notepad out into the garden, fire up some cut from the Trojan back catalogue. Maybe score a little weed?[2]

Maybe though I have written enough? Perhaps if I go back through the past couple of days and pick out three or four paragraphs there will be the skeleton of an answer?

* * *
This entry is too long. It has taken me from the bottom of my street, and all the way across London. As I type this sentence, the train is coming out of the tunnel at Baron's Court and my commute is almost over. I need to buy some rice to go with my leftover's lunch and then back into the office for a series of back-to-back meetings.

I am told there is a weekend soon. I hope that turns out to be true.


[1] Interesting s0b fact - for as long as I can remember we have eaten dinner from the low table in the front room. We only use the dining room table when we have guests.
[2] I expect the weed from my youth no longer exists, having been replaced with some GM skunk crop that has been crossed with blue rat or DMT. I don't smoke anyway so it would be academic.



________________________________________________________________________

I've had a mare of a day at work. Stress levels are high and we were in danger of falling. I sent the team outside, "go and buy ice cream and sit on the grass," I told them. Then "Go, go before I change my mind. Flee! Flee!"

I had to take a grumpy phone call from a country manager. He's always grumpy. This time he had a good reason to be grumpy. I listened to him grump.

At the end of this call I was less inclined to go back to writing and decided to do a bit of reading. Came across the original Flowers for Algernon short story. Strange that I had not read it before. A little bit of classic sci-fi and some water on the train. I feel ambushed by these summer days.

As with every year at around this time, The Shark is in the shop. Service, MOT, expensive part being shipped from Japan. It is a shame really, this is ragtop weather but I'm going to be without a car until next week now.

So what is Babylon about? That was the question I was avoiding this morning. It is about Hope. In the Joan Aitken sense of the word. A living, breathing, magical feline kind of capital 'h' Hope that turns up when you need it most. It is a story about people doing what is right.

It is a love story, of sorts; a fantasy novel, perhaps. I think it is a challenging book. It needs a list of characters in the front; it doesn't have as many as Game of Thrones or War and Peace, but the cast is of a size. I needed to be able to drop in and out of people's lives. Like a soap opera.

But I am still no closer to answering that question, "what is the story about?" I think it is because that is not the obvious question from an agent. I think they're asking for the elevator pitch.
"I have written a book!"
"What's it about?"
Rather than the full synopsis.

If you ask me what Saying Goodbye to Amy is about, I can tell you it is about a young musician who wishes that he could escape from the world and go somewhere and be forgotten. His wish comes true and he ends up in a faery world that runs at angles to our own. He meets another runaway from the real world who claims to have magical powers. Blah Blah Blah adventures, quests, twisted fairy tales, etc.

What I am not going to do is describe the detail, page by page. Around 80 things happen in SGTA, give or take. They are fairly linear. There is one sequence of flashbacks in the narrative and a few cutaways to other characters.

Babylon is less linear. It is a challenging book. It is not an easy read. The narrator doesn't want to tell you what happens in the end; and neither do I - in my elevator pitch.

Still stuck - back to work

My fitness levels are slowly increasing. Whilst I was pretty much out of breath after the Kick Boxing warm-up two weeks ago, I am now finding my way and finding the rhythms of the classes. Still drenched in sweat at the end of it though. Not having hair makes the whole process a little grim; slipping in your own puddle. I am defeated by spinning back kicks. I imagine that it looks like I am hopping in the air and flapping my arms like a flightless bird and following it up with the sort of heel kick one would use to close a door whilst carrying a tray of trifles.

The addictive element of the exercise is clear. Jules may be going tonight. I am jealous of this fact. It maybe that she goes at six and I go at seven thirty. That option calms me.

The person sitting next to me is editing a paper about the thematic analysis of a children's psychoanalysis group entitled "Make sure you keep our house safe." (Or something like that, I can't see the title any more as she's on to page two.) I am wondering if this approach, a thematic psycho-analytic criticism, might help with Babylon?

(Yes I am still on that, dammit)

I have been reading Lacan. I am struggling to find a coherent single argument; however I am seeing patterns and themes. It is almost like a cut up text at times. There are single ideas that seem to make sense, but then they are swamped. Worse than that, I can't seem to retain the sense. There was something that seemed to make sense this morning, but I can't remember what it was.

Every time I reach for it I half remember reading something on commodity fetishism with reference to Lacan - but that was not it, that was not it at all!

Anyway, now I am being properly pretentious (whilst sitting on an underground train that smells of burning, and catching the eyes of other passengers - no one wants to press the alarm because it will make us late) I can say a few words about Babylon.

I wanted to write a fantasy novel that my dad would read. He loathes fantasy. Despairs of it. I suspect he'd give it a harsh Marxist reading but he can't be bothered with it. He read SGTA because I wrote it. In one respect, Babylon is for him.

It occurred to me that it would be interesting to produce a novel where any and all overt fantasy had a rational explanation. Let the reader decide if there is any magic in the world, or whether anything that seems supernatural can be explained away through drugs and mental illness.

I'm not going to go off on one here about Marxist Fantasy and Brechtian Epic theater - that is more about technique and constraint than subject.

Gene Jones scrawls on the wall of a lift with a marker pen. His tag matches a cuneiform sigil once carved into the gates of Babylon. There is a magic here - malevolent and sentient.

Gene lives on a sink council estate in East London. It's not the worst of them. His mother, a moderately successful singer whose career was cut short when she got pregnant, struggles to make ends meet.

The building, woken by the sigil, watches over all of the residents. Looking after them as best it can. Trying to protect them from each other, and from themselves. Its only ally is Farmer, an ex-soldier suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who now works as the caretaker for the block, and who grows vegetables on the roof.

When Farmer clashes with the local drug dealer, Alex and stops him from hurting one of the elderly residents. Alex calls for Spider and Space Invader, two legendary thugs with their own idea of right and wrong.

As the winter sets in, the sigil, now distinct from the sentient building, starts to take over the lives of the residents. Keeping them quiet with television and sedatives. So much that when their children start to disappear they barely notice.

* * *

I find I can't summarise the third act. A great deal happens. Flashbacks, Ghosts, the lost and the lonely talking to each other. Psychotics and junkies stalking each other in the dark. The door between worlds. Fires, Fights, and a jungle that doesn't exist.

I have finished my commute now and must go and produce a project brief template document. Perhaps when I am on my way home this evening I will try to answer the question 'what is it about!'

The sun appeared yesterday. Whilst it was not a surprise - as the weather witch predicted it, she was wearing a yellow coat and a hat - it was still hot. Not Rome hot, or Malta hot, but still hot.

I spent yesterday sorting out a few team issues, trying to use a global corporate law firm as a force for good (or awesome.) I also talked to a man with a very good idea which I will not be discussing here other than to say that it was like being parachuted drunk into Dragon's Den and then cross questioned.

The biggest success of the day was using corporate lawyers to help out a friend. Apparently with a few kind words you can persuade sharks in smart suits and KPMG partners to rally round and be smashing. (If I were cynical I would argue that they are on a fixed fee, but that would rather spoil the line of the piece.)

I got home in time to read Joshua his stories. I have taken to presenting him with a selection of books and he selects the one he wants after careful consideration and then stands up and hands it to me. I am delighted by this process, possibly even more than he is. I still start our bed time stories with the opening lines of Beowulf, even though we finished it months ago. I think that now he understands so much he'd probably struggle with Beowulf. We have moved on from the sounds and rhythms of the words to the actual story being important. No stories are more important this week than "Wow said the owl" and "The Gruffalo."

I am expecting "Green Eggs and Ham" to return to the fold quite soon. I think the issue with that one is that he has not seen the pictures, so doesn't draw a parallel between the actual book and the performance. (I am getting quite good at the Gruffalo and Green Eggs and Ham.)

I slept well last night. Virtually uninterrupted between 10 and 4:30 when Joshua's baby monitor alarm went off - he'd rolled into a corner of the cot and off the sensor - he didn't wake up when I repositioned him. I was awake enough to poach an egg for breakfast.

* * *

It occurs to me, as I stand on a fairly busy Piccadilly Line train, that I should take up yoga. Whilst my fitness levels and core strength are undoubtedly going up thanks to three or more sessions a week in the Dojo, I'm still slightly less limber than a garden rake, and without some stretching of the ligaments and muscles the only way I am ever going to kick someone in the head is if they bring me a step ladder and hold the base of it while I climb up.

I need to find a local class that isn't too frighteningly full of YM's with bugaboos - ideally we'd have a visiting instructor who would come round to the house, but I don't think that's affordable right now. I also have my eye on the occasional foray back to aikido, and I would like to start riding again. Perhaps if I had one riding lesson or hack each month, and dropped one of the weekend Kickbox sessions for some aikido? The key thing for me is to try and do these lessons, classes, or training when Joshua is asleep - to maximise my time with him - but I also need to be aware that the weekends are the only times when Juliet can have time off to do what she wants to do.

The key thing about all this exercise, and it really should come as no surprise, is how much better I feel for it. Since I cut out the wheat, the booze and the stimulants, things have gotten easier. How this will affect my mood remains to be seen.

I think I am almost ready to start writing fiction again. There is one spike (to misuse an agile term) and I think we are ready to remove that one; when you change the topology it is nothing more than a point in space time that can easily be erased.

I literally kicked the stuffing out of the punch bag last night. I suspect that was down to a dodgy seam rather than the explosive power of my roundhouse kicks, but it was still most satisfying.

Less satisfying was the pulled muscle in my right arm. I spent yesterday evening icing it. It is right up in the shoulder so it's rather complicated with regards to putting a compression bandage on it.

This morning it is quite tender. I suspect I shall be having tonight off from any kind of exercise.
I took a breakfast of ibuprofen and red tea because the logistics of poaching an egg was beyond me.

* * *

When I got home last night, Joshua walked five or six steps to come over to me. This was both very exciting and heart-meltingly cute. He has also started to hand me things if he wants me to do something with them. A book if he wants to be read to. A loaded sponge if he wants me to drop it into the bath like a depth charge to make an enormous splash.

Work had been ... long. Not unsatisfying, but with a few niggling problems coming up last night that could have preyed on my mind. They did not. I slept well. Of course one night of good sleep is rarely helpful. One needs two or three in a row to get the real benefit, but I feel less like a zombie now than I have for a few days.

Ironic then, that I am moving like one, and moaning when I try to lift my arm.

This afternoon I think I may be trapped inside a Half Man Half Biscuit song lyric.

Everyone on the Northern Line platform is bald. Apart from the man standing next to me. I fear he may have trodden in something unfortunate. There is a smell, not unlike the smell you would imagine if a dog ate its own poo and then threw up the poo. I appreciate that is not an easy description to read. If you were eating, or were planning to eat ever again, then I apologise for sharing it with you.

The man has gone now, he got on the earlier train. The one that goes to Edgware. I do not miss him.

I don't really have any news. I am writing now to escape from the cosmologist who is hiding in my bag. She comes out every now and then and waxes on and off about Einstein. The book is frustrating because it makes me think of questions that only make sense inside my head.

Cosmologists are excited about huge things and very small things. The Big Bang and the size of the universe at two to the power of minus 39 seconds after said big bang. I just want one of them to explain to me how they can prove that the big bang is little more than the upward curve of a wave. A bang is energy, right? Energy has waves? If you could get ahead of it, the Big Bang Shockwave would take you far beyond the beach.

I am feeling very shaky. Like I could go to sleep here on the train. I might wake up at High Barnet. Or end up coming back the way I came. That'd be confusing. Stumbling off a train on the Southbound not the Northbound platform. As though a multi-dimensional horror had snatched me up and turned me mirror-wards.

But seriously, I could do with a snooze. I'm very tired. The desire to curl up under my desk is almost overwhelming. Almost.

I poached an egg for my breakfast. Pepper and salt and a poached egg. The taste of the pepper made me think of my Nan. She was not the greatest of cooks. Boiled meat and peas cooked in a gas oven that would regularly take her eyebrows off when she lit it. And grey pepper in a shaker (freshly ground black pepper had not been invented in the 70s other than in Italian Restaurants)

She smoked Rothman's cigarettes and collected the cards. She had several books of them, going back decades. They were, as far as I can remember, the only books in her house. There was Woman's Own, some crochet catalogs but other than that no reading material. She did the pools each week, went to the bingo, and had a stack of coins on top of the meter for when the lights went out.

I slept very badly again last night. Lying awake in the dark seems like wasted time, so I tried to make use of the extra hours. I started to think about possible PhD topics again. It seems to me that if I do a bit of hardcore research over the summer and get deep into some literature then I will have a far better understanding about the sustainability of the research. My biggest concern is that the direction my mind is taking me could well be one that I am not well qualified to research.

My current 'thing' is non-linear immersive narrative. Most of the writing on it appears to be about VR (which is fine, I can grok the software engineering stuff,) but I am much more interested in things like Punchdrunk's early performances or LRP.

To be honest some of the papers I read over the weekend were less than impressive: "of course current technology isn't able to support this interface, but ..." That's not so much theoretical, it is more of a wish list. I've read Dream Park too you know.

So how can I write a story, where the behaviors of the characters are unknown and largely uncontrollable, the ending is affectable by those characters, and the author (rather than the narrator) is not omniscient?

This paradox saw me through the small hours. By the time the dawn chorus started, and was subsequently blown away by a sudden wind, I had homed in on half a dozen experiments which I then over-complicated and then promptly forgot.

I am struggling a little this morning. Thinking is difficult. I'm still dosed up with fatigue toxins and peppery memories. Somewhere around 3am I was thinking about multi-dimensional geometry; Ketamine Triangles and Lysergic Cthulhu angles, 980 degrees in a circle, saddle shaped space. I worry that if I had paid more attention to my mathematics teacher[1] I would understand what I was seeing.

I understand that these thoughts are not rational. I know that I don't know enough about any of these things.

Most of all I know that I am tired. Perhaps I should keep my half-thoughts hidden; not record them; or post them as private? Today I choose not to. Perhaps tonight I will sleep?


[1] Dr Swetman iirc, his PhD proved that the universe could be mathematically compressed into a line that was infinitely thin and infinitely long. His compression algorithm will one day power matter transportation systems - in the future, when America rules space.