In the pub, I told one of my chums that if, as a world-famous poet, I was invited to stay in the Celebrity Big Brother house, I would accept. Celebrities are granted privacy in the toilet and shower. They are paid a guaranteed £50,000 for a maximum three weeks work.
He said that I had “grandeurs of delusion”. I asked him if he meant “delusions of grandeur” and he said he did, but I like “grandeurs of delusion”.
*
Sleep Singing. (written 17 November 2005)
People have been known to wake up crying or laughing, but this morning I woke up singing a song I had made up.
It went, “Love is doing far too much for far too few people. Sing it like you are a Beatle.”
Ah, the mysterious workings of the human subconscious.
*
Karaoke Hell.
Things can quickly go wrong when one goes to karaoke pubs, like the night I ate Mad Drunk Laura's food.
There was a huge buffet laid out in the pub. The karaoke d.j. announced, "There's free food over there. Everybody welcome. Eat it or it will go to waste."
So I helped myself to a chicken leg, sanwiches, small sausages, and so on. Later, the d.j. announced, "Laura is leaving. Everyone who is eating should buy her a drink." Uh-oh.
Not long after, Mad Drunk Laura came to our table and demanded we should each buy her a drink. My suggestion that I had sung for her and that should be enough was ignored. But we managed to fob her off with vague promises of a future drink.
Then when I was at the bar, waiting to buy a round, she came up and demanded the drink she felt was due to her.
"You ate my food. You have to buy me a drink." In the background, I could hear the d.j. regretting what she had said, but Mad Drunk Laura was not listening.
When I suggested to Laura that she should stop drinking because if she drank any more she would fall over, she turned quite nasty.
She put her arm round my shoulder and said, "Right, I'm annoyed now. I'm stopping here until you buy me a drink."
She was distracted when some other customers brought drinks over for her. Three double vodkas with blackcurrant and lemonade.
I escaped back to our table. My friends already had their coats on.
"We'll be all right when she moves away from the bar," I said. "She's got three drinks now."
"She's just knocked them all over," said one of my friends.
By the time I had my coat on, my friends were out of the door. I hurried after them.
"Time Warp" and "Tell Laura I Love Her" went unsung.
*
Dennis Dunaway, Marleen Gorris, Ron Vawter and I were all born on the same day in the same year.
Bass guitarist and vocalist, Dennis Dunaway, of Deadringer and the Billion Dollar Babies, has worked with Donovan and played on seversl Alice Cooper albums. What an excellent fellow.
Director, Marleen Gorris, has made some films in Dutch and "Mrs. Dalloway", which sounds vaguely familiar.
Actor, Ron Vawter, appeared in "Philadelphia", "Silence of the Lambs" and "sex, lies and videotape", all of which I have heard of. The reliability of the internet is indicated by two sites I checked, one of which gave his date of birth as 1949 and the other as 16 April 1994.
Ron Vawter is, unfortunately, deceased, which gives the four of us a 25% mortality rate so far. It is probably just as well that the sample is too small to be statistically significant.
*
Anti-Sweating League.
Clementine Black (1853-1922) was president of the Anti-Sweating League. On reading this, I had visions of Victorian ladies campaigning against strenuous excercise and the wearing of excessively warm clothes.
I was a bit disappointed to read on and discover that their campaign was against sweatshops.
*
Moral Superiority.
I share a birthday with John Milton, poet and puritan. We have a lot in common, then? Well, Milton's poetry is funnier than mine, and I'm not a puritan.
Whenever I am prompted to think about my moral character, I remember what I agreed to do with two bottle-blonde ladies I met in a nightclub not many years ago.
It was only the belated realisation that I was too drunk to be of much use for their purposes that prevented me leaving the premises with them.
So, unless they were planning to have their boyfriends beat me up and rob me, I got the worst of both worlds. No high jinks with my new friends and no moral superiority either.
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