Why you should read No Cure for Cancer (but might also want to check out Bill Hicks)

Googling the above for linkage purposes, I have now become convinced that I really, really, really should listen to/read Bill Hicks's material because so many people are frothing about Leary having nicked his gags, persona, delivery, underpants, whatever. I'm a Hicks virgin, alas but I really enjoyed this book the first time I read it and seeing it in (guess where?) a charity shop the other day I was curious enough to go back for a second helping.

The book was published in 1992 and has dated somewhat (especially the Kitty Dukakis/George Bush Sr. references) but that's just the way it goes for most stand-up, the vast majority of which is, at least superficially, topical. Some of the rest of it seems eerily prescient (stuff about the first Gulf War echoing today's Iraq issues) - or else convinces you that, depressingly, some things never change.

These are the section headings: Drugs, Drink, More Drugs, Smoke, Meat, War, Life, Death - which pretty much covers everything. A lot of it's still funny (funnier, perhaps?) even without Leary's trademark man-on-the-edge-of-a-paroxysm delivery. And some of it - especially the stuff about being shot in the head by his brother at the age of eight, not to mention his son's birth and his father's death - has the sort of dramatic meat that later proved so satisfying in The Job and Rescue Me.

In fact the whole thing stands up pretty well after fourteen years and made me remember why Leary was such a big hit when he first went to Edinburgh all those years ago. It almost makes me forgive him his bizarre penchant for appearing in abysmal film "comedies" with Pony-Club-voiced plank Liz Hurley.

Almost.

Why you should read The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex*

Who, honestly, doesn't want - doesn't need - this book? Nuns, possibly. Children under 10, arguably. Those in long-term monogamous relationships - you'd be surprised. (There are, after all, sections called both "How to Deal with a Cheating Lover" and "How to Have an Affair and Not Get Caught").

With advice provided by a veritable panoply of experts on such subjects as how to treat a wine-stain, get an emergency restaurant reservation, escape out of a toilet window, tell the gender of your date, deal with a drunken date and have sex in a small space, this is a truly invaluable addition to any modern urban person's private library. Just for God's sake don't leave it open on your desk at the "Useful Excuses" appendix. Samples:

- I'm too drunk
- I'm not drunk enough
- My turtle died
- I'm gay

*69p from a different charity shop, bargain fans. Cover price £9.99.

Why you should read ... David Sedaris*

(Part of an occasional series of posts where I praise or slag whatever I'm reading at the moment.)



No reason on earth, on the face of it, I thought, as I stood there in the charity shop eyeing up the books section. (I get nearly all my books from charity shops. This is why I have about three thousand books, at least half of them unread). But the name rang a very vague, very distant bell ... plus it was short stories - I'm trying to educate myself further in the genre - and it had a nicely campy/ironic title-n-cover combo (Holidays on Ice, accompanied by a classy black-and-white shot of a snowflake-design tumbler full of booze). Plus it was only 49p.

And let's not forget the story titles. I was talking to my tutor quite recently and I asked him whether he thought I should change the title of one of my stories. He didn't think it was that great, but opined that titles didn't matter much anyway (possibly why all his novels have one-word, somewhat unrevealing ones). He said he always read anthologies front to back, in strict order. As someone who flicks through anthologies and even novels looking for the juiciest story or chapter title so that I can read it first, this is anathema to me, and I said so.

And here's my reasoning: story number three in Mr. Sedaris's little collection is called "Dinah, the Christmas Whore". I mean, I defy anyone not to read a story with a title like that. Sorry, but come on. It would be rude not to. And any writer who came up with a title like that would surely be worth reading, no? Even in the first, rather unpromisingly titled story, "SantaLand Diaries"? Yep, he would: witness the following gem which made me burble with laughter on the tube, which, unlike so many over-fulsome reviewers, I never do.

I had two people say that to me today, "I'm going to have you fired". Go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet [elf] costume; it doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are?

"I'm going to have you fired!" and I wanted to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed."

And that is why you should read David Sedaris.

*he's a lot better-looking in the 1997 edition photo

This week's story: Sinterklaasavond

“Does everybody know what day it is today?” asked Miss Groot.
All the children looked around at each other. Did she mean the date? Mia had her hand tensed in an ave at her side, palm out, waiting to shoot up. She knew the answer because she’d asked her Dad this morning. She hadn’t thought they would be quizzed: she’d just wanted to know. Mia was curious about things.
One of the boys put his hand up uncertainly. Miss Groot smiled at him.
“Yes, Jan?”
Jan was from The Hague and spoke fast with a thick accent. Mia had only been learning Dutch for a few months and she couldn’t always understand what he said. Sometimes if she knew an answer in English Miss Groot would let her say it anyway, but she was supposed to speak Dutch all the time really.
“The day before Sinterklaas?” said Jan. He was small and bird-boned, with bright blond hair and pale blue eyes. Mia thought he looked like the school lambs in the pen in the corner of the playground. She didn’t know if he’d be annoyed if she told him that, but boys didn’t really like lambs, so she didn’t.
“And what do we call that day?” Miss Groot addressed the whole class. Mia’s hand plunged upwards in a victory punch and she strained her thigh muscles kneeling up to catch Miss Groot’s attention.
“Mia?” Miss Groot was always smiling. She had flat white teeth and thick brown hair, and was wide and round like Mia’s Mum. Mia had not cried on her first day of school much at all, because Miss Groot, who reminded her of her Mum, had come and taken her hand and told Mia she was her new teacher and she’d look after her. Some of the boys, including Jan, called Miss Groot fat, but not to her face. They liked her really, but they were boys.
“Sinterklaasavond?” That was what Mia’s dad had said in the car. Mia’s Dad was always right.
Miss Groot looked nonplussed. Mia’s lip quivered. Had she got it wrong? Mia cried easily. She didn’t mind falling down in the playground but she hated getting things wrong. She was good at things, stories and drawing and sport as well, even though she was shaped like her Mum and Miss Groot.
Miss Groot turned around and wrote Sinterklaasavond on the board in big letters. Then she handed round a pot of coloured chalk and told everyone to decorate a letter. The D of avond was left over so Mia was allowed to draw on that as well as the N, for getting it right.
Mia loved drawing. She would draw anywhere and anything with anything, even when her Dad told her off. Her plasticky magnolia bedroom wallpaper was covered in faces and trees and animals and houses and suns and flowers and on the big patch above the radiator, a whole submarine that Mia had designed and drawn all the rooms for in blue felt tip so that you could see the stuff and the people in them, like when you opened up the front of a doll’s house. She didn’t know why she’d drawn a submarine. It was better than a house though.
Mia took two chalks, green and pink, and went up to the blackboard. Jan worked next to her, on the O of avond. He was shorter than Mia and thin. She thought about lambs again. His hair wasn’t curly though. His fringe was long and he had to keep pushing out his bottom lip and blowing his fine blond hair up and out of his eyes. It looked funny. He caught Mia watching him and smiled at her.

“Today we have a visitor from a farm,” said Miss Groot, “where they keep cows and chickens and lambs.”
The visitor was a thin man who didn’t look like anybody’s Dad. He had a face blown red by the wind and brown hair like dead grass. He was carrying a scratched silver milk-urn and he addressed the class awkwardly in an odd country accent. Mia could barely understand him.
The visitor said something about the milk they drank at school, and how it was boiled and cleaned (“to make it last longer,” explained Miss Groot) and tasted different from fresh milk. He said he had some fresh milk in the urn. Mia thrilled with horror. Fresh milk out of a cow? It would be all dirty and germy. Mia’s Mum wiped down the kitchen surfaces all the time and boiled tap water before she drank it, and Mia had been warned never to drink or eat anything from a stranger. She shrank down at the back of the class, her head sagging so that her black curls dangled near the blue plastic-smelling gym mat she sat on.
Miss Groot swivelled her flat white smile around the class.
“Would anybody like to try some fresh milk?”
Mia looked around, wondering if anyone would dare. Everybody looked like they would rather try some fresh wee.
“It’s perfectly safe,” encouraged Miss Groot. Mia noticed that she wasn’t trying any. The visitor shook the urn encouragingly, as though they were a herd of sheep at feeding time, and the milk sloshed sinisterly inside.
“Come on now, who’s brave?” asked Miss Groot. Mia could tell she wasn’t going to give up until someone sacrificed themselves for the good of the class. There was a dead still silence, like waking up in the night and knowing there were monsters under the bed.
“I’ll do it,” said a boy at the back. Everyone’s heads turned at once. It was Jan, looking bored and defiant. He stood up, pulling his red t-shirt down over his skinny hips. He balled his fists in his jeans pockets and strode across the squeaking gym mats through the dotted copses of the other children. The visitor unscrewed the top of the urn and poured a half-glass into a green plastic beaker. Jan put out both hands. They were stone steady. The visitor and Miss Groot smiled at him. Jan turned around to face the class, who were watching the whole performance wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, and drank the whole lot down in one, wiping the moustache of foam off his top lip with his wrist. There was a muted gasp. Jan looked slightly sick. As he walked back to his place Mia felt her stomach turn over, but it wasn’t nausea; it was something else. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face.
“What was it like?” whispered someone as he went past.
He didn’t turn or stop.
“Warm,” he said.

After playtime they had Discussion. Today’s subject, said Miss Groot, was what they wanted for Sinterklaas. Miss Groot put everybody’s name in a hat and said that tomorrow, on Sinterklaas, everybody had to bring in a little present for the person whose name they picked. The presents could be anything, but not too big or expensive – they mustn’t spend more than five Euros. Mia got five Euros pocket money every week. It didn’t buy much, except sweets, and she wasn’t supposed to have sugar so she usually saved up and bought felt tips or Playmobil people. Most people said they wanted Playmobil. Jan said he wanted a silver pen like his Dad’s. Mia watched his blue eyes as he said it. He looked like her Mum talking about new shoes. He really wanted it. Mia couldn’t think of anything she wanted so she said zout dropjes. She loved the tart, salty liquorice they were made of. It made the spit leap out of your mouth, it was so sour. She didn’t think zout dropjes had sugar in them, either.

*

The next night, when she got home, Mia was told off and sent straight to her room. Her Mum and Dad had sat her down on the big rough white squashy sofas in the living room and explained to her, carefully and calmly, about stealing. Mia had wanted to buy it, but she hadn’t had enough money, and anyway Miss Groot had said they were only allowed to spend five Euros. She didn’t understand why it was stealing if you didn’t have the money, even after her Dad explained again. Mia had been driven back to the shop and made to give the pen back and apologise. The shopkeeper had been very nice because she was crying. She’d felt guilty. She hadn’t been crying because she was sorry, like he thought, but because she had been stupid and she hated getting things wrong.

*

Jan hadn’t looked at her for the whole rest of the day at school. He wouldn’t give the pen back and Miss Groot had been forced to take it off him in the end. He’d looked like a furious little animal, not a lamb but a cat or a bird, something wild. After playtime, which Mia spent in the pen corner feeding the lambs, whose tails twizzled like whirligigs as they sucked the bottle, Mia found that she had a new nickname. Little Groot, someone hissed at her as she passed the bookshelf. She stopped, startled. Groot was a common Dutch name, but it also meant big or fat. She looked around. None of the boys were looking at her. Jan’s pale blond head was bowed over his picture book, sulking. His long fringe hid his eyes. Mia stared down at her round legs and pouting stomach. She had never really thought about why her mother didn’t let her eat proper sweets and why she had different meals from Mum and Dad sometimes. But now she knew.
Mia felt tears clawing at the back of her eyes. She slotted her book carefully back in the shelf and raised her hand to signal she wanted to go to the toilet. Miss Groot nodded and smiled. As Mia passed Jan, he puffed out his cheeks at her. There was scorn in his eyes, bitter as zout dropjes. The tears crawled down Mia’s hot face but she pretended not to notice.

*

At dinner Mia couldn’t eat anything. The sick, empty feeling in her stomach was like the yearning lurch she’d felt when Jan drank the milk, but much worse. It felt like she had swallowed her own tears. She didn’t speak except at the end of the meal, to ask if she could get down from the table. They both nodded quietly.
Mia had her shoe in her bedroom to put out for Sinterklaas, but she didn’t bother bringing it down. If you were bad you just got coal, and she didn’t want coal in her favourite shoes. Instead she went to bed and tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. She realised she was hungry. She could tiptoe downstairs and take something out of the fridge, but the last time she’d done that her Mum had smacked her, hard. More than anything, Mia didn’t want to be Little Groot any more, either. She wondered how she could eat but not get fat. There must be a way. There was a way for everything, her Dad said.
Mia thought for a while, then reached up to the shelf for her Dutch vocabulary book. It had a whole food section, with lovely pictures of cakes and sweets and biscuits, cheese and bread and cornflakes and pies. Mia stared at the dessert section before carefully tearing out a chocolate cake. She put it into her mouth, gingerly. The paper tasted smooth and pasty, like flour, and then soft and pulpy and surprisingly tough as Mia chewed. But it was better than nothing, and this way she wouldn’t get fat. She swallowed with a grimacing effort, and began to tear out another picture, this time of a blancmange, with short, ripping tugs. Maybe this one would taste better. She put it in her mouth.
She curled up into a little round ball and thought about school tomorrow. She saw Jan’s puffed out face in the dark when she blinked. The gnawing empty sickness washed over her again, washed in and out like a wave, like the sea, as she chewed and chewed, waiting for the hunger to go away.

It begins ...

Well, not yet. But soon, and for the rest of the summer. Maybe check back a bit later on today - I've got to edit my recent output to make sure it's fit for public consumption and has as few spelling mistakes as possible.

Also, I'm going to entertain myself by trying to find appropriate images to go with each story (not all the way through, just at the beginning). For example; Metamorphosis might have one of these snuggly little beggars to introduce it:



Awww ...