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It's about pills

Today, I am mainly in meetings. This is the lot of every Friday. I tackle meetings by remaining quiet for most of them, and then laughing at strategic points. This works. My enemies are divided and therefore easier to conquer.

This approach brought to you by "coffee" - the drink that makes you peppy.

12. Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh is possibly the only thing he's written that I haven't read. It's not supposed to be as good as some of his other stuff, but I intend to read it and I know I will enjoy it. What I like about Welsh is his keen eye for the way people interact, and the fact that he can make the most unappealling of characters just sympathetic enough to be engaging.

In his debut, Trainspotting he tells a disjointed tale of a group of characters that feels less like a story and more like a series of snapshots of real life. The fact that there is character development in there as well just makes his achievement more impressive.

13. Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland could be great, but it could be conceited self-indulgent twaddle. Coupland is another one of those writers who plays with the format and the very idea of what a novel is. Sometimes. And sometimes he writes simple tales about interesting ideas. I'm hoping this is simple, but full of interesting characters and ideas.

14. Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal. If you're British, the chances are you're familiar with Ms Syal's work as an actress and comedian, and you probably have a fair amount of respect for her role - almost coincidental - in raising the profile of women from Wolverhampton in the mainstram British media.

15. My mum recommended Quarantine by Jim Crace. It's a retelling of Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness retold in non-miraculous terms, one of the most undescribed parts of the New Testament. The little I've read appears to be beautifully written, and I'm particularly keen to read it as a recommendation from my mum is always worth pursuing.

Reader Interactivity Opportunity: Have you read any of these books? Are any of them any good? Do any of them "grab" you?

I refuse to give up on a book due to apathy. I'll quite happily get rid of a book if I find it bad in some way, but to give up on a book before I've given it a fair trial seems horribly unfair.

Every book on my bedside table has had merit at some point. I've picked it up and thought I would enjoy it. Now I'm prepared to be proven wrong, but if I'm wrong I want evidence. So every one of these books will get read, or at least properly started. And most will get finished.

6. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is a tale of the rediscovery of Magic in York in the early 1800s. Part historical novel, part fantasy, Clarke's writing style is engaging, and her use of language is accessible. I bought this to read on a plane, got a fair way into it, enjoyed it. The main problem with the book so far seems to be its length. It's a juggernaut of a novel, a shambling behemoth. I've got the paperback version, but it's just a pain to hold.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell when it came out in hardback. As a paperback, it's much more compact, and it's a book that I'm really looking forward to but Mitchell's one of those writers where I need to make an effort. I loved Ghostwritten, and really enjoyed number9dream, to the extent of getting close to bullying people in to reading them. But there's a psychological barrier to picking one up. Part of that is the depth of submersion that you really need to do to enjoy Mitchell's work to its fullest. I expect this to be a book that sucks me in, and I want to be in the right frame of mind to be sucked in when I start reading it.

8. Morvern Callar by Alan Warner was recently made in to a movie. I was made aware of both the movie and the book due to the Late review, that fine late night show where people argue with Tom Paulin. Basically, the consensus appeared to be that the book was better than the movie. The other week I read the first few pages of the novel, and I found it quite interesting, and almost engaging. I almost wanted to know what happened next, what would she do after she got home from work. However, I probably don't care. That's the problem when your protagonist isn't hugely sympathetic.

9. The Man Who Walks by Alan Warner opens with the line "The Nephew was lain silent atop the paper sacks of pony nuts near the roof of the agric supply warehouse, dreaming about ghost bags, when his mobile diddled 'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves'"

I bought it because I fancied reading Morvern Callar, but the shop didn't have any copies in.

10. Again, everyone I know seems to have read Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I managed a few pages before I was distracted. Probably by Mr Twinky. It looks quite interesting, seemed to be well written, but I have a problem with the hype. It's annoying. Any book that is successful automatically carries with it a slight stigma that runs along the lines of "I've seen this advertised" meaning "It can't really be any good". I cite Norah Jones as the prime example here.

Anyway, it's published by Canongate, which can only be good, it won the Booker, which is often a recommendation, and it makes me think about Pies, which is always good.

11. Finally for today, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill concerns the Minotaur from classical mythology working in a diner in Carolina. An interesting conceit, and it was on the Booker long-list. As a result, I picked it up last week on a whim, when i needed to spend a few extra Euro to make the most of a credit note. The premise itself is enough to get me to open it at some point. Quite when depends on how much priority I put on it compared to the other books on my bedside table. As ever... you can help make my mind up...
Reader Interactivity Opportunity: Have you read any of these books? Are any of them any good? Do any of them "grab" you?

As has been noted, I'm decluttering. This is a process, I'm aware. Last night I made a pile of books on my bedside table. There were thirty of them. Thirty unread books, many of which I have started, none of which I have finished. My goal is to read fifteen of them before I buy any more books. As some of the books in question are, frankly, huge, I expect this to take between eight and nine years.

The problem is where to start. I need help. I definitely need help.

1. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole has a lot to recommend it. A comic masterwork, the central character, the beautifully named Ignatius Reilly appears to be one of those people who believes wholly in themselves, and is therefore ignorant of the chaos around him. The hype is that this is one of those books that you either love or hate. I didn't get far enough in to it to tell, despite a couple of attempts

2. Don't call me Human by Wang Shuo looked enticing in a bookshop in Hong Kong. I've never opened it. Wang Shuo appears to be one of China's more subversive writers and his style is compared to Murukami, which can only be a good thing. This is a surreal tale of the Olympics, filled with action and slapstick. I suspect I bought it for travel - I read a lot when travelling, and then didn't have the urge to open it. I have no idea why.

3. The Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson was bought because I wanted to read more by him. I'd read The Five Gates of Hell in my mid-twenties, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I don't remember getting more than a few pages into Revelation, or Soft (which I have around here somewhere). Revelation seems to be a stlyised novel, about the systematic destruction of a dancer's life, set in Amsterdam. It looks multi-layered and allegorical. I can't remember if I even opened it.

4. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson is one of those books that gets lavished with praise and described as "astounding" at irregular interviews. Everyone I know seems to have a copy. I bought it to read on a trip, and never opened it. That said, it seems to be a book targeted at women, and enjoyed by women. I don't know if that's true or not. Because I've never read a word of it.

5. Finally for now, The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester is the one of this batch that I am most likely to read first. I bought this because I'd toyed with it for ages - the story of a lexicographer who also happened to be a psychopath. Out of his friendship with a scholar comes the Oxford English Dictionary. I got quite a long way in to this, and found it an easy read. But when I put it down (presumably because my train arrived), I had no immediate urge to pick it up again. Of the five books written about here, it's the one I could probably finish quickest.

Reader Interactivity Opportunity: Have you read any of these books? Are any of them any good? Do any of them "grab" you?

Like pretty much everybody else in the entire world, I am gullible.

Which is to say that I'm open to suggestion. Everything I read, everything I see, everything I hear has some impact on my view of the world and my role in it. I notice things like the slow creep of Q10 from advertising for women's products into advertising for male grooming products. It's almost as if to say Right, Britain, we've persuaded you blokes that looking good will help you pull, now we need to use pretend science to make you think our product is better than anyone else's.

Advertsing pervades our lives. I read, or heard, or was brainwashed into believing that in the UK we receive around 3,000 different advertising messages every day. That's roughly one every twenty seconds that we're awake.

I manage this information without exploding. Some adverts make me stop and think. Some flash past and I miss them. Most, I suspect, leave a vague memory somewhere. Every time I see them, their message gets a little stronger. And then, when the time comes to make a purchase, I'm armed with a zillion little quanta of information telling which type of toilet paper I prefer.

I know absoutely that I do this. I was recently faced with a choice between two brands of toilet paper - one of which was charming, and the other of which is soft and strong. I selected them solely on the basis of their advertising campaigns. One is promoted as a value brand that saves money. Its adverts are deliberately clumsy, drawing attention because of their awkwardness, getting their message across in the few seconds alloted. The other brand is promoted with puppies. What on earth puppies have to do with wiping your bum, I have no idea. Never mind. So - value versus puppies. Cheap versus costs of puppy-training factored in to the price. At the end of the day, they were all going to end up in the same place.

Seconds passed. This was an awful decision. If I went for the one with the clunky advert, then em>they would have won - they'd have got my attention and therefore my money. If I went for the one with the puppy, then I'd be throwing away a few pennies of my hard-earned cash. There was no contest, really. And that's why I wipe my bum with puppy=patterned-paper.

Note: I started off writing one thing, ended up writing another. So?

Ooh. Retro.

Last Thursday I sat down with my boss. He asked me when I was going to do piece of work X. I didn't know.

At that stage, I was about to go on holiday for two and a half days, then I was going to be in meetings for the best part of three days. I could only foresee doom, gloom, and misery. And when I came back from holiday, I had 90 e-mails in my "to do" list. I had another hundred in my in-box, of which I'd read 40-ish, and left them there as a reminder.

I was ruthless. Sorry, Ruth. I took an hour, and that was all it took, and I went through those 200 e-mails. I emptied my inbox. And it's stayed empty all week since then, despite three days of meetings. At the end of the week, I had an empty inbox and the space to do job X.

This is the guts of my technique.

Start with the oldest e-mail in the inbox.

If I've already dealt with it, file it.

If I can deal with it within a couple of minutes, do it, and file it.

If I need longer to do it, file it in a "pending file", and review and prioritise that.

Now all I need to do is actually do some of the work... but I feel a lot better about it.

When Tom Baker regenerated in to him off All Creatures Great and Small, his regeneration didn't go well, mainly due to the fact that it was 1981, and so leg warmers were around. His companions, Tegan and Nyssa looked up information on failed regenerations on the Internet, which they could do because the TARDIS was a time ship, and could therefore tap into something that wouldn't be available for at least a decade. They found the same thing thate veryone else finds on the internet, and then they found a page that suggested that the , and found a suggestion that Time Lords can relax in Dwellings of Simplicity with little or no technological advancement. The suggested location was Castrovalva, a small town on a planet in Andromeda.

Of course, it all went horribly wrong, but you can't blame them for trying.

I'm about as stressed as I get these days, which would be a close approximation to my regeneration failing, that is if I was 750 years old, had just fallen off a radio telescope, and wound up turning in to a vet. And my strategy to deal with this is to remove clutter.

I've talked about doing this before - I even do some of it from time to time, but it's never really worked. I see a range of reasons for that. When I'm at work, I rarely get the time to declutter. It's something that I have to actively make time to do, and it always feels like as I break from work to declutter, the work is building up behind me and I'm just making myself more stressed. But I'm cluttered at home, too, and there it's a matter of comfort and joy. I tend to choose to spend time with Mr Twinky rather than spend time tidying up, and discarding things. Or, I choose to spend my time faffing around on the computer, or cooking. I do the basics. The first priority is cleaning dishes, then next is ironing, and somewhere way down the list comes decluttering.

It's all about habit. I need to get in to the habit of decluttering. A large purge is great, but it would just give me more space to put stuff in. This is, generally speaking, bad.

So, I'm looking at a five point plan here.

1. I'm going to start by tidying up. I'm going to file away anything that I can, throw away stuff I don't need. I will do this in a methodical manner, and I shall do this over a period of time. More on this later.
2. Everything I keep will have a place in which it is to be kept. I will aim to keep thing in their place. Not around their place, not near their place, but in their place.
3. I will aim to tidy away everything I am working on before I start a new task. This will be next to impossible at work, but with the system of lists and tracking documents that I am introducing, it should be possible.
4. I'll try to develop methods of keeping things tidy that work for me, and that will persist. It's okay to plan to do the ironing while watching a particular show, but when the show is cancelled, it breaks the routine.
5. By doing this slowly, methodically, I aim to make it a habit. So I keep going, and so on and so forth.

We'll see.

One

"Mavis, love?"

She was counting the buttons on the elevator. They were numbered from
one to fifty, but so far she had reached three different totals: six, a
gazillion, and eleventy-thirteen.

"Are there sixty-nine buttonses, pumpkin?" she asked.

"No," replied Holmes, shaking his head.

"Do you think it would make a difference if I jumped up and down while I
counted?"

"In a minute Mavis, love. I want to know more about the layout of the
restaurant first."

"Oh," she said. "That's no fun." She looked at him, crestfallen. Her
eyes - one purple, one green - were wide open, and her lower lip was
curled in a petulant pout.

"Nevertheless, Mavis, I need your help. Tell me what I want to know, and then you can count the fifty pretty buttons."

"Oh , poo," she said, and crossed her eyes.

Two

So she was doing her nails when the first automobile arrived. Just a sitting on the porch outside the store, sipping on a soda and enjoying the last warmth of the day as the sun goes down over the mountains and the sky becomes bright with the mechanical orange of Vegas.

Nobody ever called Peggy-Sue Holmgren a beauty. Least ways nobody called her that except Mad Larry, and he was half blind and wanted to marry a horse. She was twenty-eight, stood a little over five-four, and weighed in at two hundred and thirty pounds. What she lacked in looks though she made up in strength. Back home, they used to joke that she'd wrestled a bear and killed him with her own hands. It wasn't true, but she liked the look of fear in people's eyes when they heard the story. And then she'd deny it, so they'd believe it even more.

She heaved herself out of the rocking chair and plucked the binoculars from the table. Four people in the auto. A man, two women, someone in a sack. Not lost tourists, then. And they'd be here soon. She gulped down the last of her soda and wiped her mouth on the dirty sleeve of her denim shirt. Reached for the shotgun.

Way back, back when she'd been growing up, down on the south side of San Diego, she'd lived with her Momma and a big mongrel wolfhound called Killer. They had four locks on the door, and a shotgun by the side. Peggy-Sue had been practising with that since she could spit. Sometimes they had a man around, sometimes they didn't. Momma always used to say that the only thing a woman really needed was a shotgun. Normally, she wouldn't bother with the shotgun, like. Normally she'd just flag down the auto, sell the nice people inside some souvenirs and send them back the way they came. And if they refused to turn back, she'd improvise. She liked improvising. So she strode out into the middle of the road as they approached, flagged them down. They pulled to a stop, but stayed seated. She could get a better view of them now. Young Whore and Pimp in the front seat. Old Whore and Bag Man in the back.

"What is it, ma'am?" asked Pimp. "How can we help you."

"You can start," drawled Peggy-Sue, "by getting your smooth talking ass out here where we can talk face to face. All of you. Step out of the vehicle."

She stepped back, casual-like, lifting the rifle so it pointed at Young Whore. Hopefully they'd get the message. Crystal clearly, seemed like, as they did as they were told, nice and slow.

"What's with the guy with the bag?"

Old Whore answered. "None of your concern." Looked like she was in charge, because Pimp said nothing.

Boy, that got her back up. That's what Momma used to say when she had the late night meetings. This was her place. Everything was her concern.

A simple job. Sit on this porch, persuade the few tourist cars that arrived that they really ought to turn back. Simple but important. And Old Whore was getting on her nerves.

"Okay," she said, at last. "This is what's gonna happen. You're gonna come up to my store over here, and sit down and relax. I'm gonna make a few phone calls, and then I'm gonna decide what happens next. That's what's gonna happen."

Young Whore took Pimp's arm, but none of them moved.

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear," said Peggy-Sue. This was the bit that she liked the most.

She lifted the barrel of the rifle again, moving it from one head to the other.

"I will shoot you," she said.

And to prove her point, she shot Bag Man in the leg.

This morning, I saw two small feral children walking to School. I'd put their ages at eight and ten, although they could have been anywhere from four to thirty-seven.

Our route takes us along a long lane, which only has pavement on one side. The lane is narrow, and has casrs parked all the way along it. There is just enough room for a car to pass through the free space. The feral children were walking along the road towards oncoming traffic, kicking cans and generally obstructing traffic.

Younger feral child was a cheery thing, and ran ahead, giggling. His companion was the spawn of the devil himself, a ratkin of a child whose sneer spoke of decades of torment and loathing.

In a few years time, he will start smoking, and the years will drop off him and suddenly he will look eighty years old and satan will perch on his shoulder, glaring through his eyes and pulling his teeth in to strange new geometries. Which is nice.

At home, a stack of videos is building. Thoughts and fancies picked up, considered, noted, and then forgotten. Entertainment that enticed when it was advertised and anticipated doesn't grabthe attention without the glitz. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending - the pursuit, you see, and never the arrest.

When Keith was a young man, he would stand in the street outside the flats and call men. One by one they would come to him through the streets, beyond which lay the glass and bond of the city, and he could see them in the light of the moon. The glint of light on the towers of the city was like the glint in the eye of his young admirers, and that in turn was something like the glint of the stars through the clouds. He himself wondered why they came, but they came for him. Because of that he was in some way special; and, perhaps, he was to muse over lunch one Sunday some years later, they came to him for the same reason that he came to them, which was purely for the oddness of the whole thing.

Keith, I said, you are talking utter bollocks.

He steepled his fingers and smiled at me over the froth of his latté. He smelled of verbena and tobacco flower, and there were fewer lines around his eyes than I remember.

Prove it.