The northlondonhippy

Archive for April, 2007

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’ve been lax, I’ve been lazy, at least as far as this blog is concerned.

Is it still a blog?

I don’t think it is any­more. I don’t post 5 or 10 times a day, with a list of what I had for lunch and what I’m hav­ing for din­ner or what I think about EVERYTHING!

My scope has nar­rowed sig­nif­i­cantly. I write when I feel like it, I write when I have the time. I try to write when I have some­thing unique to say.

Today, I don’t have any­thing unique to say, so per­haps I should just tell you what I had for lunch. Chicken Cae­sar salad with goat’s cheese and aubergine bread, with chill­ies. Yummmm.

It was from Firezza pizza. Google it, maybe you live near a branch and can have exactly the same thing in 30 min­utes or less deliv­ered to your door. Yummm for you too.

For the last month or so I’ve had a lot of work on, which has been cut­ting into my hippy time quite a bit. I’ve actu­ally been work­ing really hard, like a dog.

No, I mean it, I’ve actu­ally been work­ing like a dog; herd­ing sheep dur­ing the day and chas­ing an elec­tric rab­bit around a track at night. Oh and on the week­end, I’ve been tak­ing blind peo­ple out for long walks and trips to the shop.

Ok, enough of the fuck­ing dog jokes, we get it!

That’s the thing with my life, when I’m busy work­ing, I don’t have time for any­thing else; not even you my beloved and sorely neglected hippyfans.

The other thing that has been dis­tract­ing me away from all things hippy has been my myopic quest for a new(ish) car. I always hav­ing trou­ble spend­ing money and it seems that the size of my prob­lems is directly in pro­por­tion to the amount of money I’m try­ing to spend.

A car is the most expen­sive thing you own, after your house and if you rent, it’s the most expen­sive! The forces of the uni­verse were indeed aligned to fuck this hippy but good!

For starters, all car deal­ers lie as eas­ily as I draw breath and my lungs are good and clear, which is sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing the amount of smoke they process.

My needs were very spe­cific; this time I knew the exact make and model of my intended wheels.

And then there were my own prob­lems, with my bud­get, which increased a fair bit after doing some research, It was jus­ti­fied as the real value for money bar­gains were just out­side my orig­i­nal price range.

The best deals I found were “slightly used” new cars, directly from the dealer. I saved around 4 grand off the cost of a brand new one, by going for a model that had 1,600 miles on it, all put there by the man­u­fac­turer. In other words, an employee drove it for a while, or it was a demo model.

It came with the remain­der of the war­ranty as well; a respectable 28 months from the orig­i­nal 3 years. It will hold it’s value longer as too.

It’s in per­fect shape and if I told you it was brand new, you wouldn’t argue with me. I think I got a great deal!

The car I went for is another Toy­ota Yaris. I loved my first one, so why mess around with a good thing? It’s a 2006 model, a 3-door, T3, 1.3 if that means any­thing to you. Oh and it’s blue. I adore it already!

Besides being really shiny, it is incred­i­bly well designed, slightly big­ger and more ergonomic than my pre­vi­ous one and the larger engine makes a big dif­fer­ence. It’s in the same insur­ance and road tax band, the emis­sions are low and the petrol mileage is high. What’s not to love?

It took me over 4 weeks to locate, nego­ti­ate and buy this car. I looked at over a dozen and nearly bought at least 3 of them, before the sales­man said some­thing to put me off, or I dis­cov­ered some con­cealed problem.

Life has a way of work­ing every­thing out for the best, even if you can’t see it at the time. The long, ardu­ous route I fol­lowed to get this par­tic­u­lar car is just what it took, because in the end, I got the right car.

Now that I’ve sorted the car, I can move down to the next big thing on my list of big things to do. Lucky me.

I’ll try to come back more often, but I always say that; empty words and mean­ing­less promises. And they’re worth exactly the price of the paper this page is printed on.

Oh, right.

Lis­ten: Kurt Von­negut is my favourite author.

Per­haps “was” would be more appro­pri­ate as one of the best writ­ers of the 20th cen­tury passed away in New York overnight and I feel like I’m mourn­ing a close relative.

If I’m hon­est, and I always am, I’d say I feel like I’m mourn­ing my spir­i­tual father.

I know that sounds silly, but Kurt Von­negut has been a major influ­ence on the way I think, the way I write and just over­all the per­son that I am today.

Kurt Von­negut was the first author who chal­lenged me and my ideas about what mod­ern writ­ing could aspire to be. He was a lit­er­ary genius of the high­est order and his depar­ture from the planet is a loss for us all.

If you haven’t read any Von­negut, then I implore you to seek out his work imme­di­ately. If I could, I would buy you all his com­plete col­lec­tion and then come to your house per­son­ally and read all of it out loud to you!

Yes, his writ­ing is that fuck­ing good!

The first Von­negut book I read was “Slaugh­ter­house Five” which is the story of Billy Pil­grim, a man unstuck in time. This is how it starts:

“Lis­ten: Billy Pil­grim has come unstuck in time.”

And he was.

The story flits around like a hum­ming­bird on acid, bounc­ing between the var­i­ous parts of Billy’s life, from his youth to his old age with ran­dom stops in between. OK, maybe not that ran­dom; as the book does con­cen­trate upon two key events in Billy’s life.

Billy’s expe­ri­ences as a POW in Dres­den dur­ing World War II mir­ror the author’s; both of them spent the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den hun­kered down in the base­ment of slaugh­ter­house num­ber five, hence the title. Von­negut was deeply affected by his time as a pris­oner and as you read his semi-fictional account, you will see what I mean.

The book was pub­lished in 1969 at the height of the Viet­nam War. Here in 2007, at the height of the Iraq war, his words res­onate even more and take on a deeper significance.

Billy also spends time as a dif­fer­ent type of pris­oner; he is the star attrac­tion at a zoo on the planet Tralfamadore. He’s not alone as if mem­ory serves, he is meant to mate with a female human porn star. I can’t say for sure if this also mirror’s Mr. Vonnegut’s real life, but if there was one human wor­thy of cap­ture and dis­play by an alien race, it is cer­tainly Kurt.

I was 12 years old when I first read “Slaugh­ter­house Five” and it’s impact on me, even at that age, was immense. This wasn’t the sort of lit­er­a­ture I was given to read at school, though it cer­tainly should have been!

Actu­ally, I did do a school report on the book, but not before my par­ents had to pro­vide signed con­sent for me to do so. His books were con­sid­ered quite con­tro­ver­sial at the time. And I’m sad to say, that is even truer today. Vonnegut’s books are banned in many school libraries for their sec­u­lar human­ist overtones.

Fuck you, cen­sors! You all suck!

Von­negut always told the truth and he always ques­tioned author­ity. He mar­velled at the utter point­less­ness of exis­tence, the lim­it­less expanse of human greed and stu­pid­ity and the bleak end that awaits us all. His writ­ing puts all of this far more elo­quently than I ever could, but I’ve felt a deep affin­ity for his work. I don’t think you could mea­sure the influ­ence he has had on me if you tried.

I was at work last night, when I heard the news. I gen­uinely had trou­ble hold­ing back the tears. I feel like I’ve lost a mem­ber of my fam­ily, even though I’d never met the man.

That’s what good writ­ing is like; I felt like I knew him. More than that, I’ve often felt he was my spir­i­tual father, which I know is dumb thing to say, as well as an insult to my own (dearly departed) real father and Mr. Vonnegut’s real chil­dren. Actu­ally, I hope his chil­dren are not offended and they wel­come their spir­i­tual step­brother with open metaphor­i­cal arms.

I wouldn’t (pre­tend to) be a writer today if it weren’t for the impact Kurt Von­negut has had on me. I hope that when you read this very blog, you can sense his pres­ence guid­ing my words.

I’ll say it again, because it mer­its repeat­ing: If you have not ever read any­thing by Kurt Von­negut then please, I am urg­ing you to do so as soon as you can. The man under­stood the human con­di­tion bet­ter than most and read­ing his work will make you a bet­ter per­son. It will free your mind; at least I think it will, because it freed mine.

I’m sorry I can’t do more jus­tice to the man, his writ­ing and his life, but I’m just a lowly blog­ger, toil­ing in rel­a­tive obscu­rity. As much as I know I should leave it to his con­tem­po­raries, such as Nor­man Mailer and Gore Vidal, who will eulo­gise him in a man­ner more deserv­ing, I felt I had to add my voice to the many who are mourn­ing this true Amer­i­can original.

I’ll miss you, Kurt. Thank you. Thank you very much.

And so it goes. And so did he.