A Chevy for Six, Please

Back again. I know I’m later than promised, but I think I can blame that on the time difference if I try hard enough.. In some time zone I’m sure this is only the day after I last wrote. Mongolia, maybe.

My blog won’t be an anecdotal one. Others have got that covered, and I simply can’t and don’t want to compete. What’s more, there is a danger of repetition, and none of us are good enough writers to hold wordpress’s attention throughout 6 recounts of ‘fish alley’. I have 2 worries about an anecdotal-less blog:

1. It will be unrelated to america. No reader will have any great insight into this land through my writing. They may learn more about me, but will learn very little about Sunny San Fran. I apologise. I can only advise that you do like Jack from Titanic and win a ticket to america through a poker game and see it all for yourself. Not that he got that far, but there are better safety regulations now and I have every faith you’ll make it to america.

2. Without specific stories to focus on, I’ll be led into comments such as ‘that woman ordering an espresso con panna is wearing the shoes I had 3 years ago’. Which is true (g-star raws, grey and a sort of inferior converse. I was glad to be rid of them), but uninteresting. I’ll do my best to avoid this type of mundanity.

I’ve just had another look at the blog as a whole. I see mum has posted some photos. They’ve been ‘instagramed’. She sees them as art and sammy sees them as an opportunity to play model, in a shy, ‘caught-off-camera’ way. I assure the audience here and now that he knows every shot is being taken, better than the photographer herself.

I have 2 books on the go. I’ve chosen to blog instead of read either of them for the time being. This is because I’m having some issues with them, and blogging seemed like an easy, if short-term, way out of my predicament. It’s highly convenient for me to have 2 on the go because before beginning to read, I’m obliged to evaluate my setting and select the book that is the least twatty in the situation. Unfortunately, both are equally twatty in most situations, so it’s actually not convenient at all.

Joseph heller’s ‘catch-22’ is truly a marvellous read. All of the strongly-worded critical praise on the back of the book is deserved a thousand times over. However, as I’m sure you’ll be aware, it’s an american classic. What this means is that I look like a classic idiot reading it in america. I look behind-the-times, to start with. This is part of the american culture.. I’m sure every person surrounding me had it on audio book in their cot, and 17 is simply too old to be reading it. I also look like I’ve selected it to accompany me around america in a tourist’s attempt to understand the culture of their holiday destination. This isn’t the case. I happened to find it on the bookshelf and I’d heard it was funny. I wanted no cultural understanding, simply a couple of cheap laughs.

So my worries about catch-22 are maybe ill-founded but are real enough to make it occasionally necessary to crack out my 2nd book, when it all gets a bit too much. Voltaire’s ‘candide’, in the original french. I hardly need to explain the ways in which I look like a pretentious idiot here.

Given that both are equally terrible choices for someone who doesn’t want to be hated by the public, I spend most of my reading-time trying in vain to obscure the title of whichever of the 2 books I have selected as the less-bad option in the situation. This means I am making painfully slow progress with both. It also means I have slight upper back ache from bending over the book so as to hide it. I might throw them both in a bin on my way home, that’ll be the end of my reading hell.

As for my stomach, I’m hungry and want some ice-cream. I’m going to try and persuade the rest of my family to move so we can go in search of this, and I don’t think this should be too much trouble because they all like ice-cream. I’m sure I’ll be more successful in this than I was in choosing books.