At the behest of Capt. Furball, I'm re-reading A Streetcar Named Desire - a play I struggle with, seeing as I have so little in common with the main character.

However, I've been reminded of a good joke:

It's the end of the footie season, and as usual the Scottish FA Cup Final is an all-Glasgow Old Firm derby. Everything is pretty much as you might expect in the run up to the game, but there's a bit of a surprise when the team sheets are published: Celtic are playing Blanche DuBois in goal. Not having much of a previous reputation in the Scottish Football League, Blanche is considered something of an odd choice to say the least.

Anyway, the game gets going. All Blanche does is stand in the goal mouth, doing her nails and fixing her hair. Occasionally she takes a slug from a bottle of whisky. Before very long, a striker is in the box - Blanche does nothing, and it looks like he's going to send the ball right past her. But at the last minute, the striker clutches his hands to his eyes, apparently unable to see. Guessing where the goal is he shoots wildly, but misses by a mile. This happens again nine or ten times during the game. Each time a striker gets near Blanche's goalmouth position, he clutches his eyes and misses the ball. Celtic win 3-0.

After the game Alan Hansen tracks down Blanche in the dressing room. 'Super game, Blanche. But can you tell us how you do it? How do you manage to just stand there, knowing that every ball that's shot at you is going to miss?

'Well you know Alan,' she drawls, 'I have always depended on the blindness of Rangers.'

Reasons why it's a good thing Pinter got the lit prize:

1. Some seriously great plays. I don't know why everyone goes on about The Birthday Party, though: it's good, sure, but it's not a patch on The Caretaker, which has more rounded, interesting characters and doesn't flirt with allegory the way the whole Goldberg/McCann/Stanley schtick seems to.

2. He's a Brit. Huzzah!

3. As Steve Bell's Guardian cartoon suggests it's a calculated slap for the Phoney Tony and the Monkey Man.

Reasons why it's not a good thing Pinter for the lit prize.

1. His poetry.

2. The influence of Beckett, that great master of the bleeding obvious. We all know life is meaningless and whatever temporary happiness we might achieve is undermined by petty cruelty and failed communication. Playwrights should give us a good story and a few gags so that the long trudge to the grave is just slightly more cheerful than it might otherwise be. Tom Stoppard manages it - so should Pinter.

3. His politics. God he goes on.

While we're on the subject of prizes, I see that after a few promising years Booker has disappeared back up its own arse. I'm sure John Banville is a lovely chap and all, kind to animals and good with kiddies. But shall we read a few things he said about his own work? Shall we? Hmm?

"It is nice," said John Banville on Monday night, "to see a work of art win the Booker prize."

This smiley little gem appeared in just the second paragraph of his Guardian interview. Having dug himself into a hole, he gamely keeps digging:

"... I feel that over the past 15 years [of the Booker], there has been a steady move toward more populist work. I do feel - and of course I'm completely biased - that this year was a return to the better days of the 80s and early 90s. It was a very good short list and a decent jury; it didn't have any stand-up comedians or media celebs on it, and I think that's what the Man Booker prize should be. There are plenty of other rewards for middle-brow fiction. There should be one decent prize for ..." he pauses, "... real books."

How could someone that small-minded write a great book? What's wrong with being populist, exactly? Isn't Shakespeare populist? And Dickens? Apparently Banville likes flashing his thesaurus around, too. Emma Brocke:

His books plunge through weighty philosophical debates and his language is, occasionally, arcane: "flocculent", "cinereal", "crepitant" and "velutinous" all make it into The Sea....

"Velutinous"? Apparently it means "velvety" or "having a downy covering".

SO WHY NOT JUST FUCKING SAY THAT, JOHN, EH? WHY NOT JUST FUCKING SAY FUCKING "VELVETY" AND SAVE US ALL HAVING TO OPEN THE FUCKING DICTIONARY?

WELL???

I took this photo the other day, knowing it was just the sort of thing that would surprise and delight Dave. He loves evangelicals, especially the type that seize control of medieval churches and hold "worship jams" in them.

You can find out more about these young dudes at www.stnics.org - why not pay them a visit? You're always welcome to get down with the gang!<sup>1

Unless you're embarrassingly mentally ill, like the bloke sat on in the church doorway, unable to get in. For the purpose of this definition, "mentally ill" does not encompass those who live their life according to a literal interpretation of the Bible.</sup>

The festivities marking Mum and Dad's fortieth wedding have now gone on longer than would be considered seemly for the marriage of a pasha's daughter. Today's lunch was for the 'other' half of the social circle: those whose liveliness would offend the sharply protestant consciousness of Aunties Doreen and Vera.

Those two upright Methodists were entertained a few weeks ago. Today's event was noisier, boozier and more fun. David Griggs was there. Purely one of the nicest men I've ever met, he's one of the few who can get under mum's defences, making her drink a lot and laugh at risqué jokes.

She needs a laugh at the moment: her hip is crumbling and the consultant won't operate because of the club foot on the other side. The Toyne family's physical weirdnesses, so long a subject for laughs, are starting to get their own back.

As a family we usually fail to go gentle into that good night with a bloody-mindedness that even Dylan Thomas might find unsettling. So while I'll feel terribly sorry for Mum when the time comes she has to use a wheelchair, I'm going to feel a lot more sorry for the poor bastard who has to tell her - a sorrow that's lent extra keenness by the growing suspicion that that poor bastard is going to be me.

Just got back from rather a long night in the Board with Niall. We couldn't play pool - there was a tournament on - so we fell instead to discussing his life. He had spent the day on a Disability Awareness training course, courtesy of Darlington College.

Niall lives a life that swings wildly and randomly between extremes of comedy and tragedy, never seeming to settle for more than a few moments on the middle ground where most of us spend most of our lives. Rather, he exists in a wholly Manichean universe. On the dark side are the benefits bureaucrats who don't give a shit and the smiley, friendly bank managers who keep lending him money to feed his gambling addiction. The good guys - most of them - don't give a shit either, but seem to vaguely think they're making the world a better place by explaining that disabled people are disabled "by society", and not, for instance, by the fact they've got no fucking legs or the sort of fucked-up brain chemistry that would do a reasonable job as the active component in bleach.

The problem is that too much goodness is coordinated not by good people, but by do-gooders; drones who think that by reclassifying people with "special needs" as people with "specific needs" they're somehow doing something great. I'm not taking a Thatcherite line here, because I think it's the job of a just society to support those who struggle. But in supporting them we have to treat them as people who are different from us in mind or body but identical in spirit: not as pawns in the utilitarian struggle for some woolly idea of a better world.

(I suppose some goon with a social work degree is going to mail me now, explaining that of course he cares about real people, and of course it's all about helping those disabled by society to help themselves. But to talk about "special needs" really does ostracize and objectify, don't you think...? No I don't - so you can fuck off right now. Go on, fuck off and get a proper qualification.)

So we were looking at jobs that Niall could do that make use of his talents. Because he does have talents: he's got a poor memory, and he struggles to add up. But his reading's fine and his writing's not too bad. He's a good communicator, and, once you've got over the fact that he seems a bit weird, quite easy to get on with. He wants to work with other disabled people, helping them integrate into everyday life.

A wholly admirable aim, and one that I'm sure the do-gooder brigade will be quick to crush. They wouldn't want a weirdo like that working with them.

He also had a date with this lass (Rebecca?) from Ken Warne last night. She's only 17, and he's 38. She was kind to him, and they played pool. But she wouldn't give him her phone number and told him that her dad wasn't happy that she was out with him. Niall smiled as he told me this: he understands. But the DNA's crashing around inside, breaking things.

NO, NO, NO, NO

NO

[Classical compilation CDs] are the work of the Devil and, in league with him though you are in so many ways, you must not endorse such philistine innovations!!

You must recant!!!

I should point out that in this extract from Dave's email about my classical music post (Chanson de Matin, below) some of the exclamation marks are editorial. Dave's seven years in George Thompson's English lessons were spent learning about such matters of life and death as how to do the Times crossword, mix gin and pick up boys in Moroccan souks. Spelling, punctuation and grammar were neglected, as George knew they weren't worth the bother of teaching to any student who wasn't bright enough to pick them up for himself. This has left Dave charmingly paranoid about his written English, so he would never, ever use multiple exclamation marks. In this case, I think, the multiplicity is justified in order to recreate the swivel-eyed, slavering rage I seem to have provoked in him.

Interesting gig last night: playing support for a show band up in Gateshead. The occasion was a Freemasons Ladies' Night - which means there were men and women there rather than the more usual blokes-only affairs I imagine they have.

Great fun, actually. The band, a Geordie outfit called Roll The Dice were your typical pro musicians: the defeated members of a destroyed crusade slumped face down on the dusty, bloody road to Jerusalem. They do a mix of jobs during the week, then spend every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night playing 'Vienna' and 'Radio Ga Ga' in working men's clubs in places like Shildon and Peterlee. When we ate together they were wonderful company: wry, funny, interested in what I, a stranger, had to say. Their leader, Dennis, runs the band on an employment basis - and as such sits a little aloof and apart from the others, a slightly odd figure, though friendly enough.

And what am I supposed to say about the Masons themselves? That they were a bunch of Mail-reading, racist, lower-middle-class reactionary small to medium businessmen with orange tanned mutton-dressed-as-lamb wives in tight dresses and clicky heels? That they're losers who indulge in absurd rituals with veiled homoerotic overtones? Well, if that's the kind of description you're after, you've come to the wrong place. Because they were good to me: they were polite and considerate, they paid me more than I asked, fed me, were solicitous for my welfare and seemed interested in my life and my interests. I didn't pay for a drink all night.

About ten o'clock I was having a waz. A Mason who must have been in his late thirties came and stood at the urinal to my left. His son - around nine or ten years old - went for the one on my right. We stood in silence for a while. Then another bloke, older, joined us on the other side of the young lad. He nodded at the boy's dad, then spoke to the boy:

'Ha ya reet, son?'

The boy looked at his dad, as if he didn't know what to say to the older bloke, who was obviously quite important. His dad, looking across me, nodded encouragingly. The boy turned back the other way.

'Ah'm reet, thanks.'

'Grand,' said the older bloke, 'as long as yes is enjoyin yerself. Tha's warrit's all about, eh?'

One of the great things about narration is that you get to seriously fuck about with time. For example, this post is dated the second of October, though in fact it is being written some time after that, as are several of 'this week's' posts. I've got no qualms about doing this because (a) it's better than writing one huge entry detailing everything that's gone on recently or passed through my brain in idle moments over the course of a week, and (b) it's my blog, so I'll do what I want, thanks very much.

Manipulating time in this way is causing some unfortunate side-effects, though. The münsterländer has just walked backwards into the kitchen, vomited her food back into the bowl and undrunk about a pint of water - and that's nothing to the sensation that awaits her when she finds herself trotting into the garden in reverse and squatting down over a fresh pile of poo. For this indignity she can blame the Diarist's Dilemma, a phenomenon I have explained previously elsewhere, thus:

One has the most time for writing long entries when there's not much happening. When lots and lots of interesting things are going on, there's jack-all time to write the long entries needed to do events justice. I've therefore come to the conclusion that all diarists are frauds who make up most of their stuff. There's no way Pepys was wandering the streets of the City as the Great Fire got going - he'll have been running around burying his valuables, checking his insurance and hosing down his mistresses. All the stuff he says he saw must be pure invention.

But I'm too honest to fall for that temptation, by golly.