1. What time is it: What am I, the bastard Speaking Clock? Jesus
2. Name as it appears on your birth certificate: white 1970 Vauxhall Viva (administrative mix-up)
3. Nickname: I have had many nicknames in my time. There are those who call me El Desdichado, the Disinherited One. Others call me 'Spacko'. To my local dole office, I am case No. ZZ6473/b, Red Flag, Action This Day.
4. Parents names: I like to think of myself as the bastard offspring of Boadicea and Che Guevara. On a more prosaic level, Edna and Neville Kelly.
5. Number of candles that appeared on your last birthday cake: None 'appeared', they were all there to begin with
6. Date that you regularly blow them out: My dates rarely let me blow them out
7. Pets: Siamese cats, joined at the hip
8. Eye color: I have more than one eye
9: Hair color: I have more than one hair
10. Piercings: duodenal ulcer
11. How much do you love your job: jobs are for losers
12. Best gift you have ever received: My willy, arguably
13. Hometown: The city of Pain in the state of Desolation
14. Been in love: See 12
15: Been to Africa: Good Christ no. There are lions.
16: Been toilet papering: No, it's just the way I'm sitting
17: Loved someone so much it made you cry: Yes, but then I cry at the drop of a hat. Well, at the drop of a bra.
18: Been in a car accident: I've had a car accident, but I haven't 'been' in a car accident, I mean I haven't 'been to the toilet' in a car accident, although it was a close thing
19. Sprite or 7up: R. White's
20: Favourite movie: Has to be 'E.T.' - Drew Barrymore AND Erika Eleniak - phwoarh! Er...I mean...
21. Favourite holiday: Anywhere human life is cheap and you can get laid for a boiled egg. Unfortunately I don't fancy Afghans. I'm hoping for a war in Spain or an earthquake in Stockholm.
22. Favourite day of the week:
Tweenday, the magical day between Tuesday and Wednesday, when those of us with faerie blood flit around the sleeping earth righting wrongs and playing pranks. We give leg-cramps to the wicked, lovely dreams to the virtuous but unhappy, and stifle in the crib those babies who are likely to grow up to send e-mail questionnaires asking things like 'What is your favourite day of the week.'
23. Favourite toothpaste: Ye Gods. This is what comes of inventing the washing machine: women have the time to ask each other what their favourite toothpaste is.
24. Favourite restaurant: What am I, Egon bastard Ronay? I get fed about once a year when my Auntie Alice comes to take me out for a cup of tea and a glazed bun
25. Favourite drink: The drink that gladdens the heart of all true Englishmen, the blood of dead Germans. No, tea.
26. Favourite sport to watch:
Russian Curling (played with land-mines and vodka)
27. Preferred type of Ice cream: Bloody hell. This is what comes of inventing the tumble dryer. And there'll be some psychological significance to it, like astrology. Like if I choose 'mint choc chip' it'll mean I'm cold and unreliable
28. Favourite Sesame Street character: The letter B
29. Favourite fast food restaurant: McCorquindale's Glazed Bun Emporium is fairly fast - at least, the waitresses will peel down their surgical stockings if you tip them enough
30. When was your last hospital visit: I would as soon visit Sunderland
31. What colour is your bedroom carpet:
Oh, fuck me ragged with a splintered hatstand. Get on the internet, they said. It's going to revolutionize the world, they said. Exchange dynamic ideas with people all over the globe, they said. No borders for information, they said. Even repressive regimes like China and Iraq, they said, cannot stop the cultural zeitgeist. In crumbling tenement blocks in North Korea, teenage sharpies whip together illegal modems from old radio parts or slink like cats through post-curfew shadows to black-market internet cafes, risking prison, beatings, shock-therapy in their insatiable thirst for knowledge, for connection, driven by an instinct that may be coded into their very genes to become part of an evolving world nervous system, the noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin, a planetary consciousness, one brain with two hemispheres coruscating godlike electric thoughts, they said. In shanty-towns in Rio, they gather in cantinas-siliconos to watch ancient flickering monitors hooked up to jury-rigged exercise-bike-powered generators. In Afghanistan under the Taleban, chador-clad women move swiftly through the marketplace with lowered eyes, avoiding the watchful gaze of their oppressors. Somehow, by looks, by gestures, by stealthy muttered syllables as they examine fruit, The Word spreads: it is to be today. Risking hideous death, they foregather that afternoon in a secret chamber in the house of the bravest of them. Even the least superstitious barely stifles a gasp as the wonderful, proscribed machine, the gateway to Knowledge, is taken from its place of concealment: perhaps Eve felt this way as she reached out to take the forbidden fruit. Trembling, they log on. Freeserve is down: in their simplicity, many of the newer members take this for a terrible omen, a last chance to repent, and start to wail and rend their garments. The more hardened in crime counsel patience and redial. At last, they access their mail account. Even the spam is magical to them, something to be pored over and learned by heart: tilling the fields, they will often recite, like mantras, the URLs of the sites mentioned therein. They have great hopes of the Nigerian general who has pledged to make them rich if they will help him get his embezzled fortune out of the country: so far, however, he has not replied to their offer to launder the money through their local poultry co-operative. But it is not for this that they have come: it is for something else that they have risked life and limb. 'Has it come yet?' They scarcely dare to hope. 'Yes. It has come. The reply from Marjory in Rochdale. She has filled in the questionnaire. Her bedroom carpet is pink and her favourite toothpaste is Gleem.' A great sigh of fulfillment goes round the room. 'Pink,' breathes the leader, 'how like Marjory.' 'And...and the ice-cream?' 'She likes any type of ice-cream as long as Bert is licking it off her clitoris.' A general frown of puzzlement. 'What is a clitoris?' 'It must be something Western women have, presumably a kitchen appliance of some sort. I will own many one day.' 'Perhaps we could order one from Amazon? We could have a communal one and take it in turns to use it.' Just then there is a rumble as their husbands bulldoze the house down around them and squash them all flat. But they die happy. It was worth it. They know that Marjory has a pink bedroom carpet.
Oh - mine is blue. Thankyou for asking.
32. How many times did you fail your permit or drivers test: The word 'fail' is such a judgemental term. Let us just say, after my seventh attempt the testers clubbed together to buy me a bus pass
33. Who was the last person you had an email from before this: The same cretin who sent me this. Oh, wait, I'm trying to tap her for a job. The differently-chromosomed person who sent me this.
34. Which single store would you chose to max out your
credit card:
Credit card! Hollow laughter.
35. What do you do most often when you are bored: See 12
36. Name the person you are friends with that lives the farthest: Jesus, arguably, although he's done fuck-all for me lately
37. Most annoying thing: See 34
38. Bedtime: Warm milk and mink glove
39. Who will respond the quickest: Sexually? Auntie Alice is very easy to arouse. I earn my glazed buns the hard way.
40. Who is the person you sent this to that is least likely to respond: I am not sending this to anyone. If I had any friends, they would be above this sort of thing.
41. Favourite all time tv show: There's no such thing as an all time TV show. I mean, it would have to have started in dinosaur times and still be going, wouldn't it? Some episodes of 'Peak Practice' seem to last for all eternity, though.
42. Last movie you saw: E.T. - the Raw and Uncut version, where Drew Barrymore and Erika Eleniak frolic in a paddling pool. Er...I mean...
43. Last person you went out for dinner with: Auntie Alice, in as far as a glazed bun counts as dinner
44. Favourite music/musician: Tchaikovsky. Did you know he had a brother named 'Modest'? An excellent name for the brother of a great man. I see Modest as an affable, uncomplicated, blandly good-looking, averagely successful, and totally self-effacing chap, forever backing out of Tchaikovsky's limelight. 'Tell me about yourself, Modest.' 'Oh, I'm no-one, really. Peter's the one in the family with all the talent.' 'I hear you're doing well in business?' 'Oh, you know, I bumble along - but let me tell you about this great new symphony Peter's writing.' 'I believe you gave him the title for his Pathetique Symphony.' 'Oh, that - that was nothing,' says Modest, blushing.
45. What CD is in your player right this second: John Cage's 'Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds Silence' - if you turn it up really loud it can drown out traffic noises
46. What is your deepest fear: As I have no hope I have no deep fears. Most of my fears are fairly shallow ones. Fear of other people eating my biscuits. Fear of old ladies weeing themselves when they sit next to me on the bus. Fear of midgets. Stuff like that.
When I was about 12, interestingly, I had a great fear of spontaneous teleportation. This is true. I had been reading a book on baffling psychic phenomena, in particular the case of a medieval monk who was suddenly transported halfway across Europe, and it came to obsess me. I can remember lying in bed at night worrying about what would happen if I suddenly found myself teleported into a stranger's bedroom at the other end of the country. How I would explain it, and how I would then get home in my pyjamas. I eventually started sleeping with money for trainfare stacked on my bedside table, although whether I would have had time to grab it while dematerializing Christ only knows.
I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, but it feels good to finally get it off my chest. Maybe it's good to share, after all.
47. What time did you finish this: Oh, fuck off.