I was down the Music Centre, with Gert and Trigger. We were borrowing Triggers drums for the audition. He’s played with a few groups, some were ok. The Swert and Facehugger were the better two. Trigger reckons he’s called Trigger because of the speed of his drumming, but it actually because he’s as thick as shit. Our new Boy, who wants to be called Kristo and not, you know, Christopher, has brought his mate, Colm, along to play guitar. Colm has the look, a fringe the length of my arm, and a B.C. Rich Bitch that belonged to his brother when he was in a Slayer tribute band back in the nineties. Doesn’t need it anymore, works for an investment bank. Has a takamime and some Burt Jansch cd’s. I’m playing the bass, an old Fender jazz I had lying around. They don’t know any songs I know, and I don’t know any they know, so we do Anarchy in the UK by the pistols cos everyone knows that and ask the singers to do what they want over it. Sing, scream, rap. We’re a big open book, I say.

Kristo has been soliciting among his cronies, so there’s a fair few waiting to give it ago. In fairness they don’t have to go very far. Trigger is pretending he can do the sound and passing comment after every audition to me and Gert. “didn’t like him. That kid can’t play.” Etc. fucking hell…..I can’t tell him to fuck off, because it’s all his gear. Kristo like the kit too, and he can’t half play. I’m impressed, little arms pounding away on him. COlm ain’t so hot, but he has a look. I could turn him into the bassist if I wasn’t the type who despised that kind of shit. A bassist should be able to play, you know, but not ostentatiously. Keep it simple, but be ready to turn whatever corner you come against. Some cunts, they pluck, and hold, and walk. And that’s it. No. but maybe COlm has enough chops in him to be turned from a mediocre guitarist into a fairly ok bassist. It’s a muddler. I’ll think about it.

There’s a couple of kids who can sing, but I want a Danzig, and then there’s this girl. She’s shy looking and dressed appallingly, and could well be a munter under that greasy lank hair, but she screams like Patti Smith and it actually chilled my bones. There’s potential for something in there, and I don’t know what. She was playing an acoustic guitar and a song she wrote, really average strummy crap, a minor, g. then she starts to wail, like Diamanda Gallas on the blob.

My one mistake tho, was paying the two lads, in advance, and worse yet, in cider, but by the time Kristos timing has gone all cockways on us, enough has been done. Obviously I’m gonna have to toughen these kids up, but the potential is there, and that’s promising. Playing with these two teenagers is the best craic I’ve had in weeks.

Recently I haven’t even been bothered going out, I’ve been working on the script at home. I really feel that I’m coming to a head with it, an epoch in my own development. Words are falling into place, and I’ve no idea how. I sit there, with some Jameson and twenty Marlboro and type. Jesus, smoking is like some kind of fucking muse, like my Sylvia Plath. Except, ironically, I’m the one killing myself. No, that metaphor is all over the place. Sorry, a bit tipsy.

I got a 12 year old single malt down in the whiskey shop. The guy looked at me like I had a canister of AIDS in my hand and my own shit smeared over my face, but when I started to buy some expensive drams, he liked me well enough. Whiskey’s my new thing. Whiskey and Whisky. It takes you deep. Deep in there. Where words are formed, primordially.

I’m creaking into work, a bit hungover, and finding it hard to keep up with my caseloads. Nothing new there, but I had given the old lads too false a hope with that burst of insane activity over the Christmas period. Ah well, they knew it wouldn’t last, and it’s not as if I do anything important, not really. I know where I stand in their estimations. But what can I do? I was hampered. Pampered.

I ask Cathy for lunch, and the pair of us got some wraps from nude and walked through the park. It was cold, but clear, dry, crisp I suppose you’d say. She asked about Christmas, all that family bollocks.

“they’re dead to me now” I said.

“oh come on, your family?”

“fucking dead. And the sooner the better. There’s a lot of money to be made… “

she looks at me, goggle eyed, as if she can’t believe for a minute a man would talk about his family like this. “my cunted brother made this about money a long time ago.” I throw my wrap into the lake and even the ducks wouldn’t go near it. I’m angry again. “I hate vegans,” I say, inexplicably. Well, explicably enough, just, apropos of what exactly. Cathy is cold so we walk on in a kind of silence. I think she thinks I’m weird now and I’m running my chance. Certainly, being so debilitated when I get in because of last nights drink is helping my cause with anyone, but fuck it. The work Is good. They’ll all see.

I haven’t been eating well either. Yesterday I ate polenta cos it was all I had left. Fucks sake.

This band I s going to be huge tho, you’ll see. Myself and Gert are driving down to Galway to see some band at the weekend, and rob their guitarist.