Star Blog

The Wall clan all came back from their weekend away with dripping noses, thin blood and rusty coughs. Since which time it has been hard to keep my arse as suitably fastened to the hot seat as it should be, what with wife being the worst off of the lot. Fortunately, eldest daughter escaped the Cheddar Cold so that's been one less casualty on the couch today spreading germs. And then there's me, soldiering on, impervious to illness, quite heroic. Today anyway, we'll see how long it lasts. Meanwhile, Nita sent me a couple more Howlin Rain CDs, Magnificent Friend and Howlin Rain. Have only had a chance to check out half of Friend so far but sounds just as groovacious as you would expect. Stevie Chick, a founding member of the Rain Beard fraternity, reckons the new one Russian Wilds is their best yet. But that's so good it would be anyone's best yet. Right, gotta go. Wife is in need of mouth to mouth, kids are fighting off the cold by fighting each other, and eldest can't find the sawdust for cleaning out the gerbils. I think that's what she is shouting about at the top of her voice from the top of the stairs. Funny, could have sworn the dogs had eaten them already. Must have been some other time I'm barely thinking of...

First the good news. Wife and kids went away this weekend to Cheddar Gorge. Primarily to allow the Old Man to get some Proper Work done on The Book. And guess what - the Old Fucker actually got Another Chapter Done. Oh the fuck yes! All hail the awesomeness of moi.

Well, it had to happen. Finally hit a buffer today with the book. Still got some good stuff done but lord how it barely crawled onto the page. Tomorrow will be different. Kindly-hearted wife and cute and cuddly kids are clearing out early to allow me to get some SPACE to get my SHIT done. That is, finish polishing off a couple of already done in the sense of need-to-be-ventilated-first chapters and get back to knocking seven shades out of the next couple. It is within my reach. I have the power. I bloody well hope so anyway or kindly-hearted wife will be knocking several shades of her own out of something and I don't mean a book. Upwards... away!

My old dancing partner Nita sent me a CD that I played for the first time today and instantly fell for. Band called Howlin Rain. Don't tell me, you already know about them? Well, maybe. But I've also been listening to them - since I was about 12, actually. They were there every time I heard Humble Pie, Bonnie and Delaney, Steely Dan, Little Feat, Beggars-era Stones, you get the vibe. Gonna find a youtube clip and stick it up, inspire you to light a joss stick, baby...

Arrived into the week with my coat already on and my shoes shined. Monday I was in London seeing the book world's last surviving gentleman publisher Malcolm Edwards and his top gun editor Ian Preece. We lunched at La Francoise in Soho, where the waitresses only speak French and smoke long thin untipped cigarettes as they disdainfully take your order, and when the plates arrive are smothered in scarlet lipstick, the hussies. We drank some exotic form of cocktail that only Malcolm and a handful of surviving French monarchists are familiar with and can pronounce as we ate the still feathered wings of various small birds. I'd love to tell you what we talked about but then I'd have to invite into the club and membership has now closed. (I'm still waiting for them to suss me out.)

Got up, made tea, walked the dogs, came back, showered myself and fed me. Then came in here to start again. It was good. Stopped at five to eat a sandwich, then kids started on about helping with their homework. So I did that. It was easier than usual. Sorry, but it was. Then back in here to carry on. This time with the help of a small (he lied) whiskey. Two actually, eventually. Now, at half nine, I am done for the day. It's been good. Most of them aren't, so maybe I had this one coming to me. I don't what it is. It just is.

That Thursday change of scene did me right. Two good (long) days subsequent and I've got another chapter in the bag. I'll still need to go back to it in a week or so just to give it a fresh pair of eyes but the bastard is all there, I know it. Just needs the bows and bells and drops of blood spattered over it like kisses. Feels good too because it puts me back on track chronologically. Somehow I felt myself wading into deep waters with the previous chapter I wrote, which actually comes later in the book, but didn't want to stop because the words were laying themselves down without much interference from me and when that happens you have to let it, otherwise it might never happen again. I liked it too because it was a sign that I'm not as screwed-up over this book as I was over Metallica and even more so Led Zeppelin. Something has happened - I know this because I think I know what it is but don't expect me to tell here, magic doesn't like daylight - and it has put into another realm where all things are achievable. The main thing is I have been lucky with interviews, lucky that this story really has never been told properly before, lucky that having done two books of this size and scope already my chops are now up and my groove down. Of course, these things being what they are - fragile as crocodile's eyelashes, haphazard as Thor's hammer that time the strap broke - I'll freeze in front of the computer tomorrow. Then get run over by a bus when I try and escape for some foul air...

My body has ways of telling me when to take a breather. So when, yesterday, the old hiatus hernia flared up and rewarded me with an afternoon of serious reflux pain, I recognised the signs. That's what three or four weeks fairly non-stop work will do to you. To me, anyway. Fortunately, wife got me some fresh ginger root, shaved it bare, chopped it into chunks, poured boiling water over it and left it to brew. Once I'd drank that I was practically back to whatever passes for normal around here these days. Then when I staggered out of bed this morning, feeling like I'd just crawled out from under a truck, I knew I'd need more than just ginger, good as it is. I needed rest. Just a little, no biggie. Fortunately, I had my three-weekly appointment this morning with the Sainted Vanessa, otherwise I'd never have been arsed to get this down now. Heavy on the moxo, deep on the needles... this is the road to salvation, friends. I don't mean that bullshit NHS version, for swollen knees, I mean the 6000-year-old TCM version as performed by a highly experienced, expert practitioner. Came home, had me a sit down in front of the telly, watching a Sky-plussed recording of Micky Rourke on the Actors Studio, then noticed the sun had come out so wife and I drove to Wallingford, where we grabbed a steak bake and drifted around the town, using the loos in Waitrose and checking out the groovy books in all the groovy charity stores. Picked up a paperback of Borstal Boy for 80p and a hardback American first edition of Freedom by Jonathan Franzten. Beehan I've read before, of course, having green blood. But Freedom I only know by reputation and cachet. Well we'll see about that. Taking it to bed with me tonight for a bit of full-frontal fluidity. Hopefully.

Writing AC/DC. Hard to keep the voice as I want it consistent throughout. I don't like Once Upon A Time and stock rock-crit phrases like 'grace these shores'. Impatient with this idea that they are somehow Australian when what the Young Brothers are is Scottish through and through. Want the writing, in short, to mirror the pulse and energy and rhythm of their music, unpretentious, full of fuckings and calling a cunt a cunt, but also affirming and strangely freeing. Kind to animals and ruthless to humans. Proper blood and guts on the plate. And have managed to do so, I'm excited to say, in many places. But not in others, less excited to say. Then there are the places where actually less blood and more bone is what's needed. AC/DC make the complicated things they do sound so easy yet only they can do it. And so the writing must be too. Or at least must aim for, sticky fingers and all, byways to smaller hells and back, not only in black, and not just for Bon, neither. For Johnno too, bless his roll-ups and hairy back. And of course for the brothers, larrikins from a land up and under. Smash-mouthed, closed-door smokers don't give a fuck give too much of a fuck fucking fuckers. And me.

We arrived back on the planet at least in one piece. That had not been a given. At one point in the outward bound journey we had thought, in fact, we would never be able to return again. Not that things back home were as we had left them. They never are but this was quite a lot different. We had been gone so long, so unexpectedly, so off the dial and out of reach it was a struggle at first to recognise our own reflections in the mirror. Then when we did... well, they say you can get used to anything. And what choice do we have any of us, anyway?

I came down the spiral staircase and allowed the butler to hand me a flute of champagne. I'd been asleep all day in front of the vast HD screen at the foot of the four-poster. Annabelle was waiting for me in the drawing room, a cigar smouldering between her sweet pink lips.

Dinner at Sticky Fingers last night with my friend Hamish, the rockingest TV producer in town, and my new friend Richard, the rockingest BBC producer in town. It goes without saying, therefore, that a rather large degree of rocking went on, one way or another. Ended up talking about some of our favourite music from our youths, which fortunately for us coincided with probably the greatest ever era for rock music. And when I say probably I do of course mean certainly.

Wife and I went into Oxford today on a mission to buy me a dark suit. There comes a time in every proper man's life when he needs a dark suit and that time came for me years ago, at which point I got one. The trouble is, it seems to have shrunk since then and I now find I need a new one. We did not succeed. I was looking for 'economical' but the only ones that fitted didn't fit well enough. Or put another way, looked shit. It now looks like I may need to raise the bar in terms of price-planning. Did buy a very nice cotton black shirt and gold-ish silk tie from Marks and Sparks though. Classy, like. I also splurged on a cream-coloured cashmere scarf from, er, Kashmir, actually. Hey, it's warm, it's soft, it's great-looking and my new best friend Shabir at the Dragon Den in the covered market assured me it would "last forever." In those terms then, a bargain. And we'll say no more about it. Right?

Okaaaaaaaay... We also bought a new pink swimsuit for youngest daughter and one of those leopard skin-looking hats with pink ears and long scarf-glove-type things for eldest daughter. All good for something, wife insisted. When we finally got back to the car though it refused to start. Again. For fuck's sake, we only just took it out of the garage yesterday evening. It's now back there. Fortunately, Ben and Jamie, our manic mechanics have given wife a red Peugot diesel, circa 2001 to "run around in" as a "courtesy." You could see the neighbours' curtains twitching as we pulled up in it tonight. But then they always do that when I come home. Must be the cut of my jib. You've seen my jib, right? Then you'll know what I'm talking about, baby...

Watching the credits roll on Sherlock tonight (the superor TV version, not the tedious movie), and wife says: "Is that the same Una Stubbs that was in Pulp Fiction?"

And so the old fart writer finally came crawling out of his stinking black hole and back towards the dim grey light, his tiny red eyes blinking painfully like Roley Mo at a house of hos...

So you wanna be a rock'n'roll writer? Well, let's talk about that...

Worked every day since Boxing Day so tonight I went crazy and talked wife into coming with me to Yummy Yummy in Wantage (yes, it really is called that). Eldest daughter babysat which was awesome while wife and I got the youngest two to bed early (they needed it after a string of late Xmas-related nights... honest) then dolled ourselves up and drove like fiends to Wantage. A beautiful evening, holding hands, mouths full of sweet Thai delights while we daydreamed about what we would do with the coming year If We Had Money. Woah yeah...