Q1 – writing nothing!

I have successfully set fire to my New Year’s resolutions. I lasted until the middle of February with my resolution to write more, and in particular, to try writing the novel I want to write. Everybody wants to write a novel, not an actual marketable screenplay, because everyone wants the idea of posterity and legacy, which the ephemeral nature of a random TV show seems to preclude. It is a naive view. These days, when nobody reads anything, and everybody watches a show on their iPad on the way to work, your only chance of posterity is in fact writing a hit TV show that may be repeated for decades. Admittedly, I can’t actually remember the name of the guy that created Friends off the top of my head, but his name will be floating across the credits for many decades to come, probably only after a whole heap of cuts are eventually made to the subject matter though. I couldn’t really bring myself to care about Roald Dahl’s books being rewritten. It would be quite a different thing if the government of the day had ordained that we could not read his original words, but the copyright holder is legally the author, and can do what they like with their own material. Secretly, I was also rather pleased, as my daughter was given a first edition of Matilda.

I think the things I want to write about, the fictional things, are too dark and weird for anyone to want to read about them. I want to write a dystopian sci-fi in which governments collude to make the world’s population believe that obesity is the healthiest way to be. It was a deliberate plan to limit pension liabilities. I then branched out into the idea that it is in fact a completely different reality, in which AI has replaced humanity, and the government in question is run by an AI who wants to see what happens if you take real humans and run a simulation on them. The humans who resist the manipulation are the real prize, as they represent something AI cannot anticipate. Or something. I couldn’t really work out how the story would hang together, or rather, when I wrote it all out into a summary concept, Richard said it was very hackneyed and done before, and I gave up instantly.

I went away on a work trip for a few weeks earlier this year, which was tiring and hard, more so because of all the tedious comments about how fun it must have been. No, it was a psychologically draining combination of jetlag, hangovers and anxiety about my professional performance. It was also very strange to unearth the half forgotten memories of Asia from my childhood. I spent a lot of time on the treadmill, which had a view facing out into Hong Kong harbour, and the totally different face of Kowloon. I only remember very low rise buildings, where the cornices of The Peninsula stuck out.

I remembered the look of a few roads up to Wilson’s trail, and the Parkview hotel. I was merely meeting a friend there, but had some strange sense of déjà vu that I couldn’t place. The whole trip was a succession of lost 1980s images of a small child, wandering around markets and wearing a red nylon kimono with a big dragon on it which I treasured for years. There were huge restaurants with big round tables and a lazy susan, where I admired the large lobster tanks, which in my recollection also contained other fish, but probably didn’t.  These days it seems strange that I was completely unfazed by the idea that the lobsters were being stored alive for boiling and eating; I am fairly sure this was explained to me, and I just carried on eating whatever unidentified soup had been put in front of me.

Japan without a Japanese speaker is a very different experience, which I am in no hurry to repeat. I have been to Japan three or four times, always with my father acting as the tour guide,  telling me interesting things about Shinto whilst touring the prettiest shrines, finding cheap and tasty places to eat. When left to my own devices, I would have been completely lost without an e-sim to get all the data I needed (very much recommend Airalo). This meant I could put words into Google translate, use Google Lens to show me what the signs meant, or just show a map of where I wanted to go to taxi drivers. It still didn’t stop me from the rather mortifying experience of not understanding that the fast lines on the Tokyo metro are a separate company with separate ticketing. The Japanese staff looked very embarrassed that I had made this mistake.

Still, the temples I did already know were still nice – forget about the replica golden temple in Kyoto, Kiyomizu-Dera is absolutely stunning. I got there first thing in the morning, and the crowds were soon quite massive even in March. You can see why even with my terrible phone snaps:

I wandered around aimlessly for a day in Kyoto, racking up 30,000 steps, visiting a variety of other shrines that did nice takeaway okonomiyaki, and went to the very austere but historical Imperial Palace. I had a more relaxing time back in Tokyo the next morning, running a few laps around the Imperial palace perimeter. Also very impressive; the gardens are what one would imagine:

I then went back to my hotel in Tsukiji, and went off to see the Meiji shrine, which was slightly dull, but full of touching prayer inscriptions from Americans who wanted prayers for a baby or a good time in the Tokyo marathon (there were several dozen each of these).

I spent many more hours trying to work out where I used to go in Roppongi, but it looked nothing like I remembered, just a strange, antiseptic giant shopping mall in Roppongi Hills. So I finally went around the neon lights of Shinjuku, which was ok I guess. Fun photos, but the food was overpriced and not that nice – not helped by communication difficulties.

My trip finished up in Singapore for a few days. Singapore is very easy to get around and fantastic for foreigners, but perhaps the speed dating nature of my visit made it hard to work out if it had a personality. I at any rate just wanted to be back home with the kids by that time. Look, cool architecture, meh:

I came back to rainy and reliable London, and onwards to my nice house in, err, unpretentious, Milton Keynes. And that’s my attempt to at least push out a blog post in Q2. I’ll probably rewrite it later. More on Thursday! New resolution, twice a week.