The novel I said such disparaging things about a few Blogs back is, believe it or not, right up there with the top ten in the best sellers list. It really is very strange. I think it is a case of, if people are told unequivocally that something is good, then it simply has to be good and they better believe it.
Have just finished going through the list of publishers (2008) in order to think of one to whom we should send “Enter Anthony”. Came up with sixteen possibles, all of whom I have no doubt will turn it down. It’s such a waste of heavy postage really if experience is anything to go by but you have to at least try. The publishers range from megalo – 400 or more books published in a year to minuscule – none: relying on Imprint. It is quite amazing how many of the hundreds of publishers listed specialise in “Academic and Scholarly”, “Biography & Autobiography”, “Religion and Theology”, and not a few now “Gay & Lesbian Studies”. Obviously the pink pound is still hale and hearty and brings in the readies.
A bit of a domestic Blog today. Our visitors, Stuart and Jenny, are back in the UK and I am pleased to say the weather for their stay could not have been better. This being Stuart’s first visit to Crete we had to take him to at least a couple of our favourite places we thought would be different to anything he had experienced and which we felt he would enjoy. Firstly for dinner up into the mountains, to Manousis and Marianne’s taverna, a sparse unadorned building (we used to call it a shack before they tarted it up a little). It consists of one long room and eating there is rather like having a meal in a friend’s house. Warm weather of course you can eat out on a terrace on the opposite side of the road. That is if you are willing to put up with all the tourist buses returning with walkers from the Samaria gorge. Marianne did us proud with pork in egg/lemon sauce, lamb, and beef, together with a Greek salad, and the local wine was excellent. Secondly we went to the wells for Sunday lunch. We call it the wells as it is a wooded area of waterfalls with a half a dozen tavernas situated below the ancient town of Lappa, now called Agriopoli, and is a great favourite with Greeks for Sunday lunch. All that’s left of Lappa are a few old stones and some Roman floors. You have to get to the wells early unless you’re prepared to park a mile away and be served at the busiest time. We always use the same restaurant where we are now well known as we so often take visitors there. Their two specialities are trout – choose your trout fresh – and souvlas, that is whole lamb cooked on the spit and served by the kilo. It certainly seemed that Stuart was greatly taken with both these establishments. Jenny of course had been before on previous visits. Then for the last night, we chose Peperies, another of our favourites where we are known. This is right on the edge of the beach at Kalyves so you look out to sea and Souda Bay from where you can watch the ferry putting out for Athens. You also look towards the Akrotiri where the airport is situated and normally during the course of an evening one would see at least half a dozen planes, if not more, flying in but this evening there was not a single one which goes to show I suppose how the recession is taking its toll on holiday making. Two planes did take off but even that was a low count as we are well into the season now.
Two Norwegian friends have gone against the trend and bought a 28 room hotel in Georgopoli and, at the last count, had not a single booking. I sincerely hope that situation changes and quickly because they have spent a great deal of money, not just in buying the place but in getting it ready for visitors.
Douglas and I have been through “Just In Case” yet again and hopefully got rid of all the typos etc. It should now go out in a couple of weeks.
Would you say that “pedantic” and “dry wit” go together? According to Stuart I have a dry wit but I am also pedantic. Strange all the various aspects of one’s character people come up with!

Kenneth Williams – his diaries – the private life as opposed to the public persona, and what a tragic and painful private life it turned out to be. Looking back on his career he was no great shakes as an actor, a dismal failure in fact with all the tricks, the voices, the grimacing, and he was as big a failure as a human being simply because he couldn’t accept himself for what he was. Maybe simply is the wrong word to use. When you’re that crazy and mixed up nothing is simple and, although he was 62 when he finally committed suicide in 1998, it had been on the cards for a very long time. It was not just his inability to have any kind of emotional relationship (except evidently with his mother) but, despite the many members of the public who were kind and lifted his spirits with friendly greetings there were always the real idiots who went out of their way to humiliate him which quite naturally he always found depressing. He did have a couple of lifelong close friends but for the most part people he met who he originally thought were wonderful soon fell by the wayside. Similarly plays he went into that he originally thought fantastic and exciting, as well as loving the casts, soon became a tedious hateful bore with talentless hateful actors that he couldn’t wait to get out of. Nothing satisfied him. On the 11th June 1969 he wrote – I wish I was dead. I would like to walk out of this existence for ever.
On the 17th August he wrote – The eyes full of tears. I am so lonely … There is never any peace …always the savagery, the nightmares, and horrible dreams.
23 September 1972 – In bed full of visions of an early death and prayed to God repeating my eternal cry ‘Help me, please help me.’
Sex was a no-no except for masturbation that he referred to as ‘the traditional’ or ‘tradiola’ or Barclay’s’ (Cockney rhyming slang) Barclay’s Bank – wank.
Although he could be highly critical, vicious in fact of other people, places and things, he did keep repeating himself even though he might have previously had an awful experience. For example he kept on going back to Tenerife for holidays although he always found it a great let-down. Was there something masochistic in this? “The room was disgusting … I went to the desk and had it changed but I don’t like this one either. The spirits sink … the tat of the place is quite awful.”
He was the same with religion, one minute fervently praying and all pious, the next – “Reading J.S.Mill: he’s the first man I’ve read to make the point that religion actually asks a man to stop his intellectual enquiries. It seems to question the very ability to think, let alone form moral judgments. What are we to make in the Bible of divine injunctions to slaughter people? It is a weird mess, Christianity, and it is even weirder that it worked after a fashion for a time! Of course now it’s as creaky as Byzantium before the onslaught of Mehmet.”
The strange thing is, despite his continuous put down of his fellow human beings (and sometimes their put down of him) and, although he was constantly worried about money, he was generous in the extreme when someone needed assistance or wanted a handout and he must be the only actor in the whole history of theatre who felt he was being overpaid and actually asked for his fee to be reduced! What a contradiction the man was, and so sad.

Over the years you come across true life characters you really feel you would like to write about but the period between gestation and production can be an awfully long time. It must be at least thirty years since I first came across La Belle Otero and thought what a fabulous character around which to weave a musical but it wasn’t until coming out here to Crete that I actually got around to writing it and this was because fate gave me a nudge in that the composer Chris Littlewood moved into a village not four kilometres away, liked the lyrics I showed him (from previous efforts), and agreed to work with me. Another character I thought about was Victoria Caflin Woodhull, known as Mrs Satan because of her belief in “free love” among other things and the first woman to put herself forward as a presidential candidate. She later married an English banker, became respectable and retired to the shires where the couple entertained Edward Vll, then price of Wales. A musical in fact was written about her, called “Onward Victoria” that went on in New York some time in the early eighties and came off in one night and I am not surprised. I have the record, recorded of course before that fatal opening/closing night, and the songs are pretty appalling. When there was a possibility of the democrats choosing Hilary Clinton as their presidential candidate I thought it might be a good idea to revive the idea, reread a biography and played some of the record and decided against it. An interesting life it might have been but Mrs Woodhull changed her views so often and to such an extent it’s no wonder she ended up a rather dull respectable county lady with no views at all.
Yet a third character who intrigued me was the Chevalier D’eon, a secret agent under Louis XV, an ambassador and a master swordsman. Even when wearing skirts he was evidently unbeatable. Yes, indeed, the Chevalier sometimes appeared as a man, sometimes as a woman and there were huge bets as to what sex he/she actually was. For years I have on and off toyed with the idea of writing a musical about this character but I am afraid the idea has never taken off and I doubt very much at my time of life I would want to write another musical with all the work that entails and the chances of it being produced being about a hundred thousand to one if not more. Anyway, these reminiscences were started off by my reading in The Sunday Times Culture Section, under dance, that three artistes have also been taken by the Chevalier and collaborated in creating a sort of dance spectacle titled Eonnagata, the action of dance and swordplay being broken off at times for readings of D’eon’s letters. Evidently the three all play an aspect of the Chevalier and naturally true Kabuki onnogata representation is included. The piece premiered at Sadler’s Wells and evidently extended to extra performances is not very well reviewed in the Sunday Times.
“It has been said – and such is Lepage’s practice – that Eonnogata will evolve in the process of performances, but this unveiling didn’t enthuse me to hold my breath.”
I have also thought of writing a chamber opera on the life of Modigliani but somehow I doubt that will ever see the light of day. I’m surprised though that someone, French or Italian, hasn’t made a film about him. Or have they?
We are eagerly awaiting the proof of "Just In Case" from the printers

Have to come back to religion just for a moment and only because I read with utter amazement, though I don’t know why, when it comes to peoples beliefs, I should be amazed by anything, that a number of policemen in Scotland when asked their religion replied ‘Jedi!’ Were they serious? Could this possibly be true? Unfortunately the answer seems to be yes as evidently something like 300000 people in the UK would give the same answer. They believe in something dreamed up in a sci-fi movie for goodness sake, admittedly a very good movie, the only movie I ever suggested we go and see two consecutive evenings and was just as thrilled with it second time round, but the basis for a religious belief? Oh, come on, get a life! But, when you come to think of it, if Jedi is what you want to believe, why not? It isn’t the only sci-fi religion going. Tom Cruise is into Scientology, a load of bosh if ever there was, also thought up by a sci-fi writer. Madonna has her fake Rabbi. Innumerable people over the years have been taken in by Mary Baker Eddy’s nonsense. Did none of them ever stop for a moment to wonder why animals get sick, or plants, or even rocks for that matter? There are those though who believe in healing stones and crystals. Maybe they could heal each other. I believe though that the “Christian Science Monitor” has shut up shop which is a shame. It was a very good paper. Then there is aura soma, a system of “colour soul therapy.” Choose from four bottles of colour and your whole psyche is laid bare.
Women seem to be in the forefront when it comes to indulging in mysticism and inventing beliefs. Think of Helena Blavatsky and Theosophy, more science-fiction in fact, just a different blend. Stands to reason I suppose. In ancient Greece if you wanted to know your future or the outcome of something, apart from Apollo it was always a female lurking in her cave, grotto or temple who gave you the news. So, if you have fairies at the bottom of your garden, treat them with due respect or you might get a Jedi knight swinging his light sabre in your direction. Alternatively you might be abducted by aliens and taken to goodness knows where to have needles shoved into the most sensitive and painful places. Ouch! So may the force be with you.
When I mentioned exhibitionism and voyeurism the other day I should have also added narcissism because, come to think of it, somebody watching him/herself on their computer screen as they masturbate just has to be a devotee of that poor misguided youth. One good thing though, unlike the beautiful original who drowned in the pond for love of his image, you can’t drown in a computer screen, not physically anyway. The Greeks really did know what nature is all about. Apart from the myth of Narcissus just think of Zeus and his Ganymede.
The spate of porno spam does not abate mostly involving horses, presumably because they have the biggest pricks. Why not try elephants? Are there pathetic creatures out there who open these messages (mostly badly typed or even illiterate)?
The debate continues in England on the fate of baby P(eter), brutally murdered by his mother’s violent boy friend. There have been a number of these deaths and, according to statistics, the number of children at risk because of broken homes is too enormous to even think about. Whatever happened to happy families?

Monday evening - It has been raining heavily and almost continually for twenty four hours and tomorrow our first seasonal guests arrive. The forecast is gloomy for the first three days of their visit and they’re only here for a week! Hopefully the forecast is wrong as it so often is.
Tuesday morning – So far the forecast was correct: cold, wet, and windy.
The Sunday Times Culture section informs me there are something like two hundred million blogs swirling around the internet but not to worry, they have chosen the best two hundred to make it easy for us. How they managed to do this is anyone’s guess. Someone read the whole two hundred million? It also assumes that your taste and mine is the same as whoever it was who decided on the two hundred as being the best. I didn’t notice if No official Umbrella was among the favourites! Shame.
Am still engrossed in “Human Traces” and, having finished the Kenneth Williams diaries, started on “City Of Ice” and could hardly put it down until the very last page and I didn’t notice any holes in the plot. No pretensions to being a literary work but a humdinger of a page turner and very scary; better than Dan Brown and twenty times better than old Jeff Archer. I really shouldn’t denigrate Jeff so much. After all I’ve only managed to struggle through one of his books and that was enough.
As for the Joe Orton Diaries that preceded my reading of the Kenneth Williams, I came to the conclusion that Orton, consciously or unconsciously committed suicide using Halliwell as the instrument thereof. It was a case of ‘Live hard, die young, and be a good-looking corpse.’ Everything certainly points in that direction, he being fully aware of how unstable Halliwell was, how he had been previously threatened and even physically attacked. There is no mention of his retaliating or defending himself. The coroner in his summing up spoke of the ever increasing tension but could have chosen his words a little more carefully when he ended with ‘it all came to a head’; considering Orton died from eight hammer blows to that part of his anatomy.
So on what evidence do I think suicide? Here are a few examples. On page 130, ‘Arguments continue spasmodically. Breaking out like sudden flames on a dying fire.’ 182. Quote from Kenneth Cranham ‘He thought he was really beautiful, Joe did. His buzz was himself.’ On page 186 Orton writes about how happy they both felt and that it couldn’t last. They would be struck down by disaster from afar. Page 221. ‘Kenneth became violently angry after this and attacked me, hitting me about the head.’ Page 225. ‘Yellow-jersey very upset because I’m leaving. He doesn’t believe I will return. October seems so far off. Such a lot of things can happen.’ Page241. ‘I shall be a disgusting old man myself one day, I thought mournfully. Only I have high hopes of dying in my prime.’

To continue my dissertation on deviation and pornography (which is itself deviant), both of which have been with us since time immemorial. The Greeks decorated their vases with it, the Romans depicted sexual activity on walls, in India it was carved in temples, in Japan the phallus is celebrated in festivals that even the very young can join in and, of course, the written word, poetry, illustrations, and paintings, clubs have all produced their fair share. In all this plethora of eroticism homosexuality has played a large part. With the advancement of technology naturally the ways and means of producing and distributing porn has increased. Early still photography, sepias or black and white photos of chunky gentlemen, usually with socks on, and even chunkier ladies indulging in pretty straightforward sex gave way to magazines that pretended to be health and fitness publications but were really soft porn, as were nudist ones. Films naturally followed and then came outright porn magazines, videos and DVDs. It was amazing how many young men were only too happy to let it all hang out posing for gay magazines, and for some time now we have had cyber-sex: literally hundreds of men and women from 19 to 79 years of age and from all over the world, exposing themselves, their sexual preferences, their masturbatory techniques, their little fetishes, talking to each other, urging each other on, all over the internet through the eye of their web-cam. No need anymore to have flesh to flesh bonding, no need anymore for relationships, particularly if you are an exhibitionist or a voyeur this is truly seventh heaven. The one good thing is that with nothing between the participants there is no danger of transmitting STDs, all is fantasy.
Following on the previous blog regarding the horrors taking place in Iraq I thought I would do a little research via this new medium and downloaded the first four pages of one of these sites. Under the heading MALES there are four categories: Straight, Gay, Bisexual and Bicurious. I presume this last one means someone who hasn’t tried it yet but is keen to have a go just to find out what it is like. Now, after all these years, I cannot remember what percentage of gayness Kinsey came up with in his interviews, was it 1% or 4%? I shouldn’t think all his interviewees gave him truthful answers but with modern technology what would he have come up with now? In these first four pages I counted 42 straight, 40 gay, 24 bisexual and 17 bicurious so the deviants outnumber the straights 81 to 42. There is also a separate category headed SHEMALES, in other words transsexuals so these have to be added to the deviant list. Now is it because these days the closet doors are wide open and gays are not so backwards in coming forwards and letting their sexual preference be known that they actually outnumber the straights? And who is to say how straight is straight anyway? But this seems to show just how ridiculous the ignorant homophobic religious bigots are in thinking that deviation can be eradicated by cruelty and death.
Kenneth Williams (no expert I agree but truth doesn’t always have to come from the mouths of experts) wrote in his diary, ‘Deviation is part of the human condition,’ and how right he was. He could not have put it more succinctly. Or, as Goethe said and which I never fail to quote ‘How can you call anything in nature unnatural?’

I have always enjoyed writing these blogs even if some have been on the bland side with not really much to say, but this is the first time I have been reluctant to even start and the reason is because I am angry and thoroughly dispirited and once more it is because of religion, in this case Islam yet again. It appears the mullahs both Shiite and Sunni in Iraq have decreed it is the will of the all benevolent and merciful Allah that all homosexuals should be killed and the Iraqi militia have come up with a really cute way of carrying out God’s will – they use an irremovable glue to close a man’s anus then feed him a liquid causing diarrhoea and he dies in excruciating agony. Now who is sick here? The homosexual or the mind that thought up this truly obscene method of torture and death? Mind you, again I say there really is nothing new under the sun. Once upon a dark time in human history someone just as sick thought of a wonderful invention he called a pineapple. Actually it looked more like a metal pine cone. This was inserted into the rectum and then the metal pods like on a pine cone were opened out and the device was withdrawn bringing with it rectum and no doubt bowel as well. Well this was four hundred or so years ago and the perpetrators of this obscenity didn’t come from the Middle East and weren’t Muslim but Catholics. Isn’t it weird that the three religions that have had the biggest world-wide effect and been the cause of the most pain, death, horror and destruction have all come from the Middle East? What is it with mankind, supposedly created in God’s own image, or so we are informed, that he indulges in cruelty of the most horrendous almost unimaginable bestiality. Nature is red in tooth and claw but no animal kills merely for the hell of it, with the possible exception of cats that toy with their victim before dispatching it.
After a long spate of not receiving any, these last few days we have been inundated with pornographic messages on the internet mostly involving animals. Where do the religious stand on this issue? Also one reads of pornography involving children virtually from birth that includes torture. Surely if ever sex is to be considered thoroughly sick and depraved both these phenomena would qualify. Yet I have no doubt it is the homosexual, gay pride, gay liberation notwithstanding, that will still come in for the most anathema. I am sure the Bible thumpers across America, the god hates fags brigade of religious zealots, are only too happy to know their religious counterparts in Iraq are doing such a good job, even if they’re not Christians, and would dearly like to do the same themselves. Individuals of course have been known to do it.
Some of the internet messages on this subject have been from people so incensed by what they have learned that their immediate reaction is nuke the bastards. Unfortunately this is rather like throwing out the baby with the bath water and a lot of innocent people would be nuked in the process.
There is a wonderful story of Winston Churchill who, when informed that a certain conservative MP had been caught in flagrante delecto with a guardsman in St James’ Park said ‘On one of the coldest nights of the year? Makes you proud to be British.’ And the Shah of Iran when informed by a journalist that a number of German gays were visiting his country said, ‘Why not? Iranian men are the handsomest.’ Can bigotry and phobia be beaten?
If only … If only …