I’ve been heading east in a circle around the world from Chicago, taking in New York, London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Bristol, Brighton, Paris, Geneva, Barcelona, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Los Angeles. Now I’m killing time in Barcelona. I’d forgotten what a wonderful town it is, and also reminded of how Mediterranean culture really is right at the apex of civilised society. By comparison, US mall life seems consumer capitalism’s ultimate declaration of vacuous failure. I’m sitting drinking wine in a café with three wonderful women (Italian, Spanish and English) from my publishers, and the next thing I know it’s 3 am.
A long layover at Heathrow to get the connecting flight to New Zealand. I’ve only ever been to the Antipodes on business and so have always had good seats. I’ve travelled in some dreadful circumstances in past lives, but economy class on such a long-haul flight would be a very taxing option with my long legs. I feel sorry for British Airways staff and other airlines unfortunate enough to have to fly into the squalid hole that remains Heathrow.
We’re an hour late on an hour-long flight, involving waiting on runways, circling above London, and a bus service from a dreary field in Middlesex to the “state-of-the-art” Terminal 5. Most of all I feel sorry for British taxpayers, who were informed that their billions spunked on this mess would consign those irksome factors to the past. On Sunday afternoon they were all too present. An interlude back in LA as we work on our movie Spring Breakers: The Second Coming. The creative team are constantly coming up with left-field story and casting ideas. So unusual to work with people who encourage a writer to really go out there; you’re usually being reined in. Our producer Roberta today: “Remember to get the Jesus aliens in, Irv!”
This one will be a crazy ride.
Jetlagged in Auckland, NZ, and walking zombie-like down Queen Street, I was struck by the number of tall women hanging out with smaller guys. Is this a New Zealand thing?
Sydney is a magical city. Never had a chance to look around properly and enjoy it before. The gardens are beautiful and the fusion of old and downtown evokes London, New York and San Francisco. Now I’m back in Chicago and suffering from the worst jetlag ever. It was worth all the effort but it’ll be a while before I travel this way again.
We have been missing spring in Chicago, which has become the Poland of seasons, rubbed out simply by virtue of lying between an aggressive winter and summer. It’s overcoats in the morning and shorts and t-shirts by lunchtime. An ideal cure for my jetlag would be more procrastination on Twitter or heading down to the Art Institute to satisfactorily fritter the afternoon away, but deadlines loom.
One of Twitter’s more idiosyncratic features is when total strangers request that you follow them in order that they can send you privately a proposal which will inevitably cost you time or money. I tend to pass on those opportunities. I often wonder how politicians would respond to a cryptic “Please follow me — I’ve something that could be to your advantage.”
Domiciled in the Sunshine State to avoid the polar vortex, I became a total gym rat in the first four months of the year. Alas, those reserves are ebbing slowly away following my global book tour with its hastily grabbed sandwiches, copious booze and late-night dinners. Perhaps just one more — just the one — day of procrastination before I return to my local boxing club and pummel those insolent bags for looking at me the wrong way.
But there’s nothing like good reading material to help you waste time with the greatest of satisfaction. I’ve just read the most astonishingly brilliant novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, which transported me back to the 1970s Jamaica of Michael Manley’s People’s National Party, and the attempted assassination of Bob Marley by a cabal of Kingston gangsters and the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s a vivid plunge into a crazed, violent and corrupt world, told through multiple narrators and executed with swaggering aplomb. On the downside, opening any book after this will be a little anticlimactic. If you’re a novelist, it’s the sort of book you envy, but one that encourages you to set the bar high. So there’s an idea: perhaps get back to this writing lark for a bit.
The writer’s books include Trainspotting, Filth and, most recently, The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
By arrangement with
the Spectator
