BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

Best film you'll watch all day, EASILY

(Another gratuitous shot of some 'cultural artefacts' around my flat)

Dr Mellinger shook his head with a scornful flourish. "My dear Booth, you are speaking of mere pieces of paper. These are not proof of a man's identity. A typewriter will invent anything you choose. The only conclusive proof is his physical existence in time and space or, failing that, a distinct memory of his tangible physical presence. Can you honestly say that either of these conditions is fulfilled?"

1999 - another rejection letter, another scrunched up lottery ticket, another Monday morning at the Parcelforce depot loomed. Cool Britannia booming, though it felt like 24/7 recession to me. Like all that bullshit you hear about the 1960s - the acid and free love freakouts, though must have been less of a party for, oh, I dunno, 95% of the population? Like the ones who had to clean up the toilets after another bunch of hippies had pissed their cosmic vibes all over the floor down the UFO Club? My flatmates still holding out for my share of the electric bill - bad vibes abound...

Cheering myself up by mooching around Notting Hill, then the scene of an intensely trite film production of the same name. Popping into the Book & Comic Exchange, a furious stick insect behind the counter exclaiming, "YEAH, HE JUST WALKED IN HERE, ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS! ASKED ME! WHY DOESN'T HE BUY A FUCKING A-Z?" Flicking through the cheap paperbacks, and finding a row of JG Ballard tomes, all with matching cover schemes, on the Triad Granada imprint. One of those writers I should have got round to reading, but I always ended up putting it off. The 'sci-fi' tag scared me, though my Swedish mate Nick used to rave about Ballard being the best author he'd ever come across, and couldn't understand why I was wasting my time on back issues of "Vague" and Kenneth Patchen. Oh well, just this once, they're only £1.50 apiece...

So I bought "Crash", on the strength of the cover alone, and "The Disaster Area". Mister Unhelpful Twat snorted like a petulant little Flakelf cheat, as I counted out three quid on the counter, and shoved the books into a flimsy MVE bag. I don't know what his problem was - he was reading a graphic novel. You know - books for fucking children!

Anyway, I reckoned I'd start on "The Disaster Area", as it was a short story collection, so I'd probably get one story out of the way before the Circle Line hit Kings X. Two times around the entire loop, and I was off again at Notting Hill, literally clawing at 20ps. I picked up the other three and headed back to Burnt Oak.

I know "High Rise", "Crash" and "The Atrocity Exhibition" usually command all the kudos; that "Empire of the Sun" and "Cocaine Nights" are the 'hits'; but my personal faves are still "The Disaster Area" and "Concrete Island". Stories like "Manhole 69", "The Concentration City", "Minus One", "Zone of Terror" and "Storm Bird Storm Dreamer" might not have scaled the heights of his later stuff, but reading them for the first time felt like rifling through polaroids of nightmares, smudged with black humour. It was simply written, but so much more exciting than all that William Burroughs crap I'd tried yonks before (((except for "Cities of the Red Night", I don't think I've ever got half-way through a WSB book without wanting to tear my eyes out with boredom. Have you ever actually tried to do a 'cut-up'? Oh, God forgive me...I had a go once. Do you realise how fucking LONG it takes to cut words off the page with a pair of scissors? I just ended up with a load of shredded pulp over the kitchen floor, and the only nugget of the future leaking through I recieved was "POLICE PRODUCED 8.30PM SUBTITLES ROUND UP FOWLER COMEDY CUE SUBJECT TO CHANGE GRAMPIAN". OK, maybe Radio Times wasn't the best rag to experiment on, but Burroughs worked with U2 in the early 90s, so fuck him anyway))).

So, a posthumous nod to JG - thanks for the trip. Normally, when blogger scum start doling out RIPs for dead authors, it's tempting to roll your eyes, but I've found the online tributes quite touching so far. Maybe the nicest thing I can say is that I often came away from his work thinking I'd just sat through a movie instead. A movie that simultaneously fucked and bolstered your mind and turned the Heathrow approach into the eight wonder of the world. Weirdly enough, my fortunes took a swing for the up after I read his books - seeing as I've dug them out again, think I'll give them another squizz...

Bayliss put away his notebook. "Don't take the analogy of the film strip too literally. You may not see yourself sitting on that sofa, but your awareness of being there is just as powerful as any visual corroboration. It's the stream of tactile, positional and psychic images that form the real data store. Very little extrapolation is needed to transpose the observer's eye a few yards to the other side of the room. Purely visual memories are never completely accurate anyway."

Fucking hell - kicking off in London on Wednesday evening, or what? Out of shape cops - all red jowls, grey hair, yellow flak waistcoats - tried to hold the tube station, as the SEETHING MASS, pint glasses and street debris in hand, roared proletarian battle hymns and pelted passing traffic. "ING-ER-LUUN, ING-ER-LUUN, ING-ER-LUUN," they chanted, beer cans arcing through the spring twilight and clattering against yet another minibusload of Ukraine supporters. "OO ARE YA....OO ARE YA," they demanded, cheering as one can clipped a member of the Met. Of course, the Old Bill, having deployed the bulk of their numbers in the City, found themselves more than slightly outgunned on the Euston Road. But that wouldn't exactly install confidence on the first morning of the G20 summit, would it?