Sinister: I'm the mummy now

[Nick.Dastoor at xxx.uk]

No, I'm not at all, but I would like to take his mantle temporarily by
forwarding the latest instalment of Belle & Sebastian's band diary as published
in the "other Guardian".  It's Stuart's turn again.  He appears to be losing it.
And giving the impression that if only he hadn't got a cold, he'd be rescuing
thousands of flood victims in Mozambique.

In Nicholson Baker's 'The Mezzanine', the narrator discovers that he can only
overcome his self-consciousness at urinals by imagining himself pissing on top
of the person who is intimidating him.  Then things flow fine.  Do you think the
lady behond Stuart was more or less likely to buy the pie if he did it first?
Personally, I revel in giving people ideas in supermarkets, but then I'm a big
show off.  I feel silly when I pick up the same thing as someone else just has.
Unless it's a pretty girl, in which case I smirk at the thought that she might
be thinking I'm doing it to ingratiate myself.

"He looks like a spaceman, Marjory!"

 I like that.


Here it is...


DIARY OF A BAND
8th March 2000

There's something quite depressing about writing a diary. Writing's fun usually,
but simply recalling is a denial of this present moment, when, to be honest, I'd
rather be doing any of twenty other things. But I probably wouldn't do the other
things. I've been dreaming on the couch in between bouts of shivers and coughs,
fucked since Wednesday with some virus. "Give me a helicopter, and I'll get the
kids off the roof." It can't be that hard. Point it in the general direction of
Africa and let's go. Just stop fannying around.

Instead, my big thing yesterday was a trip to M&S in search of a ready-made
meal. It's a rubbish supermarket, it really is. Very Sixties, and strictly for
the over eighties. The bread's all designed to be sucked not chewed. I felt
watched. Some people can't pee when they're being watched. I can't shop. My
conceit knows no boundaries, but I have this feeling the lady behind me is
waiting to see if I go for a 'Cumberland Fish Pie' before she buys it. If
there's any of that I'm off. I'd rather leave the shop empty-handed. But I'll
probably just go round the aisle again, hover, then strike.

The fish pie was very nice, and the lady at the checkout was nice for a change.
In M&S, niceness is doled out on a strictly cash basis. I was walking pretty
slow and upright on account of my virus, and I had wrapped up, so my clothes had
a substantial quality which must have suggested to the lady that I was a
respectable man. I took my bank card out of my bus pass while she wasn't
looking, and it all helped. She was very chatty. Or maybe she was just nice. I
don't know. Usually the impression I get is that they think I've stumbled in by
mistake. Once, I happened to be wearing silver trousers, and a man, obviously
trying to overcome his wife's deafness, bellowed "He looks like a spaceman,
Marjory!" But I must have my fish pie.

Stuart Murdoch




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