Anthony McGowan - The Art of Failing: Notes from the Underdog

The Art of Failing

To Rebecca Campbell, Ariadne to this Minotaur

I Love You

September 5 . Im back working again at the British Library. Its a forty-minute cycle away through some of the ugliest traffic in London but just getting out of the flat helps goad the slumberous elephant of my creativity back into motion. Or thats the theory. So far all Ive managed is to half-fill my Moleskine notebook with a network of scorings and scratchings, like a self-harmers forearm. And a list of possible book titles. The Constituents of Glass; The Bad News Bible; Handlebar; The Art of Failing. And Ive almost filled my card with loyalty stamps from the caf.

Even if it hasnt yet been a great success in productivity terms, I like sitting in the echoing space of the Humanities 1 reading room, soothed by the gentle susurrus of scholarship pages turning, the twitch and scritch of tweed, the patter of dandruff falling from scratched grey heads. And theres usually something interesting to catch the eye: a bearded prophet with crammed tissues cascading from his ears like frozen Icelandic waterfalls, or a pretty post-graduate student from, one speculates, Latvia or Montenegro, stretching in a mote-dappled beam of sunlight falling from one of the high windows.

And, until recently, no diplomatic incidents. But then, today, things went awry. Ive been taking a banana in for a mid-morning snack. There are, of course, stern injunctions against bringing food into the reading rooms, but I usually conceal the banana about my person, saving a tiresome schlep down to the lockers. Historically, Id always been broadly banana-neutral, feeling that their function was to fill that otherwise awkward gap in the pleasure spectrum between being hungry and eating something that you actively enjoy. But my library banana had come to be quite important in my life. It was a sign that Id worked my way through a session, and that Id be back for more. It was a symbol of hope, rebirth, redemption. And, the thing is, Ive discovered that theres a supplementary joy to be had from writing on a banana with a biro. Something about the texture the momentary resistance, followed by an easeful passage sets up a mildly pleasurable shimmer across my shoulders. Sometimes I write my name. Sometimes its just random squiggles.

Anyway, today I was sitting there, daydreaming, when the urge to sneeze came upon me. I plunged my hands into my jacket pockets searching for my hanky. Things were getting critical I didnt want to be the kind of person who sneezes flamboyantly into the air, like a trumpeting mastodon, or more furtively into his bare hands, which then have to be wiped on the worn furrows of his cord trousers...

So in my panic I emptied my pockets onto the desk keys, stray length of used floss, a piece of plastic that appeared to have been broken off from some larger piece of plastic the function of which well never establish. But also my banana.

And then my hand closed around my hanky, just as the need to sneeze subsided, like desire when you encounter an unexpected wart or a patch of coarse hair on an otherwise lovely woman.

I shrugged, and glanced at the person on my right, expecting a smile of recognition after all, who has not been disappointed in a sneeze (or in love)?

Id been vaguely aware that it was one of those prematurely balding young men, whose baldness gives them an air of nervous fragility and helplessness (think Alain de Botton), and so Id warmed to him. But now I saw the look on his face an extreme wariness bordering on hostility which seemed harsh, given that all Id done was to nearly sneeze.

And then I remembered the banana, and what Id doodled on it that morning. Not, on this occasion, a sharks mouth, or a quotation from the I Ching . Id been thinking how central my break banana had become in my life, so Id written I love you.

And now Id put this banana love bomb in front of the young man.

I slowly moved my hand to the banana and took back the fruit. I couldnt, of course, stay. As I packed up my things I gave one more fleeting glance at my young man. His expression had softened, into a more neutral thanks, but no thanks look.

So Ill be in the Rare Books reading room for a while, until this all dies down.

Bum Ball

September 6 . A limp dappling of autumn sunshine persuaded me that I should walk Mrs McG down to the underground station, efficiently combining this act of conjugal kindness with Montys urgent need for a morning constitutional. The surging horror of the early commute was over, leaving just the aimless milling of the stragglers and idlers. They reminded me of those defective spermatozoa one reads about, destined never to meet with a comely egg, thrashing in circles, or slumped, broken, at the side of the fallopian tube.

A few people were sitting at tables outside the cafs. Elderly gents with walking sticks and huge, antiquated hearing aids in shades of labial pink. A hipster, his densely-bearded head oddly out of proportion with his puny body, tapping at his tablet. A man in sunglasses stabbed a cigarette out cruelly on the stump of a croissant. It was all perfectly pleasant, and I drifted along, enjoying the wash of images and associations.

The embourgeoisification of my part of North London has taken the paradoxical form of a superabundance of charity shops. My local high street West End Lane has six of them, separated by cafs and hairdressers and nail bars and estate agents. Were told that the coils and curlicues of our DNA are made up of meaningful sections of code separated by junk. On West End Lane, all the DNA is junk.

I paused in front of the Oxfam window, and saw in there a deflated gym ball (a piece of exercise equipment that looks like a de-horned space hopper), still in its packaging. The vaguely futuristic, geometric lettering on the box made the word GYM look a lot like the word BUM .

Bum ball, I said to Mrs McG in a West Country yokel-type accent.

She didnt laugh, so I tried it again, saying bum ball in a Tennessee redneck sort of way.

Still no effect. Finally, I tried it in Scandawegian.

Bum ball.

Nothing.

Aware that theres something cowardly and dishonest in these generic voices, I thought Id try my only two impressions of actual people. Bum ball, I said in the sneering and sinister tones of 1950s matinee idol James Mason. And then in the extravagantly lisping, spittle-drenched voice of Hegelian provocateur Slavoj iek. Bum ball.

I may as well have been talking to myself. So I looked round, expecting to see Mrs McG, her arms crossed, her face bearing the lines of a patience pushed too far, waiting for me to finish so we could get on with the business of the day. But she wasnt there. There were just the other passers-by, trying to ignore the oddly dressed man (Id pulled a jumper and pair of baggy trousers over my pyjamas, thinking that Mrs McGs polish and fizz would balance my entropic chaos) saying bum ball over and over, in different voices.

For a baffled moment I wondered if Mrs McG had even come on this walk with me. Then, in a brief panic, I doubted her very existence, thought perhaps that I lived on my own in a hostel, or one of those halfway houses for recovering mental patients, and that the wife, the two children (tall, terse, decent Gabe, and operatically exuberant Rosie) and the dog were figments, constructed to console me in my loneliness.

But then I looked back along the street, and saw that they had just stopped for a wee. Monty, being a dog blessed more with irascibility than intelligence, still got confused about which leg to cock, and would go through all the permutations, like a horse performing dressage, before getting it right.