And because of ere and what had happeo us, we wao talk about personal things, so it was embarrassing him standing there.
Martin was like, Lets drink up and go, aood up. But Captain Coffee went, Whats the matter now? So I said, The thing is, we o have a private versation, and he said he uood pletely, and hed go outside until wed finished. And I said, But really, everything we say is private, for reasons I t go into. And he said it didnt matter, hed still wait outside unless anyone else came. And thats what he did, and thats why we ended up going to Starbucks for our coffee meetings. It was hard to trate on how miserable we were, with this berk in an army uniform leaning against the window outside cheg that we werent stealing his biscuits, or biscotties as he called them. People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if thats what you want?
Id be lost, if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need fideo go into small places with regular ers, small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafes. Im happiest in the Virgiore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and Im like, Der. Thats the point.
The book group thing was JJs idea. He said people do it a lot in America, read books and talk about them; Martin reed it was being fashionable here, too, but Id never heard of it, so it t be that fashionable, or Id have read about it in Dazed and fused. The point of it was to talk about Something Else, sort of thing, and not get into rows about who was a berk and who rat, which was how the afternoons in Starbucks usually ended up. And what we decided was, we were going to read books by people whod killed themselves. They were, like, our people, and so we thought we ought to find out what was going on in their heads.
Martin said he thought we might learn more from people who hadnt killed themselves - we should be reading up on what was so great about staying alive, not what was so great about topping yourself. But it turned out there were like a billion writers who hadnt killed themselves, and three or four who had, so we took the easy option, a for the smaller pile. We voted on using funds from our media appearao buy ourselves the books.
Anyway, it turned out not to be the easy option at all. Fug hell! You should try ahe stuff by people whove killed themselves! We started with Virginia Woolf, and I only read like two pages of this book about a lighthouse, but I read enough to know why she killed herself: she killed herself because she couldnt make herself uood. You only have to read oeo see that. I sort of identify with her a bit, because I suffer from that sometimes, but her mistake was to go public with it. I mean, it was lucky in a way, because she left a sort of souvenir behind so that people like us could learn from her difficulties and that, but it was bad luck for her. And she had some bad luck, too, if you think about it, because in the olden days anyone could get a book published because there wasnt so mupetition. So you could marto a publishers offid go, you know, I want this published, and theyd go, Oh, OK then. Whereas now theyd go, No, dear, go away, no one will uand you. Try pilates