Edgar the Male Blanket Octopus Is Disconsolate

You can't really do anything to console the male blanket octopus (let's call him Edgar). He's at the wrong end of some pretty extreme sexual dimorphism that has resulted in him being 100-200 times smaller than the female blanket octopus (let's call her Goneril). Try telling Edgar that he's got a third arm and that this third arm is used specifically for holding his sperm and see if that cheers him up. Yeah right. What good is a tiny armful of spunk when your missus is two metres long and built like a four-man tent? And it's no good suggesting the things that normally cheer you and me up - a light-hearted French film, Ben and Jerry's ice cream, a violent game of badminton. Come off it, he's an octopus. He'll hate that sort of thing. And anyway, I don't know what he's got to complain about: he might be tiny but he ought to consider the benefits of his girlfriend literally being a giant comfort blanket. Get over it, Edgar.

A Horse That Looks Like Ian Paisley

Have you ever seen a horse that looks like Ian Paisley? What I mean by this of course is, have you ever seen a horse that looks like this horse I'm writing about that doesn't exactly look like Ian Paisley but has one, maybe two features that remind me one way or another, perhaps inexplicably, of Ian Paisley? It has, I should explain, nothing to do with this horse's habit for rolling on its back in warm weather, or its large eyes, or its hatred of homosexual horses, or its predisposition to colic, or its inhumanity, or its strange laughing neigh: these things could just as easily have reminded me of, say, Mitt Romney and this horse definitely reminds me of Ian Paisley. It screams Ian Paisley from every inch of its sweating, steaming flanks. Come to think of it, don't all horses look like Ian Paisley?

Look at me writing about horses when I haven't seen a real horse in months. Anyone would think I had an agenda.

Putin the President and Yevtushenko the Poet

Yevgeny Yevtushenko - or YevYev, as I like to call him - is one of Russia's leading poets, a man widely known for his progressive-liberal political stance, his keen intelligence and his long string of wives. Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia. He is known for his questionable human rights record, his downright hypocritical attitude to free speech and his often shirtless defiance of the boundaries of good taste. One would expect that YevYev would join the majority of dissident or morally driven writers in an outspoken denunciation of Putin's regime. But no, he is surprisingly soft on his president. Vlad is a man who is merely struggling to find his way, YevYev says, implying that he is to be pitied, helped through a rough patch. But have a look at the photos of Putin with the fishing rod and the bare chest. Does that look like a man who has lost his way?

I've thought about why YevYev is so soft on VP and here is my theory. YevYev is sitting in an expensive cafe in some or other middle-class Prospekt in Moscow. He's writing about politics and eating a piece of millionaire's shortbread which should be good, given the cost, but actually tastes like Play-Doh. He is at that stage of his life, he thinks, where he has come to know what Play-Doh tastes like. He thinks of Putin, and how he too must have reached that same stage of his life by now. Despite the tough-guy image, the guns, the tigers, Putin is a man who knows what Play-Doh tastes like.

So, what YevYev is really saying when he says that Putin is struggling to find his way is that the two of them are similar in many respects and it's hard to denounce someone similar to yourself without denouncing yourself, which is something no self-respecting Russian (except perhaps Daniil Kharms) would do.

This is where I come in. It's here that I infer that, by saying Putin is struggling to find his way, YevYev is implying the same thing about himself. I hope he can forgive me this conjecture - after all, he is a writer too. I'd also like to think that he can forgive me for disagreeing with him, for me saying that Putin has not merely lost his way, that he has done so much more that is wrong. But what do I know, I who have yet to learn or relearn the taste of Play-Doh.

Five Pencils

He has forgotten to bring out a pen and so he buys a packet of five pencils. He sits in a café and begins a short story about two people who are walking along a cliff path on a summer evening in the south of England, discussing literature and probably sex. The first pencil is soon blunt, and of course he does not have a sharpener. By the time the protagonists have reached and decided to descend an accessible route down the cliff the second pencil is also blunt. The third pencil fails him as the two people light a fire and throw stones into the darkening sea. By the time his fourth pencil is finished his characters are looking up to the top of the cliff where they see two people who, from this distance, look exactly like them - clothes, relative height, hair - perfect doppelgängers. Seabirds wheel and squawk as the air grows colder, etc etc. At this point he becomes aware that five pencils will not be enough to complete his story. He makes a snap decision: in future he will only write stories that can be finished within the lifespan of one sharpening of a single pencil. He takes out the fifth pencil and begins to write the story of a man who, having forgotten to bring out his pen, buys a packet of five pencils and goes into a café to write a story about two people

Ingmar Bergman, Now Off Limits

It is not impossible to write a piece of short fiction from the point of view of a shop window, or a Christmas tree, or Ingmar Bergman, but I don't suggest you try it.

A shop window at Christmas, or a Christmas tree in Ingmar Bergman's family home on Fårö or Bergman doing his Christmas shopping with his last wife Ingrid von Rosen, probably buying wooden toys for his grandchildren: any of these things are perfectly legitimate settings for a story about family life or old age or an argument about the nature of truth and happiness. But I would advise against it, not least because it could constitute an act of plagiarism.

Edvard Munch's Madonna

A few days ago I ordered a cheap print of Edvard Munch's Madonna and today it came in the post. I took some time getting it out of the cardboard tube, relishing the potential creative inspiration it would give me. I thought that my thoughts on seeing the poster would be, like the painting, divine, pure and honest on one hand and modern, willful, strange and passionate on the other. But when I unrolled the Madonna I thought first of Madonna, the singer, and this made me think of the music video of hers which involves a bullfight, and this made me think of Hemingway, writing his balls off about bullfighting, and Hemingway made me thing about the Deux Magots, where he did a great deal of writing, and this in turn made me think about my impending trip to Paris, which I am looking forward to but am also somewhat apprehensive about because it will cost me a lot of money and I haven't got a lot of money - I am essentially poor, certainly too poor to make a habit of buying art prints just so that I can look to them for inspiration.

Skinning a Cat

There are many ways to do this. One way would be to write a story about skinning a cat, or rather writing a story in anticipation of the act of skinning a cat, detailing the events leading up to the skinning and taking pleasure in leaving the reader guessing as to the nature of the skinning whilst leaving him in no doubt that the skinning will take place. Another way would be to carry out the skinning alone and with definitive skill and directness, letting no-one other than the object of the skinning and (let's say the cat) and possibly your former mother-in-law (let's say the cat's mother) know that the skinning will take place, then revelling publicly after the act. The third way is to completely ignore the cat, and indeed the cat's mother, in the hope they skin themselves, or get stuck up a tree, or are ripped apart by dogs.