I'm loving...

Tumblr at the moment. I've moved my comics site over there, so please add me on there, but I don't think this site will ever quite disappear, will it? There's a strange lively feel about Tumblr, and that's even without the porny side of it.

Oddly enough, my MP has totally failed to reply to my letter to her. What should I do now?

Letter to my MP

Dear Mary Macleod,

Congratulations on winning the recent election. I'm writing to you on the issue of electoral reform.

As I'm sure you're aware, the borough you're now representing is enormously diverse and not everyone here is eligible to vote in a UK general election, but even of those who were able to vote, only two thirds of the people in your area voted. Of those, only a little over a third voted for you.

I'm sure that this must make for quite an uncomfortable position coming into a new job, knowing that most of the panel who interviewed you either abstained or wanted to employ someone else for the job you now hold, and that there are a great many people who live in the area whose voices cannot be represented because they are not UK subjects and therefore do not have a vote.

I am aware that there are moves within the new coalition government to discuss electoral reform and I implore you to support a system of proportional representation.

As it stands, only 64% of the people in your area voted, of those, only 37% voted for you, yet there's enormous pressure on you from your party to consider your employers the Conservative Party and for your decisions to be informed by their morals and ideology, and it's likely that their policies mirror your own beliefs, but I implore you to remember that now that you are the MP for Brentford and Isleworth, you work for us, not for them, and that means you work for the 63% of people who voted whose votes were ignored because of the first past the post system. You work for the 36% of voters who felt that none of the candidates on offer motivated them sufficiently to walk to the corner of their street and tick a box or post a piece of card, and you represent the people who did not have a chance to express an opinion at all, and in an election where no-one seemed to say once that immigrants to this country have brought amazing things, and we have a parliament that seems to reflect this thinking, I implore you to remember that you represent all these people above your party.

I know that you'll have joined the Conservatives out of a sense of belief, but until we have proportional representation, you're letting down the people of the area if you support the party above the plurality of opinions here in your area. Under a system of PR, MPs would be able to follow their hearts with conviction without a sense that they are not representing the views of their area, but until then, and if you're not in favour of a system of PR, then please be aware that you work for me and all of the other people in the area who disagree with Conservative ideology and policy and with the terms of your campaign and that you're going against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of people in your area if you support party politics above local opinion.

Please let me know when you're having your MP surgeries so we can start to discuss this further and so that I can make clear the things I'd like to see you campaigning on in parliament, so that I know that my voice hasn't been ignored simply because I didn't vote for the largest minority among a range of options which scarcely represent the views of myself, my friends or anyone I know in the area.

Yours sincerely,

Howard Hardiman

How was the Marathon?

Okay, it's taken me a little while to get around to writing this post.

The London Marathon was incredible. I got up early, oddly calm, having spent the previous day preparing myself for it, then had a breakfast of toast with honey and bananas and a lot of water and got to the tube with Jonathan to meet Lucy to travel together to Blackheath. Lucy was far more excited than I was, and the trip was quite amusing as we spotted other runners - at first the occasional Smurf and nervous person clutching a red bag, then by the time we hit Embankment, it was a tidal wave of runners packing onto the extra train services they'd arranged just to get all the runners to the event, which made it feel a little like we were on the way to our first day at Hogworts.

At Blackheath, I said goodbye to Lucy and Jonathan, who gave me a huge hug and told me how proud he was, and I turned to go into the runner area as it started to pour down with rain. The heavens opened as I stripped down to my shorts and the t-shirt with my name on it and there was nowhere to avoid getting soaked; by the time I had dropped my bag off and queued for a wee, the starter area was already packed and the huddle under the bus shelter made it impossible to find anywhere to avoid getting soaked, so I was stood out in the cold and the rain, which fell almost horizontally, cold and heavy.

Suddenly, the harsh reality of the task ahead was starting to sink in and it wasn't feeling great.

I started chatting to the people around me, which was reassuring; they were nervous, too, but we managed to lift each other up a little and we talked about who we were running for and why and all that. Eventually, pathetic fallacy kicked in and the rain lifted a little and before we really knew what was happening, the race had begun. We wished one another one last burst of good luck and we all headed off.

The first couple of miles was just a melee of packed in runners and it quite quickly became clear that the segmentation according to your estimated time hadn't worked because there were people who'd started the race near the front who were walking the entire route, sometimes large knots of people doing this, sometimes large groups of people doing this in costume and sometimes large groups doing this in costumes that meant that they were all tied together and blocked almost the entire road so the whole race of thousands and thousands of runners who actually ran were funnelled into narrow, single file bottle necks to get around them, which was frustrating and a little bit dangerous at points, but you have to, well, take it in your stride, I suppose.

The atmosphere in the first half was electric; there were so many people out to cheer you on along the streets and there was so much music, which was such a surprise. All the pubs in South-East London had live music or DJ's outside them to entertain the runners and the crowds and there were gospel choirs outside churches and an enormous Chinese drumming troupe who I just wish could have been with me the entire distance.

I missed Jonathan at Greenwich, having cleared the distance faster than we'd anticipated and I kept a steady pace up to Tower Bridge, stopping there for an AGE to queue for a portaloo, not wanting to be one of those people peeing all over London landmarks.

Running over Tower Bridge with the crowds cheering me on was incredible, it was a moment to savour, to take slowly and enjoy - the temptation to run through that was strong, but I'd been told that it got harder from then on and that I should enjoy that high point so I took it easy there and I'm glad I did.

God, they were right, it got harsh after that. The run along to the Isle of Dogs was longer than it looks on a map, weaving annoyingly all over the place and it's all away from transport so the streets were quiet and narrow, so it was slow, crowded and the atmosphere was starting to fall flat.

It picked up at Canary Wharf, where I was starting to falter, having been running steadily for a couple of hours by that point, and I caught Jonathan, Griff and his friend and Lucy, who were just what I needed to spur me on. The next part got hard; running through the wharf, the wind picked up and lifted cold air off the water which made my hamstrings tighten and from that point on, running became uncomfortable, but I kept on going, pulling on those happy memories I'd been reminding myself of in the lead-up to the race.

By the time I was getting back towards Tower Bridge and I saw Jonathan again, I was struggling and I was feeling dizzy and uncomfortable and it was getting harder and harder to find those happy thoughts and I was starting to worry that there was still an hour to go, another six miles of this, but fatigue, pain and boredom was starting to really cut in.

The fatigue and dehydration then made an uneasy shift happen and I realised I was starting to zone out, having little moments where I wasn't quite present and I couldn't concentrate on what was happening, that the ground was starting to swim, I couldn't find any sense of joy or happiness and all my sense of hope was fading away from me and it was with a chilling sense of worry that I realised I was starting to have one of those seizure-type-migraine things that I'm taking topiramate to avoid, but the leaflet with the tablet tells you how important it is to keep hydrated.

Obviously, this wasn't happening, and they weren't working, and I didn't have long before I wouldn't be able to speak or feel half my body or see properly and I was faced with a horrible choice. If I kept running, I'd exhaust myself more quickly and bring it on more suddenly, but if I slowed down, it would take me longer to get to somewhere I could safely collapse.

I slowed down, hoping to see Jonathan near Embankment, but the crowds were ten people thick and he hadn't been able to get through, or had he been there, I couldn't see well enough to understand that I'd seen him, so I walked a couple of miles until I reached the final mile and pulled out the last of my energy, thinking I'd find him at the runner meeting point and started running again, and found that moving actually drove me back into that strange meditative place that the pace can put you into, like knitting or maths can, where it becomes a mantra, and I sort of floated through the finish line in a haze.

I picked up my bag, not really able to remember one moment to the next and found my way through a crowd in what had become muggy heat to the meeting point, but I couldn't find Jonathan and phones wouldn't work in a place where so many thousands of people were lost, so I sat down to wait and ate and drank to try to pull my head together a little.

Luckily, our friend Annette appeared and we chatted for a bit before she headed off, but still no sign of Jonathan after an hour of waiting and looking, so I struggled to my feet and wandered out, when I suddenly got a cluster of a dozen messages saying he'd not been able to get past a police blockade and was stuck at Westminster.

I was exhausted and could barely speak, so I'm ashamed to say that when I spoke to him on the phone, I was snappy with him. I couldn't manage to articulate that I was having a seizure, only that I needed to find him. I don't know if that was embarrassment or just the anger I felt that it was taking away from me what should have been a really joyous sense of accomplishment, so when we eventually did meet, I more or less collapsed into his arms and just asked to be taken home with the last few words I could manage before language just vanished in a fog of deleted syllables and frustrated looks.

It made me so horribly upset that I'd had this happen when I'd wanted to meet him and the others with a sense of wild joy and achievement and instead I was just a quivering blur of sadness and a sense of hopeless failure, even though despite the need to walk the last few miles I'd still made my target time of four and a half hours, which was an incredible accomplishment.

He took me home on the tube, I slept on his shoulder on the District Line for a few stops, then I seemed to be able to speak a bit more after more food and drink and smiled and chatted to other runners on the train and then collapsed into the grimiest bath I've ever taken before taking Jonathan out for a meal to thank him for having been so supportive and amazing through the entire marathon - from the crazy idea of running, right through all the training runs and the missed weekends and the anxiety about the races up to the event itself where he went through hell to cheer me on and pick me up when I fell at the end of it.

It's horrible that this thing that happens with my brain has taken my driving license from me and it's taking away from me the possibility to do this kind of thing again, if this is what's likely to happen. It's hard, but I suppose it's something I just have to take in my stride.

I will keep on running, definitely, but I'm not going to do longer than half-marathon distances any more if the epilepsy thing is likely to mess me up at all, but I'd still very much encourage everyone to do this at least once in their lives.

If not a marathon, then find something that's, like this was for me, right on the cusp of impossible, and make yourself a plan for getting it done.

If you want to put in a donation for my fundraising page, then head over there now by clicking here, or, better, enter the ballot for the 2011 London Marathon and let fate decide if you get a place and let me know if you get in and I'll give you all the help and support I can while you train.

There's a lot of things left on my list of things I want to get done by the time I'm 40, the MA and the Marathon are only a couple of them, but I think having a list like that's a really, really powerful thing to have, because it's showing me as I'm ticking things off it one by one, that the future really is our own to take control of if we're willing to put in the hours, or, perhaps the miles.

Write your list, that's the first step.

Vampires

Yesterday, I finally managed to get along to the Sci-Fi London festival to see Vampires, which, in the best tradition of science fiction or horror or fantasy films, was a film about vampires which you quite quickly wasn't about vampires at all. From the opening, where the captions describe the grisly fate of the first two film crews sent to document the lives of the vampire community of Belgium, then the awkwardness of the third attempt where a man who looks like a pasty-faced relic from Nosferatu opens the door and says he's not used to talking to his food, you're reminded that, unlike in Twilight or even True Blood, they don't think or act quite like us.

As the film unfolds in its false-documentary style, we follow a household of vampires where a couple tend to their eternally rebellious "son" and depressed teenage "daughter" who is the inverse of the usual emo kid and although she keeps hanging herself and trying to end her life, she wants to die as a human would and, to her parents' disgust, apes human ways, wearing bronzer and even pink clothes. In the cellar, they house a traditional vampire couple who have taken no new vampires of their own, so, under the Vampire Code, are not permitted a house of their own.

Quite quickly, as I say, you realise how it's not a vampire film, but a really quite wonderful allegory for the difficulty of living as a community of outsiders in cramped living conditions in a country which doesn't understand or accept your ways, even if a surprising number of humans know of the vampires' existence and co-operate with their brutal, strange and sometimes farcical ways. There's some really heartbreaking moments where you're reminded of the harsh treatment of closed communities subjected to their own laws as they struggle to maintain their traditions in a changing world and as they have to deal with their fears that their children will grow up not understanding their ancient ways.

For a film that's superficially comical and drew comparisons with mockumentaries like Spinal Tap, there's a lot more going on with Vampires than that. Also, because it's set in Belgium, there's the rather superb advantage that the French they speak is slow and someone like me with rusty schoolboy French can actually follow quite a lot of it without relying too heavily on the subtitles.

I know it's a bit rubbish of me to go and see a film at a festival and then say you have to find it and see it, when I've no idea where it'll be shown again, but in the midst of all the teenage masturbatory fantasies and celibacy dogma we're having forced down our throats like pointy, needle sharp fangs at the moment, it was really quite wonderful to be reminded that storytelling can be subtler, socially and psychologically conscious and slower than all that. Also, where's the fun in vampires if you don't have to hunt for them?

Dirty White Boy, Trafalgar Studios

Last night, I went to see Dirty White Boy at Trafalgar Studios on Whitehall. It's a play that was a book that was a blog which chronicled life in a shop on the corner of Old Compton Street and Dean Street, just underneath a brothel with a leaky floor. It's performed by the shopkeeper-cum-blogger Clayton Littlewood himself, with David Benson performing all the character roles and a slightly superfluous topless boy who doesn't actually seem to have a place in the story apart from padding it out with some singing and showing off his pubes, yet is given the central spot on all the publicity.

There's a lot of charm in the story and there's some really quite poignant moments in the play, with David Benson shapeshifting through a range of what border on stereotypes of Soho denizens to give a rose-tinted view of what is, quite clearly, a bit of a grubby life. At first, it's awkward watching the blogger tell his own story, and his lack of training as a performer shows; he got the giggles a few times during the show, but actually these moments where you were reminded that, for him, it wasn't a play, it was his story, were quite charming.

I felt a little sorry for the third performer, who would sing to punctuate scene changes and was used to portray younger background characters than the older two, but I don't think he was well-used. There were only a couple of songs where he wasn't having to stretch to reach for the notes because they'd not been transposed and, really, as a device it quickly became tired. When he was being used to portray escorts, immediately the part of me that spent a lot of time with sex workers kicked in and I was making judgements about who'd be paying how much for him to do what with them, which weren't quite being upheld. If the script's saying the escort's known for his monster cock, maybe more flattering trousers might be an idea?

A shame; I'm sure he's a great performer, but as a walk-on bit of colour, he could have been replaced more effectively by a lamp without the story suffering at all for his disappearance from the script.

I suppose that's the thing with the whole piece; I don't know that it's translated well from screen to page to stage. The fact it ended with an advert for the book was quite telling - perhaps that's all the whole thing was, a taster session for a book that costs far less than a ticket for this, and hopefully is a lot more satisfying.

Don't get me wrong, there was a lot to like about it, Clayton Littlewood was really sweet and David Benson made me almost believe in the Polari-speaking queen and the crass transsexual's jokes at her own expense came off with considerable dignity, and it's worth seeing for those two. The affection they seem to have for each other is clear - you can see that David Benson filmed the looped shots of the shop because he kept filming himself in the reflection of the shop window years ago when Clayton still ran the shop.

Go if you want to learn lots of tender-hearted history of Soho and its people. Go if you'll let a cute treasure trail forgive reaching for the "know" in "Do you kno-o-OW where you're going to?" in Mahogany. Go if you want to see a chameleon who left me wanting to see more of his performances. Go if you want to see alarming honesty on stage from someone telling his own story.