ART OF EUROPE

Week 2 - Tuesday

Yay! I take back what I said about printers. They are lovely and sweet and huggable. It turns out they aren't too proud or lazy to take my money, just a tad laid-back in responding to enquiries and who can blame them when they are so lovely and pretty. Also it seems one big company has bought up most of the printers in Britain, so I've been writing to the same sales bloke about five times over and he's understandably busy. Anyway I've had a quote from one place and it's much cheaper than the people I originally had lined up, and for a better quality.

However book distributors are still absolute scum, rude, philistine, venal and a bastion of restricted trade practices and incest and uncleanliness and ritual child molestation. But there must and shall be a way around that. Late last night I had the idea of getting someone who distributes CDs and so on to deliver it. They must have similar networks in place. And early this morning, hovering on that borderline between sleeping and waking, the realm between inspiration and gibberish, I thought, 'You were onto something with fishmongers. If you think about it fish get delivered all over the country. If you find some young ambitious guy with container lorries who's bored of only hauling fish... It wouldn't hurt them to stick a few books in and stop off at booksellers...' Yes. And they could offer a bucket of free whelks with every order of ten copies or more. Waterstones would love that. And cats wandering into bookshops and rubbing up against my books and purring, why what could be better advertising than that?

I don't want to be a crashing bore about this but I continue to be annoyed by the distributors' rejections and regretful passes. 'Afraid you don't match our profile.' What the hell kind of response is that? When I'm trying to pay them money?

From websites that try to explain the farrago: 'Distributors who want your business will compete if they think you would be a good match to the rest of their client base.' 'You will be hit with a whole host of questionnaires all attempting to elucidate information about your profile.' And all bollocks about synergy.

You don't get a taxi driver saying, 'I would rather sit on my hands than drive you anywhere, because you are not the sort of custom I wish to attract. I am known for specialising in driving dyspeptic Orangemen with goiters, and you do not fit that profile.'

Company profile? Company profile? What is that? It's un-English, damn it. That's some moronic modern bollocks they've picked up from some fucking foreigner. (Excuse me to the fucking foreigners.) Walter Raleigh coming back from America didn't refuse to ship tobacco because he was already carrying potatoes. 'There's plenty of room.' 'No, leave it, it'll muddy my profile, I'm into potatoes. There's no synergy between tobacco and potatoes. It's not a match. You can't put baccy on spuds, can you?' (Which is nonsense because my granddad did all the time. Only way we could get him to stop smoking long enough to eat.)

Synergy. Synergy. Stab. Stab. A cabal of shite-talkers has taken over British life and only let in people who are fluent in talking shite.

When I finally get rich in spite of them I'm going to set up a company that manufactures:

Nuclear weapons,
Vibrators, and
Crisps

Just to show them. Of course I will have to be very careful not to get any orders mixed up. President of Iran: 'Western Dogs, Iran has joined the 21st century, we are now equal in power to you Zionist infidels. Behold, the ultimate weapon!' Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Headlines: Iran liberalising?

And a very embarrassed woman somewhere has her ____ declared a no-go area by a team of men in asbestos suits wielding geiger counters. I make it up to her with a free packet of crisps.

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