RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

220 | denis beckett
afTerWOrD
aluta confrikkentinua
When Patrick Lee deserted journalism to write movie
scripts, I screamed treason. How could he give up, just because
he was getting paid three times as much? He had no respect for
his movies, even; formula stuff that he described as “ten murders
and eleven fucks”. Or maybe it was the other way round. We were
playing klabberjas and, between bids, I delivered a sermon on
the need to believe in what you were doing. Patrick suffered in
silence while the winnings mounted on his side of the table. But
then I scored two successive Buits, which is klabberjas language
for a whitewash and a thing no klabberjas player can suffer in
silence, and when I resumed lecturing, he said, “It hasn’t done
much for you, has it?”
That’s an excellent question. He asked it some time in the
early nineties, I think, before he went to live in connecticut.
It has stayed with me. Materially speaking, the nineties and
the noughties had no lack of ups. I spent a while with my face
flighted frequently on a TV show that was much fun to do and