Entries from December 2006 ↓

Lewis is a great friend of mine. For the past few years he’s been shying away from his responsibilities in the pub and writing a book. It must be good because somebody’s publishing it.

I read a very early draft version and it was a revelation (unblinkered and unbiaised product review). Any novel that has the word “syphilis” in the first sentence is alright by me.

It’s the embellished biography of dirty old painter Egon Schiele, protegé of Klimt and imprisoned for creating porn. It charts his father’s insanity, his suppressed lust for his sister and a fair bit of homo-erotic fumbling with famous characters from an age gone by.

The publication date isn’t until next year, but you can be guaranteed to get a pristine first edition, bound to be worth a fortune, by pre-ordering NOW your copy of The Pornographer of Vienna. Click away.

(He doesn’t know this yet, but he’ll be doing free beer and personalised book signings for anybody who shows up at his signing event in Brussels next spring.)

Once you’ve done that, swing on by and visit lewiscrofts.com

I love the UK because in the space of 24 hours, I ate turkey and tinsel (which stuck in the throat) with the Eastbourne Gilbert and Sullivan Society, followed by watching little brother (who asked for a mention) set the girls’ skirts on fire with his wheels of steel and Charles Manson (the killer, not the actor) style facial hair. Some slapper from Hastings told me that the label in my jacket said I was “fit” and then I burnt the roof of my mouth on a Ginster’s Chicken and Mushroom pie at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Life doesn’t get better. Meanwhile, is this the headline of the week?

It’s a few days and counting until I’m back in Malta. Normally, any trip to the rock wouldn’t be complete without a trip to watch some near-naked ladies gyrate on stage, whilst I imbibe overpriced beers and make small talk with Lenka or Svetlana from somewhere in Eastern Europe.

The lap-dancing bars in Malta are amongst the most conservative in any country I’ve visiited. Italy has them attached to petrol stations and Thailand, well enough said. But on the Rock, the girls don’t take their clothes off, don’t touch you, and are peopled almost exclusively by young drunk students and the occasional member of the Rafia and their entouraage.

But it looks like this year will be different, following police raids on my favourite establishments.

This article from the Independent gives you the rundown. If you’ve got a couple of minutes I recommend you read it entirely.

Here’s the summary:

• 35 women have been arrested, charged with performing immoral acts in public and participating in a brothel.
• Plain clothes police were ordered to arrest “anyone wearing a thong.”
• One woman was arrested, who “was not dressed inappropriately but who featured on several photographs that [the policeman] found on a computer.” In the photographs the woman was wearing “tight shorts and a short top.”
• “The shorts were tighter than those of a gymnast.”
• “The fact that they were dancing means they were participating in immoral acts because of the way they were dressed.”
• “Wearing a thong on the beach is one thing but wearing a thong in a public place is illegal.”

Now, I don’t want to sound like a loony lefty, and while I applaud the strength of family values in a country I love, this makes me shudder, smacking of a Taliban-esque régime of discriminate, cloudy interpretations of public morality.

So this winter, in Malta, I’ll mainly be wearing a thong.