Mil Millington
Aug. 26th, 2006 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bending_sickleI’ve just finished reading Mil Millington’s Love and Other Near-Death Experiences. The summary says:
Rob Garland is getting married in two months. Oddly, however, this is the least of his problems. More vexing that the seating arrangements and the choice of stationary is the fact that Rob should be dead: and he knows it. He should have been sitting ina pub at the very moment it was wipe from the earth – but he wasn’t, thanks to a series of pointless coincidences.
Now he’s paralysed by the knowledge that every decision he makes, no matter how tiny, potentially has enormous consequences. Faced with an ultimatum from his girlfriend, he pours his heart out to listeners of his late-night jazz show. It’s a decision he may live to regret…”
Regarding MMillington: he’s the creator of “the cult website” Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (also a novel), co-founder of The Weekley”, and author or A Certain Chemistry. He was named by The Guardian as one of the top five debut* novelists for 2002.
It’s hilarious. The back-cover says “one of those reads that leaves you looking like an annoying mad person on the bus as you chuckle every five seconds…” They’re only wrong on one fact: metro, not bus.
Also, man’s British, which means I get to read words like “bugger” (in the literal sense), “taking a piss” (in the non-literal, you’re-purposely-annoying-me way), “fags” (in the smokable sense), and “fuckwit” (in the perfect-insult sense).
Let me share some of my favourite bits so far (hopefully decently spoiler-free, but no promises):
The novel’s first line
"Hello. My name is Robert, and I haven’t been dead for sixty-three days now.”
The narrative-voice, the kind that speaks directly to the read:
"‘I’m not faking anything…and I’m not mad.’
‘I didn’t mean exactly-’
‘I’m not.’
(I’m not. Honestly.)”
The hell that is Rob’s decision-making:
“I stared at the bowl.
Should I have a coffee? Or a tea? Coffee gives you more of a lift; perhaps that millisecond advantage – the miniscule difference in my reaction speed – will prove crucial later. Maybe, if I have a coffee now, then I’ll escape otherwise certain death because of the tiny, but vital, edge I possess.
Yes.
Unless, of course, it’s the extra jitteriness that comes from having a coffee rather than a tea now that causes me to make some kind of mistake or slip or twitch or jerk or something that brings about a fatal situation which otherwise could have occurred. Though – obviously, it could be that the critical thing isn’t whether I have coffee or tea; all that matters is that I have something. That way, when an unforeseeable set of circumstances leads to the hot-water machine being knocked over in a particular way at some point after this decision I’m making right now, then the cascading water will be shy of the very cupful that would have reached a piece of wiring or section of exposed circuity and instantly arced crackling death out to whoever was in the wrong spot. The important thing, then is to have something. Something that will eliminate the fatal cupful of water. That causes the short.
Or…that puts out the unseen electrical fire before it has a chance to take hold. ”
After a detailed run-down through the best self-defense manouvers** upon being attacked, our hero concludes thusly:
“The only questions were ‘What was my best move?’ and ‘When was the best time to make it?’ I felt there was no point in waiting for him to snatch the initiative. I should move first – act, not respond; see that the situation played out on my terms.
So, I screamed as loud as I could and ran like fuck for the car.
[…]
My eyes bulging, I stared at him over the top of my car and screamed at F# above top C one more time, just to show him I meant business…But he kept on coming.”
Later, under observation by his attacker from the inside of his car:
“It reminded me of the way, in films, Dracula’s sinister power holds the eyes of his virgin victims.
Oh God! Maybe it was sexual!
Maybe he was going to shag me. Then drink my blood. Christ – he was going to shag me then drink my blood! Shit. Shit. This wasn’t fair. This simply wasn’t fair – I’d just got my life sorted out, and now a nutter was going to shag me and then drink my blood. God, but I hate Birmingham.
His mouth began to move – he was going to say something (‘Graaahhhhh!’ possibly, or maybe, ‘Shag!’ then, ‘Blood!’).”
I love that whole scene.
Another encounter with “Camo Killer”:
“(…) I thought that this lightning swirl out from under his grasp – the instinctive immediacy of it, its recoiling-elastic speed – might be a factor in my favour. Maybe he’d mistake it for a sign of martial-arts training. Maybe he’d think me a ninja. But then I allowed for the fact that as I’d whipped around, I’d also squealed, ‘Aeei – fuck!’ and put my hands up in front of my face like I was someone’s mum panicking trying to protect herself from the scary approach of a football. I don’t believe ninja’s do that.”
Ah, England. As Neil Gaiman once said, “where they spoke English, of a sort”.
” ‘Do you fancy Beth?” I asked, as he strode across the living room rehearsing a tactical withdrawl to the coat rack.
‘Fancy her?’
‘Do you think she’s attractive? Would you say that it’s a normal opinion – unremarkably normal – to think she’s shaggable?’
‘Shaggable?’
‘Christ. Don’t you speak any English in America? Is Beth a babe? Yes or no?’”
Internal wars:
"I asked myself when the change had come about. Myself shrugged. More disappointed with the lack of trust it demonstrated than anything else, I told Myself that the specific timing probably didn't matter but that, as I'd thought we were close, Myself might have at least mentioned it to me, once it knew. Myself looked a bit sheepish and mummbled that it was sorry.
When people will think you're gay no matter what.
"She's not nasty: she's hurt, and sad, and lonely. Lonely most of all, I think. But, underneath the hard show, she's kind and wonderful...Um - like Mr Rochester.'
Zach did something with his mouth.
I sighed. 'Mr Rochester is a character in a book. Not a bit of rough I fancy back in Birmingham.'
'Oh, right.'
'He fucking is.'"
People will say the strangest things...
"He wished me good night, and said that he'd keep guard downstairs - adding that, if he were overpowered by intruders, he'd shout, 'The wolves are free!' as loud as possible as a code phrase so I knew, and might therefore have a shot at escaping throigh an upstairs window. I asked him why he didn't simply go with shouting, 'I'm being overpowered by intruders!' He replied that code phrases were always better, as they eliminated the possibility of misinterpretation. And that, in any case, he'd feel a fool shouting, 'I'm being overpowered by intruders!'
'But you wouldn't feel a fool shouting, "The wolves are free"?'
'No. That's our agreed code phrase.'"
About friggin' huge knives:
"I know size doesn't matter: just the first inch of the vagina is sensitive, you can drown in three inches of water, a blade only a little longer than the vagina's tiny functinal section - and far shorter than the potentially fatal depth of water - can penetrate the chest deep enough to pierce the heart. Somehow, hoever, when someone whips out a fucking huge nkife, your instinctive reaction is less, 'Pft. You could kill a person with something less than a quarter of that size,' and more along the lines of, 'Arrrgh!'
The lesson:
"When you do all that fixating on what microscopic decision could lead to your death, you have it wrong. The fact is, all those minuscule, mundane decisions actually lead to your life. You take hold of life, moment to moment, by making those choices: and every time yuo choose, yo win - because you choose to carry on. You decide to live life, instead of it living you. Not only that, but also the odds are against us every second of every day - there's simply such an unbelievable number of ways for disaster, hurt and deat to happen: and, in the end, death is going to get us anyway, that's certain. The correct way to look at it is to be amazed at each moment you beat the house: arrogantly, bloody-mindedly stick two fingers up at chance and whoop at your continued winning streak. Laugh at the fact that you're being so jammy as to pull it off - because it is incredible that you are: life is a succession of tiny miracles."
* I almost wrote “debutant”, which might have altered your image of Mil a bit. Given him a frilly dress and placed him in a ballroom, for one thing.
** Highly educational:
1) “If someone grabs you from behind, in a neck lock, then you stamp your heel down hard on the mid-section of their foot while simultaneously pulling their arm away – using the awkward twisting of their wrist joint to force them to yield.”
2) “Knife attack? Grab the person by the hand and elbow of the attacking arm, and push both inwards – the way muscles are arranged means that they have no real strength in that direction, so one can compel even an assailant who is physically much stronger than you to drop the weapon.”
3) “A face-on attack, of course, you meet with a sharp, upward blow using the heel of your palm – driving the attacker’s own nasal bone into his brain and killing him instantlt.”
Rob Garland is getting married in two months. Oddly, however, this is the least of his problems. More vexing that the seating arrangements and the choice of stationary is the fact that Rob should be dead: and he knows it. He should have been sitting ina pub at the very moment it was wipe from the earth – but he wasn’t, thanks to a series of pointless coincidences.
Now he’s paralysed by the knowledge that every decision he makes, no matter how tiny, potentially has enormous consequences. Faced with an ultimatum from his girlfriend, he pours his heart out to listeners of his late-night jazz show. It’s a decision he may live to regret…”
Regarding MMillington: he’s the creator of “the cult website” Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (also a novel), co-founder of The Weekley”, and author or A Certain Chemistry. He was named by The Guardian as one of the top five debut* novelists for 2002.
It’s hilarious. The back-cover says “one of those reads that leaves you looking like an annoying mad person on the bus as you chuckle every five seconds…” They’re only wrong on one fact: metro, not bus.
Also, man’s British, which means I get to read words like “bugger” (in the literal sense), “taking a piss” (in the non-literal, you’re-purposely-annoying-me way), “fags” (in the smokable sense), and “fuckwit” (in the perfect-insult sense).
Let me share some of my favourite bits so far (hopefully decently spoiler-free, but no promises):
The novel’s first line
"Hello. My name is Robert, and I haven’t been dead for sixty-three days now.”
The narrative-voice, the kind that speaks directly to the read:
"‘I’m not faking anything…and I’m not mad.’
‘I didn’t mean exactly-’
‘I’m not.’
(I’m not. Honestly.)”
The hell that is Rob’s decision-making:
“I stared at the bowl.
Should I have a coffee? Or a tea? Coffee gives you more of a lift; perhaps that millisecond advantage – the miniscule difference in my reaction speed – will prove crucial later. Maybe, if I have a coffee now, then I’ll escape otherwise certain death because of the tiny, but vital, edge I possess.
Yes.
Unless, of course, it’s the extra jitteriness that comes from having a coffee rather than a tea now that causes me to make some kind of mistake or slip or twitch or jerk or something that brings about a fatal situation which otherwise could have occurred. Though – obviously, it could be that the critical thing isn’t whether I have coffee or tea; all that matters is that I have something. That way, when an unforeseeable set of circumstances leads to the hot-water machine being knocked over in a particular way at some point after this decision I’m making right now, then the cascading water will be shy of the very cupful that would have reached a piece of wiring or section of exposed circuity and instantly arced crackling death out to whoever was in the wrong spot. The important thing, then is to have something. Something that will eliminate the fatal cupful of water. That causes the short.
Or…that puts out the unseen electrical fire before it has a chance to take hold. ”
After a detailed run-down through the best self-defense manouvers** upon being attacked, our hero concludes thusly:
“The only questions were ‘What was my best move?’ and ‘When was the best time to make it?’ I felt there was no point in waiting for him to snatch the initiative. I should move first – act, not respond; see that the situation played out on my terms.
So, I screamed as loud as I could and ran like fuck for the car.
[…]
My eyes bulging, I stared at him over the top of my car and screamed at F# above top C one more time, just to show him I meant business…But he kept on coming.”
Later, under observation by his attacker from the inside of his car:
“It reminded me of the way, in films, Dracula’s sinister power holds the eyes of his virgin victims.
Oh God! Maybe it was sexual!
Maybe he was going to shag me. Then drink my blood. Christ – he was going to shag me then drink my blood! Shit. Shit. This wasn’t fair. This simply wasn’t fair – I’d just got my life sorted out, and now a nutter was going to shag me and then drink my blood. God, but I hate Birmingham.
His mouth began to move – he was going to say something (‘Graaahhhhh!’ possibly, or maybe, ‘Shag!’ then, ‘Blood!’).”
I love that whole scene.
Another encounter with “Camo Killer”:
“(…) I thought that this lightning swirl out from under his grasp – the instinctive immediacy of it, its recoiling-elastic speed – might be a factor in my favour. Maybe he’d mistake it for a sign of martial-arts training. Maybe he’d think me a ninja. But then I allowed for the fact that as I’d whipped around, I’d also squealed, ‘Aeei – fuck!’ and put my hands up in front of my face like I was someone’s mum panicking trying to protect herself from the scary approach of a football. I don’t believe ninja’s do that.”
Ah, England. As Neil Gaiman once said, “where they spoke English, of a sort”.
” ‘Do you fancy Beth?” I asked, as he strode across the living room rehearsing a tactical withdrawl to the coat rack.
‘Fancy her?’
‘Do you think she’s attractive? Would you say that it’s a normal opinion – unremarkably normal – to think she’s shaggable?’
‘Shaggable?’
‘Christ. Don’t you speak any English in America? Is Beth a babe? Yes or no?’”
Internal wars:
"I asked myself when the change had come about. Myself shrugged. More disappointed with the lack of trust it demonstrated than anything else, I told Myself that the specific timing probably didn't matter but that, as I'd thought we were close, Myself might have at least mentioned it to me, once it knew. Myself looked a bit sheepish and mummbled that it was sorry.
When people will think you're gay no matter what.
"She's not nasty: she's hurt, and sad, and lonely. Lonely most of all, I think. But, underneath the hard show, she's kind and wonderful...Um - like Mr Rochester.'
Zach did something with his mouth.
I sighed. 'Mr Rochester is a character in a book. Not a bit of rough I fancy back in Birmingham.'
'Oh, right.'
'He fucking is.'"
People will say the strangest things...
"He wished me good night, and said that he'd keep guard downstairs - adding that, if he were overpowered by intruders, he'd shout, 'The wolves are free!' as loud as possible as a code phrase so I knew, and might therefore have a shot at escaping throigh an upstairs window. I asked him why he didn't simply go with shouting, 'I'm being overpowered by intruders!' He replied that code phrases were always better, as they eliminated the possibility of misinterpretation. And that, in any case, he'd feel a fool shouting, 'I'm being overpowered by intruders!'
'But you wouldn't feel a fool shouting, "The wolves are free"?'
'No. That's our agreed code phrase.'"
About friggin' huge knives:
"I know size doesn't matter: just the first inch of the vagina is sensitive, you can drown in three inches of water, a blade only a little longer than the vagina's tiny functinal section - and far shorter than the potentially fatal depth of water - can penetrate the chest deep enough to pierce the heart. Somehow, hoever, when someone whips out a fucking huge nkife, your instinctive reaction is less, 'Pft. You could kill a person with something less than a quarter of that size,' and more along the lines of, 'Arrrgh!'
The lesson:
"When you do all that fixating on what microscopic decision could lead to your death, you have it wrong. The fact is, all those minuscule, mundane decisions actually lead to your life. You take hold of life, moment to moment, by making those choices: and every time yuo choose, yo win - because you choose to carry on. You decide to live life, instead of it living you. Not only that, but also the odds are against us every second of every day - there's simply such an unbelievable number of ways for disaster, hurt and deat to happen: and, in the end, death is going to get us anyway, that's certain. The correct way to look at it is to be amazed at each moment you beat the house: arrogantly, bloody-mindedly stick two fingers up at chance and whoop at your continued winning streak. Laugh at the fact that you're being so jammy as to pull it off - because it is incredible that you are: life is a succession of tiny miracles."
* I almost wrote “debutant”, which might have altered your image of Mil a bit. Given him a frilly dress and placed him in a ballroom, for one thing.
** Highly educational:
1) “If someone grabs you from behind, in a neck lock, then you stamp your heel down hard on the mid-section of their foot while simultaneously pulling their arm away – using the awkward twisting of their wrist joint to force them to yield.”
2) “Knife attack? Grab the person by the hand and elbow of the attacking arm, and push both inwards – the way muscles are arranged means that they have no real strength in that direction, so one can compel even an assailant who is physically much stronger than you to drop the weapon.”
3) “A face-on attack, of course, you meet with a sharp, upward blow using the heel of your palm – driving the attacker’s own nasal bone into his brain and killing him instantlt.”
