Carnie and others

I know. It's been a while since my last post. The cause is the writer's usual; the day job. But also it's the weekends I've spent writing the introduction to this September's re-issue of Miss Nobody, by Ethel Carnie. It's exciting that it will be published on the centenary of the original publication. I was in the British Library's Newspaper Library in Colindale last Saturday, reading through back issues of The Woman Worker and the paper she and her husband, Alfred, edited - The Clear Light. Below is a section of 'adverts' from one issue, which struck me in their verve and immediacy. And to think it was written in c1908! 

Anyway, I think I've finished the intro, which I sent across yesterday to Carnie champion and series editor Dr Nicola Wilson, of Reading University. Nicola also wrote the introduction to This Slavery, the re-issue of another of Ethel's novels. What I would be keen to see published is a collection of Ethel's journalism. Roger Smalley is set to have published a biography of her, which he wrote in 2006 for his PhD, and which I mined for the section of Ethel in my own PhD thesis. It's all astonishingly overdue. 

In other news, I've yet to finish mapping out the 'Book of Joan', the oft-started, oft-abandoned book on my Mum. I have lost count of those to whom, having related snippets of its draft contents, have said 'you must write it'! And yes, I must. I sometimes question whether it's residing too much in the past, but given that I am able to even consider writing it at all means I'm very much in the future from where I was, if that makes sense? To be 'in the past' would, for me, signify a paralysis of intention. And there's always the old adage of to know where you're going you need to know where you're from. And my Mum's book will serve many important feminist and class-based considerations that are still hugely relevant. 

I have also been thinking about turning my PhD novel, part 1, which is the contemporary element, into an e-book. Nothing to lose, etc. And it would mean that it isn't just confined to my bound phd, which I see every time I open my cupboard, where it now languishes.

What have I been reading? To be honest I have struggled to read the TLS every week, and the LRB has fallen by the wayside. I will renew my LRB sub. I let my London Library membership lapse. One needs to be able to visit regularly to get the most from it. I have been keeping up with the New Yorker though. I like it, natch. New story every week, and some good reports. As well as the cartoons. 

On my 'must buy' list are novels of

James Salter, as well as The Mussel Feast, by Birgit Vanderbeke. 

A couple of weeks ago I caught the George Bellows exhibition at the Royal Academy, which was very good. He was part of the 'Ash Can School'. Greater realism etc. He died in his early 40s from peritonitis. I read yesterday that Sherwood Anderson, whose work I have never read, also died from it; although much older, and because he swallowed a toothpick! 

The Lowry exhibition at Tate Britain next month will make the headlines; cue articles on his seeming penchant for young girls. 

More anon.

Call for papers - Miss Nobody Centenary

This one-day conference marks the 100-year anniversary of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s first novel, Miss Nobody, published in September 1913. Widely believed to be one of the first novels published by a British woman of working-class background, Miss Nobody marks a rare and important intervention in the history of working-class women’s writing and publication.

To mark this event Dr Nicola Wilson at the University of Reading is seeking papers or short presentations on any aspect of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s life and work. Also welcomed are papers looking at Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s literary and political contributions in relation to other working-class women writers and political movements of the period.

Please send abstracts (max 250 words), contact details and brief biographical details to Dr Nicola Wilson, University of Reading at n.l.wilson@reading.ac.uk by Friday 28th June 2013.

Miss Nobody

A little while ago I was delighted to be asked by leading Carnie expert, Nicola Wilson, to write the introduction to a reissue of Ethel Carnie's Miss Nobody (1913). I now have the text to Methuen's original publication. It would seem that the British Library have lost its only copy. The importance of Ethel Carnie to English literature cannot be underestimated; she was this country's first working-class female novelist. Her achievements throughout her life are extraordinary, given the unlevelled playing field for women and more so for working-class women, which remains the case in literature.

Nicola initially made contact in response to a piece I wrote on Carnie for the Guardian's books blog, in response to a piece championing the 'overlooked' Sylvia Townsend Warner, by acclaimed novelist Sarah Waters. I argued that, far from being 'overlooked', Townsend Warner, like many of her middle-class writing peers of the time, had enjoyed incessant championing - particularly by the Virago publishing house.

I am not sure what reception Miss Nobody will receive upon its reissue, expected to be September this year, but I - along with others - will undoubtedly be active in drawing attention to the novel - and to Carnie.

I came across Carnie almost by accident when researching the critical element of my PhD. I became particularly interested in her use of the romance motif, and how working-class women in her era could ill afford it. She also pointed to the feminism of the working-classes - the cry to have the freedom to have some fun, which was sadly lacking in the lives of women up until the Education Act, who would have begun work from the age of seven onwards and barely have stopped until they dropped dead, exhausted. And, more importantly, the freedom to be able to stay at home and spend time with their children instead of having to rush back to work. And yet this is not the feminism or history that we are left with. Most know only that the middle class suffragettes fought for 'equality' for women; equality to vote; equality to work. Working-class women had 'enjoyed' the 'luxury' of work for centuries. And they had much political agency within working-class movements, such as the Chartists.

And yet, in our twenty-first century, it is the issue of women (and men) being unable to afford to give up work to spend time with children, that has become an increasingly urgent issue.

Toibin

The last time I took a week off work I immediately came down with a nasty little cold. I've been off work this week. Yes, I also came down with a nasty little cold. This time it has been worsened by also moving home. The morning after my first night in new place I felt like I had been pummelled to within an inch of my life - and yet wasn't sure what was cold and what was the result of lugging too many boxes up and down stairs. There has been some reading though. I borrowed The Empty Family, a collection of short stories by Colm Toibin, from Kew Library. I know I mentioned it in the last post, but I have to say again how bizarre I find living in a borough whose libraries all seem intact.

I like Toibin; Brooklyn was a master class in concision creating depth of feeling. I couldn't get into his earlier work though, like The Heather Burning. But The Empty Family is back to the longing; portrayals of those who have lost love - before that sounds incredibly dated - Toibin manages to both evoke a long Sunday before shops were open - and our contemporary era. In one story, powerful telescopes can easily focus in on a wave curling on the distant sea - in another, an ageing film set designer is perplexed and nonplussed at the same time, at the rebellious reaction her order-barking receives in present day Ireland; she, a product of more obedient times.
The prose is so finely crafted that it makes me appreciate just how difficult writing, really good writing, is. Which is probably one of the reasons I've not yet cracked on with my own work-in-progress.

I have finally finished the first draft of a book review though, which is something. I think I just always need firm deadlines - although they are not needed when my natural enthusiasm is awake and the writing is more pleasure than pain!

But I do have a cold. And I have moved home this week. And that's enough to be getting on with. And if you're looking for a good tea shop in Barnes, go to Orange Pekoe. I only had a cup of fresh ginger and honey in there today, but their tea menu is extensive; black, green and white.

Butchering the Big Fat Irish Butcher

It took me a long time to venture into my small local butchers in Kew. I had the idea that it would be all organic and out of the price range of most normal pocket-books. Like the organic store facing it, where a tin of organic beans can be yours for twice the amount of a tin from the Tesco Express, just a few doors down from the butcher. But, like many supermarkets, the butcher does a brisk(et) trade in the rotisserie chicken at a fiver a pop. The shop is so small that the small rotisserie, a narrow silver cabinet, is perched outside by the door, so that the juicy aroma reaches those commuters who emerge from Kew Gardens station, calling them to abandon their own oven for another day. Why make life more difficult, the waft seems to convey. It was this that finally called me in. And I was comforted, if a little disappointed, to observe the dearth of the organic fancy massaged-cow range in favour of all things butchery normal. Save for the shelf full of homemade liquid stocks at a few quid a jar. Or the few trays of medleys of meat on sticks in the main display cabinet. The rest were pies, waiting to be shoved in the oven and passed off as homemade; a mere technicality. But as I walked home this afternoon, library book of Tobin's short stories 'The Empty Family' borrowed from Kew Library (no closure in this affluent enclave I see, despite the main Richmond Library just a 15-minute walk up the road one direction, and East Sheen Library in the other direction), and collected my cooked chicken for two days worth of weekend eating (roast chicken salad and maybe a risotto), I felt a pang for the Irish butchers of my youth.
They are still there; the big Irish butchers, whose counters groan with ham shanks (hocks, these days), legs of lamb on hooks overhead, big bowls of whitened tripe in brine ready to be baked in milk and onions, mint-marinated lamb cutlets, dishes of mince, plates of plump bloody lamb, calves, and pigs liver, adjoining the piss-tanged kidneys that Joyce's Bloom would have been proud to fry, joints of pink pork - and the stock in trade - capons and chickens. I always recall the two or three seats by the door, where the older Irish and Caribbean men and women would rest whilst waiting for the queue to go down. Or a small child, chewing something sweet whilst mindlessly kicking their legs against the chair legs, staring at the sawdust on the otherwise immaculate floor. Me, perhaps, before I was old enough to do these butcheries on my own (9,10). I remember once my Da returning home on a Saturday, to where we lived in Hulme, armed with a cow's brain. My Mum opened the front door and threw the thing out, unwrapped, onto the communal veranda, telling him she wasn't cooking that bloody thing - tripe was bad enough. He'd have brought it back in and boiled it up and at least partook of it. He was ofally ambitious, my Da. He'd grown up with an old Irish abattoir butcher for a father. Just like his fatger before him - Edward Webb, born 1841 in Mayo - occupation: Victualler. Cousins, from whom the late Irish football player, Ted Webb, who died tragically young, still have their branch of the Butchery business 'Webbs' of Ballyhaunis, Mayo. Had I ever got the opportunity to persuade him to London, he'd have been in heaven at St. John's in Clerkenwell; although he'd have balked at the prices of its renowned offal dishes.
These Irish butchers would also have shelves of dried goods, showing off Kimberley biscuits, Gypsy creams, Nash's Red Lemonade. My Da would - a few times a year - bake his own Irish soda bread - which we ate cobs of, warm with Irish butter melting and melted in. Heavenly.

Next to the Irish butcher would always be the greengrocers. Rows of collies framed with their dark green leaves, like sunflowers; my Mum loved cauliflower; she would say it aloud whilst she or myself would break up the florets ready for the pan, stealing a few to munch on raw 'I love cauliflower, me,' she'd say, just in case anyone disbelieved her munching away. I too took a liking for raw collie. Why it was then boiled for too long is anyone's guess. There'd also be the darkest green savoys, a deeply pungent earthy counterpart to a boiled salty sheet of bacon ribs, or chunks of ham shank, both comforted - and the tastebuds neutered briefly - by the humble spud, often bought by the 55lb sackload, which my Da would carry on one shoulder from the greengrocers on a Saturday, before heading off in his good suit to the bookies, and then his second home of a small Irish pub, whose walls were adorned with portraits of Michael Collins - and the jukebox would ring out the rebellious lyrics against Maggie Thatcher. Oh, the days.

American Justice at Arts Theatre London

I made it to the opening night of Richard Vergette's tautly written 90-minute play, American Justice last week. It moved to Covent Garden's hip Arts Theatre following a well-received run in Manchester (with a different cast). Seated in the front row we, friend and I, could see the whites of the actors eyes and every minute facial expression, which added to the tension. The talented and versatile David Schaal was, for my money, the anchor of the play. Playing the part of the Republican anti-a-rab Obama prison warden, he guards the young Fenton, played with conviction (pardon the pun) by Ryan Gage. Fenton, illiterate and full of rage, is serving life for the murder of Democrat Congressman Daniels's daughter. Gage excels at facial expression: rage, fear, mistrust deeply etched.

Daniels, it seems, was swept into power because of his highly-publicised forgiveness of his daughter's apparent killer. Yet it's not enough for Daniels. He also takes it upon himself to educate Fenton, whilst having ideology clashes with the warden, (the only book he needs if the Good Book / electric chair etc). But is the forgiveness all it appears?

Daniels, played by Peter Tate, had the weakest accent of the trio; it kept slipping, which was unfortunate, and yet he did have the lion's share of the lines.

I learnt that Schaal's character, the warden, hasn't existed in previous runs, and whilst it is now easy to remark upon how that seems impossible having not seen the play without his character, I truly cannot imagine the play working as well without Schaal. The warden brings the vital anti-Democrat confrontations needed to keep this Obama-era play energised.
I found it telling (but of what I'm not yet certain) that the two plays I have seen this week (Julius Cesar at the Donmar) had both utilised on-stage screens to act as CCTV monitors in their respective prison settings.

What also made American Justice at the Arts Theatre most refreshing was the young audience.

American Justice is only on until February, so get booking.

Julius Cesar - Donmar Warehouse

Phyllida Law's all-female production of Shakespeare's Julius Cesar made a big impression. From the opening scene, full of potent power as Cesar (Frances Barber) emerges, and followed by her coterie of acolytes. These women, dressed in the garb of the contemporary prisoner - grey joggers and black Reebok Classics - filed onto the stage with the lopsided simian swagger of the street. I made the mistake - or perhaps not - of reading a few reviews beforehand, a few main ones being lukewarm, which readied me with lower expectations. One national declared the all-female cast couldn't compete with the (innate) power of the male performers for whom Shakespeare would have had to write. To which I can now say 'utter bollocks'.

Julius Cesar: power, ambition.

These are not - essentially at least, if not culturally - the exclusive domains of men. This production ripped down the veil of reverence that the overwhelmingly male dominated crews, canons and cultured crowds have held over Shakespeare through the years. A dusty patriarchal inheritance from the Victorian era.

But Shakespeare was not about reverence.

He wrote his plays to be performed for pennies in front of pits of bun throwing drunks. And when he wasn't doing that he was writing beyond the Elizabethan censors - not for them.

This production stops about half way through, openly revealing itself as meta-Shakespeare - a bit like when Charlotte Bronte stops Jane Eyre's story to address the reader. It is, then, a performance also about performing Shakespeare. And in many ways. Intertextuality is rife. Just like Shakespeare. It veers off the young main drag towards the mash-up. And succeeds. It goes from the blades to the machine guns to the pistols. And from techno to something sounding like heavy metal to a lone harmonica behind an imaginary camp fire. Shakespeare, Law seems to be saying, can be anywhere. And everywhere. Most of all, in a women's prison, where who makes Queen B is a matter of life and death; honour, even.
The only thing that struck me as perhaps taking it one step up the radical ladder would be to have feminised the language. She for he. Cesar as woman; Brutus, all. I feel it would have rendered that step closer to what most women know to be the power within themselves. I don't mean the power as realised - but the power that is aspired to in the vengeance we cook up as surely and as detailed as any war-time strategist man is capable of.
The performances were brilliant. Frances Barber owned her status and prisoner attire. But Ishia Benson as Casca stood out, a Yorkshire accent bringing the dialogue a greater degree of vitality than one would expect.

The last of 2012

I won't be doing my annual round-up because I just haven't been as culturally connected this year; the joys of being too busy with the day job. And I'm not sure if I even did one last year. My previous post did, however, name a few 2012 faves. Today I spent a few hours sorting through hundreds of books - paperbacks mainly - ready to be recycled. For years I've been unable to part with any books unless they were great and I wanted to pass on the odd one of them to friends and family. But today I figured, just keep some of the ones I've not yet read and a good few shelves of those I really want to keep. And the result so far is seven garden-sacks worth of books waiting to leave me. And I've still to go through another six or seven shelves worth. Having to cull books forced me to focus on the space that they take up. No bad thing, to have books around. But it seems something of a vanity to have hundreds of them, getting dusty, and never read or even referred to. They were just sat sitting there. I suppose it is also a sign of the times. I have a fair few now on my iPad. And then there's the library. Those that are still open. I suppose not wanting to part with the lion's share of the books was also about not wanting to let go of the studious life I led for over eight years, and which commenced properly on New Year's Day 2003. The day I became a non-smoker.

The books, you see, replaced the fags!

And a useless 'relationship' that was never going to go anywhere.

I say giving up the cigarettes had one real effect - it pumped more oxygen to my brain. It made me think more constructively. This led to saying goodbye to the aimless years-long fling. And this led to the first degree. Then the second. And then the PhD. As if I didn't have enough on my plate holding down either a full-time, or two part-time, jobs at the same time. I didn't stop. And whilst I'm still very busy, it's different. And I still have a book I'm writing. But it isn't all consuming. And yet this worries me a bit because writers are wedded to their works whilst writing them! And it's a book about my Mum that needs to draw on real feeling! I'm hoping to set back to work on it in 2013 though. Although I don't mind if I don't get it finished next year. Easy does it, but do it. And have some FUN!

Towards the end...

And yet there is no end. Only towards the end of a man-made calendar year. My favourite band of the year was Alt-J. And so it was gratifying to then see them nominated - and then winning - the Mercury Prize for Music. I told myself that I had picked the winner! Or that my trend-setting taste in music was perfectly aligned with the music industry 'experts'. My favourite app of the year has to be FlipBook; it opened up a new world of brilliant design, art, and technology that I probably would otherwise have missed out on. Favourite book? I started so many and failed to finish them. I struggled to connect with literature this year. I did, however, enjoy William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise. And I was blown away by King Crow, back in the summer. Theatre wise I love The Last of the Hausmanns, starring Julie Walters. And was sore to have missed out on Rylance in Jerusalem. Film wise, I was moved by Nostalgia for the Light, which I blogged about. And really liked Skyfall. And I adored The Master. I am now also a fan of the New Yorker cartoons, although not reading the magazine as intently as the first few months of my sub. And I haven't been using the London Library enough to warrant renewing my membership. So it's onwards, still psyching myself up to resume my work in progress. It will need more emotional commitment. Just waiting for my reserves to kick in.

Scribbler fatigue

I'm tired of writing. Jaded, even. How to move forward to a new and reenergised state? I'm writing the Mum book again and I have the opening scene. I also have lots and lots of fragments, from my last rough draft, as well as from previous attempts at mapping my life with her. But it's bloody hard. It's a slog, writing, in a way that it just wasn't when I began to write more seriously, over ten years ago. Perhaps it is meant to be this much of a slog. I think one has to feel compelled to it, for sure. Every phrase I pen, every sentence, is filtered through a cliche, alliteration and everything else meter. The thing with alliteration is that I like it. I'm digressing.

The usual round up of recommended books are doing the rounds. My favourite book of the year would be King Crow, I think. If that was this year. You see, my finger is nowhere near the pulse. I shall shuffle away, in the hope I have something more interesting to say on books and writing before the year is out.

Up the Elephant

Tramping the streets of south east London for the past two weekends has given me more, vital, intelligence about London - my adopted home city of the past seventeen years. Myself and a friend have been looking at what could be potentially possible - at a push - as a property purchase. I apologise for the p alliteration - perhaps I should add that most of it so far has seemed like one big piss-take as we have trawled through the poverty of pockets of south-east inner London. If London are the trousers, then these are not even the pockets, which are deep and baggy, but that which we find at the far corners: the old tissues and detritus.

What could be had for £250,000 - a quarter of a million pounds - in this capital of ours? Try a council flat in an eyesore of a block on a monster of an estate just minutes walk from the Elephant. And not just a monster of an estate, but an area that holds totalitarian type block after block after block of utter depression. All off the Walworth Road: Bethwin Road, Tiverton Street, up beyond the East Street market. These blocks. Like nothing I had ever clapped eyes on. And this is someone who grew up a stone's throw from the delights of Manchester's Hulme Bull-Ring and Crescents; they were dwarfed in comparison; made to look, in the confines of my own memory, almost genteel. The only phrase that is lodged in my mind as I play back the sights is 'what fresh hell is this?' And there had been people in these who had bought under the right to buy, and were now selling their little flats, for anything upto 250k. An estate agent, Hugo, with floppy hair and a weak stomach for smelly flats, told us that, with a couple of the worst and uninhabited blocks soon to be demolished, the area's private homes would increase in value. And it was remarkable how, the value of a flat could suddenly, from one street - still overlooked by one of these high-rise, wide-widthed - shoot up thirty grand. Another told us, in an area just minutes away on public transport and posh in comparison though still only 'on the up' that the markers of the area being thus were the decreasing fried chicken shops in favour of the deli. In one of these areas, nice and perfectly liveable though feeling a little cut off despite being in zone 2, which in south London is akin to zone 4 or 5 in west or north of the river, thanks to the lack of the tube (a blatant discrimination if ever there was one), we found a deli. Run by what appeared to be a gay couple, this little middling-class hipster-foodie haven felt like a parody. It was as if the area's 'up and coming' could breathe a sigh of relief as they congregated in communal comfort and consolation to survey the labels of micro-brewery ales and organic wines; partaking of the free wifi as they sipped on their skinny lattes and nibbled on home-made Scotch eggs, surrounded by displays of local honey. I noticed that the labels of said honey didn't advertise the demographic of the honey bees; perhaps local meant derived from hives that were hidden atop the Elephant & Castle shopping centre itself, just as the overly-monied had the hives atop Fortnum & Mason. Or even some industrious council tenant had them buzzing away on the roof of a Bethwin Road block? That little analogy could easily apply to the megalithic and monstrous towers, off the main drag, but from which comes our city's hidden workers; the stokers - worker drones - of those parts of our lives we'd rather not face. The cleaners, the chicken shop workers for those late night stops in dodgy neighbourhoods for cheap fried food that will, when we come to, shame our drug and drink addled minds far more than not knowing the name of the person you'd woken up to. It is true that many of the inhabitants of these estates are not native in that they were not born here. Yet it has to be sheer desperation that has people - families - having to take these places. The right to buy in such conditions, however prosperous it has made those few tenants who bought feel, is not just a piss-take and parody of late capitalism, but another blatant mugging of those who also work hard, and who may have originated from similar beginnings, now priced out of a bloated hideous market and desperate to get a foot on that increasingly wonky ladder. And yet who would feel only that life has pushed them beyond backwards.

The Blindfold / James Bond

I'm reading The Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt. I read her great novel, 'What I Loved' in July 2008, whilst staying for a week in the Ribble Valley in the aftermath of my Mum's death. The Blindfold is nowhere near as long but just as intelligently written and structured. I'm not far from the end and it reminds me of an edgier Bell Jar, by Plath. Mental illness of the main woman, a literature student, is the story - or is it the Jungian 'creative illness' in which she seeks, through male cross-dressing to exemplify Freud's theories of male envy?

I went to see the latest James Bond - SkyFall - last week and I loved it. It was nowhere near as sexist as its predecessors, thanks to director Sam Mendes, and of course the writer, whose name escapes me, but who co-wrote Scorcese's Hugo. I also detected much anti-imperialist subtext - or was it a reconciliation with an imperialist past? One line goes something like. 'we don't fight countries any more - it's individuals we need to watch' - hinting at the leftist internationalism and multi-culturalism that was a main trope of Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony. Can these two great collective cultural events - the Games and the new James Bond - serve to more firmly turn the tide of collective consciousness than a few twitter campaigns? Or did these two events merely respond to it?

Both events were London, though. And this weekend I am playing tour guide to my niece and nephew's first visit to their capital. The cousins - Keenan 8, and Kya, 7 - whose fathers are my younger brothers (twins) - will have their three aunties, myself and my two sisters, for the whole day. We shall be doing the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, a boat up the Thames (the best way to experience London) to Greenwich and the planetarium, then back downriver to Tate Modern to see some Jackson Pollock, who my nephew likes. Kya likes most art, it would seem, standing or sitting and looking up at huge pictures, shifting her head at different angles as though listening for the secret language. I realise that, as an auntie, I write a script with them, one which helps to determine their own, and that they will choose to have with the children in their lives when they're adults. More anon.

Bits n drabs

So, it's been a little while. The day job can be all consuming. That doesn't mean that I'm not writing though - I felt satisfied with what I managed to get done over the weekend. And despite my time being seriously limited, I'm actually writing more slowly on the work-in-progress. I watched a documentary the other night on Edna O'Brien. She said that she thinks a book will take her two years to write - but it's more like four! And that made me feel less anxious about my current pace.

I am also reading in bits and drabs; fits n starts. There was a great story in the last issue of the New Yorker: The Simplica Girl Diaries by George Saunders.

The current issue of the LRB features yet another poem by August Kleinzahler. I don't like his work. And every time I see his name I sigh. Sorry, August, your work is just lost on me and it elicits no emotional response.

I can't say there are any books around that I feel I must be reading either. I've never been one for Hilary Mantel, although I sense I would like her as a person, so won't be rushing out to buy her Booker winning 'Bring up the Bodies'. I only managed to get a third of the way through Wolf Hall.

And Rowling's The Casual Vacancy doesn't sound like my thing, although the themes are appealing; the reviews and what have been extracted reveal a prose style that wouldn't push my buttons. I never read Harry Potter. I don't do the crossover thing, although I have toyed with the idea of reading Blyton's Malory Towers series, which I loved growing up. But maybe that's where they need to stay.
Onwards!

Blogacy - for my nephews and niece(s)

I have sometimes wondered what will remain of me in the memories of my nephews and niece (and another on the way, courtesy of my sister). The aunt who lived in London who sent us books, and every time she visited, or we visited her, took us to a museum or a gallery - and always banged on about learning. And politics. That one.

I have sometimes felt it would be nice to write a little book for them, charting their family tree from the Webb side (and the maternal side of course). But then I realised, they may have this blog; this will be my blogacy!

To them, I bequeath my web words.

Regarding books. Read Orwell.

Start with Animal Farm then move onto Down and out in Paris and London.

Or not.

Try Jack London's The Star Rover, especially if you ever find yourself in prison.

If you need identification for how you feel, or if you're going through a hard time, faced with homelessness, destitution, despair, divorce, death or just plain old alcoholism - pick up a good novel - if you don't find reassuring identification, you'll find escape. How do you know if a book is good? Read it. In time you'll be drawn to themes. As long as you don't develop a taste for novels where everything ends happily ever after - they're bullshit and are responsible for creating much misery. Aim for the diverse and the interesting and the subtle and the ones that are not formulaic. Or not.

There'll be times when you can barely open a book let alone read. Try a few lines of poetry that can help you conjure up an image. I picked up Bernard O'Donohugh's selected poetry yesterday whilst on the tube and meditated on the one feeling, the image of 'In Ireland, the rain's eavesdropping on the silence'. Develop a feeling for the poignant. It will provide you with reassurance that you are human. And humane. And sometimes that one poignant image, which doesn't have to come from a book, but could come from the most mundane aspect of daily life, will have you welling up.
Cry. The tears will save you. They are good.

Although if you find yourself crying all the time, and for no reason, seek help. And take regular walks. And remember to eat good food. By good I mean wholesome. If you want to eat a bowl of porridge with a big dollop of honey on for dinner then go ahead; the only rules are the ones you choose to accept. Or tolerate. Food shouldn't be one.

And then read some comedy. A bit of Spike Milligan.

Location:Kew

And Henson

I've been trying to ward off a cold. I knew it was inevitable when people in the office began sneezing one after the other. I bought First Defence, but I still got it. And I've been supping echinacea, for what good it does. I ended up leaving work a little early today, feeling somewhat dazed and a bit faint. Unable to face the bus from Ealing Common I ended up walking the three or so miles home, telling myself that it was doing me good. I had a quick peek in at Gunnersbury Park, an expanse of unspoilt autumnal greenery with dashes of brown to mark the strewn conkers. A solitary jogger doggedly dragged his curving frame around a never ending lap. I must venture in for a cycle.

I'm in a fallow reading period after my little glut of The Lighthouse, The Twin and Nightwoods. I've not yet returned to Canada; unable to face yet more of the same. It needs a hefty cull of the old verbiage. Opened beside me is the Granta Book of the Irish Short Story. I also opened the member's magazine posted from the London Library, an institution I'm not making enough use of lately. It includes a feature by Nick Drake on being one of a
group of creative and scientific types who sailed out to the Arctic to see the results of climate change. This iced territory has had a hold of the imagination of writers for many centuries. Some of my favourite novels are based here. There, rather. I was surprised to learn of Matthew Henson, a valid contender for the first explorer to reach the North Pole. How does one define explorer given that the Eskimos staked claims long before - or that's it - anyone else hasn't felt the need to stake claims. Henson, a black American who died in his eighties in 1955, had been part of Peary's expedition. The feature mentions Henson's walk-on part in Doctorow's brilliant Ragtime. And yet it hadn't registered with me. Maybe I should do a bit of re-reading.

Location:Kew

Getting the muse when we can

Every week is busy when you're working full-time in a demanding role. So it was perhaps no surprise when I woke up later than my average weekend lie in yesterday morning, missing the first week of a writers group that I had meant to go to. It didn't stop me from spending the rest of the day from writing on my work-in-progress though; the muse was there, after a hiatus. And so too this morning. So all in all a fair bit done.
I had coffee with the editor of a trade title last week, for work, and we ended up chatting about how we keep the creative flame alive outside of work - which is the test for the vast majority of writers, artists et al. We take our muse where we can - as long as it's on the weekend! I feel quite drained now though, which tells me I've done enough on the WIP to warrant a rest until next weekend.

I'm currently reading Richard Ford's Canada. It's a good read. But there's a lot of it; a hefty cull it could have used! I've learnt though, that my own writing could do with a slower pace; not too slow though; Ford repeats certain feelings and thoughts which I feel are unnecessary.
This wasn't the case in Alison Moore's Booker short listed title: The Lighthouse. A bit of an odd ending, but she manages to get the pace just right - and in doing so the novel could be seen as verging on the novella. But f that's how the story fits, then that's how it fits.
The London Review of Books current issue has a new poem by Hinglish poet Daljit Nagra, and this week's TLS one by Glyn Maxwell.
Till next weekend, then.

Location:Kew

Regrouping

A few weeks ago I decided to let my work-in-progress hang for a while, which would give me time to settle into a new job, and allow me the distance to see the half-cut first draft anew. I still haven't looked at it, but in a couple of weeks I shall be joining a new, small and nearby writing group. This group is different from your regular writing group in that it is led by an experienced published writer and teacher. I know I've taught creative writing to others myself and even have a phd in writing, but one needs considered feedback and I'm hoping I'll find it there. And it's small enough for the focus. A regular couple of hours on a Saturday should also serve to more clearly demarcate the working week from the weekend and help me become more precious - or more wisely use - my free time. However, whilst not writing I am reading lots. I finished Charles Frazier's southern Gothic 'Nightwoods', which was taut and dark, yet with the right balance of light. I'm also close to finishing Gerhard Bakker's 'The Twin', which is a real gem, centring on the middle-aged Dutch farmer, Helmer, whose aged and bed bound father is shut upstairs. The father-son relationship is uncomfortable, cold, and at times cruel. Yet there is enough to attach to, emotionally.

I'm also close to finishing the first half of a manuscript by a man who has a real gift for description and emotional insight into his characters, and I hope, no, I'm sure, it will find a publisher. I'm racing ahead with both.

On my to-read pile is also the Booker long listed 'The Lighthouse', by Alison Moore, as well as The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story, which includes work by many of the great Irish writers, John Banville, Roddy Doyle, William Trevor, and Joseph O'Connor.

Today I also bought the new work by poet Christopher Reid, 'Nonsense', which I'm expecting much from.

BBC's iPlayer now allows users to download programmes, instead of just watching them online. I had no idea there was a programme called My Life in Books and downloaded it. It featured the luminous 91-year-old PD James, and the rather puzzling radio presenter Richard Bacon. But more confusing for me was why the inanimate-faced Anne Robinson was chosen to front the show; she offered no bookish insight, and whenever she gave the noddies, I just kept on expecting a withering and yet unintelligent put down. This is the book show dumbed down; barely scratching the surface of anything remotely meaningful.

Location:Kew

School's Out

It's the last Bank Holiday weekend of the year. Suddenly I feel determined to squeeze the marrow out of it; mostly because this week saw me start a new job, and after a week of meeting lots of new people whose names I'll have to be reminded of for the first few weeks, this 3-day weekend gives me time to recharge before the bull is grabbed by the proverbial. There's lots to do; when is there not? Anyway. I shall be spending tomorrow in St James's Square in the concentrated bookishness that is the London Library; writing; re-immersing myself into 'the book'. There's also a lot I want to read. Can I write 10,000 words AND read Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station, The Prophet by Michael somebody, Junky by William Burroughs and the new Alice Munro short story in this week's New Yorker? Oh, and meet a few friends lest I'm considered an impossible loner? Doubtful. I also had the urge this evening to re-read Orwell's Down and Out in Paris & London; such a wonderful book. It's better not fall into the trap, though, of expecting too much of myself this weekend, which will only defeat the purpose of it, but to slowly, leisurely, take it as it comes.

Location:Kew

Memoir and Iceland

I have made good headway on the memoir. I made a schoolgirl error this week though when I sought approval on where I'd reached by sending it to a literary agent. Her response, whilst friendly enough, made me question the entire thing; being questioned on one's endeavours is not a bad thing - but when you're not even halfway through the first shit draft, it is positively dangerous. I am now viewing it through her eyes, and my subjectivity has become diminished, which does not do for memoir. Or first draft of anything. I managed to plod on and do a bit more this evening but half-heartedly. I spoke to a good writer friend - she has read some of it, and she declared it to be the best thing I've written and that I must continue with it. Now it feels a bit like a big heavy bag of shite hanging above me. Will this feeling pass or can I push myself beyond it? I don't know. Maybe I need to look at my own attempts at self-sabotage through the seeking of professional approval that can only itself ever be objective.

It is hard, this writing bollocks; one has to feel the need at a core level, and I must, given how much time and energy I've devoted to it over the years. And then despite telling myself it's arrogance on my part, one can't help but note some of the stuff out there that gains recognition; some of it is absolute dross.

I may. I might. I must.

On the reading front, having been bowled over and winded by McGahern's Amongst Women and his Memoir, I turned to The Dark, the novel that was banned in Ireland when it was published. I found I couldn't even get through a third. Perhaps it was McGahern overload.

Desperate to get sucked into another book I picked up another from my 'bought but haven't read' pile and turned to Charles Frazier's Nightwoods. But it hasn't stuck yet. I bought Notting Hill Edition's 'Questions of Travel - William Morris on Iceland' with parallel commentary by Lavinia Greenlaw, ordered very quickly for me by my local: Kew Books. It's fascinating so far. There's no great heaviness - maybe that's why I feel so drawn every so often to 'cold climate' literature. That it represents both a clarity and a freezing? Morris first went when his marriage was 'in disarray'. It is on his second visit there when his 'spirits rise when he finally gets a hit of strangeness in the form of an extreme barrenness that he hasn't encountered before'. It is in the defamiliarisation or the unfamiliar (different concepts but the attraction or renewing ability presented by both is the same) that he needed; the sense of awe and wonder that can 'heal' a jaded spirit. He admits it when he says 'it was no idle whim that drew me here, but a true instinct for what I needed'. I shall continue and may post more anon. If I don't get utterly consumed with renewal of purpose on the memoir!

Revealing

The past few weeks have been a bit tricky. Snapping black dog etc. I've also begun reading a few new books, but have so far failed to reach the middle of one; when I'm in this state of mind I can find it a bit difficult to be engaged enough. It's a failure to secure a purchase on those things that one normally takes an interest in. I met a very charming and established author, Stephen Benatar, in Chiswick Waterstones last weekend. He stood beside a small table that featured piles of his own novels. Whenever anyone strolled past him he took the step or two and handed them three of his books and asked that they might take a moment to browse through. I did and immediately took them to a spare chair at the back of the shop. What struck me from all three was the quality of the prose; an established quality. Does that sound old-fashioned? Having heard of the title I made inroads into 'Wish Her Safe at Home', an NYRB Classic, including an introduction by John Carey. I think that 'established' is the right word when you're good enough to merit introductions in a well-known publisher's Classics series. I had a few words with him, saying that I would take the Wish Her Safe at Home and that I had enjoyed the first few pages. Benatar is tall and lean; he's looked after himself. And yet I was still shocked to learn that he is 75. That an author of his calibre was still happy - and he seemed comfortable and perfectly at ease with himself - promoting his own books in the unaffected way he did spoke volumes, I felt. I admired his air, his manner. The longer I write the more I totally understand how difficult the path is. The odds of being published and having copies on shelves of mainstream book stores are increasingly slim; although now anyone can publish an e-book. Amazon has reported that e-book sales now outstrip those of conventional books. I have my own on the kindle platform, A Clockwork Apple, but I never check to see if any are sold; I don't promote it, apart from the initial odd tweet. I often wonder if I'll have another work published. It won't be for lack of trying - and trying to work on my craft; my voice - and putting the hours in. I have started to write a memoir. I'm 17,000 words in and it seems to be taking on a life of its own. I showed it to a trusted writer friend and she both worried and reassured me by saying it was the best thing she's read by me - that it was my story and my voice. And yet there is still so much more. We'll see. I know I have a story to tell but I had always feared that story - of somehow branding myself with it. There has been the space of a day from writing the above, that I hasn't yet managed to reach halfway on anything I'd been reading but that looks set to be broken now. A few years ago I read John McGahern's The Barracks. I seem to recall posting on it on this blog. The writing was second to none; the psychology of the characters and the descriptions of the interpersonal and personal relations, devastating. The Irish rural mindset is the one I seem mostly to identify with - and well I might. Despite growing up in inner city Manchester I grew up with a silent yet loaded Da who was made of the rural Irish. And my Mum, well she is a bit harder to describe that way, but her own mother also carried it very strongly. It's in my Celtic bones as much as the rain itself. So I could be forgiven for having to gear myself up to read McGahern's Amongst Women. But I did so last night and am already having to absorb it in doses; floored by the devastation and the silent grieving and the ghosting around the father of the story, Moran, the old Republican army man. I identify with it so strongly - and yet the deep and abiding love of the three daughters towards their unpredictable father who wand only to appear dignified and Proper. Honourable. McGahern's fine detail that demonstrates his insight is so taut. And then there's the speech, the dialogue, which I'd also latched onto in The Barracks. Moran says to his older daughter, 'mind you don't wake up the crowd who have to be up for school in the morning'. A d there's also a scene in which his kids 'cringe into themselves' as they walk through the town. What we have in Moran is a man desperately locked into himself, and how that affects those around him. Given the nature of what I myself am trying to write - the personal nature of it - and of not being able to get into any other book but this at this time reveals so much to myself. And of so much of what I'm trying to reveal.

Beaker

Nostalgia for the Light

You must see Nostalgia for the Light at the cinema while you can. It conveys the connectedness of the world - the galaxy - of death and beginnings - of hope and despair - brilliantly. Although, I would recommend that you familiarise yourself with Thatcher's love of Pinochet beforehand.

Cedric made me

This week I bought popular linguist David Crystal's 'The Story of English in 100 Words'. The words are not only fascinating in themselves, the first one - hailing from the 5th century - being roe (as in roe-deer), but present a brilliant way into the history of the UK. Celts (Britons), Romans, Picts, Anglo-Saxons... This first word of roe stems from inscriptions made from our 5th century ancestors. I was quite taken with the fact that, when making pots or other tools and suchlike, it wasn't uncommon for the maker to state the name of its creator. 'Cedric made me', being one example given, scribed on a humble pot. It makes one realise the power of creation; of craft. It also testifies to Marx's notion that the opposite or antidote to the wretched condition of alienated labour is the craft of the individual. When the Cedrics, the Edmunds and the Annes of these times made these things they could immediately put it to their own or their close ones practical use. They were one with their tools. They had a tangible product to show for their efforts, which makes all the difference. The writer, I believe, along with all those who want to write, do so because of this innate need to create something that can only come from the 'I'; each pot as unique as the person who made it. And so, each story, each poem. Poetry features a fair bit in Crystal's book; he cites Beowulf as full of instances of word 9: Riddle. Originating in the 10th century, those on these isles loved - and still love - a good 'riddle me ree'. It also has much in common with both metaphor and metonymy, along with word 11: bone house. This is described as 'word painting', and harking from the 11th century. It's fascinating and I should think it will be a book that I will dip into and ponder.

Today is my birthday. Thirty-nine; I have begun the last year of my thirties. I did nothing out of the ordinary. Received lots of lovely messages and then got on with geeing myself up with iced coffee and tackling more of the Mary Burns rewrite. It's coming along, it really is. It's even developed in a way that I hadn't envisaged. So, onwards, as they say. One film that's getting net unanimous five star rankings from the critics is the Chilean documentary film 'Nostalgia for the Light', which I may have to fit in tomorrow.

Location:Kew

It's like...

This weekend couldn't have come soon enough. I always look to the end of the working week as 'my time', which really equates to 'writing time' or simply 'reading, arting around, and catching up with friends time'. I'm hoping to have a nice cycle tomorrow and get stuck into some writing. There are so many books out that I'd quite like to delve into though.

On my way home this evening I popped into Kew Books and read first page or so of Vargas Llosa's The Dream of the Celt, based on life of humanitarian and Irish nationalist Roger Casement.

There's also Kitty Aldridge's 'What I Learn from Dead Men', about a young man working as a trainee in a funeral home, yet dealing - or not - with bereavement at home. There's also 'Joy' by Jonathan Lee, about the attempted suicide of a corporate lawyer on the day she is about to be made a partner in the firm. There is also 'Dirt', by David Vann. So much to read, so little time. Mind you, sometimes I make do with the reviews in the LRB or the TLS or the New Yorker - though more often than not the Guardian. It gives me a feel for what's out there. I will have to write, though. I'm pretty sure that Per Pettersson also has a new book out, but not managing to finish To Siberia and After the Wake, both of which came after the sublime 'Out Stealing Horses', that maybe I shouldn't bother. I'm also awaiting news on new books from Ian Holding and Paul Harding, authors of Unfeeling/Of Beasts and Beings and Tinkers respectively.

Maybe on Sunday I will visit the Munch exhibition at Tate Modern, which aims to represent the late Norwegian artist as achieving more than just The Scream(s)!

The writer Adam Thorpe is in the Freelance seat in the current TLS, recounting when he included a poem in a new selection by the late John Fowler, which turned out to be by another poet!

Hugo Williams has a new poem in the TLS too, 'I Was Like', and I can't help but think/feel that his time spent on the dialysis unit is paying poetic dividends as he includes the idiom 'I'm like...' as the few trips to the hospital each week bring him into sustained contact with all manner of dialects, yoof speak, and all-round characters attempting to act their way out of their realities. Williams's poem includes: 'When I hear the knock/I'm like "this is it".' He may feel like he's ageing rapidly on that dialysis unit yet his words are sounding younger an more, like, vital. D'ya get me? (Not his words!)

However, the literary moment-of-being for the week has to be another poem in the TLS, Paul Batchelor's 'Brother Cole'. I was right there, in each line, each image, each feeling of each well-placed alliteration: 'My childish heart sinks like a falling flare'.

I shall have to keep it. It's a returner read, alright.

More anon.

Location:Kew

Round up

Firstly, I have a new blog. For the past year or so I had been taking pics whenever I chanced upon an item that someone had dropped in the street. I thought it would be good to have an image only blog, too, what with this one being concerned with words.
Secondly, I am still reading the book on fairy tales, but was swept up yesterday in The Life of Rebecca Jones, by Angharad Price and Lloyd Jones. It is a simplistically beautiful account of a Welsh farming family in which three of the sons are blind. Because of this they receive better educations, with Rebecca and and a seeing brother staying at home to work on the farm. There are moments so simply rendered and yet are bursting with poignancy, like when the father takes his two blind infant sons in the horse and carriage to their first school in Rhyl. We are told he doesn't get over it. Having come from a similarly large family myself, in which three of us went into children's homes, and when we were much younger, all the then five of us, it is my Dad's reactions to it all that has served as the my personal touchstone of that deeply private, and yet silently shared sadness that sits within like a fat teardrop that never moves. In Price & Jones's book the prose, which captures the much slower, harder and yet more poetic way of life, we are confronted with the satisfactions of living by the farming calendar; the seasons. I shall maybe post more when I've finished it.
Thirdly, the current issue of the New Yorker has a good piece on Hunger, A Writer's Apprenticeship by Mavis Gallant. It charts some of the time she spent in Barcelona in the 1950s; living worse than hand to mouth.
And, finally, the current issue of the Times Lit Supp has Hugo Williams in the Freelance seat, holding court on how 'need' has replace the 'shoulds' and the 'have to's. He's on fine form.

More anon. I'm still rewriting. Slowly. I'm listening a lot to Alt-J, Regina Spektor, and Sibelius.

The Last of the Hausmanns

I like doing theatre at the National. Southbank has much more of a cultural event feel about it - particularly at night after one leaves, being able to take a moment to appreciate the illuminated some of St Paul's. The last play I saw there was Hamlet, played by Rory Kinnear, who was astounding. So it was with some expectation that he was also starring in Last of the Haussmanns - although he has to contend with the household name of Julie Walters, who plays the last Haussman of the title. Judith Haussman, or Judy as her grown up son, Nick, (Kinnear) and daughter, Libby, (Helen McCrory) also call her. Nick, a former drug addict, has returned home to the dilapidated art deco family home on Brighton's coast after a lengthy absence. He is gay and wears make-up, yet I could still see, in some scenes, the shadow of his late father. Maybe because this is a comedy - a somewhat dark one - but a comedy nonetheless. He has squandered whatever talent he may have had and, although a former drug addict, still has the demon drink p deal with. But then, it would seem they all have this to contend with. Helen McCrory as Libby is the strongest presence throughout and her anger is visceral; anger towards her hippyish Mum, anger towards her brother, anger towards herself. She is the one who has tried to hold a sense of responsibility close, yet, from the waspish exchanges with her 15-year old daughter, we also learn that she too has played the wandering Mum. Add a seemingly disaffected pool boy to the story, and a family doctor who also joins the party early one but who sets off alarm bells, and an inheritance, and there are a lot of dynamics flying around. To view this family and their social context - having become the house that has let the otherwise classic high-end second-home territory down - is to see the whole play as a statement on the baby boomer generation. Judy represents the travelling hippies in the sixties who, as they age and face health issues, have to depend on their kids to mop up afterwards. The same adult kids who then struggle to get any property of their own. It's all here, with Judy urging them, during one particularly powerful kitchen scene, to live light; not to focus on possessions. A statement for our times, perhaps, as the second-homers continue to take it in in the city, buying expensive second-homes whilst locals priced up and out of these areas.
It is a marvellous script from debut playwright and seasoned actor Stephen Beresford; to have a debut play staged at the National is no small achievement. The dialogue is sharp and hits a regular beat and the characterisation couldn't be faulted. The audience loved it. The comedy achieved the a tone that made way for a poignancy that lingered after the final curtain.

Location:Kew

North Downs

I took myself off to complete what was meant to be a fairly easy 6-mile circular walk of the Wye Downs, North Downs, today. It turned out to be certainly more than 6-miles and a bit of a detour from the directions I had downloaded from the North Downs national path website. But Wye is where I started - and where I ended up, so it was all good. I hadn't slept very well last night - finally getting to sleep in the early hours, having battles the humidity. I woke with a headache and thought ugh at the prospect of trains and hills. But I'm so glad I did. I returned back into St. Pancras for 5pm, feeling tired but restored and as though my spirit had undergone expansion.

The winds up on the Downs were, in the first hour or so, quite wild, making the long grass dance back and forth; the clouds were fast moving, as though the sky was still looking for somewhere to fix its blanket of shade.



Wye is a tiny village, having given the world the 17th century woman playwright and author Aphra Behn. (A short piece I wrote on Behn a few years ago can be found on the Guardian website/books section.) It was a short walk from the station to the church, from where I found the path that brought me to the bottom of a footpath, alongside a field, that steadily inclined up to a forest.



I sat and admired the view before entering the forest, ruminating on how the Red Riding Hood fairy tale was such a fixed part of my own psyche - that and the odd news stories proclaiming attacks and bodies found in England's idyllic forestry.


I also recalled an image of a forest surrounded by black and yellow police tape, set up by an artist for an exhibition some years ago; a statement on how violence was becoming synonymous with these wooded idylls. Yes, the chances are a million to one, more even, but I found myself staring into the dark wood - as though in a doorway of a haunted house.


Within a few steps I had chanced upon a heavy log and carried it with me as the new relay baton to be delivered once I had reached the finish line of safety. There was a steeper incline in the forest, adding to the pronounced knots of tree roots and sharp stones. I emerged onto a narrow road and passed through a kissing gate - eventually arriving above the landmark of the Crown; a chalk crown made by students at the turn of the last century for the then monarch's jubilee. I sat up here awhile and marvelled at the view of the patchwork quilt of greens. The weather forecast had said rain around noon - but not a drop came my way. Instead the cool and by turns warm winds were the perfect conditions. Another half hour and I had reached the Devil's Kneading Trough.


This was a majestic dip on either side, yet almost like a giant grass 'V'. I sat and ate my lunch here, thinking how fortunate I was to have come.


I wasn't thinking that an hour later though, when I took a wrong turn, ended up in a field of thistles and nettles, cursing aloud. But I retraced my steps and then took the country road the 3.5 miles back into Wye. All in all I walked for a good 3 hours.

Reacting to Tories

I have refrained from using this blog to chart my thoughts and feelings on this government since they managed to get into office in 2010 - partly because the posts would be too long and too frequent! However, an incident occurred this morning on the tube - the District Line from Richmond - that I wanted to write about. Writers like to listen to conversations wherever they are 'performed', and make no mistake, this particular one was a performance. The lady, a dowager type with trowelled on make-up and a heavy frame that suggested a regular greedy gobbling of chocolates, was remarking to her Daily Mail reading ex-city type husband, that she didn't know how anyone could vote Labour. I was sat one seat away from her. She was talking loudly and with a sickening grandiosity, as if all Labour supporters were stupid and thick. And yes, I thought, typical bloody Tory, travelling from Richmond where Tory cuts will affect a mere few. The tube, as is often the case on that line, was packed. I felt myself shake at the prospect of pulling her up on her nonsense. Then she said 'Ed Balls - what tosh - Balls by name, Balls by nature!' I leant over so I could see her properly and said 'Who would vote for the Tories, more like!' She fell silent, and then said, with deadened eyes that suggested botox, 'I was talking to my husband!' 'Really? Well we can all hear you too!' Then she lowered her voice and carried on in a mutter. I then carried on trying to read an article on my iPhone, trying to stop my hands trembling, but still spending the rest of the journey wondering if my fellow passengers thought I was mad, but also imagining what I could have said to her. Here's what I would have said, had I known that I was going to respond this way this morning. 'What do you know? Do you realise that most Tories seem only to want to vote Tory because they're the party of the tax-dodger? Because the Tories think they should contribute as little as possible to our shared society? Have you ever ventured out of the Home Counties to the rest of the country to see the regions that are still affected by Thatcher's legacy? Where entire industries were destroyed, industries that we should now be focussing on for the growth of 'UK Plc' that your beloved party keep harping on about? Do you realise that you are blinkered to what is going on in your own country that your voice seems to want to represent? Whole areas do not just despise everything that the Tories stand for because they're having a bad day; they despise them for wanting to fleece hard working people who find their salaries cannot keep up with rents and travel and, god forbid, a holiday once a year. That they stand for dubious narrow values that benefit only themselves and their tiny circles of privilege? That they stand for the ugliest selfishness? That they moan about 'scroungers' claiming housing benefit that they then, as landlords, take gladly, whilst increasing the rent some more. That they would rather have us return to their 'glory Victorian' days where most workers lived in slums and had no rights at work; where the beloved architecture and infrastructure that they hold up as having been achieved by visionary individual men in the nineteenth century was actually made possible only through the sheer hard toil of men, women and children who routinely died through such work; work that failed to sustain them? That the 'empire' that many Tories so glorify was built on the backs, not of them, but of everyone else? That they talk about encouraging the rebirth of these industries, but then send their own often dimwitted children to public school and then onto 'the best' universities to study the subjects that they frown upon those from poorer backgrounds studying?'

And there is far more that I could say - like 'there could come the day, quite easily, when you lose your lovely chintz Home Counties home or your pseudo-bohemian house with its library of enlightened thinkers that are there for show only, that you lose it all because of your banker friends' rampant greed, and you could have a breakdown because of it, affecting your mental and physical health. Where would you turn to then? The Daily Mail? No, you'd want us - the rest of society and the state - to help you - those of us who vote Labour because of everything that Party and its predecessors fought for: an NHS to try and mend you and not leave you in the street, like is common in America; a few quid a week to buy some groceries with; and a roof over your stupid fat head'.

And breathe.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:The London Library

Catch up

Last week I wrote an article for CiF/Guardian asking whether Louise Mensch, the Tory MP for Corby, should be setting up a new business (a political discussion site called menshn!) whilst she is also meant to be a full-time MP.

Having finished King Crow I am now loathe to return to I Know This Much is True. I have this week off, I'm glad to say, leaving me some precious time to get on with rewriting Mary Burns. But I won't be just stuck in front of a laptop. I've also built in catch ups with a few friends (it's amazing how one neglects these when working/travelling long hours). Wednesday I'm off to spend the day at the St Pancras Renaissance hotel's spa for a spot of rest and recuperation - sauna, swim, snoozing. Thursday may involve the London Library and cycling, and Friday will see myself and a friend heading out to Wye, the North Downs village and birthplace of Aphra Behn, for a six-mile circular trek that will hopefully provide clarity of mind and oxygen!

Location:Kew

King Crow

Last night I finished Michael Stewart's debut novel, King Crow (2011). The biggest wonder is how on earth the big publishers missed out on it; although that assumes Stewart even approached them. Northern based Bluemoose is the lucky publisher of this gem, and I am reliably informed that it is a publisher to watch, having also published Ben Myers's Pig Iron. Narrated in present first person one would think it wouldn't lend itself to the alienation of protagonist Paul Cooper. Yet it does - remarkably well. Sixteen-year-old Cooper is obsessed with birds and carries a list of those he has seen. Each chapter is headed with a type of bird, setting the tone for the next stage of Cooper's journey, from Salford to Helvellyn and back again. No sentence can be faulted; the prose is focussed yet poignant for it. The journey features death of another outcast and we learn of Cooper's homelife with a lesbian mum who has her own demons to constantly fight. For those who have the ear for the Salford dialect Stewart is 'bang on'. I figured out what was really happening just after halfway through and it then takes on added poignancy. What I hadn't bargained on is learning so much about birds as I read it. It is a beautiful book and if there is any justice should win every prize going.

Location:Train from London to Manchester

King Crow and catch up

I was reading Wally Lamb's I know this much is true - I still am - but I've laid it aside (figuratively speaking as it's the kindle version) - in order to read the marvellous King Crow. I'm far from halfway through, given I only started on it yesterday, but the tone is accomplished and the voice bang on. It's about a teenage boy who lives in Salford with a penchant for ornithology. Birds.

Yesterday, after several weekends of feeling disconnected from the Mary Burns rewrite, I got into a stride. I wrote longhand - which I haven't done for yonks - and I ended up with sixteen or so pages. Writer's cramp is much more pleasing than writer's block. I'm hoping it will be as easy to resume this Friday. I have seven working days off from this Thursday and I need to get it into a fit state to resubmit. And then, this evening, as I arrived home from a very long day at work, I found myself with the opening paragraph of a book that has been jostling for space for a while. I tried to ignore it, but then realised I'd have to get the words down. So I did. So it's there, this hook, of another book. That rhymes. It rhymed better when I inserted the comma after hook, hence leaving it in. So. A bit of a catch up. More soonest. And just to say - Lionel Asbo?! I feel any respect I had for Amis the writer has flown out the window. The current LRB has also given the cover story - four whole pages (broadsheet sized pages) of text about him and Asbo. Aargh. Why?! We know why. But why, oh why?!

Location:Kew

Waiting for Sunrise

I’ve recently finished reading William Boyd’s fast-paced and gripping First World War novel, Waiting for Sunrise. Fiction, like the more firmly established poetry, set around this most futile of wars can be said to have a genre of its own; one need only think of Pat Barker’s compelling Regeneration Trilogy, which can be best summed up as focussed on ‘men, military and memory’.
For those accustomed with the reputation of Boyd as one of the UK’s leading contemporary novelists, Waiting for Sunrise had much to live up to. Set in the years before and during the First World War, the book opens in Vienna, Austria. It is here that we are introduced to the main protagonist of Lysander Rief. A fashionable young man with a ‘sportsman’s build’ and ‘brown breeze-blown hair’, and a London stage actor, he is in Vienna to partake of psychoanalysis in order to cure a sexual issue before he marries the beautiful, intriguingly named Blanche Blondel. Rief consults an English psychoanalyst based in the Austrian capital by the name of Bensimon. This, of course, is Freud’s area – geographically and intellectually – and whilst the man himself has a cameo role, his shadow and his theories loom large over the entire story, creating a puzzling subtext.
However, there are clues.
The first has to do with Bensimon’s own theory of ‘Parallelism’, which involves rewriting or building up the narrative of a disturbing or problematic memory to one that is soothing and pleasant, thus curing, or coercing the neuroticism into the safe cover of an illusion; in other words, to create a fiction within one’s own personal narrative.
The second, I think, has to do with the sleeping draught that Rief seems to take throughout the story, and which we later learn, through Bensimon’s warning to Reif, can cause distorted realities, which again can be reduced into the fiction compartment.
The third is Rief’s role as an actor, performing under the shadow of his late, great, theatrical father; the obvious strand here has to do with the father and son theories a la Freud. However, there has long been a device employed with varying effects in the modern novel – that of what is known as the ‘unreliable narrator’; it is a device I believe that Boyd uses with aplomb. This becomes clearer when one realises that the clues of the story are all focussed on the fictive, and it is through that prism that I believe this book can best be enjoyed.
It is in Vienna that Rief meets the strident ‘New Woman’ sculptress, Hettie Bull, with whom he enters into a passionate and, for a while at least, liberating affair, through which it could be said he really finds the cure to his issue. Bull, however, is already in a common-law marriage with a possessive artist. Rief and Bull are discovered, which starts a chain of events that sees Rief fleeing Austria, using his skills as an actor to great effect. But the whole episode, whilst riveting, again raises more questions than it answers. Following a page-turning debacle, Rief finally returns to London, and to a kindly impasse with Blanche.
The periods of time spent in London achieve a strong sense of place and time, and those familiar with the areas surrounding the Strand will recognise the Embankment and the theatre-district. The settings, reminiscent of the later Hitchcock, evoke intrigue and plenty of twists and turns. These continue into an assignment Rief undertakes with MI5, which sees him move onto a sinister scenario in Switzerland. At the heart of this story is also Rief’s touching relationship with a ‘musical’ uncle, and a stranger one with his Austrian mother.
Waiting for Sunrise straddles so many genres – historical, romance, thriller, spy – and is all the richer for it. The book is highly recommended.

Waiting for Sunrise

I recommend William Boyd 'Waiting for Sunrise', which was the choice of my work-based monthly reading group. Boyd is often said to be one of the UK's best contemporary novelists. This was only my first book by him, but I could see why he attracts such encomiums. It was well-paced and well written. I hope to get a fuller review posted soon.

Location:Kew

Update

Ok, so it's been a little while since my last post. I tried to get into Anne Pratchett's Orange short listed title, A State of Wonder, but gave up ten pages in. Or about ten pages. It just felt sooo dry. So this month I'm reading William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise and I am enjoying it. I've also been busy thinking about my Mary Burns book. I've now taken her strand from the book, which sits alongside a contemporary alter ego, and am focused on making it richer, and more 'Victorian', which will contrast against the sparser prose style of the contemporary strand. And will, I hope, bring Mary more to life. That means more multi-clausal sentences, which can work, particularly when describing a landscape of packed images. Or satirising. We shall see. I want to do her justice. And then, once I've paid more attention to it, and reconsidered its position, physically, alongside or alternating with the contemporary strand, I shall send it back to Verso for their thoughts. As ever most of my reading matter had been of the social/political type. Yesterday's Observer ran a brilliant, withering editorial of Osborne's gross mishandling - and misunderstanding - of the UK economy. Then David Cameron is lecturing the Greek people on the EU situation, which is a bit bloody rich. Why on earth would they listen to him? Arrogance and entitlement of voice for voice's sake can be a tedious thing. Ed Balls put out a much healthier comment this morning, saying that the matter - the decision on whether to stay in or pull out of the EU is up to Greece.
I bought a new bike this weekend - a cream Trek Allant, with a wicker basket on the front. It's much faster than my previous Trek Navigator - and lighter. I'm lightening up a fair bit lately. I've even splurged out on some lighter additions to my wardrobe. I can get stuck in a rut until I suddenly realise that the vast proportion of my clothes are dark and say little. I worry about spending money you see - think I should be saving all disposable income for a future deposit on a flat. But that seems impossible. So, I tell myself, spend a bit of money on clothes - update the bike - and maybe the next job will enable me to save enough to actually make a difference - save enough to at least make me feel that a deposit is somehow possible! One cannot just save, whilst living in cold, less than desirable rented rooms - it brings on despair too often. It's ridiculous, of course, that anyone working full time shouldn't have a suitable home. But that is the south for you. There you are. A little update. I hope to have a more bookish post soon.

Location:Kew

Dangling

When one starts to notice things in clusters, particularly character traits, projection of one's own traits can be the culprit. Or it may simply be that particular traits, such as passive aggression, are simply more prevalent in the people one meets. Who can say? Inner or outer? Yours or theres? But what if the clusters of things are not traits, but words (especially words whose definition one was previously ignorant of)?
Once I learnt the word 'ontological' I began to see it fairly often, as if it was a new friend who wanted to spend lots of time with me until the relationship faded into a passive normalcy; now, when we encounter each other, the salutation consists of little more than a nod. So why am I suddenly finding dangling modifiers everywhere? They're the troublemakers of language; sometimes they offer great comedic value, yet sometimes serve only to confuse and slip, slide all over the p/lace. The one I spotted today was in that august publication, the New York Review of Books. Aren't literary Americans supposed to have a greater anxiety around the use of the English language? That's if the reviewer in question, Ian Buruma, is American - or literary. Of 'Thinking the Twentieth Century', the last book by Tony Judt, created through a series of conversations with Timothy Snyder, Buruma writes:
'We even know from (Judt's) last book ... distilled just before his untimely death from a series of conversations with Timothy Snyder...' On first reading one wonders whether Snyder was so taxing that he caused Judt's untimely death! The notion is horrific, of course, and given that Judt's death is relatively recent, some may think pointing out such a clanger as that made by Buruma is one that should not be highlighted. But there you are. It highlighted itself. Does it say more about the dangler, the danglee or the dangled? In this case, the dangled, Judt, would probably have had a laugh about it. As Snyder should.

Location:Banyard Rd,Bristol,United Kingdom

Help cyclists

The owner of Addison Lee minicab company, John Griffin, this week made inflammatory comments regarding cyclists on our roads. He offered to pay the fines of his thousands of minicab drivers to drive in the bus lanes illegally, thereby putting cyclists in increased danger, so that he could add to his already deep coffers.

He is lobbying the present government - having donated to the Tories - to allow minicabs to use bus lanes, which will defy their very purpose, become a greater hindrance to the buses, cyclists and the highly regulated, trained and self-employed black taxi drivers.

This is clearly a man who thinks that he can throw money at the powers that be in order to create far more for himself.

about it on Friday, and Beth Anderson, another cyclist, set up a Die In, which is taking place outside the AL offices at 6pm tomorrow (please do join the group on Facebook). I also put forward the cyclists case on yesterday's Radio 4 PM programme, in which Griffin seemed to backtrack (backpedal!) somewhat, yet who still wants to use bus lanes.

David Mitchell has also written a piece in today's Observer.

Ian Austin MP has promised to table questions in the Commons this week.

Our cause as cyclists is a simple one - we need to increase our safety, not decrease it. We are cutting carbon emissions in the process, much needed in our already badly air polluted capital, and we would love to see more people cycling!

Please sign the petition, which calls for the AL license to operate to be revoked in light of Griffin's anti-cycling, illegal anti bus-lane vendetta.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/33116


Belinda
belwebb@hotmail.com

Location:Cycle City

Writing-free days

By the time I get in from work, go for a run, have dinner, have bath, mooch around on Facebook, there's no time left for writing, hence not adding words to the page this evening. There's always tomorrows commute, though. Fragments of Horror is, though, turning into one of those things that needs frequent binges, frequent space, so having writing free days is healthy. I was a bit surprised (can one be a bit surprised?) though to discover that no work of fiction was awarded a Pulitzer this year, announced today. I had been looking forward to being introduced to maybe another Tinkers (I still love that book - I must re-read it). Or maybe I'll have to stop depending on waiting for prize winners to be announced and find my own winners! I took a module in Prizes and Politics on my BA in English Lit whilst I was at Westminster. I can't really remember what I learnt - something about the politics of prize, ergo module title! Ok, I'm rambling now. I tell you what I would like to see soon though - a new novel from Willy Vlautin. Instead I read today of the hoo-haa around the London Book Fair (I've never been) and the brace of six-figure twelve-way auction battles for 'amazing' debut novels. Pass me the salts and the pity pot! Apart from the story of Paul Harding's Tinkers - and the perfectly poignant Pulitzer-winning prose that one wanted to linger inside - there was the backstory of how it struggled to find a publisher at all. I know. I've posted about it before. But he wrote that on a highly acclaimed MFA - and tried for two or three years to find a publisher who would take it before finding a home for it with a Brooklyn non-profit. It warms my heart. Oh well. For that, read 'what Belinda wishes for her own book'!) Onwards.

Location:Kew

Fragments

By midnight last night I had reached 13,000 words on my current project. It is provisionally titled 'Fragments of Horror'. I feel it is ok to say that now, although if anything goes wrong with it between now and the continuance of this, the first draft 'spewing out' stage I shall blame this blog post! When is it ever a safe time to 'talk' about stuff one is writing? Even if something manages publication the author's words can damage the always precarious relationship between herself and the words she has delivered herself through a bloody birth by her own hand. Before that there were the pains of contraction as she wondered when full term would finally allow the first sighting of those head of words. Name/title may have been there all along or may only make itself known once momma has seen the full shape of her offspring. Me, I only ever declare provisional titles. Fragments of Horror was the title scrawled as I first began to spew out what are fragments. Of horror. Of course, now that I'm hopefully about a sixth of the way through this delicate stage, I realise it can't all be horror. There has to be something a bit lighter. No. Not sketches, but the odd bit of commentary that serves as the equivalent of a bench overlooking the cool gardens in the corridors of the asylum. One may wonder what sort of horror I am writing that can only be spewed in fragments. It's back to 'Joan's Book'. Instead of trying, as I so disastrously did in 2008, to piece together a life into a whole narrative, I have embraced the fragments. Fragments of story. Fragments of my understanding at various ages. Fragments of a life, from which the whole life can be more meaningfully and perhaps more realistically gleaned.

Location:Kew

5,000

I have just broken through the 5,000 word mark on the first draft of my new project. It feels like a proper beginning, but I dare not wonder about how many more words, how many more scenes, need to be excavated and examined. It is not fiction, which makes it harder - perhaps easier; I don't know. It's like a memoir. Fragments. I wrote it all in longhand. I had spent £17 on a small notebook especially. I do that. But then there's the typing up, which I've now done, hence the word count. Despite this I'm also reading. Following Victor Lodato's P.E. I bought the kindle version of Mathilda Savitch, his first novel. There is not a word wasted - the descriptions are full and concise. It is the perspective of a thirteen year old girl grieving the death, suicide, of her older sister. I'm also meant to be reading State of Wonder by Anne Pratchett, though I've barely begun; it's for my reading group.

Location:Kew

Victor Lodato

The short fiction in this week's (2nd April) New Yorker is a must-read. 'P.E' by Victor Lodato brilliantly captures comic poignancy in the life of, and relationship between, an estranged alcoholic father and his adult, obese son. The father visits the son in Tucson, where he hopes to lay to rest some of the tragic ghosts of the past. It's pitch perfect. Intrigued by Lodato I looked up his debut novel, Mathilda Savitch, which I am now reading on kindle. It is more of a crossover book, but one that has crystal clear observations and the frozen grief of Mathilda who struggles to find a way to her teacher parents in the aftermath of the (another) tragic death of Helene, Mathilda's older sister. I'm racing through it.

Location:Strand

Evil

I recently reviewed a book simply titled 'Evil' (Polity Press) for new review site 'review31'. The author aims to study evil on the sociological plane, taking it from the hitherto theological. You can read it here.

Location:Train to Kew

Here we go again...

I no longer trust chronological auto/biographies. That's the conclusion I've reached through years of trying, and flailing around in, the writing of 'Joan's Book', or my Mum's story. I've just started on it anew, with the help of a mentor, who has emphasised - for a long time - that creative writing has to come from the right-side of the brain if it's to reach the right-side of the readers brains. Write right! It is hard, though. Of course it's bloody hard. Writing creatively is. (Those last two sentences were from my right side, I know.) I spend my working life writing left - corporate, measured, chronological. Writing from the left is the what. Writing from the right is the how. And whilst I still find writing from the right difficult, I speak from the right effortlessly. I have a powerful and emotive voice. The task, then, yes, we know. So I've started it again - I've had a fallow period since handing in my phd - actually it goes back further, as much of the last six months of that were editing. For the past couple of months, I know this with hindsight (or am I projecting a nice narrative explanation onto random thoughts), I've been riffing on possible openings. 'She had a thing for horror films'. 'She saw nuns flying around the lampshade'. 'The hospital consultant said that she'd had the worst history he'd read'. And on. I'm writing it in fragments. Remembering is fragmented; like a jigsaw that won't fit together, or if it does it's higgledy piggledy. How can anyone say higgledy piggledy is a cliche? If it is, it surely can't count. So I've made a start. My fear is that it will send me a bit doo-lally; entrap me in the marshes of her long-dead horror. She died in 2008. A long, slow hunger. Do I feel I owe her this, her story as I saw it, see it? Maybe. I feel compelled to - not just because it will give her life a 'voice', but because it is a compelling story. I would like it to be a bit of social history, too, but I can't put markers in place this early - I just have to let the jigsaw pieces tumble out.

Location:Kew Green

Hirst - worse than manufactured pop

Art critic and former curator and head of galleries, Nigel Spalding, was yesterday reported as saying Damien Hirst is not an artist. Spalding coined the term 'con-art' to refer to much of contemporary conceptual art and installations. Singling out Hirst as the high-priest of self-promotion and money-grabbing, Spalding said that people will soon see that the Emperor has no clothes. 'His work' represented, Spalding contends, the sub-prime of the art market.

I like some contemporary conceptual art; it has made me think, but I've always felt Hirst to be distinctly lacking in talent. His work has never made me stop and stare - or think. It has not moved me in any way, except to wonder how many it does speak to. Spalding, of course, is not the first to proclaim Hirst as arch-blagger, although his remarks come as the critic gears up to promoting his book 'Sell all your Hirsts...' (that's not the full title, but you get the gist. Is Spalding engaging in his own spot of publicity-friendly controversy? Perhaps. He's long been described as a maverick himself in art circles. But given that Spalding has an established and hard-worked for career history in his field, including the achievement of many great things for Scotland's galleries, I have to doubt that he's doing this just to sell a book. The key phrase in the latter sentence is 'hard-worked'. Spalding hailed from a South East London council estate, winning a place to study art, and then working hard to move ahead in museums and galleries. Hirst, however, has not worked an inch for his 'art'. Instead, he has employed an army of poorly paid assistants to put dots on the mass-produced canvases, which in my mind make them no better than bric-a-brac; the real 'craftsmen' in Hirst's career history have been the abattoirs and others who have prepared the animals and put them into the tanks of formaldehyde. Nor can Hirst draw. That lack of tangible skill is not said to matter, particularly with conceptual art, which is analogous to those who can't sing but who still expect a number one, and who will get it if they have enough marketing behind them; but neither making or creating, or having failed to demonstrate any measure of tangible talent, makes Hirst a man only of ideas (and how many of those are his own?). His own ability lies only in self-promotion and giving orders to his workers.

I really am against this whole tradition of bosses getting workers to do all the work - workers making all the sacrifices - putting their own ambitions on hold because they have to pay the bills - which said boss then takes from them and declares it to be his own. And then throws the workers a few coins whilst he buys himself a mansion. In fact, it's obscene, and I hope that this is the next big con/scam that is tackled. It should have no place in the twenty-first century. We should be resalvaging the purpose and skill that is inherent in learning and trying to master a craft. I saw some of this hard-won craft and talent in last year's BP Portrait Prize, one can only guess how long was spent by the artist on each photograph, painting - yet out of about 100 exhibited, maybe one will be lucky to make it their career - despite the talent that far exceeds that of Hirst and his ilk. Some of them may even have worked for Hirst.

Koons, the American, is another. He has a team of around 300 painters in India paint his work for him. Koons places not one splodge of pigment on the canvas. Asked why he didn't paint them himself, he said it would take him tweety-years to achieve the skills of his chief painter! Has no one thought to tell him that's why his chief painter should be the celebrated one? It is exploitation, pure and simple. There are now many art collectors who insist on buying art works that have been created by the named artist. One can only hope that this increasingly becomes the norm. No, those who claim that the 'works of Hirst' and others who don't do the work themselves, are great and everyone else must be jealous, are usually those who then turn up their noses at manufactured pop and formulaic fiction. It is worse.

Location:Strand

The weekend

The weekend, for anyone working all week, is the prize. Yet when it's here I find a certain level of anxiety appears: what will I do that makes me feel as though I've had a weekend, but which doesn't take all the weekend? For introverts this former point is important; we recharge our batteries alone, or at least, not through our social lives. How much time alone is needed? I find it to be at least a day. And then come Sunday there's the anxiety about facing the workload on Monday! The New Economics Foundation have brought out several reports over the past few years that attempts to put the person back at the top of the agenda, instead of 'the economy' and 'GDP' and 'productivity rates' etc. One of the things NEF calls for is a 21-hour week. This, they say, would ensure everyone who needs to be employed is and the fewer hours (3 days) would enable parents to spend more time with kids and the rest of us time to pursue 'other things'; the things that we try and seek in our work: fulfilment, creativity (ie the ability to create), a sense of accomplishment - or simply more exercise and slower food or even the true innovation we're constantly told will turn the economy around. It's a nice idea.

I slept until late yesterday then felt a tad guilty for 'wasting' half the day. I took myself off for a four-mile walk, along the river and up to Mortlake, and carried a bag of groceries on the way back, whilst listening to a radio 4 Desert Island Discs podcast of John Peel, recorded in 1990. He really was an authentic man by the sounds of it - his voice, even and bullshit-free. And when he said there were rock and punk records that he cried to, I could relate and I felt, as I walked (also trying to eat a jam-filled brioche bun), that I wanted to cry because in that moment I felt absolutely connected to what he was saying - and why. When asked if he knew why he liked certain music he said he didn't know. The feeling I got when he mentioned 'bursting into tears' at these records was a kind of grief mixed with a survivor's gratitude - a grief for lost childhoods when the buoyancy and feelings of power that some of the music evokes could not be expressed but had to be stuffed down - and the adult tears in full yet verbally inarticulate acknowledgement of this - mingled with absolute gratitude for knowing it. It was a lovely walk, accompanied by John Peel.

This morning I ran (and walked a bit) 3:14 miles around Regent's Park in aid of the British Heart Foundation. I did not enjoy it at all. I'm struggling with running - I'm finding it hard to accept that I may only get one good run for every three or four others! Oh well. I said I'd give myself 2012 to get running and that's what I'm doing. 2013, though, could well be a different matter.

Onwards. I've written a few pages. That's all I'm saying on the matter. One of the pages is full of doodles!

Location:Kew