tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69509240719579883102024-03-19T03:41:47.963+00:00West Pier Words'You know how Perry's always using hundred-dollar words he doesn't
half know the meaning of?'
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-12266127603044729422011-08-12T15:08:00.005+01:002011-08-13T13:24:23.749+01:00Greed, Rich & RiotsGreed is the <i>sine non qua</i> of our society. Back in the openly greedy days of the power-shouldered eighties, when lunch was for wimps and greed was a healthy appetite, through the caring nineties, and the naughty noughties, the avarice for more has never declined. The gap between the haves, and, in Bush's words, the have-mores, and the have-nothings has increased exponentially; within countries, between countries.<br />
<br />
Do we need to look at examples of greed from those who believe themselves so privileged to ignore their digressions? The bankers and their bonuses; the politicians and their expenses; Murdoch and his phone-hacking?<br />
<br />
What an example to set before the dumb and the dumbed-down. The dumbed-down are in the interest of all big business as is numbs their critical facilities. An individual who has not the vocabulary to express him or herself and who is bombarded by advertising which suggests they will better identify with their peers if they eat this, wear that, buy the other, and - surprise upon surprise - finds a: the acquisition of such goods or services leaves them as poor in fulfillment as before; b: poor and as wanting as before; c: poor as ever, may well prove frustrated.<br />
<br />
I do not condone the riots. But I do not find them surprising. I have discussed the potential of such with my daughters for some months now. <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-links-riots-to-scandals-2336478.html">Ed Mileband</a> echoes the thoughts I posted on a brilliant post by <a href="http://motowns.blogspot.com/2011/08/im-no-writer.html?showComment=1312989665533#c7162497170979985570">Motown</a>, a black blogger, who suggests that the reasons for riots are more subtle and complex than the reactions and comments of knee-jerk politicians whose only interest is to preserve their positions and power.<br />
<br />
What has happened cannot be reduced to a series of simplistic political posturing; it is as an outcome of intricate social webs. Read this<a href="http://tiny.cc/33lb6"> article</a> by Peter Osborne of The Telegraph. I am not a natural reader of that paper, but he summarises the problems brilliantly.<br />
<br />
There used to be a sense of <i>noblisse oblige </i>among those who were rich; the more you own, the more you owe. Now the established wealth mock the new wealth for their bling but behave no differently. The competitive instincts of both parties is to stay floating atop the shit within their own social circles. Read a few books, I recommend Zola's <i>The Kill</i>, to see how nothing changes but everything changes century upon century.<br />
<br />
I know. I come from a very privileged background in my not so distant background.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #a64d79;">PS Howard Jacobson weighs in with his own considered thoughts in The Independent: <span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-they-may-be-criminals-but-were-the-ones-who-have-created-them-2336895.html">They may be criminals, but we're the ones who have created them</a>.</span></div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-9493296395719047692011-07-26T13:06:00.007+01:002011-07-27T17:13:52.148+01:00The Most Unlikely Agent ZigZagEddie Chapman was the most extraordinary WWII spy you will never have heard of. Were he a fictional character, you would not find him credible.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPFcIPjkOMbEW4psFaFweVcEVtwS9LhcFpbC0kn45o7tUHG_9or-cxF2SPZ4BwNs1gS_0Mu7l9OlXHIGAwze3iMpNB4ONGXMO89tWludkym-SUVT-55EVNdKQSQc35vASTkQIAzvZ4tPo/s1600/51penQON-qL._SL110_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPFcIPjkOMbEW4psFaFweVcEVtwS9LhcFpbC0kn45o7tUHG_9or-cxF2SPZ4BwNs1gS_0Mu7l9OlXHIGAwze3iMpNB4ONGXMO89tWludkym-SUVT-55EVNdKQSQc35vASTkQIAzvZ4tPo/s1600/51penQON-qL._SL110_.jpg" /></a>I met him while browsing a second-hand book shop where my attention was drawn to his existence by a book entitled <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1408811499/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wespiewor-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1408811499%22%3EAgent%20Zigzag%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=wespiewor-21&l=as2&o=2&a=1408811499%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E"><i>Agent Zigzag</i></a> by Ben Macintyre. Implausible title, improbable character, I thought. A wannabe blockbuster, I thought, till I read the blurb where I discovered it was reprint for World Book Night 2011; to quote: 'one of 40,000 copies printed of each of the 25 brilliant titles selected…'. I looked at the list. They included many I have read, like <i>The Blind Assassin</i> by Margaret Atwood, <i>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night</i> by Mark Haddon, <i>Stuart: A Life Backwards</i> by Alexander Masters, <i>A Fine Balance</i> by Rohinton Misty. Good company, I thought, I'll buy it.<br />
<br />
Eddie Chapman was by all accounts a charmer. Terence Young, director of the first Bond film, who knew him when Chapman arrived in Soho, observed to a lawyer friend, '"He is a crook and will always be one. But he probably has more principles and honesty of character then either of us." […] Chapman would steal the money from your pocket, even as he bought you a drink.'<br />
<br />
And Chapman was a crook, he was a member of the 'Jelly Gang', responsible for burglary the length and breadth of the country. With the police on his heels, he moved with his girlfriend and others to Jersey. It was in a restaurant there, that he made a spectacular exist befitting of Bond through a closed window to escape the law who had just walked in. Eventually he was caught and imprisoned locally. Bad timing. It was 1939. On 30th June 1940, the Nazis occupied the island.<br />
<br />
Chapman, together with his less fortunate friend and fellow inmate, Anthony Faramus, decide on a ruse to get out of prison. They would claim they wanted to spy for the Germans. They made their ambitions known with no effect even after they were transferred to the Fort de Romainville prison in Paris. German bureaucracy may have been slow, but it was relentless and eventually Chapman was interviewed. And accepted. (Faramus, despite all Chapman's protests, remained in prison. He was to be the Germans' security for Chapman's good behaviour. Faramus was later transferred to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp but survived.) <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">So the story begins. </span><br />
<br />
After training, Chapman is parachuted into a muddy field in Cambridgeshire and immediately gives himself up to MI6. Thanks to Enigma, the code-breaking machine, they are already aware of his existence, but can they trust him, a man, who by rights, should be in prison? Despite all their qualms, they take him on and he proves one of their greatest successes as a double-agent.<br />
<br />
Ben Macintyre documents Chapman's career neatly and concisely without succumbing to any temptation to embellish. He is enough of a journalist to know that the facts in this case are more than sufficient to hold the reader's attention. But he is also enough of a journalist to know how to structure the telling in order to keep the pages turning.<br />
<br />
You do not have to be a fan of the Boys Own Book of Adventures to enjoy reading the history of this archetype model. Eddie Chapman was an exceptional character. In the words of Colonel Robin 'Tin Eye' Stephens, 'The man [Chapman], essentially vain, has grown in stature and, in his own estimation, is something of a prince of the underworld. He has no scruples and will stop at nothing. He makes no bargain with society and money is a means to an end. Of fear, he knows nothing, and he certainly has a deep-rooted hatred of the Hun. In a word, adventure to Chapman is the breath of life. Given adventure, he has the courage to achieve the unbelievable. His very recklessness is his standby.'<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #a64d79;">PS Bang on cue, World Book Night publishes the one hundred contenders for 2012, <a href="http://www.worldbooknight.org/your-books/the-wbn-top-100-books">here</a>.<br />
<br />
PPS Just noticed it is on a 342 book offer at Waterstones, (342 - neat, huh? I should have been a copywriter.)<br />
<br />
Ooops. Correction, the book was <i>Alone in Berlin</i> which a reviewed a few posts ago. (Nurse! Nurse! It's time for my medication.)</div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-74486744855667900542011-07-13T08:11:00.002+01:002011-07-13T08:26:10.903+01:00BastardI have known of Rupert Murdoch and his methods since he took over The Times in 1981.<br />
<br />
I was a new group head in Leo Burnett, the advertising agency, and the paper was one of my accounts. I wrote the line ' Have you ever wished you were better informed?' Sounds clunky now, but we didn't have Wikipedia in those days. (And schoolboys called William ran round in ragged flannel shorts with a catapult stuffed in their pockets.)<br />
<br />
Brian Todd (if I remember correctly) was the marketing manager. A chain-smoking fifty-year old on the business side of the business, and so derided by his then editorial colleagues - there being a serious split between editorial and business employees - was systematically humiliated by Murdoch's henchmen. And I mean humiliated, I could recount the details, before he was handed his cards. Why? The word 'marketing', i.e. selling, was a cardinal sin according to the bible that was Murdoch. Out went Brian, ousted by the king of marketing, in a manner that would amount to grievous abuse today.<br />
<br />
Even at my then young age, and so not over-sympathetic with 50+ men, I was appalled. I have waged a one-man war against the owner ever since. He is brutal.<br />
<br />
I don't believe Murdoch's downfall is imminent. He is a man who bathes in oil.<br />
<br />
I met him once. I was in a meeting a few years ago with his daughter, Liz, at Sky when he popped his head around the door. If only I had a gun, I thought, the world would be better.<br />
<br />
I am not joking.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-63980489472253963802011-07-01T07:08:00.007+01:002011-07-01T07:28:35.787+01:00GigglesSue, as in ex, had a bad fall yesterday. She, along with friend, Mary, daughter, Em, and grandchildren, Amy and Katie, was going for a picnic when she tripped over a protruding fire hydrant cover. According to Em, she lay motionless for a couple of minutes. When she came to, she complained of pains in her stomach rather than her head. Diagnosing remotely, It sounds to me that she knocked herself out for a second or two. I spoke to her and she denies the charge; however, I stick to my diagnosis. She, being an enthusiastic tennis player, was more concerned about the damage to her right hand. (She has since informed me it will not impede her aces; the graze not being situated where her hand meets the racquet.) <br />
<br />
But, to the point: Amy's immediate reaction to her grandmother's fall was to giggle. Callous, you may think. But her mother, Em, being so much more sensible than me, understood: young Amy's reaction was a means of coping with a situation she had not met before. She, Em, told me had reacted in the same way in similar circumstances in her own young age. <br />
<br />
When reported to Sue, she said the same. She related a story of a school friend from Hong Kong who was looking forward to seeing her father after a year's absence when it was reported he was killed in a car accident. The whole class, according to Sue, collapsed in giggles.<br />
<br />
Giggling as a means of coping is not a phenomenon I have met before. I have known of giggling as means of overcoming moments of embarrassment - it seems appropriate as a means of self-effacement - but never as an expression of shock.<br />
<br />
I am now in shock. I thought I knew it all.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-44096391706490037622011-06-23T13:30:00.004+01:002011-06-24T10:45:33.053+01:00Cockney: or Town Meets Country<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbfNxrxOGqsEi2gV4l9TzXMp38ODneYQnoIoH3uVjmR1JapUXJxmc0v0ceXS3_4MKcwUtSjwy5winvV2RYReQ1gd8WCzj6rtDjjDa8t8JWU8lQbUX1xCSlw0bX7mrqUcQW7ra4i9qsruQ/s1600/Scoundrel%2527s+Dic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbfNxrxOGqsEi2gV4l9TzXMp38ODneYQnoIoH3uVjmR1JapUXJxmc0v0ceXS3_4MKcwUtSjwy5winvV2RYReQ1gd8WCzj6rtDjjDa8t8JWU8lQbUX1xCSlw0bX7mrqUcQW7ra4i9qsruQ/s200/Scoundrel%2527s+Dic.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I am a collector of dictionaries, particularly any relating to slang. One reason being you come across unlikely little gems like this, lifted from a compilation by Michelle Lovric in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scoundrels-Dictionary-complete-compendium-18th-century/dp/B0016K0WOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308831409&sr=8-1">The Scoundrel's Dictionary.</a></i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"></span><span style="background-color: black;"></span><br />
To quote:<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666;">COCKNEY</div><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;">A nickname given to the citizens of London, or persons born within the sound of Bow Bell, derived from the following story: - A citizen of London being in the country, and hearing a horse neigh, exclaimed, Lord! how that horse laughs! A bystander informed him the noise was called neighing. The next morning, when the cock crowed, the citizen, to show he had not forgotten what was told him, cried out, Do you hear how the cock neighs?</span><br />
<br />
(I don't suppose they ever saw a horse or heard a cock crow in the East End back in them days seeing how they was all sapsculls or half out to sea.)<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #a64d79;">PS A source of Lovric's work seems to be the <i>1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence,</i> for the definition of the Cockney above, among others, is lifted straight from it. Quite interesting is the fact the 1811 Dictionary goes on to to state:</div><div style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #a64d79;">Whatever may be the origin of this appellation, we learn from the following verses, attributed to Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk, that it was in use in the time of king Henry II.</div><div style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #a64d79;">Was I in my castle at Bungay,</div><div style="color: #a64d79;">Fast by the river Waveney, </div><div style="color: #a64d79;">I would not care for the king of Cockney;</div><div style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</div><span style="color: #a64d79;">i.e. the king of London.</span>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-68131960521830083322011-06-17T16:47:00.014+01:002011-06-17T18:04:51.185+01:00Alone in BerlinThe problem of reviewing books is, when you stumble upon a gem, your immediate instinct is to lend it to all and sundry with the result that you find myself having to write the review without the book to hand.*<br />
<br />
Such is the case of <i>Alone in Berlin</i> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Fallada">Hans Fallada</a>, also titled <i>Every Man Dies Alone</i>, or, <i>Jeder stirbt für sich allein</i> in the original German.<br />
<br />
It was written in 1947, so I have been slow to come to it; nonetheless, it is an outstanding piece of writing. According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Man_Dies_Alone">Wikipedia</a>, Primo Levi claimed it to be 'the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis', and he should know better than I.<br />
<br />
It is story based on true facts; on a couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, who were once enthusiastic National Socialist party followers until Elise loses her brother in France. (In the book, the lose is transcribed to their only child.) Thereafter, they devise a unique and sadly pathetic method of resistance to the regime, which is to leave messages on postcards in the stairwells of office buildings denouncing the Nazis. Their end is never in doubt and though their campaign survived a surprising length of time, two years or so, they were eventually caught and executed.<br />
<br />
Fallada, a successful author pre-war, was caught up in the harsh politics of the time despite his attempts to remove himself, which gives him the authority and insight to write the book. <br />
<br />
<i>Alone in Berlin</i> gives one a real sense of the fear and suspicion one has to endure in a totalitarian regime. You know at the outset the two protagonists will be caught, but it is the courage with which they face the day to day tribulations that is humbling. The most innocent encounter with a neighbour could prove their downfall at any moment. (Also, what is of interest for one who has studied the Holocaust, is the awareness the general public has of what is happening to the Jews; the debate swings back and forward as to whether all Germans at the time knew, and so were culpable, or not. This book indicates they did.)<br />
<br />
<i>Alone in Berlin</i> has a particular significance now given what is happening in the Middle East as Arab nations rise, or attempt to rise, against brutal dictators. Without belittling the courage of Otto and Elise Hampel, one can regard their campaign of messages written on postcards as a forerunner of Twitter. (To expand on the thought, Fallada details how the couple hoped their messages would be passed from hand to hand to be spread across the city much like tweets.)<br />
<br />
Read <i>Alone in Berlin</i> not just for the story of two amazingly brave but very ordinary people caught up in circumstances beyond their control, but also for the writing. Fallada writes with a busted flush so to speak, you know how the book will end the moment you open it, so he concentrates on the environment of repression that he knows from personal experience, and while the ending is inevitably sad the book manages to remain optimistic, perhaps because it was written in the knowledge of the outcome of the war.<br />
<br />
Fallada wrote the book in just 24 days not long before he died.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: magenta; font-size: x-small;">* Although 'you find myself' is grammatically incorrect within the context of the rest of the sentence, there is a curious accuracy to the thought. I leave it as is. </span>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-33866444926576543012011-05-02T09:40:00.001+01:002011-05-02T09:42:29.306+01:00Bang Goes My Knighthood<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Given the ecstatic news of Will’s and Kate’s wedding, it seem sacrilegious to write on any topic other than the nuptials. Certainly the UK papers are still full of the Royal news: Where is the honeymoon? How much is costing? Will they use the missionary position? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can’t wait to be told. But trust Osama bin Laden to spoil everything by going and getting himself killed. I imagine the Daily Mail’s newsroom must be in turmoil over what to flag across their paper.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Present headline reads: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 13pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382587/Royal-Wedding-Prince-William-whisk-Kate-Middleton-tropical-hideaway.html">William to whisk Kate on £4,000-a-night tropical honeymoon... but couple face ten weeks APART as he is sent to serve in the Falklands</a></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Future headline?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 13pt;">William & Kate honeymoon romp disturbed by Osama bed Linen?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 13pt;">Osama bin Laden comes between William and Kate?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I knew I should have been a sub-editor.</div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-67770913366049300162011-04-15T10:33:00.004+01:002011-04-15T11:05:52.590+01:00Mentors, Guides and Gandalf [Grand Elf for the illiterate]I posted this comment on the excellent service offered to writers, and I have taken advantage of what is on offer so I speak from experience, by <a href="http://bubblecow.co.uk/2011/04/do-you-need-to-hire-an-editor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Bubblecow+%28BubbleCow%29">BubbleCow</a>, and it seemed to me a point worthy of wider interest:<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #3d85c6; text-align: left;">My personal gripe from my former career (advertising copywriter) is I miss the Traffic Manager, Hazel, for that was her name - we followed each other from agency to agency. She knew me, could buck me up when down, kick me when lazy, and keep me on the rails generally. A personal mentor who takes no shit but understands my moods would be my lottery prize.</div><br />
Hazel was the most unflappable individual I have ever met. Her only fault was that she would insist on telling me her dreams from the previous night. As far as work was concerned, she could coax a stone out of blood. And invariably it would be a gem (I'm not blowing my own trumpet, but I was good).<br />
<br />
Now that I foolishly throw myself on the sword of my own angst in an effort to write something trully original, I miss her. I need Hazel to tell me when I am doing good and when I am just indulging in pathetic, creative tantrums. A good slap would not go amiss, though Hazel would never slap but just recount her latest dream. It was enough.<br />
<br />
She should have gone into publishing were it not for the fact she was not hugely motivated by literature.<br />
<br />
I suppose there are two points arising: every writer needs a mentor; and I should get in touch with Hazel again.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #741b47;">I ought to add Hazel became the Production Director of a number of agencies so was no light-weight. </span>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-20504918110517238552011-04-13T07:33:00.007+01:002011-04-13T08:55:43.821+01:00Whither Confidence?Let's start, like all indifferent news articles, with a platitude: personal confidence is as wobbly as a jelly set before a gang of children at a street party to celebrate a royal wedding. [ I expect a call from one of the tabloids any minute now after such a well extended, topical metaphor. Hello? The phone's ringing.]<br />
<br />
If you follow any sport, you will hear trainers, coaches and managers as well as the individuals concerned constantly referring to this mysterious quality described as confidence. You will watch a team of talented individuals either dominate or collapse and so celebrate or scratch your head. Certain individuals seem to be able to instil confidence in others, Sir Alex Ferguson being the exemplar. Indeed, the measure of a good manager in any sphere is one who can inspire confidence in those he or she manages.<br />
<br />
But what is confidence? <br />
<br />
For those who know no better and have no experience to prove otherwise, confidence frequently emerges as arrogance. Ugly but forgivable in the young. Less attractive in those who are older. But it is a fine line that exists between an overwhelming sense of self, of one's superiority, and the comfortable knowledge of what one is and what one can achieve. This is not to say confidence is the recognition of one's boundaries in the sense that one knows how far to trespass but the recognition of what binds you and how much further you must push. It is at this point that one becomes wobbly and self-belief is your only ally. You can see the circularity of the argument. Pushing further means placing yourself in a position where you have no experience, where, like the young, you must rely again on naked belief in your abilities. How easy it is for the circle to crack and for you to doubt the talent that brought you to this point.<br />
<br />
It happens to individuals who play team sports; the multi-million pound striker you goes game after game without scoring a goal. It infects whole teams who find themselves unaccountably losing after reigning supreme. And most especially it paralyses those who rely on their wits to produce.<br />
<br />
I have yet to define confidence, only the situation that anyone who writes will recognise. Confidence is like water. It trickles away between the synapses without you being aware until you find yourself dehydrated and depressed for no obvious reason. The situation is made no easier by the fact that the motivation for some of us who write is to assert ourselves, to express our individuality through words. I make this distinction of a writer who writes to push boundaries from those who write for more obvious commercial reasons not to say that one is better than the other but that the latter is more amenable to being motivated than the former.<br />
<br />
Given a brief, the objective is clear so the writer who struggles can be encouraged. Given no brief but the desire to bring to the surface some ineffable idea, who can rally? It is this ambition that makes certain authors famously difficult. The struggle they face is with themselves and out of that struggle the work is created - if and when it is.<br />
<br />
If this were a well-rounded article, I would now offer the magic solution. Bang and the dirt is gone. <br />
<br />
I have this vague belief that a lapse in confidence for a writer is similar to a stitch for a long-distance runner. You have to persevere; run it off. But it is a rubbish metaphor. You never notice your confidence draining away. It is only when, like me, you are trying to write a letter for a part-time job that has your name all over it in embossed lettering and you cannot string an opening sentence together after three days of banging your head against the screen that you discover jellies look positively concrete compared to you.<br />
<br />
Having said that, this is a dreadful warning for anyone with aspirations that are out of control: an interview with Tony Hancock, one of Britain's most brilliant radio comics, which took place in 1961 - though according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hancock">Wikipedia</a> it was in 1960 - with John Freeman on <i>Face to Face</i> and just before his break with his writers, Simpson and Galton, and subsequent rapid decline into alcoholism and eventual suicide in 1968.<br />
<br />
Anon: Fequently on radio and television and nine films you play artists and intellectuals…<br />
<br />
TH: Yes<br />
<br />
Anon: Does this mean you would like to be one?<br />
<br />
TH: Well actually, I think I am deep down. It's never been appreciated entirely but I think it's there. I think I can safely say that. It's only a question of time.<br />
<br />
Anon: Before what?<br />
<br />
TH: Before it's recognised.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #a64d79;">Correction: The quote is not from <i>Face to Face:</i> I've just watched the original interview on YouTube and though fascinating the above does not feature - I got it from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0107wzx/Hancocks_Helpers/">BBC Radio Extra Bollocks (the link will only last for a week)</a>. However, the Freeman interview is well worth thirty minutes of your time, be you a fan or not. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnkovGeASzE">Part I</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3UMgqMCPQE&feature=related">Part II</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df85XWfbcTs&feature=related">Part III.</a> </div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-40765538409241949802011-03-26T08:36:00.006+00:002011-03-26T09:51:03.436+00:00Emotive Language<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>I am sitting at my computer; I have been since 5.30 a.m., listening to BBC Radio 4, thanks to a neat <a href="http://www.phantomgorilla.com/">widget</a>, while scanning the papers online or staring down the road opposite that leads the eye out to sea.<br />
<br />
So the scene is established.<br />
<br />
To the point: I just heard a review of the papers on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sy9fl">This Morning</a>, Radio 4's news programme 6 - 9 a.m., where the newscaster read a piece from <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/">The Independent,</a> to whit:<br />
<br />
'Stray cats provide a <i>flicker</i> of movement as they wander in the newly emptied landscape.'<br />
<br />
'The <i>brooding</i> presence of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant…' [My emphases]<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1hIkANpHb57x0873FF7msHuR1qOL-PRvLlCFOdi2AZiIfAnBuepxndLoiRILPxXELxn4sO9iVsnPzJfKlsh588OmVnCv3XX2XtOuoxfZ5bwBzKBV8aJMOG-3tha1vyXeXGgMcZNpWU40/s1600/Old+Radio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1hIkANpHb57x0873FF7msHuR1qOL-PRvLlCFOdi2AZiIfAnBuepxndLoiRILPxXELxn4sO9iVsnPzJfKlsh588OmVnCv3XX2XtOuoxfZ5bwBzKBV8aJMOG-3tha1vyXeXGgMcZNpWU40/s320/Old+Radio.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Now, apart from the obvious clichéd use of <i>brooding</i> to describe the presence of the power plant, what role do cats have in a factual report on the real dangers of a damaged nuclear reactor whether they <i>flicker</i> or not across an emptied landscape?<br />
<br />
It requires no poet to understand the desire of the author to employ such descriptions but to what extent do they detract from his intention? The truth of the horror that has engulfed Japan requires no embellishment and it is only an inflated ego that looks to add his or her paint strokes. Or, do we readers need such hyperbole to colour our jaded palettes?<br />
<br />
Journalism has been described as the art of painting a picture (at some point these metaphors must end) but at what point does the personal image interfere with the facts as presented? As a student of Literary Criticism, I understand that text is all; i.e. it is impossible to remove one's self from a scene, in other words, you, all the components that make you, will interpret a situation singularly and the language you use to describe it will never fully encompass your thought or motivation. So the idea of wilful artfulness, the desire to manipulate language to a purpose is usually pursued for one's own ends rather than as an exposition of what is presented. One is far too conscious of self to be objectively involved in the other.<br />
<br />
Of course, there are people we read precisely because we are more interested in their opinion than their reporting; however, when it comes to news, i.e. the facts of a situation, I prefer the reporter to disappear insofar as it is possible.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-87064834174348523752011-02-28T10:56:00.012+00:002011-03-26T09:44:19.175+00:00Three Very Different Novels<style type="text/css">
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<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I continue to dip in and out of Perec's <a href="http://westpierwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/life-users-manual-georges-perec.html"><i>Life: A User's Manual</i></a> as and when ordered by the doctor for my general sense of well-being. [Bang on: that Mr. Scott Pack tries to steal my thunder with this feeble attempt of a post on Perec:<a href="http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/2011/03/georges-perec-was-a-genius-i-realise-that-is-a-word-that-is-thrown-around-willy-nilly-but-he-really-was-one-he-also-looke.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FFiSA+%28Me+And+My+Big+Mouth%29" style="background-color: white; color: black;"> The art of reviewing a book that has no punctuation or capital letters.</a><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"> </span> Too late, Mr. Pack, I sneer, I was there first.]</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">There is no such sense of holiday dalliance with Murakami's <i>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle</i>, a book I read last month. This involves total immersion with no snorkel. So, before I take the plunge, let me first deal with Thomas Eidson's <i>St. Agnes' Stand.</i></div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0007181760?ie=UTF8&tag=wespiewor-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0007181760%22%3ESt.%20Agnes%27%20Stand%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=wespiewor-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0007181760%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">St. Agnes' Stand</span></a> </i> </div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">From his prose style, it is evident Eidson is a fan of Hemingway; his prose is taut, well-muscled, and walks with a testosterone-laden swagger. </div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5N87c2rlv7NKKicenDUaEKCM_v5LFz7nwZNHBtrU2sLUx2Uhyphenhyphenb_KLZN3DlhcAnCeS7v17FfT5PCQsopvErGR2g9PWbJ1PUDa0iMkTj2NlxtveTfRJ9CELLwT-KUPsj5EH2kQS1kO37_E/s1600/416GM1NJQZL._SL160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5N87c2rlv7NKKicenDUaEKCM_v5LFz7nwZNHBtrU2sLUx2Uhyphenhyphenb_KLZN3DlhcAnCeS7v17FfT5PCQsopvErGR2g9PWbJ1PUDa0iMkTj2NlxtveTfRJ9CELLwT-KUPsj5EH2kQS1kO37_E/s1600/416GM1NJQZL._SL160_.jpg" /></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">The </span>story<span style="font-weight: normal;"> is best described as a contemporary western. It opens with a man on the run with his dog who comes across a group under siege from a band of Apaches. The group consists of three nuns, lead by the eponymous Sister St. Agnes, together with seven orphaned children they have recently rescued. The Apaches have already caught and horribly tortured one nun and her Mexican wagon driver who were attempting to make a run for help. Against his better judgement, Swanson, for that is the man's name, decides to assist. To the Catholic sister, Swanson is literally the answer to her prayers and she never doubts for an instant his ability to save them for, as she constantly reminds him, he was sent by God. </span> </div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">The story tells of the increasingly personalised battle between Swanson and Locan, the giant leader of the Apaches, who is rapidly losing face with his party of braves. In some respects St. Agnes' Stand may be regarded as a conventional western. The characters are personalities you would expect to meet. It is no surprise, for instance, to discover the good Sister St. Agnes turns out to be a whisky-drinking, poker-player, thigh-slapping (OK, I made the last up) nun-of-a-gun. What is surprising, even questionable, is the underlying theme, which is one of faith, specifically Catholic faith versus savage superstition, and I do not employ the term savage lightly, because Eidson absolutely demonises Locan and his followers in a surprising manner given the date of publication, 1994. There is an argument to be made that Eidson is thoroughly contemporary in that he is the literary equivalent of Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers in his exploration of violence but where the latter comment, in their different ways, on attitudes today, <i>St. Agnes' Stand </i>reads like a good, ol' fashioned parable of good versus bad. And the bad are still Injuns and those of that ilk.</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">That said, it is still a good read and worthy of your own appraisal.</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="color: magenta; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099448793?ie=UTF8&tag=wespiewor-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0099448793%22%3EThe%20Wind-Up%20Bird%20Chronicle%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=wespiewor-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0099448793%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E"><i style="color: #a64d79;">The Wind-up Bird Chronicle</i><span style="color: #a64d79;">.</span> </a></span></div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">I think of Murakami as Marmite – you either love him or hate him, and I love him. (For those who are not Brits, Marmite is a spread*; you either love it or hate it. I hope that clarifies the analogy.)</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Like with all Haruki Murakami's work, there is no simple way to summarise the plot. So I will save myself the effort and quote from the blurb on the back:</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="color: #999999; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1PLkVKuKWzvQpx-3VXRxXaDHOMbRZjD6G0qZbxvZ_d8LyqRcyQ9yfcrUCyRzFImo9KbQVzXGFeRHrHR0kTChiJXY-qQB88YjCQji-gCefXfsXfvKkrnNNvDjZHsBAkLnZ8bFi6LEG9-Y/s1600/4114HPP3MBL._SL160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1PLkVKuKWzvQpx-3VXRxXaDHOMbRZjD6G0qZbxvZ_d8LyqRcyQ9yfcrUCyRzFImo9KbQVzXGFeRHrHR0kTChiJXY-qQB88YjCQji-gCefXfsXfvKkrnNNvDjZHsBAkLnZ8bFi6LEG9-Y/s1600/4114HPP3MBL._SL160_.jpg" /></a>'Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As the compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life – spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table – are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.'</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">Clear?</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">As hinted, <i>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle</i> explores the way life develops through circumstance, inexplicable promptings and chance events, and much of its charm, from a westerner's point of view, is the cultural difference in attitude displayed by Okada to each twist in his day. It is not that he is fatalistic but accepting, with an almost naïve curiosity, of whatever might happen next. </div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">It is very seductive and you soon find yourself infected by his ingenuousness. To appreciate Murakami, you too, like Toru, must travel blind trusting that you will be transported safely. And you will be, trust me. </div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* Something you spread on bread, toast preferably, and not a large tract of land in Wyoming.</span></div><div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br />
</div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-12867684098257692182011-02-17T17:39:00.006+00:002011-02-17T17:54:36.661+00:00Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater SafetyOn the back of reading Hilary Mantel's <i>Beyond Black</i>, I have just about finished her <i>A Place of Greater Safety</i>.<br />
<br />
It is an historical, factually- based work charting the rise and eventual fall of the heads of the main characters involved in the French Revolution; Camille Desmoulins, Maximilian Robespierre, Dr. Marat, etc.<br />
<br />
Mantel has used her considerable imaginative powers to explore the domestic background, i.e. the female perspective, of these figures during those whirlwind years while sticking to the original script as laid down by historical events.<br />
<br />
I have a strong interest in this period. I was once intending to research a doctorate on the difference in attitudes to intellectualism between the English and the French since the Revolution to the present day and its consequences. So, my appreciation of the book is biased. I wonder how an uninterested reader will take to it. I believe anyone will admire the writing, but there is such a cast of characters, unless you have been previously introduced to them, they can prove confusing. Also, major events, like the desire of the protagonists to spread their ideal to other countries [so current given what is happening in the Middle East], e.g. the French invasion to liberate the Belgium <i>sansculotte</i>, are necessarily glossed over or the book would run to twice its 871 pages.<br />
<br />
I have not read <i>Wolf Hall</i> but it seems to me <i>A Place of Greater Safety</i> is a rehearsal for the work that is to win Mantel her Booker. From my perspective it is fascinating. From anyone's perspective it is a lesson in how to write character and dialogue. Her women, evil, manipulative or innocent, are marvellous.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-81034717762452058102011-02-09T13:26:00.002+00:002011-02-09T13:43:59.426+00:00Old Farts Smell the BestI have hit a wall. Not literally, obviously, or I would be a flattened sort of creature with fingers of rubber. <br />
<br />
My writing has collapsed into a litter of consonants and vowels that drift across the carpet to clutter in the corners ( how I love alliteration). My novel remains buried somewhere in the recesses of my computer awaiting the final polish from my magic duster. An idea for a series of inter-related short stories remains eleven pages of an idea for a series of inter-related short stories. <br />
<br />
Nicola Morgan has posted on the issue of <a href="http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2011/02/emotions-and-writing.html">hitting wall</a>s and hit a nerve. (Well, you would, wouldn't you, hitting a wall at speed?)<br />
<br />
The particular wall I hit was erected by the masons, Expectations, I could say Great Expectations but Arrogance may be more accurate. I had assumed I would be welcomed on a very prestigious course with rose petals strewn before me by the Dean; he turned up with thorns.<br />
<br />
Collapse of the stout party, as they used to say. But do not weep on my behalf: the point I want to address is not the one entitled 'Managing Expectations', but 'Managing Growing Old'.<br />
<br />
There, I've said it: I am growing old. Not a problem in itself, indeed, I read somewhere that older people are more content than at any other times in their lives. To an extent this is true but, being an awkward sod, I still have ambitions, the major of which is to write a novel worthy of serious consideration. <br />
<br />
But what happens when you reach a certain age? All the sins of your past assemble in a single spot and assault you at once. It was once possible for me to breeze through life no matter what was thrown up with no other help than a nose-peg and cunning intelligence. Now, laxity is itself the problem.<br />
<br />
Life, it seems to me, is an accumulation of habits and behavioural patterns. What suited when young and becomes comfortable through use is not easily dislodged in later life no matter how inappropriate<br />
<br />
F**k it. I will now behave inappropriately. Inappropriate to my age and expectations. This is not say I will suddenly become an eccentric. That was my norm, i.e. to question the status quo, but now I will conform. I will vote Conservative and wear what few strands I have in a perm. I will get heated over issues of immigration and the collapse of English identity. Shiny faced posters of David Cameron will adorn my bedroom. Nick Clegg will be the custard on my pudding.<br />
<br />
I will join the rich. Ha! You may laugh but all my life people have told me I would be rich. Now is the time. Personally, I am not a fan of the rich - and I know a few who are mega-rich - but it is time to join their ranks, if only to mock them for their narrow-minded, greedy assumptions.<br />
<br />
How is this to be achieved? I don't have a clue but, believe me, it is not rocket science. It is a combination of nonce, greed, exploitation, ruthlessness, and testosterone - all qualities I have in abundance. (I would invite you to view my testicles if this were not a public domain.)<br />
<br />
Why this sudden ambition? <br />
<br />
i want to move back to London only to discover that all I can afford is a cupboard in a garden shed. Now, woodlice I count as among the best of my friends but I am allergic to rudimentary pots (aesthetically they cause me hives). So money is necessary.<br />
<br />
Am I joking?<br />
<br />
No. I will, despite others' expectations of what should, could, can be achieved by an old burst of wind like myself, find a means.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-39814193910177376182011-01-27T09:10:00.000+00:002011-01-27T09:10:59.329+00:00Sir Richard Dearlove - Tom Phillips?This <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/jan/25/richard-dearlove-chilcot-testimony-redacted">article</a> on Sir Richard Dearlove's evidence to the Chilcot inquiry caught my eye in the Guardian this morning, to quote:<br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Never let it be said that Britain's spies do not have a sense of humour. <a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/50694/20100616-Dearlove.pdf" title="">Ninety-three pages of evidence (pdf)</a> given in private to the Iraq inquiry by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mi6" title="More from guardian.co.uk on MI6">MI6</a>, have finally been released. Unfortunately, they have been so heavily redacted by the censors that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2011/jan/25/dearlove-chilcot-redacted" title="">some are entirely black</a>, save for a lone, enigmatic question mark.</span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRzeuuLyjTVCOyCykZAZYJ407WBAO7XArnC9waIuASnfDXzFZpjnJtabs5yGhFm_-m51hrgN-KWf602Ojky-KuEuXd9bpoHg8jRTOJ-ocRLUoYRXRZnAIuqMuQbSA2iQwBs9cjco8GyQ/s1600/Dearlove-testimony-to-Chi-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRzeuuLyjTVCOyCykZAZYJ407WBAO7XArnC9waIuASnfDXzFZpjnJtabs5yGhFm_-m51hrgN-KWf602Ojky-KuEuXd9bpoHg8jRTOJ-ocRLUoYRXRZnAIuqMuQbSA2iQwBs9cjco8GyQ/s400/Dearlove-testimony-to-Chi-006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>It reminded me of the work of Tom Phillips on whose work I posted <a href="http://westpierwords.blogspot.com/2010/11/appreciation-or-appropriation.html">earlier</a>. It makes you wonder if Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, has secret longings to be an artist.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-38693925708858952072011-01-13T12:12:00.003+00:002011-01-13T12:26:29.488+00:00The Blue Tit FactionOne of the few pleasures among my duties as a tempaculturalist is to watch with the same fascination of the cats, though perhaps not their appetite, (see final pic in my last post), the antics of the gang of little masked bandits who mount relentless raids on the Balcony Precinct of La Haute Houssais.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcF7-m5LCIFafwL1SulZIPHFdPvwM7jXpLcKMDTcCzvoQbCkHn5TQAHCwYA_7WbdogdvxaeRb9cslCSbLBlqhwIwqweK99ptypcD3TZCkB5B7zIAElFQ5nOBgw8ckpI494sZyQZwIIYSU/s1600/Bluetits.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcF7-m5LCIFafwL1SulZIPHFdPvwM7jXpLcKMDTcCzvoQbCkHn5TQAHCwYA_7WbdogdvxaeRb9cslCSbLBlqhwIwqweK99ptypcD3TZCkB5B7zIAElFQ5nOBgw8ckpI494sZyQZwIIYSU/s400/Bluetits.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br />
This CCTV pic gives little clue to the constant hustling of these would be jailbirds, for they be Blue Tits, one of a very small group of villains who make all their demands for mere peanuts.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-67774086823237350562011-01-11T17:09:00.001+00:002011-01-11T17:10:50.781+00:00Country MattersThis week I am house-sitting for <a href="http://permacultureinbrittany.blogspot.com/">Stuart and Gabrielle</a>, professional permaculturalists, in La Haute Houssais, Brittany, a hamlet so small it is easy to drive straight through and never notice it in your rear view mirror.<br />
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While here, I am also chicken-sitting:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNsVjNq9yWwfZvhavTxk4PIN0ZXrYTPMpDLS7oxV-n2xiLGl_fdIogGJX_1liU-Yo1F30yrMppxkqKfdVVGarET_lM6y1zC1__yNzzDEaxH_UceO3S925KEmlLCv1zysHogzwmQ9mes0/s1600/Cock01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNsVjNq9yWwfZvhavTxk4PIN0ZXrYTPMpDLS7oxV-n2xiLGl_fdIogGJX_1liU-Yo1F30yrMppxkqKfdVVGarET_lM6y1zC1__yNzzDEaxH_UceO3S925KEmlLCv1zysHogzwmQ9mes0/s320/Cock01.gif" width="239" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div> Sheep-sitting:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOWHRcvzLZHOtmBXyviSXy0M-xk-k6mjwK-GrDsT9s9TS0kbf798vk06YzwDfV-0E9Oz2qQrrmSAWNJrDF_7aKo2kZufEq8VHXLe2lOApBBQXWRfeRM6HyGoWdMt4x1D-E1oJFRjF4wnY/s1600/Sheep01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOWHRcvzLZHOtmBXyviSXy0M-xk-k6mjwK-GrDsT9s9TS0kbf798vk06YzwDfV-0E9Oz2qQrrmSAWNJrDF_7aKo2kZufEq8VHXLe2lOApBBQXWRfeRM6HyGoWdMt4x1D-E1oJFRjF4wnY/s320/Sheep01.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Rabbit-sitting:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBVe6pldL4uEqvOvTuB3kf_ZPZHY1KnMqZalaY9yqsR4SJ4UnKBACAr_mH7g-urJPELGfWbIJ90ssJVH4gGSzObnLZfM8M6VIM32McfFCBXY3L7-4-W6yecn8cmuaHP9m7P9P9RPYM4Xc/s1600/Bunnies02.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBVe6pldL4uEqvOvTuB3kf_ZPZHY1KnMqZalaY9yqsR4SJ4UnKBACAr_mH7g-urJPELGfWbIJ90ssJVH4gGSzObnLZfM8M6VIM32McfFCBXY3L7-4-W6yecn8cmuaHP9m7P9P9RPYM4Xc/s320/Bunnies02.gif" width="239" /></a></div><br />
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And cat-sitting:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUXAlLWpWm7Y7qRi3tIUpR326whHnraU2TesV0AtqLPhhohL5KuufaYyeiavtXmeKwMXXmFKOQYvwToZQ0OcNxeMd4x7B4Itf-9FptJx8IWUrBUIK23dt2dAhf26SLlTgAmgjeqKKdP9Y/s1600/Cats01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUXAlLWpWm7Y7qRi3tIUpR326whHnraU2TesV0AtqLPhhohL5KuufaYyeiavtXmeKwMXXmFKOQYvwToZQ0OcNxeMd4x7B4Itf-9FptJx8IWUrBUIK23dt2dAhf26SLlTgAmgjeqKKdP9Y/s400/Cats01.gif" width="400" /></a></div>I feel I can now justifiably call myself a man of the soil.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmtB2Nj75fxxp8ieMr8qVj8Hlt50H9iQEMdUOwERcz5fG4Erol3egaByz1Zxt79pLOuxbad1nVZuvPdVzrtz5DxvtakJ8baQzA-ow3EvgcZw1LgWZJl4iTEOPBIpNO7-jAR956er5jWqA/s1600/Hen01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br />
</a></div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-47572395931019915612010-12-29T10:41:00.000+00:002010-12-29T10:41:48.537+00:00Santa AmyOverhead on Christmas morning, Katie, aged two, sitting up in bed addressing her still sleeping sister.<br />
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"Thank you, Amy," she said. "Oh, thank <i>you</i>, Amy. Thank you. Oh Amy, thank you."<br />
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Katie had discovered the stocking at the foot of her bed.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-88848641884967351262010-12-20T10:31:00.000+00:002010-12-20T10:31:08.651+00:00Frozen Fingers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtw3tTiBXGf6I9eaj3775FXaE9DJr_oBb5Ud4r8xtxSxGsYqXVaJTCB5aVzDWeXqy8A8KvHhpXqZY0cKQjsxwyEGnKhstEiLvT3HTBiuXRegW5jJJAE1jlKcjCnL-cL0nPTJsXqQFHxLQ/s1600/Frozen.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtw3tTiBXGf6I9eaj3775FXaE9DJr_oBb5Ud4r8xtxSxGsYqXVaJTCB5aVzDWeXqy8A8KvHhpXqZY0cKQjsxwyEGnKhstEiLvT3HTBiuXRegW5jJJAE1jlKcjCnL-cL0nPTJsXqQFHxLQ/s320/Frozen.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br />
You may wonder why I have not posted recently but I find it difficult to type with fingers frozen to the keyboard. So instead of a blog, a couple of tracks on the subject currently closest to my wrists.<br />
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<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OK6tmhRSy-8?fs=1&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OK6tmhRSy-8?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-88172676152033754562010-12-09T10:40:00.004+00:002010-12-09T19:48:12.112+00:00Life: A User's Manual, Georges PerecI smell like poo. Allegedly.<br />
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It was my birthday recently and I woke to a big dump of snow together with the information that I smell like poo. This news was sung to me over the phone by a gleeful Amy. It made my snowbound day.<br />
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So wrapped in layers of clothing and huddled around a candle - there's no heating in my flat - I spent the day reading <i>Life: A User's Manual</i> by Georges Perec. <br />
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Perec, who died aged 46 in 1982, was a French novelist, filmmaker and essayist, as well as a member of the Oulipo group. <br />
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Founded in 1960, Oulipo, <i>Ouvroir de littérature potentielle</i>, continues to bring together intellectuals and masochists who enjoy making the art of writing even more difficult than it already is. They bind themselves with constraints so tight their vowels bleed. For instance, in a lipogram, the writer will deliberately exclude using a number of predetermined letters; in one variation, the prisoner's constraint, the writer will not use any letter with a descender or ascender, the letters b, d, f, g, etc.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUi1gGoEL0rcacioU3CgqjCjS5kIgFpkg-GDF8AWTHw5uIUl55gG3zcc0O2BP8sWikNjp2S0yuJjnQiTAv2DgRQrpiUOhRv1QRJiqE78MhKvW_VFgcE_T6MtFupyzI7Hwbx9hqF_x6ACE/s1600/georges_perec.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUi1gGoEL0rcacioU3CgqjCjS5kIgFpkg-GDF8AWTHw5uIUl55gG3zcc0O2BP8sWikNjp2S0yuJjnQiTAv2DgRQrpiUOhRv1QRJiqE78MhKvW_VFgcE_T6MtFupyzI7Hwbx9hqF_x6ACE/s320/georges_perec.gif" width="252" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #bf9000;">Vist Yelena's <a href="http://ybryksenkova.blogspot.com/">blog</a> for more of her excellent work</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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Perec, who among his many accomplishments compiled exacting crosswords for <i>Le Point</i>, once wrote a univocalic novella, <i>Les Revenentes</i>, in which 'e' was the only vowel he permitted himself. In contrast, his novel, <i>La Disparition</i>, was written without once using the letter 'e'.<br />
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You could say he was an eccentric. Or an ccntric. <br />
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<i>La Vie Mode D'Emploi</i>, or <i>Life: A User's Manual,</i> is his best known and most admired work. Needless to say, Perec did not make the work of writing his novel simple but an exercise in lexical acrobatics<br />
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I read somewhere the claim that Perec was a structuralist. Having studied the subject, I am less than sure, unless the writer is referring to the structure of the novel in which case Perec is less a structuralist and more an architect. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>In <i>Life: A User's Manual</i>, Perec takes as his starting point the imaginary elevation of a building with rooms, including the stairwells, that form a ten by ten grid. The whole is imagined as existing in a single moment, as if a painting. The book travels around the building in a series of chess moves known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_Tour">Knight's Tour</a> with one chapter devoted to each room. The stories relating to each are constructed by the use of a mathematical device: over the ten by ten grid of the building Perec lays a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeco-Latin_square">Graeco-Latin bisquare</a>. From the little I understand, Graeco-Latin bisquare is an instrument whereby from a given number of elements or themes all possible combinations are revealed on the different squares without any repetition. To quote from <a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/georges_perec_a_users_maual/">Frieze</a>:<br />
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<div style="color: #999999;">Each box in which the knight landed gave coordinates referring to the ‘schedule of obligations’. These lists provided the objects, emotions, places and periods in time which would feature within each chapter.</div><br />
In a scholarly paper, <a href="http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.995/consen.995"><u>Memory and Oulipian Constraits</u></a>, Peter Consenstein identifies '42 themes [that] were divided into ten groupings of four each, leaving room for two extra "themes." He goes on to suggest that Perec employs the constraints he imposes as the means to create the themes, 'In essence, the constraint determines the novel's themes; the theoretical consequences of working under constraint are such that the novel is "constraint-driven" not "theme-driven."<br />
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This may make the <i>Life: A User's Handbook</i> sound as joyous to read as John Harrison's <i>Principles of Mr. Harrison's Time-Keeper</i>, but joyous it is. To quote <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6D7153CF936A25752C1A961948260">Paul Auster</a>, who reviewed the book for <i>The New York Times</i> shortly after its English publication:<br />
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<div style="color: #999999;">To read Georges Perec one must be ready to abandon oneself to a spirit of play. His books are studded with intellectual traps, allusions and secret systems, and if they are not necessarily profound (in the sense that Tolstoy and Mann are profound), they are prodigiously entertaining (in the sense that Lewis Carroll and Laurence Sterne are entertaining). </div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-63955804295845878012010-11-25T17:23:00.008+00:002010-11-25T19:02:48.282+00:00Appreciation or Appropriation?<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">It’s blog time again. Though I do sometimes wonder why I bother. According to the stats for this blog, the reason why most people arrive here by a very curly mile is because they are searching on Google for the term ‘CurlyWurly’. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So much for my highbrow aspirations. West Pier Words will be condemned forever to be known as the blog of the curly wurlies. Well, better than the blog of the short and curlies, maybe, but only by a slim coating of chocolate.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hot Cross Bun Fight</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the subject of blogs, there has been much heat generated recently by the issue of copyright. It kicked off when Cooks Source Magazine was caught lifting stuff wholesale from the web. The editor, Judith Griggs, defended her action to one who was ripped off, Monica Gaudoi, by saying, ‘But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it!’ </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jane Smith gives a blow-by-blow account <a href="http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=3450">here</a>. <a href="http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/2010/11/copyright-day.html">Nicola Morgan</a> and <a href="http://behlerblog.com/2010/11/07/how-to-out-yourself-makemyteethitch/">Lynn Price</a> wade in with their cudgels too.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What joy, therefore, to discover today two books that take old books to create new works without changing a word but by removing words. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAPoGyf7TQU6BIF4l53F1zOX_jOMRYWpjF7uvqru9k-WIS0gTaVF-dN5aWWq1Vlb4mMCRFxgP_5VsijV5qZ6ciwEyhn4jMoBNxAaTwiE-jHwBgPM1mSQVxUxnRtl4hNjDK02_3vSVhi88/s1600/pc-foer-span-blog480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAPoGyf7TQU6BIF4l53F1zOX_jOMRYWpjF7uvqru9k-WIS0gTaVF-dN5aWWq1Vlb4mMCRFxgP_5VsijV5qZ6ciwEyhn4jMoBNxAaTwiE-jHwBgPM1mSQVxUxnRtl4hNjDK02_3vSVhi88/s1600/pc-foer-span-blog480.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #666666; font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> <span class="credit">Courtesy of Visual Editions</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It began as I followed the scent of a new book by <span lang="EN-US">Jonathan Safran Foer, <i>Tree of Codes</i>, published by Visual Editions. The first mention I came across was posted by <a href="http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/jonathan-safran-foers-book-as-art-object/">The New York Times</a>. To quote the publishers, “Jonathan Safran Foer has taken his favorite book, ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ by Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz, and used it as a canvas, cutting into and out of the pages, to arrive at an original new story.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">A Short Detour</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Having never heard of Bruno Schulz, mea culpa, I took myself to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz">Wikipedia</a> to discover he was a Polish Jew, </span>who ‘nurtured his extraordinary imagination in a swarm of identities and nationalities; a Jew who thought and wrote in Polish, was fluent in German and immersed in Jewish culture, though unfamiliar with the Yiddish language’.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Something of a hermit, Schulz preferred to remain in his provincial town from where he observed the lives of his fellow citizens in a series of letters to a friend. These were to form the basis of his first book, <i>The Street of Crocodiles</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Schulz was also an inspired artist, a talent that prolonged his life for a brief period when he was ‘adopted’ by Felix Landau, a Gestapo officer of the <span lang="EN-US">Einsatzkommando, one of five sections of the Einsatzgruppen. This group was originally formed to follow behind the frontline troops in Russia and clean up the radical elements left behind, i.e. murder the Jews and Bolsheviks. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRjojqwl5vHN3iZ2tU2IaWBW_4uQq_AEFv3fEUEBt0AiPw1CMRxqHFHNZ_QXpY1hjOmECqspr__9k8zLgbfGnlasaTdMZgqJqzw_Gzt-Sulv9XjFdaJNFCx3VVvRGxo6pwh3dbJpsksg/s1600/bruno+schulz01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSRjojqwl5vHN3iZ2tU2IaWBW_4uQq_AEFv3fEUEBt0AiPw1CMRxqHFHNZ_QXpY1hjOmECqspr__9k8zLgbfGnlasaTdMZgqJqzw_Gzt-Sulv9XjFdaJNFCx3VVvRGxo6pwh3dbJpsksg/s400/bruno+schulz01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for similar murderous work in Poland. (For an account, read <i>Ordinary Men</i> by Christopher R. Browning.) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Schulz was shot on 19 November, 1942 by a German officier, Karl Günther, in retaliation for Landau’s execution of the former’s ‘pet Jew’: </span>"You killed my Jew - I killed yours."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">(<span lang="EN-US">My interest in the subject stems from the fact the mother of my children is a Polish Jew and most of her family on her father’s side died in the Holocaust; in all likelihood they were exterminated at Treblinka.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">A Humment</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I arrive back at the <i>Tree of Codes</i> via <a href="http://theasylum.wordpress.com/">Asylum</a> where John Self reviews Judith Schalanshy’s <i>Atlas of Remote Islands</i>, which is ‘that rarest of things, a coffee-table book which is actually worth reading’.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The point of relevance is that later, in the comments, John provides a link to an excellent review posted on <a href="http://tinycamels.wordpress.com/">Tiny Camels</a> of Foer’s <i>Tree of Codes</i> in a post entitled <a href="http://tinycamels.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/the-politics-of-erasure-tree-of-codes-versus-a-humument/">The Politics of Erasure: Tree of Codes versus A Humment</a>. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>A Humment</i> is another book I have never heard of. Actually, less a book, more a work of art still in progress. It is the work of <a href="http://www.humument.com/">Tom Phillips</a>, an English artist who takes a Victorian novel, W. H. Mallock’s <i>A Human Document</i>, and decorates it, leaving words linked in bubbles to create a new story. It was first published in 1970, since when there have been three new editions, though it would be more accurate to say three new works such is the degree of revision subjected to them by Phillips. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizSd_lfHIhxdQ1pD-1fZGvRIyOtYF2m-9cJcmDww4ivRmvQJXLRluBRQNkJTYUAtQPuTo56-CD2efLEFsTJpUk65QmmwF9eiG4xLzpZ2gpxpxYayyeFmd7xvmPGo5Yew0yIVM6P-nFIbY/s1600/a-humument.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizSd_lfHIhxdQ1pD-1fZGvRIyOtYF2m-9cJcmDww4ivRmvQJXLRluBRQNkJTYUAtQPuTo56-CD2efLEFsTJpUk65QmmwF9eiG4xLzpZ2gpxpxYayyeFmd7xvmPGo5Yew0yIVM6P-nFIbY/s400/a-humument.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Today’s excitement about <i>A Humment </i>is that it is going to be released as an iPad app. (It’s my birthday soon. Perhaps I will get one. One of each that is; original work, iPad, app. Ha! if Peppa Pigs could fly.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A Question or Two</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I presume both <i>The Street of Crocodiles </i>and <i>A Human Document</i> are out of copyright and therefore Foer and Phillips may do with them what they will. Is this the case, I don’t know?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even if they were not, at what point does the reconstruction of a copyrighted piece take on the guise of art, i.e. a new and original work?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I referred to this issue last year in a post entitled, <a href="http://westpierwords.blogspot.com/2009/07/cut-paste-copy.html">Cut, Paste & Copy: A Polemic</a>. As I said at the time, I have written a 5,000-word short story as an exercise in existentialism where I took passages from the works of Henry Miller, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. I am sorely tempted to publish it in the form of an e-book to see what happens. (I would, of course, credit the passages lifted.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<br />
<span style="color: magenta;">PS The Guardian have just posted on the app for </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2010/nov/25/a-humument-ipad-tom-phillips" style="color: magenta;">Tom Phillips' <i>A Humment</i></a></div>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-42624585962225295932010-11-08T11:27:00.009+00:002010-11-09T09:15:13.887+00:00Hiliary Mantel, Beyond BlackJust because Ms Mantel won the Booker prize in 2009 with <i>Wolf Hall</i> is no good reason for me to read it immediately. In fact, the opposite; it's a good reason for not reading it immediately. I haven't read Ms Mantel before and feel the need to get to know her first before taking on her award winning work. As for all newly acclaimed authors whom I have never read, I want first to know her backstory.<br />
<br />
So when I spotted <i>Beyond Black</i> in a secondhand book stall down on the front at a small weekend market by West Pier a few months ago, I bought it and added it to my reading list.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp7SLMaZgb9qhimY5rdqgziFUHs_4LrOLftg7ogJHchKXTuV94Hvt2KnNQ3ySLAuw25b-jCaWgz2pHznq0sYnGmNbuRBLxW5kYcP8zEJsl-oCDGkNyyUktkrTzrILv6ItwcohLPpCKjgs/s1600/31e340iJmJL._SL160_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp7SLMaZgb9qhimY5rdqgziFUHs_4LrOLftg7ogJHchKXTuV94Hvt2KnNQ3ySLAuw25b-jCaWgz2pHznq0sYnGmNbuRBLxW5kYcP8zEJsl-oCDGkNyyUktkrTzrILv6ItwcohLPpCKjgs/s200/31e340iJmJL._SL160_.jpg" width="200" /></a>As one who has never been overcome by Jane Austen, I am suspicious of women writing of women, and <i>Beyond Black</i> is a story almost exclusively of women. I am particularly suspicious of stories of women who dabble in the dark arts, believe in the occult and place their trust in fringe remedies for life threatening diseases, such as a severe hangover. [It is evident I would not be a natural supporter of the Tea Party were I an American.] And<i> Beyond Black</i> is all about women with these hobbies: Alison, the main protagonist, her mother and grandmother are all natural psychics and Alison, in particular, spends her life negotiating the ground between the spirit world and here.<br />
<br />
As Fay Weldon says in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/apr/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview30">her review </a>in the Guardian, 'If, as a reader, you feel briskly and brightly that dead is dead, alive is alive, and anything else is nonsense, this novel is probably not for you.'<br />
<br />
I will flatly contradict her: this novel is absolutely for you.<br />
<br />
Though the story may revolve around Alison and the spirits that keep invading her space, the spirits of vile men she knew as a child growing up with an equally vile mother who survived by providing services for the squaddies from the barracks around Aldershot, the story is really of two strong individuals, Alison and her business partner and full-time companion, Collette, each dealing with their past. You may take the ghosts literally or figuratively.<br />
<br />
Now stories by women of women who are fully rounded individuals with all their flaws, and who deal as best they can with life instead of being overwhelmed by it, I enjoy. Stories written as richly, and with such depth and beautifully observed detail as <i>Beyond Black</i> are a treat all too rare.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Beyond Crusty</span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ4CjS56ozW6SPSmKe8oqsxeFLVl0WSJt-598Vj2Hf1J34iBUyQjHWCll8Mel7A6vpi_KWJYED2KC8niGP4MWw0AZeqb5QYkjfyK7HGMs86WOQmtpex6wJL1R6v6LuihPyXfmV-fa1oYo/s1600/Loaf.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ4CjS56ozW6SPSmKe8oqsxeFLVl0WSJt-598Vj2Hf1J34iBUyQjHWCll8Mel7A6vpi_KWJYED2KC8niGP4MWw0AZeqb5QYkjfyK7HGMs86WOQmtpex6wJL1R6v6LuihPyXfmV-fa1oYo/s400/Loaf.gif" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">Today at 12.45 p.m. my first ever loaf was baked, classic soda bread, with the midwifery of <a href="http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/classic-soda-bread/">a recipe</a> from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Baker and bread are doing fine. </span><i><br />
</i>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-74371283888537690902010-11-04T05:27:00.002+00:002010-11-17T09:14:53.422+00:00That Was the Weekend That WasI had a truly fabbie weekend. Sue, as in ex, roasted half a pig with crackling of such cracklyness Gordon Ramsay would have awarded it an expletive explosion of a volume that would equate to three stars in the more demur world of Michelin.<br />
<br />
I salivate in memory as I type. (Not a pretty sight, and causing havoc with my keyboard.)<br />
<br />
Another treat was to be driven for the first time by newly qualified Emily in her brand-old new car. I flinched not once. In fact, I was rather impressed by her competence though I managed to refrain from saying so. She is five-foot nothing and a swollen head might have overbalanced her and caused an accident.<br />
<br />
And then there was <strike>Lady</strike>, <strike>Holly</strike>, Polly, the twelve-week old <strike>springer</strike> COCKER spaniel that is the new addition to Emily and Danny's household. Despite the rapid turnover of her name in a short life, Polly is so laid back they should have named her Galene, the Greek goddess of calm seas.<br />
<br />
Then there was the trick 'n treating. Very funny. Sue lives in quite a posh bit of South London, and we traipsed around behind all the posh families who were knocking on the doors of those foolish enough to leave a lighted pumpkin on the gatepost. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'After you.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'No, after you.'</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOZFDrMxphl65ASeXsMTRTp7di9gbdRV0zDTn85xU8YNEJikeSmiQQfGjNpl1YUBrx2DiZ7t3kssX-FlKbFctxtSmTsr4iX4S8xfeoTsTuW9jUgwCpakLMlPoJLflQfIutBX_c0Pajx0/s1600/docile-husband01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOZFDrMxphl65ASeXsMTRTp7di9gbdRV0zDTn85xU8YNEJikeSmiQQfGjNpl1YUBrx2DiZ7t3kssX-FlKbFctxtSmTsr4iX4S8xfeoTsTuW9jUgwCpakLMlPoJLflQfIutBX_c0Pajx0/s400/docile-husband01.jpg" width="256" /></a><span style="color: #999999;">'Please, you were first.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'But your children are younger.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">''They may look such but pre-juvenile plastic surgery is so efficacious nowadays.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'I couldn't possibly, you have put yours down for Harrow.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'I happen to know yours are down for Roedean and Eton.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'Only if the Lehman Brothers' bonus is not taxed to buggery by the government.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'Don't worry… David went to Eton and Nick to Westminster, so…'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'I hear Harrow is very good.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">'After you.'</span>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-26503254629364485362010-10-27T13:38:00.011+01:002010-11-10T11:52:46.151+00:00All Souls, All SaintsI have watched the growth of what I believed was the American import of Hallowe'en with cynicism, thinking, like Father's Day, it was created to give the retail trade another spurious event to promote. However, a tiny bit of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/halloween_1.shtml">research</a> reveals the tradition evolved from an ancient Celtic festival called <i>Samhain</i> - a Gaelic word meaning 'end of the summer' - which is believed to have been a celebration of the end of the harvest and a time of preparation for the coming winter.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdYs-5FSuD8sVaBp9TEDkyT-dLIn9pQUVbreIzBJRDa826qV0cvWelU77TwTevVoUrGT5tY4TPPgeeKHuPDVvOkCS-YPguFR_Ph-ydS_-ILUSrXvnTyuR-OgfoJQDy1SSOuJGsjvzrnOk/s1600/4633976129_b72b4a33be+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdYs-5FSuD8sVaBp9TEDkyT-dLIn9pQUVbreIzBJRDa826qV0cvWelU77TwTevVoUrGT5tY4TPPgeeKHuPDVvOkCS-YPguFR_Ph-ydS_-ILUSrXvnTyuR-OgfoJQDy1SSOuJGsjvzrnOk/s400/4633976129_b72b4a33be+copy.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Image courtsey of <a href="http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/05/man-in-crowd.html">A Journey Around My Skull</a>, by John Buckland Wright's illustrations for Poe's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales</span>)</span><br />
<br />
All Saints, to you who were not raised Catholics, originated with Pope Boniface IV, who instigated the idea in the early 7th century when he consecrated the Pantheon in Rome as a church dedicated to Saint Mary and the Martyrs, and ordered that that date, May 13, should be celebrated every year. Several centuries later, Pope Urban IV (d. 1264), ordered it to be a day specially to honour those saints who didn't have a festival day of their own.<br />
<br />
How All Saints ended up being celebrated on 1st November, I have no idea.<br />
<br />
All this is by way of an excuse to talk of books that go bump in the night. It was prompted by this article in <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/10/22/halloween-reads-seducing-a-writer/">The Paris Review </a>which mentioned a book I have referred to in an earlier <a href="http://westpierwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/plethora-of-books.html">post</a>, <i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</i> by Shirley Jackson. <br />
<br />
The mistake I made is I don't really do anything that goes bump in the night - books, films or theatre. I find life too frightening already, what with daughters and granddaughters, to further scare myself on a voluntary basis. What is really scary Is I will be facing them all for a belated birthday dinner in honour of Rebecca at my ex's on Hallowe'en. The littl'uns will be trick and treating. I won't.<br />
<br />
I will be in bed early with the duvet over my head.<br />
<div style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</div><i style="color: #a64d79;">PS</i><span style="color: #a64d79;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">This may explain my horror of horror. One of the many houses we lived in when I was a child in Malaya was a pre-war, single story house, built of wood then grey with age, and raised on stilts. You walked up the stairs, through the door into the main reception room, with bedrooms and what have you in the eaves on either side. Steps at the back led down to the box room and out to the servants' quarters. (We kids, Ukow, Onyow and I - and apologies to any Chinese speaker for my useless phonetic spelling - found a cobra's nest complete with eggs in one of the boxes out back. That was fun. I also discovered a hornet's nest under the building. More fun.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">To get to the story: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">The house stood alone, away from other habitation, and when we first moved in my parents discovered a sign in the overgrown garden that they presumed was in Chinese. They thought no more about it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">Now, given the humidity, my parents slept in separate beds. One night they were woken by the most horrific screams seemingly coming from between the two beds. My father, who was raised in Burma and so well-used to the noises of the jungle at night, was still shaken enough to leap out of bed, grab his revolver and turn on the light. All they could see were some ugly stains on the wooden wall high up between the beds. It was, as you can imagine, very disturbing. Especially as the event happened on more than one occasion.</span> <span style="color: #a64d79;">They could think of no natural source or explanation for the tortured noises.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">However, matters were to turn more sinister. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">They invited a professor they knew to dinner one evening during the course of which they showed him the sign, curious as to what it meant.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">'It is not in Chinese,' he said, 'but Japanese. This building was once an interrogation centre during the war.'</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #a64d79;">Genuinely spooky, no?</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span>DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-24385235167335291142010-10-19T18:28:00.006+01:002010-11-10T11:19:57.954+00:00Fry's Five BoysThis is a special post for <a href="http://zanyzigzag.wordpress.com/" style="color: blue;">someone</a> I met at D. J. Kirby's launch of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Without-Alice-D-J-Kirkby/dp/0953317269/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287509129&sr=1-1"><i style="color: #cc0000;">Without Alice</i></a> a couple of weeks ago. This someone is slightly, ever so slightly, obssessed with a certain Mr. Fry.<br />
<ol></ol><br />
I mentioned Fry's Five Boys Chocolate, as it was known, but was met with a blank. Not surprising as it was withdrawin in 1972, several years before this person was born.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzSN1828ARZLgWyHTmhJT3OsowggBpOegFG4uZDtLchnUvPfhyphenhyphentSYSWrAidIfndVhTSaLhe-_8LuaHmaLB7HIr87GEqH6e-m-GVXHPWttIXsmF_2GfDj_OaN_Ebo9WzR1yAtaSL5nZKQE/s1600/Five+Boys.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzSN1828ARZLgWyHTmhJT3OsowggBpOegFG4uZDtLchnUvPfhyphenhyphentSYSWrAidIfndVhTSaLhe-_8LuaHmaLB7HIr87GEqH6e-m-GVXHPWttIXsmF_2GfDj_OaN_Ebo9WzR1yAtaSL5nZKQE/s400/Five+Boys.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
As I remember, the bar had a soft centre with each section a different flavour.<br />
<br />
It was pure serendipity that someone on The Antique Roadshow brought along a collection of chocolate bars which had been rescued from ancient station vending machines having fallen down inside, and one happened to be a Fry's Five Boys. The image is a screen-grab.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6950924071957988310.post-38076367900466414202010-10-06T14:19:00.013+01:002010-10-06T20:28:25.391+01:00Dear DiaryDear Diary,<br />
<br />
You have been very patient but my life is not filled with much excitement since I gave up extreme skateboarding to concentrate on my collection of 1930s dried peas. However, this weekend was an exception.<br />
<br />
Saturday went to London on train with Sue. She was going on to see her fresh out of the box, brand <a href="http://girlontherun2.blogspot.com/2010/09/awww.html">new grandchild</a> still with decorative bow and price tag in his hair. However, before separating, we went to the National Gallery to look at the work of Pissarro, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Renoir and Degas, among others. And we did it just for the hell of it. We are both becoming very abandoned in our wayward lives.<br />
<br />
Rebecca joined us straight from the hair salon for lunch in Chinatown. She did look rather gorgeous.<br />
<br />
We, Sue and us, said our goodbyes on the tube and I went back with Rebecca to Bethnal Green. She, poor dear, was exhausted after a late night the night before. So as she went out to see friends in the evening, she promised not to be too late. She managed to get back before 4.00 a.m. I don't know what passes for early in London these days so made no comment.<br />
<span id="goog_674896281"></span><span id="goog_674896282"></span><br />
<br />
Around midday Sunday, we met Emily, Amy and Katie at Old Street tube station. Young Amy looked like she'd stepped straight off the catwalk. Young Katie just scowled. It was a long walk back to Rebecca's, but it gave Amy the chance to show off her style to a wider audience. And, of course, it gave Katie the opportunity to glower at more people. (And, in the interest of fairness, I have to mention that Emily looked rather gorgeous too.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji9c-cnrnRlxdxEjA1iEBB6Me7eMYinkoyM1NoboMtJF-YFw64CuVYCKfv6McfLd6LAeDUEc6B0ooTok_D2ux0c4bez0wiJ6FAhU5S3ngqOC-nqxRWSAf_28s0sh2FFYZuibe7jtbjTqk/s1600/Katie-Amy-01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="327" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji9c-cnrnRlxdxEjA1iEBB6Me7eMYinkoyM1NoboMtJF-YFw64CuVYCKfv6McfLd6LAeDUEc6B0ooTok_D2ux0c4bez0wiJ6FAhU5S3ngqOC-nqxRWSAf_28s0sh2FFYZuibe7jtbjTqk/s400/Katie-Amy-01.gif" width="400" /></a></div>The weather wasn't great, so we decided to go to the V & <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/index.html">A Museum of Childhood</a>, which so happens to be situated five minutes from Rebecca's flat.<br />
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A little of its history from their website:<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #999999; text-align: center;"></div><div style="color: #999999;">The Department [of the original V & A] thought there should be similar museums in north, east and south London and in 1864 put the idea to each district. Only those responsible for Bethnal Green were interested and in 1868, following the architectural guidance of J. W. Wild, construction on the plot at Bethnal Green began. The work was carried out by S. Perry and Company, led by Colonel Henry Scott, an officer of the Royal Engineers. The Prince of Wales opened the Bethnal Green Museum on 24th June 1872. Wild had designed a garden, clock tower and library amongst other features. Due to the lack of funds however, his design was only fully realised in an 1871 edition of The Builder magazine. The final structure was decidedly less grand, the east and west façades being the noticeable remaining original design elements.</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRxeDNs4rPrCW9NiC0vfnV7dkondQB17DZxR3442qodtcZhLD8CDZzACBCjF0I7X9sUacR3sbTgY_H9UZeTzantjsZjcN8bxxkzfbsjY7H_JozYMAnwLiJB-r_1Tzd8hl5dL-1M0nY19w/s1600/MoC-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRxeDNs4rPrCW9NiC0vfnV7dkondQB17DZxR3442qodtcZhLD8CDZzACBCjF0I7X9sUacR3sbTgY_H9UZeTzantjsZjcN8bxxkzfbsjY7H_JozYMAnwLiJB-r_1Tzd8hl5dL-1M0nY19w/s400/MoC-small.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>It is a lovely, large space, light and airy, with a broad gallery running around its midriff, filled with toys from every age right up to a plastic Harry Potter broomstick. We grown-ups rapidly shrunk to children again as we oohed and aahed at each toy we recognised from our childhood. Amy didn't get our enthusiasm. Katie glared; however, there was so much for them to get their hands on neither was particularly bothered one way or the other. <br />
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To round off our visit, Emily and Amy gave an impromptu puppet show that, much to their surprise and Amy's delight, drew a crowd. And Katie discovered a sandpit was the answer to relatives who annoy and was very happy. <br />
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On Monday, I did little till the evening when I went to D J Kirby's book launch at the<a href="http://www.biggreenbookshop.com/"> Big Green Bookshop</a> in Wood Green. There was a Tube strike so I had to bus it. I don't know if the strike brought out the Dunkirk spirit among those who managed to make the event, but there was a great atmosphere with lots of mingling. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, though the evening, of course, belonged to <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdjkirkby.blogspot.com%2F&rct=j&q=d%20j%20kirkby&ei=_3asTKeQN4W6jAfD2tUa&usg=AFQjCNEDzkNSbQFL97ZSCwRTiE-V9WHLDA&sig2=_OpXGe_GUAsMl0KhMxd3mQ&cad=rja">Denise</a> and her newly minted <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Without-Alice-D-J-Kirkby/dp/0953317269/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286370898&sr=1-1"><i style="color: #cc0000;">Without Alice</i></a>.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhM2t8nEWJ_Td9LPrUo4zQpmmJ3oaui3g1D14xRtezzdRbik1Cp8bHQHZY_cG52TeuXvjJ1jIhDQpqAli6nWlNcE5ZHY9Ihwo17TtQG1fQ4d2Cgac3zyH70-aqFBmSOkogEOJ3a47GI1s/s1600/Without+Alice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhM2t8nEWJ_Td9LPrUo4zQpmmJ3oaui3g1D14xRtezzdRbik1Cp8bHQHZY_cG52TeuXvjJ1jIhDQpqAli6nWlNcE5ZHY9Ihwo17TtQG1fQ4d2Cgac3zyH70-aqFBmSOkogEOJ3a47GI1s/s1600/Without+Alice.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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So, dear Diary, I made my way south on Tuesday to a flat empty of small children demonstrating their karate prowess with blows from needle sharp elbows to my most delicate parts or reducing me to jelly with their laser-eye treatment but filled with the sound of someone somewhere in the block arbitrarily drilling holes in concrete just to drive me mad.<br />
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I can only take so much excitement these days.DOThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00719312854612984929noreply@blogger.com5