Kernow Writer

Time for tadpoles?

2012-02-25T14:00:00.001Z

I'm sure it is too early but everything is disjointed these days so am going to walk to the headland today where there is a secret pond where all the frogs and toads spawn and see if a few tadpoles might want to come and live in our pond. I do it every year and some years we have newts wriggling around near the surface and some years mini toads hop out and lurk in the belly of the watering can. If it is too early, we can drown our disappointment in the pub.

Thinking about Jean Rhys

2012-02-24T00:34:00.000Z

The writer Jean Rhys hovers about on the edges of my thinking much of the time. She is now, ironically, most famous for the novel she produced towards the end of her life, The Wide Sargasso Sea. This, if you haven't read it, is a masterclass in the art of novel writing. It is one of those few novels which take the novel genre and create something unique and very special from it. It is unforgettable. The irony in this being her most famous novel is that it was first published in 1967, when Rhys was 77 and had for the previous thirty-odd years lived in obscurity in Devon. In the 1920s she had lived in Paris and attended the salons of writers like Ford Madox Ford, and in a ten-year period published very brilliant novels such as Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning Midnight. Then a combination of romantic loss, ennui, drink, whatever you wish to ascribe to it, led her to her years of anonymity in Devon, before her late re-discovery in the '60s (her comment when some journalist asked her, as they do, how she felt about her 'revival', was that 'it has come too late'). This is all biographical tittle tattle, as she would no doubt have had it. What was great and fine and beautiful about Jean Rhys was her writing, and no-one since has captured the first-person emotional intensity which she managed to achieve, in her early novels and also in Sargasso Sea. Here she is in Good Morning Midnight setting the scene late in the novel of the female protagonist's isolation:

"The curtains are thin, and when they are drawn the light comes through softly. There are flowers on the window-sill and I can see their shadows on the curtains. The child downstairs is screaming."

And then almost 40 years late, in Sargasso Sea, here is Antoinette being given a cup of hot chocolate:

"While I am drinking it I remember that after my mother's funeral, very early in the morning, almost as early as this, we went home to drink chocolate and eat cakes. She died last year, no one told me how, and I didn't ask. Mr Mason was there and Christophine, no one else. Christophine cried bitterly but I could not. I prayed, but the words fell to the ground meaning nothing."

She was an extraordinary writer, in her art quite at ease in plunging the emotions into the stage setting of contemporary life, with absolutely no equivocation or doubt. How fine she was.

Snoopers

2012-02-20T10:21:00.001Z

T thinks these hang gliders aren't daring extreme sports people, they're snoopers floating over remote homes like ours hoping to catch someone in flagrante. They'll be lucky - too blooming cold! There were two of them in the one that just went over the house - perhaps the second one holds the camera. T says she thinks it would be fine to shoot them but I'm not so sure.

Yes.

2012-02-19T22:23:00.001Z

Another challenge from the demonic Chuck Wendig here. Tell a story about making a sandwich in 1000 words, he says.

Yes.

Yes. Thank you. I'dlike a turkey Club Sandwich please. On white. Can you make the bacon crispy,and only a little tomato? Thank you. What's that? No, I said white please. Idon't like brown bread. Yes, I know, but I don't like it. Well that's great.Which mayo? There's more than one? You must be joking - spicy mayo? People eatspicy mayo? Wow. Why would they do that? What's in spicy mayo, chilli powder orsomething? That sounds really horrible. Spicy mayo. Good God. Yes, you are mostdefinitely right, I'd like what you call normal mayo. It's good you call itnormal. You should just call the other one freaky mayo. Or weird mayo. Spicymayo doesn't give anything like the measure of the beast. Spicy mayo. What? Youeat spicy mayo? You're going to have spicy mayo in your sandwich? I don'tbelieve this. This guy behind me, he's a fan of your spicy mayo. What sandwichare you ordering? Cheese and ham? You're ordering a cheese and ham sandwich andyou're asking these people to put spicy mayo in it? This is changing my wholeday, and not in a good way. Let me tell you. OK, well good luck with your spicymayo cheese and ham, very good luck with it. Wow. OK, I'm just a littleuncomfortable now, what with the spicy mayo issue, so can I just check a coupleof things before we go too much further with the Club? I think I'm now comingalongside you here, making this sandwich with you, figuratively, if you knowwhat I mean. Yes, I realise you see it as a standard order, but my definitionof standard is clearly not yours. Can I just confirm the nature of the spreadyou've just applied to my white bread? What do I mean? I mean, what is it? Whathave you just put on my bread? OK, that I accept, it will be my bread when I'vepaid for it, at this stage in our relationship it's still yours, but let'sassume that it's going to end up with me. Although who knows what's going tohappen at this rate, this is all quite unusual. This is how it was with Louise,before she left. I thought I would end up with her. Both of us, on rockingchairs, swapping stories. Yes, thank you, very amusing you with your spicy mayocheese, I have bought many sandwiches from many sandwich shops, just not thisone. No, you do not know Louise, you would never meet a woman like Louise. Canwe just focus on my sandwich for a moment? Let me put it more simply: are wetalking butter or margerine? I can't tell what's in that not-so-attractivewhite tub of yours at the moment, and I can tell you that I'm happy to accepteither butter or margerine, but I do not want to consider a low-fat version ofeither. Oh come on, that's a simple question: please just confirm the spread isnot low-fat. I happen to believe - what? No my friend, I do not believe infairies, and I think you should pay some attention to what I'm saying, withyour spicy mayo cheese issues, you clearly need greater nutritional advice inyour own life, thank you - I happen to believe that low-fat spreads containextremely unhealthy polyunsaturates and should be avoided. That at least wasone thing Louise and I agreed on. Louise was very opposed to polyunsaturates. Ohhave no fear my friend, I will be avoiding you in future too. Butter ormargerine? Thank you. Standard margerine will be fine. Look chum, I live mylife my way, you live your pathetic life your way. I am organised, disciplinedand highly self-motivated. Out of that triumvirate of qualities comes progress.My life progresses every day, while yours clearly embraces both stasis andretrenchment. Louise and I, we work on things. We move forwards. We plan. Thisis all going to be fine. Oh now look, let's just clarify one final thing: thatturkey you're about to slab onto the bread that's still yours but may soon bemine, are we talking free-range or factory? Do not, my friend, mention her nameto me: you never knew her, and I love her. You, you are incapable of love. Loveis when you give everything, absolutely everything that you ever had and everwill have, to another person, and they then have the power to walk away, towalk into the distance with the sun making mirages on the sand as you standrooted to the ground that you know will be yours, alone, till you die. Madam, Ihave no reason to doubt that your purchasing policies lead you to absolutelyfirst class suppliers, but I'd just be more comfortable knowing that the turkeyI'm about to eat had at least a fair chance to embrace the glory that is ourlife here on earth before some dumb operative stuck a taser in his gullet.You're going to do what? You're going to stick what in my gullet? Listenchimpman, you don't even know what a gullet is. You'd have to phone a friend toknow where to stick your girly little penknife, and even when you found out,you'd miss. Mutts like you never win, let me break it to you. You say it'sfree-range? You didn't seem quite so confident a second ago. Did you ask yourmanager? You are the manager. I'm making a sandwich with the manager and PyschoBilly here at my side. OK let me think about this. We're now looking at anissue of credibility. What's the matter? Why have you stopped making mysandwich? Hey, don't shove me. Why are you staring at him? Oh, you're kiddingme. Not with that. Not here. I haven't even paid for -

The rabbits are eating all the daffodils

2012-02-19T17:16:00.001Z

It's ten past five and look how much sun there is still left. The growing year fills me with excitement. On the motorway the other day I watched the dawn at seven - soon it will be six. The days expand and are filled with this light. Which will leave less time for the guerilla rabbits to eat the heads off the daffodils before we get up. I like it that they are eating well. But couldn't they scoff the gorse instead?

Self-publishing

2012-02-17T10:38:00.003Z

Interesting news out today from The Bookseller that a quarter of all novels sold in the UK at the moment are by self-published authors. That's an extraordinary change. If you looked at that same statistic five years ago, it would be nothing like that. Obviously the main trigger for this change has been the arrival of Amazon Kindle, and the ease with which one can now upload a novel. But also, the new technologies in print and distribution have meant that it's much more feasible now to produce a printed version of your novel and, as long as you take care over the details of design and layout, there's no reason why that novel can't look as professional to the reader as one produced by Harper Collins. And when Waterstones as a chain finally collapses again - which it inevitably will - and we revert to small, well-run independent bookshops delivering good local service to local readers, then it will be even easier for self-publishers to reach their audience. (As long as they make the effort to ensure their book looks as good as it should.)

So what does this mean? The American blogger James Althucher coined a great phrase for it recently: "the era of validation is over." What he meant by this is that the process which capitalist publishing has established over the last 100 years, by which readers are taught to accept the commercial choices of publishing houses, is coming to an end. In the long run, this 100-year hegemony will seem like a blip, a moment in economics. Before then, the great modernist writers - Joyce, Stein, Ford, Woolf etc - created their body of work essentially by self-publishing it. It was only later, when the publishing houses spotted that they might be building an audience, that they became commercially published.

Commercial publishing then, is an industry which exists in order to make money by selling books. To do that, it needs to create trends and fashions, just like the clothes industry. At the moment, we're peaking on the Scandinavian crime trend, and heading off somewhere else. The editors and agents who are responsible for feeding the commercial publishing machine - most of all of whom are dedicated, intelligent and passionate fans of writers - will right now be unconsciously creating a new book trend to last another few years.

But with the return of self-publishing - and it is a return, not a novelty - that era of validation, as James calls it, comes to an end. It is replaced by the one thing that terrifies the commercial publishing industry: the wisdom of crowds.

The commercial publishers are hoarse right now from shouting about the dangers of this return. It will mean, they say, that millions of awful books clutter up the airways; that readers won't be given the quality they deserve; that good writers won't be promoted properly; that the art of editing will decline.

None of those is true. As with most things in life, this return to self-publishing will create its own universe of rules. Crap writers won't succeed in this universe, just as crap organisms don't evolve. Editing will continue as a noble and required art as self-publishing authors gain more and more access to excellent editing skills outside of the commercial publishing houses. Jacket designs will flourish as self-published writers learn to work collaboratively with artists and designers. Reading will increase as more and more book-loving groups spread the word about brilliant new writing. And Rupert Murdoch will scratch his funny little head and wonder why he's not making any money from it.

This is only the beginning. I think it's wonderful.

What the tide brings

2012-02-14T07:58:00.000Z

Today we carried up a massive piece of rope from the beach, and it's now sitting in the garden, while we think about where to put it. The garden is full of odd human remnants that have been carried up from the beach. The character Sam in my novel The Last Good Man finds a child on the beach in the same way, and it's a special thing to hold something on the beach which has touched another human hand perhaps thousands of miles away across the ocean. The tide is relentless and repetitive and all consuming and all delivering. It connects us. It connects me to the past: last week my daughter, who is studying history at university, told me that the Tudor rebel Perkin Warbeck landed on our beach over 500 years ago. He wasn't very good at rebelling, and despite rousing some fierce Cornishmen to take on Henry VII, was pretty soon locked up. All our plans and ambitions and schemes, eventually they end up on the beach as the tide decides where to place them. Like with rip tides, the trick is not to struggle.

Luggering on

2012-02-03T10:33:00.001Z

I have been mulling about Lugger recently. Lugger was the 18th century retired naval man who cured his own gout by undertaking the massive physical task of carving out a cave in the cliff rock about a mile down the beach from here. The cave is still there, now protected by the National Trust with an iron gate (through which, obviously, some of the local lowlife have successfully managed to squeeze some litter). It is a thing of great beauty, big enough to fit a family in a storm, and on the ceiling you can still just make out the lines that he carved in stone once he had dug the whole thing out:

But, as thou walk'st, should sudden storms arise, Red lightning flash, or thunder shake the skies, To Sharrow's friendly grot in haste retreat, And find safe shelter and a rocky sea

There are various stories about Lugger. One is that he was envious of the Lord Edgcombe who received praise for some naval adventure when poor old Lugger had been retired out of service early (the gout, perhaps?). But go and stand there now, on the flat rock which sits in front of his cave and which used to house a pilchard palace, and imagine old Lugger limping down day after day with his hammer and his chisel and resolutely cutting flint by flint into the rock. Imagine him at the end of another long day of hammering, sitting down on the flat rock in front as the sun went down where it still does over above Looe and Polperro, with the big bay flushed with the sunset red, and his hands presumably red and blistered. Did he sit there for a bit, and think back on scrapes he'd got into at sea, gaze down into the water and spot a couple of bass feeding near the rocks, wonder whether he should go and get his fishing rod, then feel the gout in his legs again and conclude that perhaps it was time for a pint instead? I feel very fond of old Lugger and his mad compulsive mission to carve his own cave. Do go and wander by one day and pay your respects to him - we need more Luggers.

Animal silence

2012-02-01T14:22:00.001Z

Today as you can see it's another stunner. It's completely silent here other than the roll of the surf on the beach and the birds calling out to each other. There's a kestrel up in the blue blue sky circling slowly, and two wood pigeons just clattered past me in their ungainly way. The sea is velvet flat out to where the horizon blurs in the white hot sunshine. Somewhere out there is America. There's a trail of airplane vapour heading to New York. We're in animal silence here in Cornwall, we're in America, we're in Japan. We're all over the planet, sitting here on the wood steps looking out at the sun-filled sky.

Lazing on a sunny Cornish morning

2012-01-28T11:00:00.001Z

There is no reason at all for this post other than simply marking the glory of this beautiful day.

A sliver of ice in the heart

2012-01-26T08:23:00.000Z

Graham Greene once wrote that writers needed to have a sliver of ice in the heart in order to produce their best work. He was prompted to this thought by a spell in hospital. In the bed next to him, someone was dying. He watched as relatives came and went, and found himself scrupulously observing their varying reactions, looking at their faces, remembering clips of their conversations. Then he wondered if he was weird doing that; if most people would have simply empathised with the tragedy, felt sorrow. And that, he concluded, was why writers need a sliver of ice in their hearts: they need to be able to focus on the details of human existence if they are to write about them, and sometimes - often - that means standing back from the fray while they observe. Greene made this observation in his usual calm, measured and entirely self-hating tone: as though it were yet one more item of evidence he was handing the prosecutor to demonstrate what a foul human being he was. (I suspect he was a fairly difficult human being actually, but I'd have loved to have met him. I did once get drunk in Antibes when he was still alive and living in a flat there, and I called out to him from the street. Oddly, there was no response.)

But I think what Greene failed to consider is that the sliver of ice in the heart is the requirement of all of us who are trying to make some kind of difference, and to make that difference well. The surgeon who operates, the social worker who counsels, the car mechanic who fixes, the fisherman who catches, the business person who creates: all at some point need a sliver of ice in the heart to allow the process of standing back and evaluating objectively. Writers need to be able to observe if they are to write about other people, and that can appear to be cold, standoffish. But if you're not a surgeon, or a social worker, or a car mechanic, or a fisherman or a business person, then you will think the same thing sometimes: how can they be so ruthless, cold, mechanical about their decisions? And if you are a surgeon, or a social worker, or a car mechanic, or a fisherman or a business person, then every so often you will ask yourself: should I not have cared more, persevered in trying to save a soul or an engine or a business instead of taking the decision my experience and training told me was the right one for the future? It's the same sliver of ice.

Work in progress

2012-01-24T21:43:00.000Z

So this is what is occupying my mind most of the time at the moment: will the characters that I've now allocated to this novel start playing the song that I've based their story on? It feels to me that they can hear the song in the background, maybe a bit like the John Williams song The Long Goodbye commissioned by Robert Altman for his film of the same name in 1973. That song drifted in and out of the film - my favourite ever film, incidentally - in different tones and structures, the only consistency being Elliott Gould's anachronistic Philip Marlowe continuing his comic shuffle towards the answer. I've watched that film so many times. What I want now is for the characters in this novel to accept their position in the song structure I've given them, and then perform. It's a blues song, obviously. But I remember also Peter Greenaway imposed these rules in The Draftsman's Contract in 1982. I liked that too. I like structure and repetition and formality, because only by pegging those down can you create a space for the unexpected. Haven't written a word yet, but I like muttering about it like an old tramp here in cyberspace.

The Chandler obsession continues

2012-01-21T10:08:00.001Z

I just read this para from The Long Goodbye, and it's so good I had to share it with you:

"The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out, but this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss's daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programmes they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even have got rich - small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader's Digest on the living-room table, the wife with a cast-iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I'll take the big, sordid, dirty, crooked city."

Written in 1953, two years after Kerouac's On The Road. For me, Chandler is streets ahead of those sentimental Beats; so precise in his writing and so startling in his images and contrasts of shades. And yet he was the one downgraded to the genre level, while Kerouac and others were elevated to what the publishing world likes to call literary. Chandler himself would have viewed that with a rueful smile, and carried on.

Sing Michael, sing!

2012-01-20T10:53:00.000Z

Singer Michael Campari has finally produced his first CD, and he is launching it in London next month at Soho's Society Club shop in Ingestre Place. He's come such a long way since he first decided to embark on this stage of his career, and his voice is sounding better than ever. I hope the evening is a big success for him, and the first of many albums to come. If you can't make it to London, then you can purchase online at Amazon here.

Not so Concordia

2012-01-18T06:25:00.000Z

This tragedy which is playing out off the island of Giglio is awful. The loss of life and suffering of those wounded and those bereaved is devastating - that's perhaps the one thing we can all be clear on. Beyond that, we are now caught in one of those rare and awful moments when the swells and undercurrents of what we know as our way of life take over, when we are truly at the mercy of the storm. The noise of that storm sounds back a hundred years, to when Titanic sank and created overnight one of the world's first truly international media events. The myths which began to travel the globe a hundred years ago - not enough lifeboats, a captain obsessed with his pride, a ship travelling too fast in dangerous waters - remain myths to this day. A book published a couple of years ago - Tim Maltin's book on the Titanic - shows how, for example, the Titanic was equipped with the number of lifeboats approved by the UK Board of Trade; the company at no point attempted to skimp on their provision. And now, as the Concordia still lies stricken off the Tuscan coast, seeming to reveal yet more awful news as each day dawns of more fatalities, we find ourselves in the grip of another media storm which is rapidly assuming a life of its own. The captain, Schettino, appears in the photographs released of him as a sensual-looking man: in many photographs of him in his pressed white uniform, he is bulging a little at the seams of his tunic, his face is shiny with grease, his hair a tad too slicked. Those photographs alone are condemning him: the sensualist who abandoned his ship to save his own life. Yet we don't know what actually happened. What we do already know is that his alleged diversion close to the island of Giglio, ostensibly so that he could salute someone on the island as he sailed past, was a diversion he had previously taken, and which his operating company had to have been aware of in the past. Did Captain Schettino tell some passengers during the previous day that one of the glorious traditions of the Corncordia was to salute the islanders of Giglio as she passed, and did those passengers take delight in knowing that they were on board a vessel which took pride in such traditions? We don't know. How did Captain Schettino end up not on board while there were still passengers aboard? We don't know. Is the Concordia, as has been suggested by several maritime authorities already, an example of a hubristic ship design, an overblown and unseaworthy structure which pays lip service to sea safety while bowing down to the demands of the tourist industry for a hotel on water? Again, we don't know. Deep down, in the rumble of archetypes within this story, do you not also hear a Calvinist fury, an implicit criticism of those passengers, those sybarites, who were so self-indulgent as to be enjoying a luxury Mediterranean cruise when around them the pillars of the capitalist system - the euro, the high street, the international brand - creak and bend and threaten to topple? Were the Titanic's passengers not dressed up in their finaries and enjoying their dinner when disaster struck a hundred years ago, just as the poor unfortunates aboard the Concordia were apparently taking their dinner when the first boom was heard? The terrible human truths of this event are bad enough; the lack of compassion and the Old Testament wrath lying underneath the emerging structure of the story we are creating of the Concordia are perhaps even worse.

Blues words

2012-01-15T10:27:00.000Z

I'm working on plans for a blues novel at the moment (getting fine tips from the mighty Vince Lee too). A lot of thinking about structure, but also looking at words. How beautifully the old blues singers used words. Here's Lil Johnson talking about her clearly foolish man:

"I woke up this morning with the blues all round my bed
I woke up this morning with the blues all round my bed
I felt just like somebody in my family was dead.

If you don't like my sweet potato, what made you dig so deep
If you don't like my sweet potato, what made you dig so deep
Dig my potato field, three, four times a week.

My dog jumped a rabbit, the rabbit fell down on his knees
My dog jumped a rabbit, the rabbit fell down on his knees
He looked up at the dog, he said, Won't you have mercy on me please.

Just as sure as you hear me sing this song
Just as sure as you hear me sing this song
You sure won't miss your jelly, till your jelly roller's gone."

And you wouldn't want to mess with Betty Jackson:

"Some folks say black is evil
But I will tell the world they're wrong
Cause I'm a seal-brown
And I been evil ever since I been born."

This analysis from Lil Son Jackson is riveting:

"I think that the blues is more or less a feeling that you get from something that you think is wrong, or something that somebody did wrong to you, or something that somebody did wrong to some of your own people...and the onliest way you have to tell it would be through a song, and that would be the blues...but the blues is really aimed at an object of some kind or an indirect person. It's not aimed at the whole public, the blues cannot be aimed at the whole public."

And how about this from Blind Willie Reynolds:

"If you can't do my rollin, mama, you can't spend my change."

Ha ha! I wonder how much change Blind Willie kept on him? But there's a lot of dark, serious business behind it all, as Booker White recalled:

"I had a first cousin to get lynched. His name was Robert Lee Hatchett. He was just about 18 years old. A bunch of white boys was drinking one Saturday night and Robert Lee was coming home and they killed him and laid his body on the railroad tracks for the train to run over. But the engineer stopped. The white boys went home and went to bed and nothing was ever done to them. And that was one of the things that started me to being mean..."

And bleak, poetic lines, like this from Sam Collins:

"My mama signify that my black snake was dead."

It's a genuinely awesome body of work, the blues, too often dismissed as being formulaic or some such. As Vince says, when it works, and you're in it, the music and words, they sing.

Ghosts in the machine

2012-01-14T12:18:00.000Z

I've only just got to Adam Curtis's Christmas offering: http://bbc.in/wAdHXZ. As usual, a wonderful words and film essay from Curtis, this time with a scene-stealing cameo from a remarkable man, Maurice Grosse, who emerges from both the films and from Curtis's whole essay as a lovely heroic individual. Some of the humour is great too, particularly as Mr Grosse indulges the ridiculous Uri Geller in his tight sports knickers. The two children in the Enfield House case are compelling, while the BBC's surreal Ghostwatch show with Michael Parkinson hamming it up perfectly is a revelation. Curtis riffs on onto some of his familiar broader concerns, but I remained transfixed by these people. Old film footage has the habit of lending both a dignity and a sentimentality to people and scenes which inevitably were not necessarily there at the time. You're peering through a greasy, grubby window into a living room which has been empty now for years, and your own concerns and obsessions rise to the surface as these ghosts speak. So there are all kinds of ghosts in Curtis's essay, which make it really worth reading and watching. Overall, the extraordinary Maurice Grosse seems to deliver his own sermon on the importance of connectivity. He died in 2006 according to Curtis, but I will remember him and his charming, eccentric politeness and doggedness and humanity for a long time.

Melancholy mornings

2012-01-12T08:37:00.000Z

This morning, still early and dark with the wind blowing me along, I walked through the streets here to go meet someone early. What do you see early in the morning? Often, you pass houses with a soft light on in the front room, and sitting at a table, hunched over a laptop and staring intently into the screen, you see a man or a woman at their computers. Always on their own in the room with the soft light. It's such a melancholy sight. You want to call out to them: "Go back to bed, turn the computer off, go back to your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your wife or your husband. Stop communicating with people everywhere else in the world that you probably don't even know." But you don't. You keep on walking, have your meeting, then sit at a table with a soft light on and start the computer up and write a blog for people you probably don't even know about men and women sitting in front of their computers when they should be telling somebody they love them. Hmm.

King Cantona

2012-01-10T09:33:00.003Z

So Eric Cantona is to run for President of France. I think this is the break that Cornwall has been looking for. Historically and geographically, we have as much of a connection with Brittany as we do with the rest of England, and it is only the freak force of nature which split us apart a few tens of thousands of years ago. Finally, we could rid ourselves of the lily-livered, duplicitous and self-seeking pale-faced Anglo Saxons who currently occupy the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street, and we could pledge our allegiance to King Cantona of France. Just think of it. Two hour lunchbreaks. A friendly pat on the back if you wallop some really annoying tourist who's talking too loudly in the pub about his bonus deal. Pasties on sale in the Champs Elysees. And every so often, King Eric would come over and make a totally enigmatic and stimulating speech about sardines, and we'd all cheer and crack open the booze. Vive La France. Vive Le Roi Cantona!

Terrible Minds

2012-01-09T12:53:00.003Z

The very smart Chuck Wendig set this challenge on his Terrible Minds blog this week:

This week’s challenge is based off of music.

Your music, actually.

Go to Your Favorite Music Player. Dig out your digital music collection.

Maybe this is iTunes or Spotify, or use Pandora if you’d rather go that way.

Hit SHUFFLE, then “Play.”

Meaning, let a random song come bubbling up out of nothing.

The title to this song is the title to your story.

Use the song for inspiration, too, if you feel so inclined.

Let’s tighten up the word count a little, too –

You only have 500 words this time.

I span the Spotify bottle, and guess what came up: Red, Red Wine by Neil Diamond. I swear I didn't put that song on my Spotify page. I swear. Anyway, rules are rules. Here goes:

Red, Red Wine

The very last drink which Arnaud Frobisher consumed camefrom a magnum of Les Boudots Domaine Gagey 1999. Pinot noirs, especiallyBurgundian pinot noirs, always seemed to Arnaud to travel better in the magnumsize. Their ambition - a fragile but tenacious thing - flourished in the fatbelly of the larger bottle.

It seemed appropriate to drink this now, at this moment. Itwas too early - the '99 could have done with another couple of years at leastto seal off the earthy note of the terroir. And although it was a Premier Cru,it was a boy scout of a wine compared to the big Burgundian guns. As he sniffedthe cork which he had tugged out of the neck, he recognised the determinationin the vine and yet the inherent failure to achieve greatness. It would bethin, and the notes of mud and truffle and leaves would be hesitant.

No-one else would have called the Boudots a failure. Evennow, those magnums would be lying on their sides in the cool gloom oftemperature-controlled wine cellars the world over, waiting to be called totable at the right time.

But if they didn't fail, then why were they not triumphant?Why, as he poured an inch of the ruby wine into his glass, did he despise itso?

He grabbed the stem of the glass, and swirled the wine aroundin the bowl. Then he plunged his nose into it, sniffed. The flavour ofblackcurrant edged with vanilla and a distant call of treacle. The flash ofacid. Wet leaves, the thought of an early morning mist.

Arnaud looked at the wine. He knew how it would taste. Hethought of his mother and father watching him as he walked up to the podiumfifty years ago to collect his prize. The winner of the best short story of theyear, chosen from all the entries at his school. He looked keenly at theirfaces in his memory, the unqualified joy and pride. Then the wave ofexpectation, the knowledge at that moment of what would need to be done. Ofwhat his life must bring.

He let a sip of the Boudots settle on his tongue. He ignoredits welcome, its eager little flourish. He looked at the bookshelf beside hisdesk, the lines of Arnaud Frobisher novels neatly parked in chronologicalorder, the foreign translations on the shelf below. He looked at the silver fountainpen on his desk, the brown leather writing pad, the framed photograph of himreceiving the Honorary Doctorate from Yale. His face, pale and taught, underthe black mortar board with the tassle giggling above it.

He knocked back the glass, and gulped back the wine. Hethrew the glass onto the carpet, where it broke in one quiet snap, the last fewdrops of the Boudots patterning the white thread.

"Fuck it," he said.

Then he leaned forward and picked up the revolver.

Strange old world

2012-01-09T09:20:00.003Z

Over Christmas, I was talking to a friend who until recently was involved in the allocation of EU grants into Cornwall. The county, in case you didn't know, managed to make it onto the list of Europe's poorest areas a few years ago, and thereby qualified for what is known as Objective One Funding. (I used to make up names like Objective One Funding when I used to write government propaganda, but I was young then and thought it was funny.) She told me about a particularly picturesque village in Cornwall, with winding streets edged by Georgian houses leading down to the sea, which has getting on for 90% occupation by second homers. She said there were about six families living in that village who could be said to actually come from it - everyone else had been moved out by prices to a cheaper village inland where the second homers didn't go. And the village in question has only kept going in recent years by the allocations of money from Objective One, which has gone into funding restaurants and hotels and shops. So we have created a great European project which hoovers up consumer taxes and, in this instance, redistributes them to ensure that an idyllic seaside village in Cornwall is maintained for the almost exclusive use of wealthy people who visit it from time to time to chill out. And recharge their batteries, so they can go back refreshed to London and elsewhere to carry on working to earn the money to continue being able to visit the idyllic village from time to time. Nobody I think would resent their wish to have some time out in a lovely place - I'm sure they've worked hard to earn it. But is that what we planned when we signed up for the EU, and is that what the people who used to live in the village but can now no longer afford to do so wanted to happen?

The future bookshop

2012-01-07T09:49:00.000Z

YKWVMFWH9GBU I was in Bath yesterday, and visited a bookshop called Toppings. I think this shop is how bookshops are going to look in the future. It was utterly beautiful, wonderfully and intelligently arranged, with an eclectic choice of books - none of which were discounted - and with a higher than normal share of hardbacks. The hardbacks were very nicely covered in a cellophane wrap, so the whole shop sort of glistened like an iced cake. The staff were polite and lovely and clearly loved books. I could have bought hundreds of books (if I had any money) but instead I bought my Dad a hardback on an obscure military affair which he will love, and which I've never heard of. (Hope he's not reading this.) But here's the rub: Toppings is in Bath, which if you don't know it is a sort of fairytale enclave of rich white middle class people. The shop wouldn't work in many other cities, because it relies on the wealth and education and habits of its local people in a way which simply wouldn't be viable in many other normal towns and cities. But the reason why I think it is the bookshop of the future is that I just don't think there are going to be many other bookshops in the future. The growth of the e-book will continue to the point at which it effectively obliterates the physical book industry. At that point, there just won't be enough physical books to sustain high street book chains, and they will simply disappear. All these issues are coming, and if you're interested are very well discussed at Mike Shatzkin's blog at http://www.idealog.com/blog/. Mike is well known for his trenchant views on the likely decline of the physical book industry, but his site is a good place to keep in touch with all the arguments and predictions. Physical books - much as I love them and keep buying them - are on the way out. You can't buck economics and technology when they collide. Part of me inevitably is sad about that, but in life you get sad about lots of things, and one day you wake up and find you're not sad about that particular thing any more. The other part of me is thrilled by the arrival of the e-book: thrilled that I can have hundreds of my favourite books tucked into my pocket for easy reference when I'm on a bus; thrilled that I can buy a book and read it when I'm a million miles away from any shop; thrilled that I can embark on my own publishing journey and try and encourage people all over the world to give my work a try. What's not to like about any of that?

George Melly

2012-01-06T22:28:00.000Z

I met George Melly a couple of times, and listened to him in Ronnie Scotts bar in Soho in London. If you don't know George, he was a jazz singer, a writer, a painter, and for many people conjured up that notion of Bohemian Soho. He died not so long ago. I think he must have been a tremendous man. I don't know why I'm thinking of him tonight, but for some reason he came into my mind. The first time I met him was about 12 years ago, when I was working for a company which ran events in Hyde Park in London , and we hired George and his band to do an early evening jazz session at the Serpentine Lido cafe. Six thirty to eight thirty. In London, that's the preserve of the keen jazz fan, the illicit office couple who are having their clandestine meeting before nipping off to Waterloo and the train back home to their loved ones, and the fierce posh dog-walker who has a nanny at home preparing the evening's dinner party. We met George before the show started, and made just one request: "George, as this is an early evening show and it's Hyde Park, would you mind trying not to be rude or use swear words?" "Dear boy," he said, without really looking at me, "you can trust in my propriety." An hour later, George came on, to the sprinkling of clapping from the not very large crowd. His first words were: "Oh, how lovely to be here, outside, in Hyde Park in the summer. It reminds me so much of the days when I used to come here and get buggered by army officers in the bushes over there. Such memories..." And then he went straight into the first song...

That was quick

2012-01-04T16:55:00.000Z

As an ex-publisher, I'm normally supposed to hiss a bit when the name Amazon is mentioned. However, the reality is, unlike many bricks and mortar book retailers, Amazon in my experience tended to be pretty straight. No mucking about with sending returns back to balance their cashflow, no Sicilian tactics when it comes to marketing strategies. Yes, they take a fair whack, and yes, and they do have monstrous global takeover plans and yes, that man Bezos sometimes seems slightly scary. But on the whole, they tell you what they intend to do, and then they go and do it. Never a very British approach to life. So yes, within 24 hours, they've published my novel. Took me a bit of time to work out the formatting (and I'm happy to share tips with anyone if you're having difficulties) but about 9 hours after pressing Send, the novel's up for sale. I've just bought one. That has made me approximately 54p richer. Oh damn, it was my money, wasn't it? Never very good at maths.

Making a start

2012-01-03T17:21:00.000Z

This evening, I should be uploading my first novel, The Last Good Man, onto Amazon. And hopefully beginning a new self-publishing phase. The Last Good Man was first published in 2006 by Beautiful Books, and now the rights have reverted to me, I've decided to publish it myself using my own name, rather than the pseudonym Patience Swift which was used at the time. Why Patience Swift? Actually, I can't remember, but it had something to do with my grandmother being called Patience. Anyway, Patience Swift is no more, and by putting this novel up and this blog up, I will be increasing the pressure on myself to deliver (to myself: that should be an interesting meeting) a second novel this year.