thesvenhunter

...Has Doubts

2010-02-24T12:19:00.001Z

New blog number three is up and running: http://hasdoubts.blogspot.com/

Thank you, me, for doing that.

This is probably the last one. This blog here will in all likelihood remain stagnant from now until I remove it.

Mine,

Velky

Shelf of Self

2010-02-05T17:26:00.000Z

New blog number two is up and running: http://shelfofself.blogspot.com/

Thank you, public, for your unwavering tolerance.

Yours,

The Velky

Coin Du Vin

2010-01-18T13:21:00.002Z

New blog number one is up and running: http://coinduvin.blogspot.com/

One more expected soon, on a similar theme but book-based.

Thank you, public, for your unyielding support.

Yours,

A. Velky

No more blog here

2009-12-30T16:08:00.003Z

In a dramatic continuation of misfortune this blog has failed to become lucrative or topical or even coherent (or any of the other things I'm given to understand blogs should be) after four years of regular updating, so I'm not doing it anymore.

I will be deleting all the """creative""" content too, in case anyone ever wants to publish it.

Expect an almost identical blog with a different name to spring up soon.

When it does, I'll forward you there and this will remain as another rotted husk of worthless data clogging up the Internet.

In your face, in your fridge, in your DREAMS. Your reluctant author,

Alexander Velky

Joe McElderry is Hilary Swank

2009-12-20T11:22:00.006Z

Obviously I'm not the only person (or the first person) to have noticed this, but the level of resemblance between these two is actually quite dispiriting; I'd long presumed and hoped there were an infinite number of faces available to humanity, now I must venture forth into adulthood and (God willing, one day) parenthood knowing that any son (or daughter) I have may end up looking like a famous c'lebrity, for example, Nicolas Cage.

Yes, Joe McElderry IS Hilary Swank:

Hilary Swank

Joe McElderry

Anyway, in under 24 hours we'll know whether Hilary has beaten that bunch of unwashed, washed-up, old-skool nu metal ear-achers, Rage Against The Machine, to the coveted Christmas number one slot in the UK singles chart.

And in under 25 hours, we'll no longer care.

Either way, Joe'll be lucky to retain the imagination and/or sympathy of the public for long enough to rush out an album's worth of bad cover versions, but he has an assured lead role in the Hilary Swank biopic some twenty years hence.

That's if the earth hasn't fallen victim to the tentacles of our historical enemies, the jellyfish.

My first published short story / Harlequin's Tales... 'The Listeners'

2009-12-18T14:14:00.008Z

2009 has been a year of underachievement for me, like every year since I was born; I'm still not king or emperor of my own autonomous European microstate; I still don't have even rudimentary superpowers (like super-fast healing or misc. energy bolts to shoot from body part); and I still don't have a black and green leather jester's outfit.

But plenty of good stuff has happened, the details of most of which I'll not bore you with.

What has happened is this: I got some creative work published in three dimensions for the first time ever. It might even be the last time. Who knows?

Before you get too excited, no Faber & Faber didn't publish 'Goodbye Misery...' and that Welsh poetry zine I sent it off to didn't feel the need to indulge my speculation with a response of any kind, possibly because their editor is a poet herself and a pretty shit version of E.E. Cummings. But like John Smith's, I'm not mild.

No: I got a short story (one from my Harlequin's Tales... series - one not even published online at any point, if you'll believe it) published in a London-based zine called 'They Did', published sporadically by Monster Emporium Press.

(A lot of 'published's in that sentence. I'm still pretty chuffed, as you may be able to tell.)

Now, I'd be lying if I said some of the people associated with said publishing company aren't my friends and (and indeed or) associates, but isn't that always the way?

I re-read a bit of the story yesterday lunchtime and I think it's alright bordering on good. It's certainly up to a standard I'm happy with.

It's called 'The Listeners', and I stole the title from a Walter de La Mere poem.

You can read it here, in amongst other treasures, on pages 18-21:

Or, y'know, you could order a copy, or print it out. Or something.

***EDIT***

The illustrations (both those shown here) are by Kathryn Corlett. At least, I'm pretty sure they are. And she edited the mistakes out of my story too. Bless her!

My Common Sense Is Tingling

2009-12-16T16:08:00.008Z

Word.

On the subject of Turkish people, I had a lovely kofta and meze meal of the day from the place by Caledonian Road station for Lunch.

Haven't had time to photoshop my head onto a gorilla's body today like I'd hoped to.

Maybe tomorrow.

In the interim, entertain or annoy yourself with this poem I wrote on my laptop in the Kenton the other night while I was waiting for my carriage.

As you'll see, it took me till halfway thorugh writing it to realise I'd stolen the premise (the simile) from this song.

Never mind, eh?

Opinions

Opinions are like fingernails,
(In my opinion).

Some grow theirs long, strong,
Polished, painted, filed and buffed;
Some chew away at theirs and wear them
Snapped, snipped, split or scuffed.

For some they are their pride and joy:
They present them, unashamedly false,
Tap them on tabletops, point them like batons,
Later, privately, to be removed,

And later still, replaced.

For some they are, in this way,
A kind of armour: half shields, half swords,
They use these pricks to punctuate
The gaps between their weighted words.

But if they ever scratch the surface of a serious point
You'll find none of their DNA remains in the shallow sores
Left behind in the pores these bores bored.

Some suffer from some sort of pica
And get them stuck between their teeth
And even, if with enough resolve, enough belief,
Ingest, digest and afterwards excrete them:
Their own opinions, the fools!

Some people's opinions never look the same twice,
Because of constant worrying of this kind;
Though they're made of the same stuff
And grow from the same root,
They come up clipped and jagged,
Facing every which way but forth.
(Nobody knows how seriously to take these folks.)

That isn't my opinion, now I think of it;
The Incredible String Band thought of it first.

But I've had opinions: all sorts.
Most, I suppose, adapted from some higher source,
But some were genuinely my own.

When I was eight I thought it best
All homosexuals be repatriated to Bolivia
And a wall built around it. For ever.
I can't remember why.

When I was nearly not a teen I was convinced
That any word that ended in an 'ism'
Was beneath my contempt regardless of whether or not
I'd wrapped my head around its schisms,
And that nihilism was as close to an acceptable truce
As an 'ismic' word could hope to come.

(But that confused me some.)

When I realised I'd neither the wherewithal
Nor the income to think on fashion
In the attentive way that some still do
I added it to my list of things to poo-poo.

When I found out you liked jazz,
I added you to it too.

And modern art.
And milk shakes made in tins.
And wine from Germany.
And dieting.
And fold-away chairs.
And non-wheelie bins.
And the Southern Hemisphere.
And amphibians with fins.
And poems containing lists.
And loads of other shit...

I had opinions, and each and every one and two
Were minions, with which to pinion
My enemies, that they'd no longer
Bother me without apology.

I had opinions…
And they were all right!
And they were all wrong,
And I knew all the most naturally scenic sights,
And none of the most expertly-composéd songs.

I've had it:
I couldn't give a fig if you're better informed than me,
Your opinion's only any good if it's the same as mine.
And it's all wrong, but it's alright:
In fact, I abdicate them all;
I have no more opinions, I've lost them overnight.

Now watch, as I rebuild them all
To a similar magnitude
In a fraction of the time
Upon foundations much less stable
And ring a thousand bells in their praise
And celebrate their poise in rhyme.
(The best medium for such a purpose.)

Wear a hat? I'd rather not.

2009-12-16T10:02:00.004Z

In the last six months I've been shacked up with some posh totty in East London, so almost every morning I've been buying my daily ration of V Energy Drink and miscellaneous confectionery from a small Turkish shop just under the purple bridge at Hackney Central.

In those six months I've had two conversations with the guy I presume to be the owner. He's about 40 and looks kinda Turkish.

The first one was after about three months, the morning after I took the posh totty out for some ethnic cuisine in an affordable restaurant in fashionable Covent Garden.

I'd shaved recently. (My face.)

"It's better," he said, indicating my shaven face.

I nervously felt my unimpressive jawline and anticipated the rash that would soon be a predominant feature of that area. I made some reply, but whatever it was it wasn't sufficient to prolong the exchange.

The second conversation happened this morning.

"I'm dying," he said.

Obviously my initial thought was 'Why should I care?' One less Turk in the world is neither here nor there to me. Despite a recent truce I still fundamentally consider the nation and its inhabitants - diaspora and all - high on my list of natural enemies. But I like his face, so I asked him what was up.

"It's too cold," he said.

I agreed that it was too cold and suggested, helpfully, that he might like to invest in a hat, such as my own - purloined from the posh totty when the winds began to blow - to keep the cold from getting to him.

Ninety percent of heat is lost through the head, I told him.

He gave me a look like I'd just shat on his counter, and said nothing.

I thanked him and went on my way.

Open Letter to Faber and Faber

2009-12-14T16:46:00.006Z

Dear Faber and/or Faber,

Earlier this year I sent you (in good faith) a portfolio of poetry (my poetry - the best kind of poetry) and I couldn't help noticing - last time I was in Waterstone's bookmongers of Angel - that you have as yet still not published said volume either in its abridged form as was sent to you or indeed in the intended six editions staggered over two years (or more accurately, six four month periods).

Nor have I received a written response to my speculative enquiry to your alleged "new poetry" department.

I can only assume that some form of gross idiocy and/or racism has taken place.

Please advise: I'd hate to have to publish them in .pdf form online, because everyone knows that doesn't really count.

Yours, en rage,

The undeniable Alexander Velky, erstwhile poet.

P.S. as a reminder of how awesome my poetry is, check out these timeless lines from a poem I wrote in spring of this year:

"I thought about Amelia Earhart, lit a cigarette, and began to cough..."

I think you'll agree they're better than anything Keats ever sullied his blotting paper with, and contain much more depth than any of these posing toffs and/or plebs delivering their poorly-worded, hopelessly-arrhythmical, woefully-neurotic """anecdotes""" by way of Spoken Word or whatever the hell people call it these days.

My shit* is epic. As in epic win. (Or fail.)

* for 'shit', in this case, read 'poetry' - this line is ironic, to an extent...

The Stone Gods - Jeanette Winterson

2009-12-10T13:49:00.008Z

I've made no secret of the fact that Jeanette Winterson is my favourite living author ever since I read Sexing The Cherry, which is a truly brilliant book, and later The Passion, which is possibly even better. And others: Lighthousekeeping, Oranges..., The Powerbook; all of them masterpieces of modern[ist?] literature.

This is why it galls me to say I'm not that bothered about The Stone Gods, her second most recent novel, published in 2007, and the most recent (and most recently published) that I've read.

Her stories, like many real stories, have a tendency to peter out: to end - in the words of a miserable reformed colonial - not with a bang but a whimper.

This difficulty in instilling a work of literature with true meaning but concluding it in a satisfactory manner is one that has plagued novelists since the dawn of the medium - the 18th century works were all about the "conclusion in which nothing is concluded" - if my addled memory serves me correctly.

Martin Amis is great, but most of his books end badly. Magnus Mills is great, but he just ends his books after about 150 pages and usually nothing has happened. I've heard Will Self books never end, but I usually leave them on trains, so I wouldn't know.

Certainly, a truly satisfying ending in which all loose ends are tied is a sure sign of a perfect plot, which - with contemporary novels - I would argue is often a sure sign of a wasted read.

But The Stone Gods takes this disdain of conventions to the extreme, and doesn't really fare that well for the bravely non-linear path it takes.

For all her philosophising and moralising on the human condition, there's normally enough intrigue and detail in character, environment and situation to keep the reader going in the absence of well-painted signposts, but Winterson's characters in The Stone Gods - chiefly a 'Robo Sapiens' robot called Spike and the narrator, Billie Crusoe (ugh) are not her strongest creations by any stretch of the imagination.

And the imagination needs to be stretched to get through this novel. This is the most explicitly sci-fi work I've read by Jeanette Winterson so far (whatever her hatred of genre tags, this is definitely science fiction, plot lines or no plot lines). The Stone Gods plays about with past, future, alternate reality, speculative fiction and historical fiction in a way that seems less controlled than usual and (I don't like to say it) a little slapdash. The bones are not strong enough to support the flesh, which comprises numerous ideological but not particularly focused complaints about the way humanity is headed.

The mismatched sections of the narrative vary tremendously in length (and do not progress in any linear manner, of course) and the opening voyage to a new world from a recognisable dystopian version of Earth is very Phillip K Dick or Logan's Run and all well and good, if not quite up to the lofty standards I've come to expect from the author.

Unfortunately, from this shaky start it's all downhill - the flashback to the unfortunate marooning of an imagined crewman of Captain Cook's results in a dull gay love affair framed by an even duller (though mercifully brief) study in anthropology that all seems a bit clichéd as a foil to the soon-to-be-returned-to super-mega-future of implants, robot-pets, all-powerful global corporations and vitamin-pills.

It's all a little familiar, and I don't even read much sci-fi.

And the meta-story of the book itself (or part of it) being a document found (or was it left?) on the tube by the main character was clumsily dealt with and, worse still, kind of uninteresting in the grand scheme of the narrative.

The deeper meanings of the thing - future, past, present, our impact upon our environment, our greater meaning (or lack thereof) within the context of our universe, the big bang etc. - are all well and good, but the players and the sets and the costumes have been so much more richly-imagined by Winterson in the past that this work cannot help but be dwarfed by her previous achievements.

When Billie is musing on science's failure to answer what happened 'before' the big bang and paraphrases the end of Molly Bloom's soliloquy from Ulysses ("yes, I said, and yes") she makes the unfortunate error of reminding her reader of the absolute pinnacle of a genre (or at least style) of writing, which makes her own home (the novel, f.y.i. - this is a metaphor) seem shabby and favella-esque by comparison to that veritable palace.

At its best, Winterson's work is untouchable by the living and by most of the dead. And her style and her choice of words remain sufficiently unique to shine, even in this diluted state. But this is Winterson at her worst, and it's readable, but not much more.

Nicolas Cage in The Wicker Man Vs Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man

2009-12-01T13:43:00.008Z

Obviously this is a pretty one-sided contest and the outcome is pretty much pre-determined as you'll be aware if you've seen just one of the above versions of the British cult horror, remade by Americans, Canadians and Germans, directed by Neil Labute of Nothing You've Ever Heard Of fame and starring once-potentially-great, fallen-from-grace, millionaire oddball Nicolas "How'd it get burned? How'd it get burned?" Cage.

Here's the much-bandied-about 'best scenes' alternate trailer from the re-make, which I saw (and rewatched again and again) many years (at least two!) before I watched the full film:

Cage was excellent in Bringing Out The Dead, and possibly some other films, but on this evidence (and that) he's really missed his calling as a deadpan comic master. Labute defended this film by saying the comic touches were deliberate, but really Cage's version of Woodward's Sergeant Howie is - if anything - a much more troubled individual; the opening scenes in the original set up our doomed hero as a devout Christian about to be flung into the jaws of temptation. In the remake our hero is also a cop, but he's haunted by a terrible car crash, which originally definitely did happen (at the beginning of the film indeed) then later seems not to have happened at all, then definitely did, then who knows? then who cares? then actually what significance does that have to the plot anyway? NONE! NONE WHATSOEVER!

Okay, the girl in the car looked a bit like his daughter, but presumably wasn't as she turns up later, not at all dead and, even in her role as a prop, significantly inferior a character to the creepy little shit known as Rowan Morrisson in the Robin Hardy-directed original.

Anyway, mainly due to his 'troubled' nature, but partly due to his allergy to bees, Cage's cagey cop is a cold and distant character, whereas Woodward's sergeant was a tough and uncompromising (slightly irritating) git, but a respectable one nonetheless.

The chief focal point of the tension in Hardy's was Christianity Vs Paganism (old Vs new and a host of other implicated opposing forces): Labute chooses (for comic purposes or simply because a Pacific West pagan island is too far fetched?) to opt with the Allergy to Bees Vs Bees dilemma, which gives us an admittedly atmospheric touch to the location, but in terms of intrigue nothing further than how convincingly Nicolas Cage can tumble down a hill while crying "arrrrrrrrrgh bees &c."

Yes, the matriarchal beekeeping wonderland that our hero's ex apparently hails from is not a shit invention; in fact it has great potential to house this reimagining of the original wild-goose-chase-gone-grizzly. Unfortunately, the script is often too closely based on the original and sometimes not closely enough; we are left with at least five lines that refer to past occurrences that were (at some stage) cut from the cinematic release.

Nicolas Cage reacts preposterously angrily when told someone's name in the latter stages of the film:

"Of course, another fucking tree." he says. (Possibly without the swearing.)

The point is that the matter of the inhabitants' names hasn't been broached, so only the most astute viewers will have noticed the connection between the Rowans, Willows and Oaks (seriously, people aren't that sharp), and even then they'd rightly be perplexed by Cage's sudden and irrational hatred of names derived from foliage.

This tipping point in his sanity possibly mirrors the point where Sergeant Howie (in the original) decides to club McGregor over the bonce and steal his Punch costume - by now he hasn't so much crawled into the lion's jaws and settled down for a nap as poked the inside of its mouth with a stick and bade it chew.

The Labute version's equivalent sees Nicolas Cage strolling into the bar, punching an old lady full in the face (without any explanation), and then being attacked by her supposedly-seductive (not a patch on Britt Ekland) barmaid, who goes schizo (again without any explanation) and gets seven shades of shit kicked out of her by the newly-psychopathic Cage.

In the blink-and-you'll-miss-it finale Cage ends up in a bear suit punching another woman, has a pot of badly CGI-generated bees put over his face and is then swiftly toasted in a large but less-imposing-than-intended wicker man.

The clumsiness of this final sequence of events - from the house searching to the screaming agony of toastiness - is a key comparison; in Hardy's original the pace, action and accompanying soundtrack accelerated so gradually and purposefully that despite a dormant feeling inciting one to shout "What are you doing, you idiot", one is convinced and taken along by sheer adrenaline. The final showdown is kind of inevitable, but somehow still shocking.

This time around it's a blessed release and can't come soon enough. (And, as my good lady pointed out, there's a freaking massive wicker man on this island that must have taken weeks to construct, and he's searched the island several times, and it's pretty small, and he didn't notice it at any point. What a shit policeman!)

There are a lot of fine visuals to entertain one throughout this film, and Nic Cage overacts his way through it sufficiently that while it falls short of being a credible character-led story it is entertaining, frequently amusing and often (and this is mainly down to Nic's unpredictable and exaggerated bodily reactions to simple statements) entirely perplexing.

If they'd only dropped that ridiculous car crash at the beginning (which repeats with mild variations throughout) we might have had room for some filler scenes that'd have fleshed this out into a worthy remake; perhaps Nic could have punched a few more women? Or some beehives? Certainly he could have learned how to ride a bike without looking flouncy, and to park one without simply dropping it to the ground.

Woodward was stoic, tough, resilient and displayed just the right level of bemusement, anger and below-the-surface-terror. Cage makes a convincing lunatic, but it remains unclear whether his, shall we say, eccentric nature was a result of weeks of intensive method acting or just... the general hardhsips of his actual non-acting off-screen life.

Anyway, an inferior actor Nic may be, less focused he certainly is, but there's no denying he has a similarly magnetic draw to Woodward: he looks amazing onscreen.

I couldn't even take my eyes off him in THIS performance:

The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien

2009-11-30T14:01:00.006Z

In many ways The Third Policeman reads like that first novel you write, but never finish; a fairly standard, familiar and wholesome beginning is set up in which a hero emerges, his unlikely accomplice is outlined and suggests himself as a likely antagonist, then a few chapters in when you have, perhaps, an idea of where everything might be going, things start to get a little bit strange.

Usually this is done because one doesn't really know how to unroll a plot or perhaps gets bored with one's own underdeveloped and erratically paced writing. Perhaps the chaos that ensues is the entry into a fantasy world, perhaps it's all just a crazy dream.

In the case of The Third Policeman it seems very much like a divergence of some kind - the real and expected plot goes one way and is never seen again and what we are left with is something that hardly seems real: an extensively-detailed fantasy and hall-of-mirrors pseudo-science (further backed up by the wonderfully mundane footnotes detailing the life and works of fictional philosopher and historical conundrum deSelby, and his numerous, rather colourful, biographers).

While there is no doubt that what we are left with is... strange, and at least on some level supernatural, the discomfort and occasional terror displayed by our narrator is never quite horrible enough to detract from the weirdly warm atmosphere created by the grotesque caricatures of semi-human, near-psychopathic bicycle-obsessed policemen in this parochial purgatory.

The idea that our narrator is somehow paying for the murder he committed at the start of the book is obviously there throughout, though the exact nature of his punishment - if that's what it is - is never spelled out.

He is occasionally haunted by his crime, but is mostly haunted by his uncertain near future as he searches this strange place (supposedly not far from his home) for the prize for which the original crime was committed - some untold and nonspecific wealth, kept in a black box.

Later he awaits execution for a murder he didn't commit, or at least, doesn't think he committed, or perhaps committed but didn't finish properly or... something (*check dictionary for definition of irony) and is forced to explore the make-up of the universe while arguing with his own soul (who he has named 'Joe' for convenience) about the likelihood of eternity (or was it infinity?) existing in a cellar below a police station.

More than anything I've read - except perhaps Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - this novel recreates in frightening detail the illogical progressions of a very bad dream, and while doing so raises - but never truly theorises on - many of the 'great questions' that art is meant to address.

The thing is, Flann O'Brien manages to tell this story, and tie it together, in a manner that makes the ingredients of this cake (or should I say 'pancake'?) as impossible to adapt as they are perfect for their purpose. Yes, this book is absolutely perfect, as perfect as very, very few works of art or stories (if you care to differentiate) ever mange to be.

In the publisher's note (a letter written by the man himself shortly after completing the novel), O'Brien dismisses the work as merely a good plot and nothing more - it was rejected by the UK publishers who'd given him his 1st deal as "too fantastical", and later similarly dismissed by American publishers when submitted with the alternate title 'Hell Goes Round and Round'.

The letter (which you should definitely read AFTER the book) shows exactly what O'Brien wanted to do with the book, and while it's pretty much what you'd imagine on getting to the end it almost seems a shame to have it spelled out in a few brief lines by an author who clearly felt he'd failed on this occasion to create something as wonderful and as clever as he'd hoped.

Is it fair for me to call him wrong?

(He's dead, so he can't argue.)

Not my place to say, I suppose, but The Third Policeman is up there with the finest (and most bearable) moments of Joyce and Mervyn Peake's work in terms of imagination and inventiveness, and equal to Magnus Mills (himself a big fan of O'Brien's) in stark, deadpan humour, and way, way ahead of Will Self in the practice of using amusingly complex lingo for legitimate purposes.

Recommended to anyone who doesn't mind a novel that challenges concepts, among them being the concept of itself and yourself and the possibility of you remaining friends.

But, quite honestly, I think anybody who enjoys books could enjoy this book, if they had long enough to devote to it; it reads much better in a continual flow than when approached in bits, which can make it seem an impossible task.

P.S.

I: this book was written during WW2, approximately 60 years prior to when I assumed it had been written. Yikes.

II: For those of you who watch 'Lost' - this book has, apparently, been cited by that programme's writers as essential reading for help understanding the plot of said TV show in later episodes. Having only ever seen the first few episodes of said show and having been bored into submission, I couldn't possibly comment.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

If you don't want to read this book, assume what I assumed all along about Lost (and I'm sure has been poisted by theorists): that they did die in the plane crash and the programme you are watching is their own shared hell.

Mark Jones on 'Men's Lib' and 'Masculism' for The Times, and why he's wrong and stupid

2009-11-26T13:29:00.012Z

SUBJECT: Article on The Times website

Author: Mark Jones

Entitled: 'Maybe it's time for men's lib?

Subtitled: It's a dire time for the stronger sex. Men are in the firing line of sexism, too, so please stop the ‘dorking down’

Every once in a while an article like this pops up, supposedly turning the tables on sexism, and exposing our society as a deeply difficult and horrible place for men to live in.

And every time the writer manages to take a very interesting subject matter and trivialise it into the pointless rantings of idiotic mankind: perfect fodder for militant feminists who want their points proving for them.

Mark Jones starts off with a couple of incidental examples of things in his day that made him feel discriminated against by a society that favours men and immediately defeats his own posited argument by setting up the imagined counter-story of a day in the life of a typical female: one imagines they'd not have to delve so far into the barrel to scrape up a sample.

He cites examples of recent journalism graduate events he's been at where women outnumber men (or girls outnumber boys, depending on your definition of adulthood): this gripe seems to have little or nothing to do with the matter in hand; who's to say that a cross-section of journalists has any bearing on the scales of societal equality? (Well... Mark Jones is to say, I guess.)

poohugh @AlexanderVelky you reading Times article? Sounds a bit like 'why isn't there a union of white police officers' cunting load of cunt speak.

Mark Jones highlights the advertising industry phenomenon that you'll all be familiar with if I am (I don't watch a lot of actual TV that isn't on my laptop); the dorky, useless male and the in-control female dynamic. He suggests this is evidence of female dominance in the industry, simply because females make up the bigger part of the target audience (the consumer, the passive, the receiver), apparently not suspecting for a moment that many of these ads are made by men, and that it's men who see the advantage in presenting themselves this way, and that by doing so - and for so long - are taking the piss out of their audience in the way that any lazy bastard with a shovel can take the piss out of the cattle he's feeding by spitting on the food first.

Presumably the trend will shift as soon as it ceases to amuse the general public. Advertising is like art in that if one person does something clever, that works, everyone else then does the same thing over and over again forever (even if it stops working as well) until somebody else does something new that works, then they copy that.

This is why I hate advertising.

And art.

And people.

Then there's crap like this:

"We men are going to be a minority, and a small minority, in the newsrooms and boardrooms of the opinion-forming industries. "

This is another wagon of crap. So women get on in ad industries? And journalism and PR and whatnot. Cool - that's great. Women, it may surprise you to find out, are people capable of most of the things that men people are too; there's even evidence to suggest they're better at some stuff. I'll tell you what they're not better at; they're not better at having been mainly in control of society and its make-up and its evolution since the dawn of time.

So if newsrooms and boardrooms are full of women in a few year's time, they'll be fucking lucky if they're there on merit and not cos someone likes looking at them, and they'll be even luckier if they're still there after they have their first kid.

And the small minority of men? Chances are they'll be the small minority of higher earners.

Basically what you've done, Mark Jones, is pad out a third of an article with pointless anecdotes about your life and (mostly) inane comments from (mostly) idiots* from another section/article on the site, and then fill the middle of this shit sandwich with... shit.

Frankly, taking this angle of "we're discriminated against too" is bullshit; why don't you take a look at what men stand to lose from being in a permanently favourable position? Why don't you talk about what living in an unequal society does to a boy's brain when he's growing up? About how much further our society and our race could go towards a mutually beneficial future if we weren't worried about some nasty ad man suggesting you're a bit dim so he can sell an oven cleaning fluid to your wife? Or, you know, if we weren't worried about being beaten or raped when we walk home at night, or worried about having a perpetually lower earning-potential and therefore being reliant on a partner who is able to impregnate a million eggs while we are gestating his one or two sperm cells?

Douche.

You talk of 'masculism' as some opposing force to 'feminism' which we need to take up if we are to retain our equality. This is unbelievably dumb and a very old, yawn-inducing fuckbundle of an argument.

The "male version of feminism" that all concerned men should be fighting for if they want a better lot in life, if they don't want to be discriminated against, if they want a better world where they feel less like shit, already has a name.

It's called feminism.

Go read a book about it or something.

* Sample comment: "Charging men extra for car insurance. Is that not sexist?"

(Simple answer: No.)

SM 101 A Realistic Introduction - Jay Wiseman

2009-11-24T14:11:00.009Z

This book is pretty self-explanatory in its aims: to provide the curious with a basic (but comprehensive) introduction to sadomasochism, which we British call S&M, but the Americans simplify as SM.

The publisher qualifies it thusly:

"The highly regarded, comprehensive introduction to consensual BDSM - bondage, giving and receiving pain, role-playing, negotiation, finding partners, and more. This edition is updated and expanded, including a chapter on "SM Organizations," sections on lifestyle relationships, SM and pregnancy, and more, plus illustrations of key points."

The scope comprises all manner of practices and all ranges of extremity, from the playful slap to the arsenal of horse-whips; from getting a date in a small town to inserting a tray of ice cubes up your own anus; from lovingly paddling your partner's bare, bound buttocks to wrapping them head-to-toe in cling-film and shitting on them.

If you didn't like that sentence, you won't like a lot of the book.

To be blunt, I didn't like a lot of the book, but I'm hardly squeamish so what was my big deal?

Mr. Wiseman's introduction would surely be enough to drive most people away. I don't know (or much care) if it was part of the original text or if it's some sort of self-congratulatory addendum to this later edition. The problem is that Jay Wiseman suffers from a lot of the personality defects one might expect from an ageing leather-clad self-described 'pervert' from the bay area. He's smug and a little dull and nowhere near as intelligent or (crucially) as great a writer as he seems convinced he is, nay, professes in plain English on many occasions throughout, not least in this introductory autobiographical snooze-fest, where one is only saved from dropping off by the occasional need to gag (and not in a good or sexy way).

I don't much care about Jay Wiseman. He may consider himself some sort of sexual pioneer, but I don't reckon there's anything that pioneering about a guy who one day had an epiphany that he wanted a bunch of women to kneel down and suck him off, even if he did stick up a bunch of flyers in his hometown one weekend in the sixties anonymously advertising the fact. Nor do I like the way he refers throughout the book to women who object on principal to the dominant/submissive dynamic of SM relationships as "so-called "feminists"". In fact, the inverted comma is a dangerous tool in Jay Wiseman's authorial spice rack: dangerous in that he constantly overuses it and makes himself sound like a pompous, snidey little fuck-rag, when in reality he's probably just a pretty smug, irritating little douchebag.

In fairness to Jay, he's not some sexual megalomaniac. No doubt he would be in a society that allowed it, but as a good American Citizen, (much better than any of the so-called "Americans" that aren't perpetually committed to campaigning for localised sexual inequality), Jay doesn't break rules - he is all for the law, and he does argue lengthily (and, you'd have thought, pointlessly) that brainwashing people into being sexually or otherwise submissive (or dominant) to you is WRONG. And so is causing them a lot of physical pain if you haven't signed a very lengthy, disturbing-in-its-implications, legally-photocopiable pre-sexual agreement form he has enclosed within the pages of this very book.

When Jay argues that people should know what they are getting themselves into before they engage in any sexual or non-sexual SM activity one cannot help applaud his caution as wise, but when he presents this photocopiable form as a means to simplify the procedure, one cannot help feel he is providing a get-out clause for would-be rapists.

Certainly Jay attests to the lines of consent in SM activity being blurred more often than not - he gives personal anecdotes of women he's tortured who've decided midway through they don't like what he's doing and (citing one example) kicked him in the face.

If there's one aspect of SM activity (or "play") that really bothers me (other than being cling-filmed and shat on, obviously) it's these consent issues. Some would argue that a man or woman who insists on being physically dominated - or humiliated, or tortured, or beaten - as part of a rite, sexual or otherwise, is not of sound mind or is not capable of being declared 'happy'. For such a person to be meeting and entering into SM relationships with strangers seems pretty bloody dangerous to me, and call me a cynic, but I suspect a higher proportion of SM practitioners than casual bar-hopping one-night-stand types (who I by no means encourage in their own weekly filth-parade) are in mental states that are not conducive to entering into a whips and/or chains affair for fun.

Obviously I also believe that SM (I continue to use the American as I am discussing an American author and text) can be a part of a healthy, happy sexual relationship (and I don't mean 20% max or anything), otherwise I wouldn't be reading this book in the first place.

But when Jay starts to talk about how much "fun" it can be to have your submissive partner do all your washing and cook all your meals etc. etc. one begins to wonder

a) is there anything at all progressive about accepting SM into everyday life, free of stigma? Wiseman (ne'er was one so inaptly named) talks a lot of grade-A horse shit about how the SM community should be viewed as the next step along the line from blacks and gays as a minority group in need of liberating, and of how the idea that equality between partners has long and (this is implicit) incorrectly been seen as the epitome of the relationship in our enlightened western society. I am tempted to leave him and his friends in the closet and lock the key, but would have SM less of a taboo subject because, and I'm not joking here, I don't want someone like Jay Wiseman teaching my kids. (Or going anywhere near them, if I can help it.)

b) aren't you the same guy that, earlier in this book, boasted of how you told a submissive woman to "run" when she said her partner was insisting on being dominant in every area of her life? Are you now advocating exactly that in the spirit of "fun", despite knowing from personal experience what a hugely-traumatising affect it can have on people?

c) as part of the 60s hippie generation, when did you stop thinking and become so closed-minded and certain you're right about everything? Because it seems to me that as soon as you reached the conclusion as a teenager that you wanted girls to suck your dick, and perhaps you'd quite like them to be tied up while they did it, that you stopped thinking and joined Mensa so you could do crosswords and get sucked off till you were in the grave. He (Jay - sorry - switching from 3rd to 2nd and back here) goes on and on about the stigma of being into SM - I think you'll find, Jay, few people give a shit what you or any of their friends do in the bedroom: what's stigmatised is feeling the need to tell everyone the minutiae of it, thus boring them to nausea.

I can't imagine one could usefully address Mr. Wiseman in any other medium than the unread blog rant, by the way. He doesn't seem the type for intelligent debate; seriously - Jay Wiseman even says, in brackets, at one point (paraphrasing, can't be arsed finding the stupid quote) - "some people disagree with me on this - that's fine, they can go on being wrong".

What a dick!

Anyway, there are a few good things about this book; it is hugely practical on the whole, and certainly written by someone who is knowledgeable - to the point of being very dull - on bondage, clamping, flagellation and all manner of "erotic torture". He is also (a former Ambulance crewman, don't you know) very safety-first, in a commendable and often quite cute way: telling us to be careful, for example, of playing with fire because (you guessed it) we might get burned.

And the fact that some of his friends actually did set fire to one another after rubbing each other with alcohol fumes then playing with candles goes some way to explaining the incredibly patronising tone Wiseman employs throughout this book - he basically thinks he's talking to borderline retards, and he's super intelligent by comparison. How right he is on the whole, I have no idea.

He does raise some interesting questions too (briefly) about where our sexual desires come from, and how we should respond to impulses which make us uncomfortable. (Clue: embrace them, embrace them all.) Why do so many women have rape fantasies? Why do so many men have them too? Why do we deny it and refuse to talk about it?

Who knows? But I sure wouldn't want Jay to answer - or even raise - these questions in any public forum in any official capacity as a result of his work on this lengthy, dull, creepy but - I have to admit, begrudgingly - pretty practical and "realistic" guide.

Still, I actually wouldn't advise buying this book for (or lending this book to) anybody you are trying to convert to (or merely educate in) SM, because Jay Wiseman's voice may well dissuade them from what curiosity they have.

It's a bit dated too - it's of its time - he talks of the Internet as a caveman might have talked of strange fruits he had tasted in a neighbouring valley. He talks more often of social groups and PO boxes. This only serves to highlight what is surely apparent to all today upon reading the first few paragraphs: if you're interested in exploring SM, you can get all this information on the Internet; better still, you can get it all from many different people with differing points of view and discuss it with them.

And you don't have to plough through the life story of a fat, hairy, ex-hippie, leather-wearing, misogynist hack-twat to get there.

(But it probably helps.)

Ian Garfield Hoxley is Metatron - Gaye Bykers on Acid and Meads of Asphodel rock family tree (or something)

2009-11-23T13:21:00.006Z

After years of searching the Earth for the secret identity of The Meads of Asphodel's enigmatic vocalist, Metatron, you'll be pleased to know I've come to a conclusion; he's Ian Garfield Hoxley from Gaye Bykers on Acid.

I came to this conclusion after Andrew Collins played Gaye Bykers on Acid as part of the seven inches of love section on his (excellent) 6music show where he's (unfortunately just) a stop-gap between the difficult George Lamb and the relatively-easy Lauren Laverne.

I was only aware of 'Gaye Bykers on Acid' before as being something my dad would mutter when I passed through the living room having got dressed up for a Friday night on the town. Similarly, he was probably only aware of the Meads of Asphodel as a (quite literally) unholy racket that must have emanated from the car speakers courtesy of the last mix CD I burnt for him a few years ago - I doubt it lasted too long before the skip button came out.

Though the Bykers' Ian has a name a bit like that one from Keane and has a slight American twang to his voice, the occasional rasps and grunts in there are more than a little reminiscent of Metatron's trademark cancerous howl, I'm sure you'll agree:

Exhibit A: Gaye Bykers on Acid - Git Down

Exhibit B: The Meads of Asphodel - Creed of Abraham

What's more, both bands share a penchant for weird face masks, unlikely side projects and scuzzy psychedelia.

So Ian Garfield Hoxley is Metatron - Metatron is Ian Garfield Hoxley. The picture at the top of this story will never be a resultant screen from a Google search again.

This is PROPER music journalism.

Where's my award?

I thank you.

(Pending my award, which I expect within the week.)

Your avid sleuth and sweating toiler,

A. (The) Velky

Once In A Blue Moon - Magnus Mills

2009-11-20T09:30:00.006Z

Very much in the same style as 'Only When The Sun...', this second collection has four very short stories and two glaring typographical errors. (This time 'here' instead of 'hear' - page 12, and 'cat's eyes' instead of 'cats' eyes' - page 41. If anyone over at Acorn wants to give me a job proofreading, get in touch!)

Okay that second one is technically correct for a single unit, as in a bollard or a traffic cone, but if THEY are lighting up the road, then THEY can't possibly all belong to the same cat now, can they?

Anyway, the stories are good. The first - 'Once In A Blue Moon' is the weakest, or at least my own least favourite, again, being a sort of oddball mother-daughter relationship-cum-police stakeout situation. It's off-kilter and quaint but has little depth I care to explore.

The second is a daft gag well executed - 'The Good Cop' - it's called, and the premise is that staff cutbacks mean only one of the traditional partnership is available to interview a suspected crim. Hilarity ensues. I would normally be reticent to reveal the entire plot of a story, even one so short, but this one is so predictable it hardly matters. It's quite charming anyway and the humour packed into the mundane dialogue actually reminds me very much of my friend Dave Paul Nixon's short stories. Shame he doesn't tend to publish them on that blog I linked you to, and is only demanding your cash for his charitable facial hair.

'They Drive by Night' is an excellent atmospheric hitchhiking story perfectly satirising the stoic oddball relationship between late night lorry-driving types, but the real jewel in the crown here is (again - as with 'Only When The Sun...') the last of the four stories; it's a rare thing in the Mills canon: a children's story, that is, a story about children, told by one of them.

'Screwtop Thompson' mixes evocative portrayals of childhood Christmas-present comedown with one of the very finest examples of Mills' affectionate portrayal of Englishness (or perhaps just humanness) through the veneer of dark humour. It's a truly fantastic and deeply satisfying piece of writing and as good as anything he's done, which is the highest possible praise.

Incidentally, I recently searched the web for any recent news on Mills and found that the press offensive surrounding his new book (The Maintenance of Headway, 2009) all focused on the fact that he is a bus driver again; the original line of Mills being a working class, salt of the earth, bus-driving type was later played down by cynical journalists, but it turns out Mills has not only spent a few years driving a van since the publication of his debut, The Restraint of Beasts, (the inspiration, it turns out, for The Scheme For Full Employment - a good book,) but he's also back on the buses in London.

Fancy that.

More on that in a very interesting Telegraph interview, here.

Only When The Sun Shines Brightly - Magnus Mills

2009-11-18T14:07:00.008Z

This tiny collection (four very short stories) is from the early period of Magnus Mills' so-far unassailably great literary career.

Value for money is one of few criticisms one could level at him - you pay 10p for every tiny, sparsely-covered page of this 1st of his 2 short story collections to date. But, as has often been observed by his fondest critics, Mills doesn't waste space: not one bit of it.

Hence why I was so shocked to spot a few glaring typographical errors in this second edition Acorn Book Company print; 'been' instead of 'being' (p 29) and 'quite' instead of 'quiet' (p 23). There are also a few Americanised spellings of words, which one could pass off as a stylistic choice, but seems clumsy and inappropriate in a collection I'm pretty sure was intended for the British market. (The price is in sterling.)

No, these few typographical errors didn't wholly ruin the stories they popped up in, but it's distinctly unprofessional and rather amazing that nobody has spotted them in such short and easy-to-read stories.

Anyway, that aside these follow the same dry, sparse, first-person narrator approach as his work is known to: character history is largely left as a mystery and the environments they find themselves in are familiar; working class urban banality (the title story), blustery rural holiday home bleakness (Hark The Herald) and parochial English oddness (The Comforter, At Your Service).

The almost unpleasant weirdness of first story, The Comforter, is unlike anything I can remember form Mills' work and actually put me off a little: it seemed a little too cheap a twist at the end at the expense of a very likable character - the sandwich-eating, stationary-enthusing Archdeacon who has trouble concentrating during meetings.

But fairness has never come into Mills' world and when one recalls the narrator of All Quiet On The Orient Express, trapped in a holiday that never begins; or the put-upon bus drivers in his recent novel, The Maintenance of Headway, always too late or early; or this collection's At Your Service's unpaid, eternal handyman to an unpredictable neighbour, working tirelessly and thanklessly just for a cup of tea; when one thinks of these poor saps, one can allow one's self a sad smile, knowing at least that these unfortunates have each other (and ourselves) for company.

The final story (Hark The Herald) is by far my favourite, being both sublime and ridiculous in the careful atmosphere of wintery isolation it evokes - one feels so sorry for the narrator - spending Christmas alone in a busy (yet weirdly always empty) guesthouse, always too late for the party - but in a way, one almost envies him his "splendid isolation" a little too. In fact, this could be the closest Mills comes to a ghost story, if you dare read anything but what's on the surface into his carefully-kept tales. But would that make our narrator the haunted or haunting?

Another narrator (in the title story) watches with equal parts interest and disinterest as a sheet of plastic gets caught on a roof by a train track opposite his house, and though annoyed by it, he actually finds he misses it when it is finally removed.

Mills' stories, even at this paltry length, deal in incredibly complex simplicities, or perhaps incredibly simple complexities? This isn't me trying to be clever, it's me being confounded and loving it.

It may only have given me minutes for my money, but what minutes!

Recent reads: Animal Farm - George Orwell, A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr, Through England on a Side-Saddle - Celia Fiennes

2009-11-09T13:11:00.008Z

Animal Farm - George Orwell

I've always admired Orwell but perhaps felt I was too old for this, it being one of a great number of books almost everyone read when they were 12 and I didn't. (See also Catch 22, Brave New World and, erm... Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas?)

Something had always put me off it: the concept seemed irritating and rather obvious. I couldn't imagine how any writer, let alone Orwell, who I've always thought of as a good fiction writer, but not a great one, could stretch the point to over 100 pages.

I was so wrong. This is by far my favourite Orwell book now, leapfrogging 'Homage...', '1984' and 'Road to Wigan Pier', not to mention the many others I haven't bothered reading. This is a fantastic story told with expert control and pacing; what's more, it's tremendously sad.

Some of the characters - e.g. Boxer, the dutiful work-horse, Napoleon, the duplicitous despot and the cynical donkey, whatever he's called - are absolutely fantastic. When we see Boxer's inevitable demise approaching, it's even sadder than when Snowball was stabbed in the back; the level of treachery between these 'comrades' clearly knows no bounds.

The Manor farm beasts remind one surprisingly well of how much (or how little) one remembers of A-Level history, and the specific events, anecdotally allegorised are a thrill to spot, but that aside, as a straight story with or without the cold, metallic bones of satire that house its sinewy flesh, this novel is a quite horrible beast and a more accurate reflection of the inherent unfairness of systems of government, labour and law I have never come across. It's really very moving.

A Month in the Country - J. L. Carr

A short but incredibly-detailed story of a war-damaged London-born loner restoring a painting in a church "up north", this novel is at once very unusual in its simplicity and stark portrayal of a snapshot in history, and truly "classic" (just like it informs me on the cover - thanks Penguin).

The characters - not least our subtly-humorous, embarrassed and somewhat damaged narrator - are almost impossibly-well realised for what little space they have to flourish, and the relationships between them all are unique and special, painting pictures in myriad styles running the gamut of human emotions.

The uncertainty of the 70something-year-old "I"'s relationship to this embryonic self is galvanised by the humdrum nature of the recollection juxtaposed with the obviously huge emotional significance of this brief period in his post-war youth.

Technically, I suppose, it's little more than a very uneventful love story, but it's an eminently-fine novel and truly deserving of its reputation as "unique" in the English language.

Through England on a Side-Saddle - Celia Fiennes

I actually read this ages ago but forgot to add it to my blog-based reading record so here it is; a diary or travel writing compendium penned by a well-to-do female in the seventeenth century, this is entirely unlike anything I've read before and undoubtedly a rare enough record from such far-flung times.

Ms. Fiennes is "a remarkable woman" by all accounts, and certainly comes across as brave and industrious and utterly fascinated by the world around her. (She rode side-saddle through every county in England, accompanied only by two servants.)

Her observations on the changing landscape of the nation are the biggest surprise here. One is taught to imagine the UK as a pretty stagnant place between the dark ages and the Industrial Revolution, but the massive developments that she sees by way of trade in dyes, tin, foodstuffs &c. tell a very different story.

Her knee-jerk likes and dislikes of whole cityfuls of folk make for very amusing reading also, and show a very human face behind the detached and considered observations of an expert. Her good opinion once lost, one presumes, is never got again, and one suspects she kept - some place apart from the main body of the diary - a league table of types of bread she bought and ate around the land, basing her opinion on the character of the bakers closely on the quality of said staple baked goods.

She also has a tendency to regularly refute the claims of road signs and insist (on at least five occasions, I'm sure) that a 6 mile road is, in fact, more like a 7 or an 8 mile road.

We've all been there!

The Wicker Man - Robin Hardy & Anthony Shaffer

2009-11-04T13:26:00.009Z

This may well be the first "book of the film" novel I've read, having long-maintained an elitist contempt for the very concept of the genre.

Pretentious, moi? Mais, oui! (Or something... French is a bit rusty.)

The very fact that most novels today are written filmically, with films in mind - from both a commercial and narrative perspective - regularly fills me with rage and despair and often forces my own writing into plotless cul-de-sacs of unreadable bullshit in a desperate attempt to avoid the tiresomely-familiar (if not necessarily easily-erected) aspects of the perfectly-constructed and adaptable story arcs that most forms of narrative will have in common with one another.

There was that book Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, though, wasn't there? And that was awesome. And that was a TV series first. I remember Gaiman recounting how he'd infuriated the TV folk he worked with (providing the script, of course) by regularly ending sentences with, "It's okay, I'll put that bit in the book," every time they had to cut a scene.

One wonders if Shaffer had a similar experience with his script; certainly the filmmakers were unhappy with the truncated b-movie cinema release, (though I still love it as a close 2nd to the director's cut: it was, after all, my introduction to the story).

First things first: this book is inexpertly written. It's full of superfluous bits of description and speech tags and (most heinously of all) adverbs. There was even a long sentence somewhere (too many little paper bookmarks to locate it), broken up by parentheses, that was utterly nonsensical and had somehow bypassed umpteen editors to make it to this 2000 reprint edition.

Still, the technical amateurism does not truly impede on well-paced and sometimes pleasantly-descriptive storytelling. The world os Summerisle, as in the film, is very much alive and sensually overpowering. You can almost hear the steam organ, taste the bitter, smell the pickled foreskins.

And, crucially, the scenes that are not in the film are excellent: possibly the best here. Maybe it's because they don't carry the association both ways; there's a lot of directly-filmic description taken from very memorable scenes, and it jars. And although there's more sex in the book, there's less titillation. When Sergeant Howie searches the village, for example, the woman he comes across in the bath is no Hammer Horror beauty given a few lines to get her tits out (sorry Ingrid Pitt, but it wasn't one of your best roles, was it?) but an obese, sex-crazed lunatic. And there's the three old biddies with the "priapic chair", who come across as borderline insane, very creepy and yet oddly touching. They weren't in the film and while they're a bit Terry Pratchett they do give us an insight into what the sexually-liberated pagan society is like for OAPs as well as a secondary insight into the character of Lord Summerisle's father.

The opening chapter is entirely absent from the film, too; it was replaced (in the director's cut) with a brief exchange between two (less-Christian) coppers at Howie's expense, but fell short of giving the troubled policeman's prudish persona any added depth. In the book, Howie is not just a God-botherer: he's a liberal episcopalian, a staunch (and institutionally-controversial) socialist, and sexually repressed to a point that the film can only hint at.

He also loves birdwatching.

There are numerous other characters who are either expanded upon or introduced by Hardy's novel; a particularly significant one, though a difficult one to pin down, is Beech. Beech is a miscellaneous nutjob whose mental health conditions preclude him from a normal involvement in community life: instead he guards a "sacred grove" as a self-proclaimed king. He figures in one of Howie's chief theories (side-note: the 'theories' aren't given room in the film and they add to the mystery both of the plot and of Howie himself). He also sprawls himself across the closing scenes, declaring his allegiance to Howie as the unfortunate policeman burns to death, much like some Shakespearean 'problem' character, say, Mercutio or Fortinbras, he is at once very convenient and very inconvenient. I rather like him.

The story in this form encourages the reader to be more of a participant in the tale rather than merely an observer. And for once, I found myself wanting Howie to survive; his character is much more well-rounded in Hardy's rendering, being allowed - as he couldn't possibly be onscreen - to have numerous potentially-conflicting core values that inform his idea of morality, he is questioning himself more often than he wants to be.

As a novel in its own right, it's an excellent thriller/horror/mystery. Having read it with 22+ views of the film in mind, it'll never lessen my enjoyment of the screen version of the story, but for me it serves as pretty solid evidence of the superiority of the medium, even more so than any one of the many crap cinema adaptations of favourite books I've seen.

Why I Hate Americans

2009-10-30T16:32:00.002Z

On 13th September 1997 at 11:38 am PST I was urinating in a toilet in a McDonald's in San Francisco when a man of about twice my age (coincidentally, the age I am now) complemented me on the gold-rimmed sunglasses I'd bought the previous day in Safeway.

"Cool sunglasses!" he said.

They weren't "cool"; he was lying. I knew they weren't cool because I'd chosen them for that exact reason.

"Thanks," I said, my heart palpitating like a bullfrog.

"Cool shorts too!" he said.

They weren't "cool"; they were Lycra: one half black, one half multi-coloured neons with an indecipherable overlaid black pattern. He was lying.

It dawned on me before the last drop of urine escaped from my penis that I was in the presence of a paedophile.

Ever since that day I have had an extremely logical and justified hatred of Americans.

Fairy Tales From The Balkans - Joan Haslip

2009-10-30T13:48:00.003Z

Apart from being a delightful physical specimen, as I enthused earlier in the week, this is a splendid little collection of very European fairy tales whose many ingredients will be familiar to anybody with even a passing familiarity (can one have one of those?) with the genre. And, let's face it, that pretty much includes everyone who has been a child at some point: so everyone except goalkeepers*.

The names and places change but the stories are similar: almost all of those included in Fairy Tales From The Balkans feature three brothers, the first two being lazy, useless bastards and the third being brave, beautiful and bloody good at completing impossible tasks with the aid of, for example, magical animals. Naturally I can empathise with this familial situ, but for the fact that I was blessed with a younger brother to upset the synchronicity.

Anyway - the places are Balkan, or at least the ones I recognise are. And the names are awesome. Check these for some story names:

'The Tzarina Loveliness Inexhaustible'
'A Pavilion Neither On Heaven Nor Earth'
'Bash Tchelik (or Real Steel)'

The first is very Monty Python, the second sounds like a song by an obscure post rock band and the third is surely a Norwegian Black Metal act. Awesome, I say again.

By far my favourite of this bunch, though, is 'The Grateful Eagle', whose titular being is a motif in many tales, but whose role in this one seems unique and all the more wonderful for it. The tale contains so many tests, trials and tribulations that it has the feel of a distilled saga: we have a hero for the first half, then his son takes over, but the eagle is there throughout and grateful throughout, except for a little while at the beginning when he drops our hero repeatedly into the ocean to punish him for what he was about to do earlier on when the tale began. (Shoot an eagle who didn't want to be shot, don't you know.)

The tale also features an angry sea god who keeps dishing out impossible tasks to our hero and threatening to chop off his head if he fails them. Dude, you're a sea god: chop off whosoever's head you want to for Pete's sake.

There are three magical helpers who enter and leave the story at the convenience of our hero's predicaments, too; Eater Up, Drinker Up and Crackling Frost (guess what their powers are?) are very reminiscent of Long, Broad, and Sharp Eyes, the X-men-style super heroes that help out a young prince in one of Božena Němcová's popular Czech tales. Oh, and did I mention it has mermaids in it? Yes, this was back when Montenegro was part of Serbia.

Actually it was shortly before Yugoslavia was formed, when this was published. But the tale no doubt dates back long before that. Still, the idea of a greater Serbia (greater than all its neighbouring countries) has existed for a while. And I'm told by a reliable source that the reason Slobodan Milošević was such a £$%& is because he subscribed to an archaic and frankly disturbing romantic ideal of Serbian nationalism as opposed to being all nice and liberal like our politicians.

If I read that Misha Glenny book past the Karađorđe bit I'd probably have some idea what I was talking about.

Anyway, the nuances are there in many of the tales, and the uniquely Serbian character, present in a few tales here, is surely best expressed through the following line, used to chastise an overly-curious wife:

"Come over here my woman, and if you really want to know the reason why I laughed, I shall give you the biggest beating of your life."

She backs away and I QUOTE: "They all lived happily ever after".

!

!!!

Anyway, what else did we learn?

* "There is nothing like whistling to keep one's spirits up."

* There are alligators in the Balkans with two heads.

* Serbian faeries are called 'feela' (singular) and in 1945 it was expected that readers would know this without having to have it explained to them.

* Japan isn't the only place lovers turn into birds to escape the wrath of their parents.

Anyway, I enjoyed this book so much that I am no longer at war with Serbia.

That's all, folks!

*"Goalkeepers aren't born until their mid-thirties." - Jimmy Hill, some time ago when I used to watch football.

The Maintenance Of Headway - Magnus Mills

2009-10-29T13:39:00.004Z

Having spent a reasonable (not unreasonable) portion of my time of late bemoaning the 'destination change' chance card so oft drawn by early morning bus drivers (or indeed bus drivers at any time I might choose to travel), what better time to read The Maintenance of Headway: the most explicitly bus-driver-related novel yet written by Magnus Mills, former bus driver and celebrated author of sublimely mundane plotless novellas high on dark humour and bereft of most of the ingredients you find in a normal story?

Note the question mark at the end of that last sentence. It may have been a long, drawn-out poorly constructed sentence, but it WAS a question too.

Anyway, The Scheme For Full Employment was about van driving and had an overarching theme of an ethos or philosophy being enforced on willfully-simplistic working folk who want nothing more than to finish a little early and have more time for things they like: like not working, going home early, and cups of tea.

On the face of things this new Mills novel is pretty bloody similar to that one. Only this time the philosophy is (again titular) The Maintenance Of Headway: a fancy term for the latest interpretation of the driving force (yes, DRIVING force) behind a city bus service; the running late Vs running early issue combating the impossibility of running on time.

We are reminded at numerous times by the drivers as they sit and discuss the merits - or otherwise - of this philosophy; they talk of the bus driving thing as a 'business' and analyse it with that understanding, until one of them points out that it's actually "a service".

Indeed! This is exactly what I regularly point out in fits of rage directed against numerous media of public transport.

That aside, there are the usual tremendously subtle characters with the most normal names imaginable (first names for drivers, last names for their superiors), and the final gag that the (kind of) plot leads up to is pleasantly anticlimactic.

The content is familliar in its reference points, yet curiously evasive with regard to specifics. I cant for the life of me, from the descriptions, work out exactly which London bus route Mills is referring to - if indeed it's a real one, and it could well be - but the substitution of, for example, 'Oxford Street' with 'the bejeweled thoroughfare' is typically quaint and tongue-in-cheek.

Frankly, it's everything I love about Mills' writing. Explorers Of The New Century was excellent, (most memorably, the argument between said explorers about how to pronounce "scone") , but I prefer Mills distilled to this level of simplicity: a book you can read in a couple of bus journeys, as I did, which should soften the blow of the inevitable mid-morning announcement: "The destination of this bus has changed".

The bigger questions, which one traditionally expects to be raised by NOVELS in their £1.75 Penguin Classic, thick-as-a-brick, beauty, are all present and correct here, they just invite your input and waste no paragraphs, no sentences, in sermonising or spelling it all out for you. I'm not even sure if this is technically long enough to be classed as a novel, but it's worth its asking price.

Magnus Mills' greatest talent, and one which few other writers come close to possessing, is his economical approach to language: he can say in a few lines of dialogue what it would take lesser writers a chapter to convey.

He ought to be a household name by now.

Just Another Inch on my Beard

2009-10-28T13:49:00.002Z

Just Another Inch on my Beard

My mother married for love and paid for it with cash,
She was a sucker for a man with a well-kept moustache.
He was out the door by the time I was four,
When she tried to stop him, he put her on the floor.

It didn't mean that much to me.
It didn't mean that much to me.

My daddy died in the war - not 'a' war, but 'the' -
Never took the time to tell the facts of life to me.
All he left were his debts and his diary:
Nothing much there to inspire me.

He didn't mean that much to me.
He didn't mean that much to me.

He was just another lesson I learned,
Just another bridge that I burned,
Just another figure I feared,
Just another inch on my beard.

I left for the city when I was old enough to leave,
With as much money from my mother's purse as I could thieve.
I fell in with some artists from the modern school,
They told me the cut of my coat was "cool".

It didn't mean that much to me.
It didn't mean that much to me.

I said "I've coughed up greater works of art than that.
"Your brush strokes are clumsy and your model's fat."
I got an awkward silence and a dirty look.
I put my fist through the canvas and slung my hook.

They didn't mean that much to me.
They didn't mean that much to me.

That was just another inch on my beard,
Just another inch on my beard,
Just another lolly I licked,
Just another bucket I kicked.

I set sail for the new world at the end of that fall,
In a suit that did not fit on a ship that was not tall.
I saw a sailor making love with a manatee.
He swore it was a mermaid, such is man's vanity.

It does't mean that much to me.
It does't mean that much to me.

The crew all died of a disease that I couldn't contract.
I told it to the harbour master as a matter of fact.
I found myself in a new-built, New York jail,
With no man or woman known who would pay my bail.

And that really pissed me off.

But that was just another inch on my beard,
Just another inch on my beard,
Just another thorn in my side,
Just another daydream that died.

When they couldn't convict me they sent me away
And I lived to love and laugh and leer another day,
Until the slave ship I sailed on fell to mutiny.
To walk the plank or join the ranks: the latter suited me.

It didn't mean that much to me
'Cause nothing means that much to me.

I got tribal tattoos and threw away my shoes,
I lost myself to gold and blood, gunpowder and booze.
I lost an ear in Veracruz, it hurt like a bitch.
I've finally sucumbed to a gash I can't stitch.

It does't mean that much to me.
It does't mean that much to me.

It's just another lump in my throat,
Just another stain on my coat,
Just another milestone I neared,
Just another inch on my beard.

It's just another inch on my beard,
Just a hellbound vessel I steered,
When I was wounded all the angels cheered,
Having snipped the final inch from my beard.

Picture from whitneybee's flickr stream.

Lilith's Cave: Jewish Tales Of The Supernatural - Howard Schwartz

2009-10-26T14:00:00.003Z

This collection of myths and fairy tales was one of the many listed in the back of that Demon book I read in Spain earlier this year. It must be the first time I've consulted a bibliography with the express intention of expanding my collection in a specific area.

Fortunately it proved a very sound decision.

This sizeable collection retold by a Jewish American scholar - fondly described by someone I've never heard of as "an American Hans Christian Andersen" - is a wonderful insight into the values, fears, customs and superstitions of a fascinating group of people. These may have been collected with the American market in mind, but there's nothing but the English language in the way of people from every nationality enjoying these tales and learning a lot from them.

The source material comes from all around the Mediterranean, the middle east, northern Europe and even further afield, but the greater part is made up by stories taken from the oral and written tradition of the eastern European Jewish communities.

Some of the more substantial tales like 'The Speaking Head' and 'The chronicle of Ephraim' are sweeping majestic works as rich and allegorical as anything in the fairytale kingdom - they could well be watered down and spangled up to make excellent Disney (or perhaps Disney Pixar) films if anyone had the mind to do so.

Others, such as the title story, 'Lilith's Cave' (not Lilith's only appearance by a long shot) and the troubling 'Helen of Troy' are fascinating studies into the darker side of male sexuality and the line between chivalry/tradition and misogyny.

The general themes of temptation and evil come up regularly in these stories, and good versus evil is a simple and powerful undercurrent to most of the tales: however rich and fantastical they may be, they are almost all deeply religious, and must have raised many law-abiding, God-fearing Jewish children between them.

A large proportion of the tales in the middle of the book focus on the Jews of Prague and their awesomely-powerful superheroesque Rabbi Judah Loew, a.k.a. The Maharal, a real historical figure from the 16th-16th century, famous as the main character in the golem myth (written some hundred years after his death) but also included as a benign and powerful community father-figure in many of these stories. He is an awesome man and more powerful than mortals in fairy tales normally get to be; his presence is almost an inevitable calming influence: a foretold victory of good over evil. What a guy.

His tomb is in the old Jewish cemetery that (for some reason) I never visited in the six months I lived in Prague. Oh well.

Anyway - this collection is thoroughly and heartily recommended for anyone with an interest in folklore, mythology, Judaism, or even the fantasy and short story genres. One of the finest collections I've read this year.

Also, for anyone with an interest in zombies, necromancy etc: there's plenty of it about in Jewish folklore. So, yeah - have fun!

Amazon Kindle Vs. Fairy Tales From The Balkans (1945)

2009-10-26T11:32:00.003Z

My 'Fairy Tales From the Balkans' book was published during WW2, reprinted in the year it ended, and (at some point) given to a young girl called Pauline who lived on Pont Street in Ashington, Northumberland - just north of Newcastle Upon Tyne.

The paper is old enough to have that grey-brown tinge. It smells decades older than me because it is. There are illustrations in colour and black and white and none of the these, or the text, have faded in the 50+ years of its existence. Having lost its dust cover, it is light tan with a dark blue image, and a previous owner's name ('Pauline') written on biro rules. It somehow found its way to an online book store in Brighton and I ordered it from them via Amazon. It arrived this morning in an unremarkable brown jiffy bag. One remaining blue stamp on the inside cover from '66 indicates it was a library book once, but not where.

It is fairly big for a book. I am happy for it to take up so much space in my life. It's meant to; it is a book. Though it can be scanned and hopefully has been, its full meaning cannot be reproduced by the honk of shit pictured above: Amazon's Kindle, which is a couple of hundred quid and looks like something you'd measure your sugar intake with.

You cannot scan the smell of it, or the feel of the pages. You cannot scan its soul.

Once you can, get back to me, and I'll scan you, then stab you to death to prove some kind of point about man's relationship with technology.

And will you thank me? No. Probably not.

Why Marry? - Sybil Neville-Rolfe

2009-10-16T13:01:00.003Z

A treatise on proper behaviour amongst the young folk of the day and a speculative look at the changing face of Britain's sexual politics between the wars, this little gem of a book is both a delightful peek into a bygone era and a measurement of the progress made in the last three quarters of a century.

All this talk of dancing till 3 am and driving down to Brighton to take the water (scandalous!) paints a very pretty picture of society at the time of writing, and Sybil Neville-Rolfe uses her position as (what seems to be) some kind of them-days agony aunt to ladies of all ages to give a vivid portrayal of the hopes, fears, concerns and demands of women (and men, by association) of all ages and generations.

She speaks of changing attitudes towards young people spending time together outside of marriage, the controversial though at-the-time very popular notion of the "modern" marriage (or 'open relationship') and of the rise of "trial marriages" ('cohabiting') and how these strange practices went down amongst the more traditional parents.

At times the book reads like a guide or manual for young people - telling them what to expect on their adolescences, relationships and honeymoons: talking of nocturnal emissions, hymens, and glands: lots and lots of talk about glands.

In fact, the introduction serves to illustrate that Neville-Rolfe's chief concern with 'Why Marry?' was to bring the latest scientific (biological) research to the public, applying it to the understanding of sexual relations and the changing attitudes theretowards in the 30s.

The fairly liberal, level-headed (and unsexy) way in which Neville-Rolfe discusses sex (and at some length) is often tempered with phrases like "The need for practice, however, does not imply that the physical act should be undertaken with undue frequency". What exactly is unduly frequent is not discussed, it is, however, pointed out that women and men both expect and require different things from sex, and the specifics of this are bravely hinted at if not explicitly advised upon. Really, this does seem more like a women's magazine of the day as opposed to a scientific journal, much of the time, and that's not to its detriment.

And, crucially, Neville-Rolfe argues for a more open approach to sexual matters - more discourse between parent and child, as well as more peer-assistance in dispelling the myths of sex that - in some cases - persist to this day.

Though one hopes we're beyond trying to cure syphilis by raping a virgin. One hopes.

The only bitter taste comes from with the arrival of the subject of "friendships between women" and when they go too far.

Coming from a woman who (according to my research) wrote sympathetically on the subject of the many women deprived of male companionship as a cause of the great wars of the early 20th century (probably the 1st more than the 2nd?), she is very, very down on lesbians, and homosexuality in general.

"Those who are physically attracted to members of the same sex are abnormal... socially & racially very undesirable", is one exemplary sentence of many that are really rather shocking to the modern reader.

I had grown up thinking how far we had to go in confronting our own homophobia as a society, but I had no idea quite how far we'd come in less than 100 years - at the time of writing it seems to have been a common scientific viewpoint that homosexuality is undesirable and a biological abnormality or fault - and so, this attitude informs her writing. One can't quite blame her for that, though it's tempting.

Still, she talks much about changing morals and how it is the privilege (and responsibility) of the younger generation to form and shape the moral makeup of society marching on into the 20th century, so if we have by now (I hope we have) come to accept the spectrum of sexuality as within what is natural (or at least acceptable), perhaps this is because of a general mellowing of morals mirroring the last days of Rome (that we hear so much about), or perhaps it is down to a latter day shift of focus from the importance of "society" to the right of the "individual". Who knows? But we've regressed before - Neville-Rolfe chastises the Victorians (quite rightly) for uneducating young women in the ways of sex and generally making things hard for them (oo-er). So what happens next, as Ms. Rolfe stated at the end of 'Why Marry?', is really up to us, each and every one.

I for one think it's a shame that we've lost some of the mystery of sex with the more prim and proper approaches to sexual questions favoured perhaps by those much older than Ms. Rolfe herself, but if that's the price we pay for a more liberal society, so be it.

Ramble, bramble, itch and scratch

2009-10-08T18:00:00.003Z

I've been meaning to write this for a while so the fact that it's National poetry Day seemed like a good excuse, because it's a poem:

An Interest In Cartography

When I was young I conquered all that I surveyed:
Climbed cliffs in school shoes,
Dug pits with picks and spades
In the corners of the garden where it was allowed.
Shouted out loud what I liked and listened
As the wounded hillsides
Took split seconds to agree with me,
And seconded my sentiments
With seemingly sentient glee.

Have or have-not haversack,
I'd ramble, bramble, itch and scratch.

With my mapmaker's eye
I made mincemeat of the sky
And moulded clouds to suit my moods:
I'd play with clay and plaster,
Draw colours from the sunset
With the best of my tools,
Make fools of weather forecasters
And clasp cold breezes to my chest.
Braving thunder, lightning, rain,
I came home wet-through and full of wonder,
Investing my ambition in a golden net,
In which to catch words,
With which to build a model village of my world.

What happened to that plan?
I half-forget.

But I unfurled my failures as sails
And crossed oceans of opportunity,
Still as mill-ponds,
Rowing, always rowing,
Showing no signs of flagging
Beneath ever changing colours.
Full of failure, primed with pride,
Fixed to take a lion-tamer for a bride
And woo her with my wounded paws
Upon her knees, if she should please
To pick the pricking thorns from out my side.

When I was young I could begin my sentences
Without "when I was young".

I'm no great cook, could I be Scott?
Or just a lost and lowly sot
Without a jot of jotted lines and dots
To press me a forget-me-not?

I was a bored explorer when I found you:
An amateur cartographer,
With a shaky hand and blurred vision,
I tried to scale your face
But my placement lacked precision.
I was snow-blind to your behind,
Mistook your skin, at times, for mine,
Heeded nary a warning sign,
Did my level best not to depress, but to impress,
Confused your mountains with breasts.

I stood and waited by a frozen lake,
Making out mirage mistakes,
Blanketed in yesteryears' pelt,
Trying to focus on feelings felt,
Waiting for the footprints I saw
To either thaw and melt or fill:
These paths to overgrow,
These ill inklings to kill.

I take comfort in cardigans.
"If you want me I'm your country."

But every ashen emperor,
Is forever saying sorry.

Am I a Roman?
Abusing and confusing an existing infrastructure?
Am I the quarryman? Are you the quarry?
If I straighten your communications,
Between your axes and projections,
Will I be able, then, to navigate
The surface of your skin in straight directions?
In the pools that fools call eyes
Will I see my own reflections?

Are you now my land?
Could I raise my flag on you?
Or are you always someone else's country?
Am I only passing through?
Am I Gypsy or a Jew?

Am I making light of you?
Can I do right by you?

I'd like to be complicit in your upkeep:
Patrol your borders, see your sights,
Because you keep me up all night
Even when your lights are out
Or when they're on but no one's home,
When your sacred rivers have run dry,
Or your pleasure domes are overgrown.
I'd like to feel if there's some upset
To your environmental make-up
That it's partly down to my faults
And I'm due some kind of shake-up,
And I'm learning all your ways
And your many moods amaze me.

I try not to let it phase me
But I know I've got so far to go.

When you breathe a certain way
You blow me away.
When you laugh your loudest
You shake me to my bones.
When I miss you,
When I cannot kiss you,
When you block the signal on my phone,
You're as here and gone as a midnight train.
When you cry you're a monsoon,
And when the rains have come and gone
Sometimes the floods remain
(On the plane, in the main,)
And a rot sets in to everything
And I fear what was further than far
Has now come near.

When I lament the many eyes,
Some perhaps less green than mine,
That wondered at your landscape,
Ventured through its scenes sublime,
Before our climates climbed together,
And our twin breaths intertwined:
When I curse the tardiness that echoes
In my expedition's every hollow rhyme,
I can only bring to mind,
Can just remind myself a second time,
That only measurements exist in time.
Not moments, momentous or otherwise,
Not flutters of the heart
Or hard-luck lullabies,
Only arrivals and departures –
Be they early, be they late –
Only numbers, units, digits, dates,
Not the irregular contractions of
A muscle pumping blood,
Only grudges, greed and graves.
Not love.

The Gypsies - Jean-Paul Clébert

2009-10-06T12:33:00.006Z

Gypsies: you can't live with 'em...

It's rare that I finish a work of non-fiction, let alone one that was written before I was born.

Charles Duff's translation of Jean-Paul Clébert's 1961 attempt at a cultural and historical explanation of the much-mythologised Gypsy peoples of Europe is one such rare example.

Even though it took me WEEKS if not MONTHS, I am glad I read 'The Gypsies'.

Here's the opening paragraph of a much more of-the-time review, the first page of which I found online, but which is sadly uncredited. I will comment on it by way of arriving at my own opinion:

"I have found it difficult to review this book fairly. Clébert is obviously very dedicated to his subject, perhaps too deeply involved in it."1

"His researches have been painstaking and exhaustive. But the book is very badly organised and the writing obscure, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility."2

1: Presumably the reviewer is referring to the often-brought-up concern of Clébert's regarding discrimination against the Gypsies in Europe through the ages. In recording the people and their way of life - noting the differences between their own moral code and 'ours', particularly - he often seems to be a wilful apologist for them, and while he seeks to de-mythologise, he is clearly very attracted to them as a people, not least their women, about whom he is often very complimentary.

2: I think this is unfair: the first few chapters (reasonably described in this review as "the best") are historical and chronological. What follows is a series of chapters focusing on customs, trades, practices etc. and as a study on their way of life I can't imagine a more digestible presentation outside of fictionalising the content or at the very least arranging or framing the whole with some quasi-historical exploration of the Gypsy 'journey', which would in itself imply a more accurate knowledge of the historical aspect of the question than is (or certainly was) available. Oh, and, there are a couple of whimsical sentences near the beginning of the book, but only a couple: MOST OF THIS IS SOLID FACT AFTER (SLIGHTLY LESS) SOLID FACT.

Anyway, while I always feel non-fiction books of this nature descend into monumental lists after a while, there was much of interest in this noble tome and I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to know more about the Gypsy people, who - let's face it - don't tend to get a look in as far as school history syllabi go, except for a brief cameo as the Jews' understudies in the holocaust.

Particularly worthy of note, for pub quizzes at leas, is the assertion of Clébert that gypsies fall into three main groups: Kalderash, Gitanos and Manush.

While he does tend to sweep all the spares under the Kalderash umbrella, it is worth noting that the terms 'Roma' or 'Romany' , (which are NOT related to or derived from the word 'Romanian'*), are umbrella terms above these three, so the ethnic and cultural variation between, say, an Andalucian Gitana from north-Africa and an eastern-European Hungarian Kalderash Gypsy, could well be as much as you'd expect between a Swede and a Turk.

Although they may both smell bad, eat hedgehogs, sell you a shit horse, steal your watch or piss on your cabbage patch.

(I'm not being racist - these are facts!)

Particularly of interest to myself was the section on Gypsy folklore (because that's what I'm particularly interested in), so if you ever get a chance to read up on the medical demonology of the Gypsies of Transylvania (pp183-186 in my '67 Penguin edition pictured above) do it! Do it right away!

It's full of sentences like this:

"[The demon] advised the king to cook fish in an ass's milk and then put some drops of this love potion into the sexual organ of his wife while she was asleep... Nine days after this embrace, Ana [his wife] gave birth to a female demon, Lilyi the Viscous - her body was that of a fish with a man's head, from each side of which hung nine sticky filaments."

Gross!

*As far as I've gathered it, Romania comes from Roman (Latin), meaning, well... 'Roman', and 'Roma' comes from 'Rom' (some form of Gypsy - I forget) meaning 'people'.

Myths of Creation, # 456

2009-10-01T08:27:00.003Z

"One day God decided to make a man. He took a sour lime, made a statue and took it to bake in his oven. Then he went away for a walk and ended by forgetting his work. When he returned the man was burned, quite black. This was the ancestor of the Negroes. God began again but this time he was so afraid to let time slip by that he opened the oven too soon; the man was still quite pale. This was the ancestor of the Whites. God tried a third experiment, which this time succeeded; the last man was baked to a turn, well browned, a nice tan-colour. This was the ancestor of the Gypsies."

From Jean-Paul-Clébert's The Gypsies.

Henna My Hair To Forget About You

2009-09-29T19:16:00.007Z

Dyeing my hair again and - by extension - my face again, my hands again, my lungs again, my towel again, as I do every payday if I can.

I like having an unnatural colour for hair and I like that 90% of the time I forget that other people will know as soon as they meet me that this isn't my real hair and that I must dye it and therefore they'll immediately judge me and stuff.

But I don't enjoy the experience.

I enjoy the ritual I suppose; I don't have many rituals: not monthly ones, specifically, at any rate. But I hate the smell and the taste of bleach.

Controversial views, as always, here on the blog of me, Alexander Velky.

Bleach is for people who don't have time, who opt for the immediacy of the chemical world. And although it isn't very, very cheap, it is readily available and perfectly reasonable at under a tenner a month.

In Prague, during what if I was a twat (your call) and if it had lasted twelve months (as opposed to six) would be called my gap year, I used to wake up some days at 5, cake my whole head in home-mixed henna, wrap my whole head in plastic, poke some breathing holes with a screwdriver and lie back, arms crossed on my plastic-wrapped chest (yes, I dyed that hair too), reposed like some kind of religious person from somewhere East of Clacton On Sea but West of Tuvalu, and I'd daydream, then actually dream, about the wonderful postmodern novels I'd complete as soon as I got home and felt ready to distill these incomparably enlightening experiences I was having in this foreign country, so far from my comfort zone, in a near-airtight windowless cupboard on a thin mattress inside an old wardrobe beneath a rumpled gaffa-taped picnic blanket, with my Matalan lumberjack coat as a pillow.

Yes, prying onlooker, you are right to feel awestruck and insignificant. Yay, what things I've seen.

And it wasn't quite a mind-altering near-death, mescaline-orgy on a hot air balloon over the Nazca lines, but, you know - it was my extended foreign holiday, sort-of-gap-year, sort-of job thing.

And I made the least of it.

And I miss the width of time I had to do simple, pointless things like dye my hair in a comfortable manner, and not burn my skin, eyes, lungs &c.

Yours, begrudgingly, having wasted only half the time before I have to get in the shower,

A. (The) Velky.

This Week's Blog:

2009-09-22T15:47:00.000Z

There is no blog this week.

The World And Other Places - Jeanette Winterson

2009-08-25T12:39:00.004Z

"In the style of postmodernism" is a phrase I wouldn't readily associate with any of Winterson's work, although I guess it must be true or it (The World And Other Places) wouldn't be defined as such on The Internet.

Her work has always surpassed categorisation for me, even when wilfully non-linear or weird in terms of plot. As far as I'm concerned The Passion was as much an epic and tragic romance as it was an experiment in how one can tell a story in print. Sexing The Cherry was as much a miniature saga as it was an exercise in deconstructing fairytales with a feminist scalpel. The Powerbook was... I don't remember so well - but it was still bloody good, I recall that much.

The stuff in this collection lives in both worlds too - there are solid objects reflected in water, and it may be the reflections we read, but every story here has a base in something tangible and lovable. It's hardly Samuel Beckett.

Winterson's arsenal includes not only some of the most bountiful and beautiful language in modern English fiction, but also some of the most duplicitous. The stories are telling you things you aren't even aware of. How does one know? Trust one: one knows, one does.

You don't necessarily feel how you expect to feel at the end of each sentence. You begin to wonder if how you expected to feel was not how you were expected to feel.

Jeanette Winterson's high art take on romance can be a bit poetically exhausting at times. The narrator who is just a bit too emo to have a pet (24-Hour Dog) gets on my nerves, and the entirety of The Poetics of Sex, while intriguing and well-written (well, duh), is a bit too disjointed to stand out amongst snatches of more complete and satisfying stories.

Orion is a classic-Winterson "cover version" of a myth I have heard of but not read. But I'm sure it appeared in Lighthousekeeping, which, if it did, sort of pisses me off a bit, because even though her novels often include what are basically short stories embedded in them like minerals, one likes to think their positioning therein is as careful as her choice of words on the next level of detail, and that their contextualisation empowers them: not that they could be cut out and magnetised to the fridge, although any number of her sentences could shine in such isolation.

Ho-hum.

Both the Disappearances are truly wonderful; 1 is a romantic work of fantasy (or speculative fiction, if you must) in a world where sleep is being phased out and the narrator is swimming against the tide: 2 is a mini-gothic marvel in which an isolated aristocrat is the tour guide in his own crumbling estate and becomes a slave to his genealogy.

Psalms, another pet story, is Oranges...-era Winterson (i.e. as 'straight' as her stories get) and a great snapshot of an early genius and the early genius' short-lived turtle.

The Green Man and Newton both explore isolated dysfunctional males struggling to fit in to disturbingly-normal environments. The former, particularly, is infused with a melancholy longing for something extraordinary in an ordinary existence: places other than the world, if you will. It's my favourite, though it's one of the saddest: in its singleminded portreyal of the man in a marriage turned cold it reminds us just how lonely an existence we can carve out for ourselve if we aren't careful.

Unsurprisingly, as all her stories are shortish and I've long-admired her work, Jeanette Winterson is now my favourite writer of short stories.

Rejoice!

This compilation (?) was published ten bloody years ago, B.T.W.

The Time Traveler's Wife - Book Vs Film

2009-08-20T10:15:00.009Z

It must have been a good book because my mother recommended it to me: she only gives me good books. And I bought it (2nd hand - obviously) for a brother's girlfriend for Christmas.

It was a few years ago, so I don't remember the details. But it was a greater work than its perceived status as a Richard & Judy Book Club Classic suggests. I cast no aspersions as to the taste of either Richard or Judy, but it's often suggested to me that a book with their stamp of approval (or Oprah's if you're American) is blessed with popularity and cursed with... well, popularity.

As though great fiction, like great wine, should not be consumed by the masses. As though, perhaps, the finest books should be too expensive for the common people.

It's a love story with a twist: this is how it's marketed and it's as close as you'll come to the truth in six simple words. It's a story about the love between two people and the curious (and highly unlikely) condition of he, which makes him accidentally time travel (usually backwards but later forwards), often at the most inopportune moments and often with hilarious consequences! (That last bit's not true, F.Y.I. It was a joke!)

When I read the book I remember taking away a sense of the sadness of love - as, perhaps, best distilled in the opening line of Jeanette Winterson's novel, Written On The Body: "Why is the measure of love loss?"

The saddest thing of all is (look away now if you don't want to see the results) knowing how it all ends before it all ends. He has no idea how it will begin, though she does, because he has been visiting her (via the medium of time travel) since she was a little girl.

The cynic would say it all starts out a bit paedo, but anyone with an ounce of interest in the subject matter will probably interpret this as

a) A convenient plot device employed by an adequate writer to set what would otherwise be a very standard romantic narrative apart from the myriad other titles.

b) A convenient plot device employed by an adequate writer to illustrate (or visualise) the all-encompassing desire of love.

The thing is (this is the thing): there is an aspect of love, perhaps a selfish aspect, that wishes to consume or rather contain its subject/object. Our hero (if we see him as such) is no Dr. Who, but he straddles years if not dimensions.

For the most part, he's time's bitch rather than its lord, and yet the benefits of his "condition" (other than winning the lottery, which happens, obviously*) are that he is - even unbeknownst to himself - growing up with his lover and being her "best friend" from a very early age, sharing her first kiss (though it is not his) and preparing her for their first meeting in his own chronology, where she will be prepared to save him from his crummy alcoholic life as a depressive librarian.

The wish-fulfillment aspect of this not-so-super power is sufficient that it appeals to both men and women, which is part of its charm, I suppose.

Still, being a romantic, soppy affair, it's not all idyllic cuddles shared between a stubbly fortysomething and his prepubescent love on a picnic blanket in a spring meadow. (Easy now.) There are obviously tensions between jealous (or perhaps just fatigued) friends who have to deal with Mr Time Travel and his frankly annoying habit/disability. And he ends up nude and disgruntled in enough public places for him to have to do manly stuff like kicking doors in and getting in fights for no real reason.

Incident by incident, there's nothing great here, and it relies heavily on the oft-employed modern trick of using a very standard narrative but confusing the order of events so as to blind the reader to its simplicity. Of course, what with time travel being literally impossible to fathom, Audrey Niffenegger has an added ace up her sleeve (not literally of course, ra ra) because the cheap plot device is immediately transformed into a genuinely perplexing complicity of brainmelting illogic: he goes forward in time and meets his daughter, she tells him what she's called, he goes back and so that's what they call her.

Does. Not. Compute.

What if she had a shit name (well, she does, but forget that), and wanted a different one? The more you think about it, the more the real world with its infinite range of consequence and multi-billion parallel universes ceases to exist here and everything is reduced to the absolute law of fate.

You cannot escape. You cannot save your mother from that car crash; you cannot say 'No' when he asks you to marry him; you cannot halt the passage of that sperm you issued last month.

Depending on your frame of mind this could be incredibly creepy and annoying, or very romantic and sweet.

I'll settle with interesting, because it's what makes the book (or shall I say the story) truly worthwhile for me.

It's more final than Final Destination. Not least because we don't anticipate a sequel.

(Oh wait, his £$%&ing daughter can time travel. And she's really annoying. GREAT.)

Actually, she's annoying in the film; in the book it was that relationship that bore the real emotional weight as far as I was concerned, because while we have the perspective of both lovers and get to share in their tenderness and frustration etc. all we get from the daughter is a very sad and mature (and sad because it is mature) outlook on her parents' lives and the implications on her own existence.

And did the film differ in any significant way from its source material?

Of course not - that's why I'm sort of flitting between the two accidentally; this book was a classic example of the sort of book Jeanette Winterson would condemn (correct me if I'm wrong, please, Jeanette) as being written as though it were a film. It's written as though by a camera, despite being in the first person. It's very visual, despite dealing with emotions: in fact, it deals with emotions as a camera does, by panning and swirling and shifting in and out of focus and using funny lenses to filter the raindrops or emphasise the autumn leaves (back to the actual film: autumn meadow in late film, spring meadow in early film - clever.)

Some of the locations were really good actually, well - by 'good' I also mean true to the spirit of the book, or perhaps just corresponding with my own imagination.

It was adequately played by the two annoyingly-nay-unrealistically good-looking leads. The supporting cast was sufficiently unmemorable. Etc. Etc.

I can hardly say much about the film because most of what I remember from the book was present and correct. The only difference is the inevitable loss of a few scenes here and there and that quintessential feeling of getting a bit less, proportionally to what you've given, which I find with most consumption. The plot and its simplicity are more apparent in the film, because the process of film-watching is almost entirely submissive and/or receptive, so one is less busy imagining or interacting. It's a little thin as a result.

The book was so filmable and the film so adapted that either one shrugs its shoulders at the other and offers it a place on the podium. In fact, as art and/or entertainment, both take a back seat and allow you to take them where you will. It needn't impress its own profundity, a fan might say.

I'd recommend the book or the film, but not both.

Finally, a note on classification: the notion of fiction being 'literary' or ever described as such, really pisses me off, so whether this is or isn't I don't know. Whether it's magical realism (also a wanky term) or fantasy (a mistrusted term) or science fiction (a slightly less mistrusted term) I don't much care.

One could read this in a book club, a university literature course, an airport, on holiday, or on a bus: yes, even on a bus.

And one could as easily watch this at home on a television as in the cinema, which, given the apparently lukewarm reception by critics (I can sympathise) perhaps explains the many empty seats.

Okay! Thanks! Bye!

* I can't remember it happening in the book, but I assume it did

There always has to be the same ammount of hair in the world

2009-08-13T23:29:00.003Z

I can't get over how good the new Wave Pictures album is. Sorry. I just can't get over it.

On an unrelated note, here's a bitter love poem written fromt he P.O.V. of a homosexual German sommelier:

Good Companions: Rarely Blended

To have been a fly on the vine,
As the sun rose over the Rhine,
Germany, 1439.
Did the dew on the Riesling shine

As Count John counted the cuttings?
With his sommelier strutting,
Splashing out twenty two shillings,
Sure one day he'd make a killing.

Cradled in cat's elbow castle,
His foot-stool a verdant vassal,
Flicking a fine-plaited tassel,
He'd hardly thought it a hassle

To add to his grape collection
A white, which, upon inspection,
Bruised as easily as his wife,
And told by taste its early life,

For who would trace it to its source?
Divert a river from its course?
Feed mouldy hay to a gift horse?
Or take a liberty by force?

* * *

Well, I heard it through the e-mail;
Not much longer would you be male.
I can't help but think
You turned to the drink
To avert this impending fail

And you failed, failed like a gypsy:
I was the Po to your Dipsy.
The more that you drank,
The more the plan stank;
You barely even got tipsy.

Your rebel'ion was belated,
Reminded me how you hated
When cabernet franc
Met sauvignon blanc
And their love was consummated.

Looking at you sitting down there
With your girlishly cropped girls' hair,
Your challenging scowl
And your thrown-in towel
And your implausibly pert pair

Reminds me of how you tasted
Downstairs when we were both wasted
And the wine labels
Onto low tables
With wallpaper paste we both pasted.

Coin Du Vin 2 or 3 or whatever - heeeeeeeeey who's counting?

2009-08-13T19:25:00.007Z

I had a bloody lovely chardonnay on Sunday you know. Bloody lovely. Really set me up for the week. I forget what it was exactly but it was one of these strong, buttery Californian ones - basically the closest thing I could find in Sainsbury's to the Cycle's Gladiator I used to buy.

In fact, I think I bought about half of their supply of that feisty little number last year.

I bought it for the nude ginger woman on the front holding on to a flying bicycle. But I bought it again for the wine. Trust.

Anyway - I'd been hankering after (or for) a fine chardonnay for ages and it was worth the wait. Helped me wash down the thin-sliced chorizzo, goat's cheese (the cheese of a single goat, I assume), French bread and summer fruits snackathon I had liberally scattered around my prostrate form on my newly made bed in my newly cleaned room.

Anyway - I already said that didn't I. Hmmm... I mean, furthermore... no, that's not it. Begin again, this paragraph's not agreeing with me. (Yes I am!) (No you're... oh £$%&.)

I still had a glass' worth of pinot noir (possibly still my favourite grape out of grapes) on the side but I was saving it for later.

The day before, the fantastic red - slightly darker and more standard hued in appearance and texture than usual, perhaps because French? - had rounded off a wonderful evening at Adam & Steve's (they're not a quintessential gay couple despite the convenient names) (in fact, they're not even homosexual). The preceding tipple - give or take (he gave I took - wait, I just want to point out again at this juncture that there is absolutely no homo in any of these sentences) a can of Carlsberg - was a lovely and intensely characterful (though not exactly intense) bottle of white, which I picked out of Oddbins' shelves because of its name:

Colon notwithstanding, I've lost the label. Bugger. It was Esmeralda, anyway - the same name as the heroine from the novella I'm writing. And it was from northeast Spain a.k.a. Catalonia, which is near as dammit to the (admittedly fictional but heavily realised) place in which my story is set.

Well, actually it's probably more Basque. And Esmeralda is her second name (and the name of her imaginary sister - have I said to much?)

And it's spelled ESMERELDA.

Perhaps it shouldn't be?

Ah! I've found it (isn't this great it's like live blogging!)

Torres Viña Esmeralda. I don't need to say anything much about it because you can read the official version up there. What I will say is BUY IT! It's excellent. Full of character and if - like me - you've mainly stuck to chardonnays and (chh pt) sauvignon blancs over the years you're sure to be struck by how much more versatile affordable whites can be that you (and I) thought.

So... yeah, then there was the Australian dry muscat the other day (or couple of days) from Victoria, Australia (perhaps subconsciously the reason I chose it... ahem). That was excellent too. It was from Tesco so look out for that one there, devoted and awestruck reader.

There have been a number of passable house whites in pubs and then the wine night in milady's local where we were offered two (bloody expensive) wines - a decent merlot (bloody better be for six quid a glass) and a white Bordeaux, which I actually think was past its best but perhaps that's just what white Bordeauxs taste like? It was drinkable but I have been informed that wines on offer - in pub or shop - are often on offer for a reason. Hmmmm.

(I like the word 'hmm' because it's adaptable.)

Oh and there was a bog standard pinot grigio blush that I can't be bothered to remember. I'd got quite into them lately through necessity rather than choice but it was no match for the muscat, which it followed. Must try harder, Italy.

That brings us up to today's straight-up Cono Sur Gewurtztraminer. I'm big on Chilean wines - as with Argentina you tend to get a lot for your money, and Cono Sur's pinot noir is my affordable pinot noir of choice. It's fine and fruity and everything a pinot noir should be, though maybe not quite so flavourful as that pricier French number I splashed out on the other day. (NB - by pricey I mean like 7 quid so it was probably only a quid more.)

So, this Cono Sur white is bloody good, particularly now I've stopped upsetting it with my Tabasco-infused cheapo """Italian""" food from Sainsbo's.

Smells pretty floral but it'sdrier than I'm led to believe these Franco-Germanic wines are normally meant to be. I'll definitely come back to it, though I'd need some advice on what to drink it with, foodwise.

Oh! And I just opened the mini-wine guide I was given (that was free with the Guardian) recently and it's the "one to drink now" choice for this particular grape!

Which was nice...

P.S. I'm not sure if there is meant to be a 'du' rather than a 'de' in this section of my blog, so it''s lucky I'm not French and therefore don't care!

Nicholas of Myra Vs Per Yngve Ohlin

2009-08-12T08:48:00.006Z

So, what do you think of those current events, eh? Pretty relevant, aren't they? Here's what I think: my opinion, that's what.

Okay that opening paragraph should have increased my blog hits by about 700% so welcome all you newbies, stick around, you might find reading haphazardly constructed filler verse is actually way more fun than concerning yourself with issues and events and trends an suchlike.

So, in the absence of something you might prefer, here is a poem of sorts concerning the one-time black metal musician Per Yngve Ohlin as imagined by an equally fictional (but even deader) neighbour of his.

Sort of. If I'm being honest, I'm not sure what point there is to this exercise:

Dead by Christmas

I only came once a year
But that was once too much for you.
I’ve seen the way you unwrap presents;
Performing autopsies on pheasants
Wouldn’t strike you as so unpleasant,
Wouldn’t be as difficult a thing to do.

You couldn’t sing for croaking,
It was the fashion of your age.
Dead by name, dead by nature:
You were a pitifully morbid creature,
Painting Pierrotesque your features.
Opening arteries onstage,

You liked to watch the blood flow
Over your scrawny Swedish arms,
And the horror on the faces
Of the people in those places
Where you dealt in dead disgraces,
Vomited your vocal charms.

You left me a dead badger
In a wet bag, like a broken toy,
Where others would leave milk and biscuits.
I’ve a bucket: do you want to kick this?
Did I fuck-up your winter wish-list?
I knew you had a death-wish, boy.

If you want something doing,
Do it yourself, if you want it done right,
I always said, and, although I admit it’s a shame
That outside Oslo you blew out your brain,
That was the closest you came to sane.
I remember that one winter night,

Flying over the peninsula –
Full was the moon, high was the tide:
I was on my way to a conference in France –
I saw you chasing a cat around the garden in your pants.
I caught the glint of your kitchen knife at a second glance,
And I shook my head, and I sighed.

picture stolen from Lorenzo Mariani

At home, in forest and in ocean, worship earth and sky

2009-08-09T16:07:00.003Z

Just bit all the individual little balls off a blackberry for the first time ever and found that inside is a little greenish cone of plant that tastes a little bitterer than the surrounding fruit.

This information is free from copyright.

Blood For Texas Tea

2009-08-09T15:09:00.003Z

PRESS RELEASE

Ex-Goatherders ukeleleist turned Bogwoppit denies charges of idleness and insignificance

We can exclusively unveil that celebrated underground self-diagnosed artist Thesvenhunter has released the following satement via Promos For Homos, his privacy agent:

"Dear" """Fans""",

Well. How soon we forget. After all I've given you, you value my artistic contributions to the world of art so little (and/or small-ly) that you allow me to sink into perceived obscurity with out so much as a thread on my forum, an @ reply on my Twitter, or a postcard from whatever skanky club 18-30 favella-bedecked Mediterranean scuzz-pit you happen to be befouling with your uncultured flatulent selves this paltry season allegedly called summer.

Anyway, had you (any of you) been so benevolent as to tear your ears away from your translucent pink earphones long enough to miss, say, a whole chorus from your self-compiled iTunes playlist of the best of MGMT, La Roux and Raygun, then you might have heard a tiny, frail voice calling out from beneath the rubbish dump of culture something like the following:

"I am fine. This is all part of the plan."

So there.

Yes, The Goatherders thing didn't work out, No neither did the Bogwoppit thing. It wasn't so much that nobody believed that an artist called Bogwoppit had stolen and plagiarised my solo album 'Soggy Globsters On The Beach Of Dreams', it was more that nobody cared.

Said collection - both the original 12 track album and the deluxe 2cd bonus edition - has now been lost to the whims of a disjointed usb connection.

Such Thesvenhunter classics as 'Camel Riders', 'Suck The Poison From My *****', 'Who Would Win Out Of Colossal Squid Vs Estuarine Crocodile?', and of course 'My Unlucky Pants', will be seen no more. Even the heartfelt renderings of other artists' work - the lo-fi emo update on Thin Lizzy's 'Got To Give It Up' and the Honolulu-groove grafted to Nihgtwish's 'Nermo' - are all gone. Are all gone.

But it's fine though because actually I've found love, so I'm writing a whole new album all about that and it'll be out in a couple of months probably, on CD, DVD, Cassette and Wax Cylinder. Blue Ray can **** my ***.

Some tracks penned for inclusion are:

- 'I Met Her On The Internet (But She's Not A Paedo)'
- 'David Paul Nixon And The Unsuspecting French Intern'
- 'Lover, You Really Ought Not To Have Got Quite This Drunk On A School Night'
- 'Cheese'
- 'That Wasn't A Gaudy Tea Pot From The Rose Road Association, That Was My Heart'
- 'I Say Chardonnay, You Say New Rave'
- 'The Time Between Waking Up And Getting Up'
- 'Your Blood Will Colour My Antique Rug With The Colour Of Your Blood'
- 'Don't Ever Stop The Squid'

Pre-orders are available at £475 here and include somewhere between 3 and 5 CD's worth of material presented lavishly in CDR format with a cork painstakingly wedged through the hole in the middle, chucked into a shoebox and lavished with maple syrup and saffron.

I look forward to the veritable invasion of press interest.

My privacy is your Bitch.

Adios,

Thesvenhunter.

Inquiries should be directed to Thesvenhunter's management at

E-mail: jamie.janakov@googlemail.com
Mobile: 07932 452 128

Notes to editors

Thesvenhunter is a cashflow crisis. Do not approach Thesvenhunter without a good sancerre. May be flammable. Contains nuts.

-Ends-

They Seek Him Here, They Seek Him There

2009-08-04T12:57:00.007Z

Full of vexation come I with complaint against both uninformed wine-snobbery and wilful slavishness to high street fashion. Two pretty-much-unrelated topics I can b$tch about in the absence of any substantial literary progress of late. Because I said so.

Yes, if I told you I was a man who wears leggings and drinks chardonnay you might assume any number of things about me: that I was a gentleman of refined tastes, perhaps: that I was both thoroughly modern and well-aware of my place in history's grand narrative, certainly: that I was at once influenced by practicality and elegance, style and substance, beauty and truth - most definitely!

I've always loved tights and anybody that knows me will attest to the fact that I have - historically - jumped at every chance to crossdress, not necessarily because I'm a massive trannie stuck in a (buff, supple and/or toned) man's body. I just like and possibly covet women's clothes. I even own a few dresses, though they don't look as good on me as they would on actual women, because they are designed for women's bodies, which are different to men's in a few subtle but significant ways. (But that's another blog post, curious reader.)

I've always loved tights and, by extension, leggings. I've always wanted my own and now I have some, thanks to my lovely girlfriend, who got me some, albeit partly for selfish reasons.

Anyway - now I have leggings (or 'meggings' as some of the worst humans ever are calling them) and I look amazing in them, like really hot. BUT, shock of shocks and horror of horrors, some simple Googling has led me to the improbable and unpalatable conclusion that they are IN FASHION. At least, they were in March, and so they might still be, possibly, because it's still summer, no?

Anyway, it won't affect my enjoyment of them as such - they are comfortable, they feel lovely, and I look hot in them. If you have fat legs or don't want everyone to see your penis, that's your problem. I suffer from neither of these maladies.

But now, not for the first time I presume, though I can't think of many, I run the risk of being perceived by strangers as a fashion victim. As somebody who is aware of (crime #1) and gives a f£$% either way about (crime #2 - punishable by death) """fashion""".

Whatever I'm wearing I tend to look a little uncomfortable in - this is because most of my clothes are 2nd-hand or hand-me-downs and ill-fitting, and because I'm rarely secure in my environment and usually suspicious of the strangers who so presumptuously inhabit what I consider to be my personal space.

So I may appear to the casual observer to be somebody who is nervously wearing leggings in an attempt to appear fashionable.

How awful that would be.

So - observe less casually, you bastards; far from mistakenly subscribing to a flitting fad I am fulfilling my dreams and ambitions.

What are you doing? Dressing like Fleet Foxes and not quite daring to grow the beard you never wanted while desperately failing to second guess the next sea change in high street tat. That's what. So sod you.

And another thing - chardonnay. Probably one of the most delicious and refreshing and warming white wines going. Definitely a top contender in the mid-to-low price range in which I am usually to be found. Amongst a load of piddly inconsequential grapes whose juices couldn't dampen a picnic I've always found chardonnay a welcoming and rewarding drink, though of course the quality varies hugely.

And yet I'm casually told in pretty much every bar I order it (or at least given a look to suggest) - by knowledgeless slatterns often of Australian extraction - that chardonnay is rubbish and inconsequential and doesn't really count as wine and that nobody in their right mind would drink chardonnay unless they were a counsel estate slag who smokes 60 sovereign a day and eats KFC out of an actual bucket.

And why? Because it's so nineties. So Bridget Jones. So unrefined.

Bollocks.

You can get a Californian chardonnay for £3.99 from your local supermarket that'll piss all over your average Riesling, Zinfandel or Pinot Grigio marked at twice the price. More character, more charm and more tickle. It's like looking into the eye of a duck, and then passionately kissing the duck while touching up its friend.

Chardonnay is (as opined in the Guardian's recent WINE supplement, the skimming of which is the source of all my wine knowledge) a victim of its own success. Like Coldplay, who are also awesome. (Now - guaranteed, they used to be a bit shit.)

I'd rather be a victim of success than a massive twat.

Not that these things are really connected but they both reveal how much our perception is transitory and steered by fashion. I say 'our' but I mean 'your' because obviously I only exist behind the mirror I am holding up to your grotesque and rotten face.

How dare you breathe the same air as me?

Anyway, glad we had this little talk,

Bye!

AV

Alopecia Areata

2009-07-24T11:21:00.006Z

In the absence of the unfinished poem I didn't finish on holiday here's an unfinished poem about my hair I thought of while falling asleep with a can of V on the 253 around Manor House this morning:

Rotkopf

I shed red hairs
Like an autumn willow
Weeping itself bald,

Like a summer setter
Forsaking its old coat
For something better.

Like so much saffron,
I'm left on your sheets,
Shirts, dresses and tights.

On your oak-panelled floor
(Which I'm told was expensive)
My hair catches the light.

It interrupts kisses,
Draws like curtains across
Certain conversations.

Almost everywhere,
It gets involved:
Seasoning slow-cooked chili,

In your microwave,
(Or on your microblog).
I follow you like a dog,

Paw on thigh, blunt claws,
Nipping your heels.
I carpet your tiles,

Moreover: I'm all over
Your narrow, white bath.
I used to pick them out

But now - complacently,
Perhaps - I've lapsed,
Allowing them to spread

Over your bed, bathroom,
Hairbrush, &c.
I'm not doing it to mark

My territory, believe me:
I just want you to be able
To track me when I venture

Out into the morning,
One day closer to death,
Smelling of toothpaste
And you.

A Choice Of Christina Rossetti's Verse - Selected With an Introduction by Elizabeth Jennings

2009-07-22T13:07:00.007Z

Yesterday morning I was standing at the bus stop on Amersham Road or whatever the hell the road in Hackney that I was standing on that morning is called when the driver of the number 247 bus that wasn't even stopping at my stop so didn't even need to be anywhere near me drove right by the pavement and soaked me from ankle to nipple in flying puddle.

If I was the sort of person who thought this sort of thing always happens to me I'd have been really pissed off. Or if I'd started the day in a bad mood, which I didn't.

Either way, that's the kind of random event that - while avoidable if I was more prudent - is bound to happen every now and again if you leave the house: it's an occupational hazard of being a man (or woman) about town.

I'm a realist. I'm a romantic. I'm also indecisive and have probably at one point or another been referred to as a piece of shit. But, outside of the world of The Cribs lyrics, I've never been a pessimist - only by comparison to optimists, (who are idiots, invariably).

I've never been a miserablist and have only ever been drawn to art that represents the miserablist point of view as a middle aged woman is drawn to, say, an aardvark in a zoo. Some of my best friends have been depressive and most of those who were still are. I don't see all of them anymore.

Anyway - my point is, obviously, that if Christina Rossetti had a bus run by her and soak her in water she'd probably think about nothing else for the next week and would silently cry about it when she thought nobody was watching. She'd write a poem about how the bus soaked her with water and how that made her feel. (And possibly about how it made her look and smell &c. but more likely is it that she'd wish to convey how she felt.)

She'd probably end by making an impassioned plea to God to help her get through all this, but only after remarking on how she'd never find love whilst soaked by puddle water in an unfashionable area of London at half eight on a Tuesday morning - because who could possibly love her, Christina Rossetti, now? (Or ever?)

But she'd do all this rather well, I imagine, with an unfaltering awareness of the classically-held penchant for neat rhyme and meter. As often as not she'd opt for the instantly-recognisable form of a sonnet, which is of course associated with and said to evoke by its very shape a sense of longing and unrequited passion.

It's a firm favourite of Christina's and she uses it well.

But it's a shame, this wallowing nature she has. It's always a shame when somebody is less happy than yourself.

For when Christina's happy - when she was happy, once, briefly - she produced 'A Birthday', probably her most recognised work and definitely her most joyous and one of her most beautiful poems:

"My heart is like a singing bird..."

You know the one.

I quoted some lines from it in the visitor's book of a cottage I holidayed in recently, perhaps half-aware of how glib they might look to anyone else, but not really caring. Because that's the feeling I get from the poem - it's almost saccharine with its pretty similes, but one must surely afford her this liberty in light of

a) the pervading sense of innocence and love as a novelty that imbues the poem, and
b) the knowledge that this was a very difficult feeling - an unfamilliar feeling - for the poet to relate

Elsewhere there are tear-jerking lines aplenty read as if across a grubby mirror. There are also pretty but melancholy verses whose form would lend itself beautifully to music - the Hardyesque 'Cousin Kate' is one fine example: Kate could easily be a cousin to his Tess. Then there's 'Maude Clare' - a touching tale of new bride's simple determination to outlive if not outshine her husband's former (and reputedly aesthetically superior) lover:

"Yea, though you're taller by the head,
More wise and much more fair,
I'll love him till he loves me best,
Me best of all Maude Clare."

I'd be surprised if Joan Baez has never sung this.

There's a point in this collection where poems with names like 'Despised and Rejected' and 'Gone Forever' and 'Sweet Death' begin to pervade, and if I was a shit journalist I'd say she makes Sylvia Plath look like Pam Ayres, which would be perfect, in a way, because I've never even read any of the latter's work.

Purely because Plath's was the last full collection I read, (and both poets are somewhat miserable), I can't help but compare them though; Rossetti was from another time - a full century before Plath near enough, and her relatively-simple, unadventurous work is perhaps even less fashionable today than Plath's; this is certainly suggested in Elizabeth Jennings' almost apologetic introduction.

But behind Rossetti's somewhat basic vocabulary and use thereof is a wholesome sense of purpose that makes her work much stronger than a lot of other writers'. That the poems are easy to read and understand in the main does not make them any less enjoyable or any less deep - to reclaim that puddle from the introduction, one could just as well see a murky image of one's self staring back as make any accurate estimate as to their depth.

Yes, their sadness is unfortunate - even tiresome - for those of us who are affected by it, but their worth is unquestionable.

Oh, and then there's 'Goblin Market', which takes up about 20 pages at the beginning of the book, and - with its irregular form and dazzling sensual language -breaks all her own rules, and is undoubtedly her opus, and is pretty incomparable to anything I've ever read, and whose many layers of meaning have been speculated upon for years. Christina Rossetti herself wanted it to be thought of simply as a children's poem. In fact, she insisted that's all it was.

Well, at the very least it's a cautionary tale, but there are hints of all sorts of things bubbling beneath the surface: proto-feminism, religion, lesbianism, anti-capitalism, sexual politics - take your pick.

Like it or not, (and she didn't, I imagine), even Ms. Rossetti had a subconscious.

KNIFE BRAWL DEATH THUG JAILED

2009-07-16T10:34:00.004Z

I think that's the headline I saw on the way to work this morning. Certainly it was a combination of those words.

All to the good, no doubt.

Last night on the way back from Shoreditch where I enjoyed Mexican food, wine and fine company I was shocked and/or perturbed to see the street (possibly Valentine or Vivaldi or Velodrome?) taped off by pigs (not actual pigs - that's cool indifferent talk for her majesty's policing forces).

How awful to live up to the violent reputation made light of in the "more shooters than Hackney central" gag on the Shoreditch Mexican restaurant's chalkboard.

Anyway, this morning on the way to work - at the top of Caledonian Road - the same again: [Matthew] cordoned off by white and blue ribbons. Had to take a detour.

So it's official: I am being stalked by a serial killer.

Shit.

Bye Bye 8/N8, Hello C2 and other Stories

2009-07-01T08:21:00.007Z

So that's another bunch of bullshit.

The 8/N8, pretty much my favourite bus route in London, basically doesn't exist anymore because it now only goes from Bow Church (or wherever it goes from) to f**ing Oxford Street. Or cop-outford Street as it's known among bus route connoisseurs (which is nothing like a train spotter).

No longer can I hop on a bus outside the Wicked musical building all the way to a skanky drug party on Fish Island (hi, East London friends). No longer can I cross the motorway after a high-power business meeting at Don Studios IV to jump on a night bus all the way to my haughty abode in fashionable Pimlico. No, not none of it.

No longer can I (this is the last one and quite similar to the first) saunter onto a lazy Sunday afternoon double-decker to meander through the congested concrete plains of London to a Brick Lane market listening to the Look See Proof album (they've split up too, which is bullshit), hoping against the odds that 'Bishopsgate' will come on my SamPod at the same time the bus swings out the front of Liverpool Street station.

Nevermore.

Do you remember an inn, Miranda?

Yeah, I do. It was great, then they bulldozed it to make way for the Olympics or some such bullshit. Yeah my gran had lived there for 750 years but don't worry about it.

Thanks Ken.

(It's still Ken's fault - always. Boris wouldn't do this. He wouldn't even know how.)

Anyway, what's our replacement? What's our pay-off?

The C2, which isn't even a proper number, it's a fucking battleships attack formation or something. And it's shit - it goes between Victoria and Camden, seemingly, just like the bloody 24 does. What's the point?

Two quid to get home from out east now. Fuck that - I'm never going out again. The C2 has seen to it. (HAHAHAH&c.)

Transport for London?

Pile of shit, more like!

(Self-five on that snappy conclusion, I think.)

Turn Again

2009-06-30T22:18:00.004Z

Good news everyone: I've entered (and therefore won) The Bridport Prize.

From now on (well - from November) you'll all have to pay to read my stylish effusions of wisdom.

More on this later...

I saw Blood: The Last Vampire on the weekend.

"Nice idea, shame about the vapid dialogue and shit characters."

More great blog posts next month!!!!!!1!!

AV

And I Know How I Feel About You Now

2009-06-16T14:17:00.004Z

Reclaimed folk songs, restraining orders, German hip hop, Weimar cabaret, seductive elves, man-love in a climate of self-loathing, beat generation vignettes and dappy French nonsense.

Its all here, music lovers.

The last podcast for a while

STREAM/DOWNLOAD HERE

Nick Griffin 4 Da UK! (You Get What You Give.)

2009-06-08T14:19:00.010Z

2 complete cunts are representing us in Europe then!

That's a shame isn't it?

No - it's not a shame. It's exactly what we deserve for having come this far (i.e. not very far at all) in the last century or so. And it's not just us, it's a lot of Europe that's reacted to its little $-catastrophe by wheeling out the racists, so I'm told - and that's not much of a surprise either as we do (despite what Nick "The Cunt" Griffin and his merry men would have you believe) share a hell of a lot in common with a lot of the other European states - an overinflated sense of our own self-worth being high on the list (and indeed there's the very curious and confused notion of identity that lurks behind the use of terms like 'our' - who else do I include when I use this?)

I confess to being massively Eurocentric to the point of racism. Europe could, potentially - I really believe, be a seat of greatness and the helm of progress in the world, ideologically, environmentally, politically, technologically (if we could only destroy Japan - joke) but it's in danger of just remaining as it has long been: one giant sausage festival.

I wasn't shocked when I found out that form 696 was a cackhandedly racist attempt to shut down one of the few avenues of accessible entertainment/culture for our city's black youths, so why would I be shocked to find out that the wilfully-ignorant scum who still make up a decent wedge of our thuggish police force are pretty well mirrored within society (notably the voting public) as a whole?

In fact, I've known there were loads of ignorant and bigoted people in the UK for ages - since I was conscious and able to communicate with others; I've met some, talked with some and drank with some in bars - I've rarely confronted them with how ill they make me feel and how illogical, backward and ill-thought-out is the core of their belief.

Therefore I'm unsurprised by the appointment of 2 BNP MEPs, and I don't feel hard done-by, just a little guilty.

There was that time the members list got published and I didn't invite the local bigots round to tea to discuss politics - hell, I didn't even firebomb their swanky Pimlico houses or piss through their letterboxes.

Before you complain that Nick Griffin doesn't represent you and sign a convenient electronic petition to send to Europe to say this wasn't in your name, please accept the reality of the system of government you live under and the population with whom you share your air.

The BNP appeal to people who do not understand or care to understand politics, and there are many of those around.

They do this quite cynically (as most of them, evil thought hey are - and I don't use that word lightly) are less stupid than their voters) by mirroring the proles' contempt for complex things like 'politics' and 'Europe' and 'the correct use of your 1st (and undoubtedly only) language' - here's the newly-elected Andrew Brons referring to the EU as a dictatorship, for example, (skip to the end) which as anyone who ever had a passing interest in an education on either history or politics will know is an utterly ridiculous thing to say.

The only cure for stubborn, wilful ignorance is education by force. So next time you're watching the football in a pub alone next to someone who turns out to be as shockingly ignorant as people found in such places sometimes are you'd do well to correct them on some of the more outlandish statements/outbursts. (I'm really talking to myself here - not you.)

If they won't listen or enter into discussion with you? Walk away. You wouldn't talk to a brick wall, would you? though you might kick a football at it, or piss on it when drunk.

What's the worst that could happen in confronting an individual like this, in a public place?

And if 'the worst' happened, wouldn't it still have been worth it, so you could actually say you'd done your bit, instead of shaking your head in wonder and bemoaning that the land you know and love is going to bee seen in this light by those abroad.

One should never find one's self 'agreeing with racism out of politeness' as Stewart Lee put it - that's indicative of one of the most shameful characteristics of 'Britishness', or 'Englishness' or whatever you term your own identity/malady.

I voted lib dem and as well as the BNP outperforming in terms of changes, UKIP (the Waitrose version of BNP) actually did significantly better overall. Never more have I felt the need to shout angrily at people in public places.

Still, at least I voted - Griffin got in on less votes than last time he ran (apparently) and it's thought the politicians are to blame for disillusioning the people, or the people are to blame for being disillusioned.

Should you be allowed to complain if you didn't vote? Of course you should -it's a democracy!

Click here to see Nick 'One-Eyed Fat Cunt' Griffin giving his victory speech in which he moans about how nobody lets him celebrate the day of the lizard-poking patron saint of England, Ethiopia, Russia and Greece, and goes on to compare his victory to water flowing over the country (!?) which seems an odd comparison given concerns about global warming.

I think They Might Be Giants put it better than I ever could:

Every Time Your Hands Grasp My Neck I Feel Saved Like The Christ

2009-06-04T22:58:00.004Z

First podcast of the summer? Sort of? Kinda?

Dunno.

But:

Creepy stalkers, militant vegans, nihilists, odinists, misanthropists, dead poets, goths and voice coaches - they're all here!

STREAM/DOWNLOAD HERE

And don't forget to ask if I forgot to say who something was by. I wasn't paying too much attention, what with Question Time and voting and all that political jazz going on.

Feminist Fables - Suniti Namjoshi

2009-06-04T11:57:00.009Z

The oft-quoted quip that the lesbian has "no natural allies" in our society is closer to the truth than its humorous tone would suggest. The implied recognition that straight girls and gay guys get on is a massive generalisation but surely truer than the opposite scenario.

Traditionally the only relationship between lesbians and straight men has been a voyeuristic one, and one that rarely involves any actual lesbians. It's just another nonsensical fetish.

Also, only a dribbling idiot would contest the fact that society is set up strongly in favour of male over female and straight over gay. So gay women don't need to develop a sense of victimhood, it's there whether they like it or not. How many famous lesbians can you name? The fact is that homosexuality is still pretty much a taboo in our society, outside of the easily-identifiable exaggerated form that middle England can swallow.

Gayness is all well and good as long as it remains firmly in its own camp. Part of the true nature of homophobia is the anxiety brought about by not being able to tell the difference between straight and gay: the fear of an open border.

There's also the often firmly-held belief among men that lesbians are man-haters by definition. How dare they eschew what we have to offer? I mean, men are awesome, aren't they?

Anyway I begin with all this kerfuffle because my first reaction to Namjoshi's 'Feminist Fables' (1981) was to be taken aback at how specifically lesbian-based most of these fables are. Lesbianism and feminism are by no means synonymous, after all: although one can imagine there's a great deal of crossover.

My reflexes, apparently, still don't stretch to the basic understanding that everything I write is at least as informed by and dominated by my own sexuality (or lack thereof depending on the phase of the moon). I look forward to the point where such considerations are second nature.

I would yet insist that - unlike the very greatest of authors - Namjoshi does at times allow her message to overshadow her method: her content to smother her style.

But this is not always the case, and for such a focused and driven collection I think we can excuse some of the simpler and less evocative stories in light of the many successful, rich and complex amalgams of myth and polemic. Because Suniti Namjoshi really plays with two particular meanings of 'myth' in these fables, destroying one by embracing the other.

To give a general idea of the content while completely omitting the style, here are a few of my favourite plot lines:

* A lion attacks mouse, planning to eat it. The mouse persuades the lion to spare it in return for a favour in the future. The mouse comes across the lion trapped in net. The lion expects the mouse to chew through net and free it. The mouse decides not eating the lion is favour enough.

* Bluebeard leaves his new wife a set of keys and forbids her entry to just one of the rooms in his castle. She thinks he's entitled to a room of his own and thus obeys him. Enraged that his plan to entrap her has failed, he slays her anyway.

* Two knights battle over an abducted maiden. Her rescuer defeats her captor but finds she has already been raped. He grieves bitterly for his loss.

* A whale must spend her whole life eating plankton to survive. But she always wanted to sing. She decides to sing a little each day and eat plankton the rest of the time. She gets to sing pretty well by the time she's starved to death.

Though the average length of a fable in this book is less than a page, many are too complex to be distilled like this. The language throughout is as simple and child-friendly as the themes are complex and sophisticated - like all good fables.

There are enough people in the world who would have no interest on principle in reading a collection of (very) short stories that combine ancient world fables with (comparatively) modern feminism. For the rest of us, there is much to explore in Suniti Namjoshi's 'Feminist Fables'.

And they do not disappoint.

Walk This Way

2009-06-03T10:49:00.007Z

I've decided there aren't enough pointless 'personal life' related blogs on here - you know, the sort that you don't give a damn about but upon which I can look back and laugh or cry or at least blink.

So: whole new thing - walking blogs.

Walk This Way 1: My House (Warwick Way) - Giant Freddie Mercury Statue (Tottenham Court Road)

This is a lovely walk because you never have to do it the same twice. There are an infinite number of ways to get from here to there through/past some or all of Pimlico, Westminster Proper, Parliament, St. James' Park, The Strand, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Soho, Oxford Street and all that.

Of course you won't see all that if you want to take a vaguely logical route, and as my own purpose for heading to town is normally to meet somebody I don't take any unnecessary detours except the (pretty close to logical and necessary) amble through St. James' Park in favour of skirting around it to the east.

You still get a lot of flavours of central London in this short space. And you couldn't go back exactly the same route if you tried - trust me: I always try and I always fail. (But at least I try.)

I always seem to end up going by the Duke of York's column on the way back - a.k.a. The Half Nelson Column. (Well - it is now.)

Pictured is the approximate route I took yesterday when off to meet a good friend from school days to drink tea and talk about Busted, tea and old school hip hop. I also had the opportunity to preview the new Akira The Don album in full and I'm not even joking when I say that the volume of emotion it stirred in me made the walk a pretty difficult though all the more enjoyable experience. I saw much of it performed at Dawn Of The Don on Friday (an excellent review of which, courtesy of Zombiehamster is here) but nothing really prepared me for the size of the thing. (That's what she said.)

I recommend you try this walk while listening to The Life Equation some time, (when the time comes): or perhaps an equivalent length of walk and an equivalent class of album. The former you can tailor. Good luck finding the latter!

This walk says it took an hour but it so didn't - it adds unnecessary detours that don't account for footpaths. Still though - good on Google for giving me all the more power to combine rambling with rambling.

More on this later...

Beer & Books

2009-06-02T12:42:00.009Z

Just a short update to comment on the rather ridonculous ammount of beer and books coming my way lately.

It seems that almost everybody I come across is overly keen to ply me with beer (or alternative alcoholic beverages, often depending on my own choice) and/or books (usually ones which are suspiciously related to my areas of interest).

Of course, neither of these things are a cause for complaint: far from it. I love reading and I love getting drunk; rather often I choose to combine the two, but sometimes it seems like it's all getting too much.

The other night at Dawn of The Don (see picture, courtesy of Zombiehamster) I'm not sure if I bought myself a single drink. People kept on buying them, even if I still had one in my hand.

This was not an isolated incident though - at most of the events I've attended in the last month or so it's been the same story:

"Hi I'm Alex - you might have heard of me."

"I know, we're acquainted - can I get you a drink?" / "I don't care who you are - can I get you a drink anyway?"

Unbelievable.

If I were to pay for all these drinks I'm getting, or indeed return the gesture by buying everybody else a drink, I wonder what would happen? Perhaps I will never know...

It's not that I personally never offer to buy other people drinks (or pay for my own, for that matter), or indeed that I never part with books - I'm sure I've done a bit of both over the years. But I'm worried that there's a karmic imbalance. Perhaps this is why I have a cold again? Or perhaps that's because I typically spend my time on seven mile hikes in the north London wastelands / Wiltshire countryside after drinking?

There is a possibility that these people are trying to get me to lose weight. But I can't be getting into conspiracy theories...

The empty glasses clink around in my dishwasher memory and taunt me with their false promsies, because everyone knows that whatever the benefits of alcohol in a social context, you can't drink yourself slim, or young, or happy.

The pile of books on my desk grows daily.

It is a good thing.

Soon I will know it all.

Flora Of Andorra

2009-05-26T22:58:00.005Z

Well I started researching the climate of Andorra to work out if it's a suitable canvas for my new short story, which will be less short than those of late and probably TOO LONG to even fit on this blog if all goes to plan.

Yeah, so, anyway, I was doing that when I suddenly got the urge to write nonsense verse, which I haven't done all year!

I'd never have got into this writing lark if I hadn't taken it upon myself, as the musically untalented one of our never-formed teeange rock band, to make myself a lyricist.

I just find rhyme so inspirational, you know???

So, yeah, it was nice to do this again:

Flora of Andorra

I’ve been getting sidetracked
By your crablike footprints, Flora,
When, like some psychopath,
You sidle off into the water
Leaving little to no trace
Of what expression might grace your face.
You’re the devil’s devious daughter,
You’re my hybrid mega-fauna
And you don’t understand
Why I want to hold your hand,
But I want to hold your hand
And I want to hold it fast.
I want to iconographise you
In a basque, basque, basque.
(You’re basically Basque.)

Flora from Andorra
You’re a fraught flamenco dancer,
You’re a cumbersome cage-fighter
And a charmlessly-chaste chancer:
You flout the law of order
While you flaunt your sordid borders;
Only half Vitis Labrusca,
You’re my hybrid mega-flora.
A. M. Spangler made you mine
But I can’t press you for wine.
Hope my fingers don’t denote
That they’d like to slit your throat,
Because they’d rather work a lather
On your skin with scented soaps.
(I’m not saying you need a wash, though.)

I’ve heard the Flora of Andorra
Is nothing to write home about
But I don’t know about that, baby,
I’d send postcards of your pout
To those who've lost their faith in faces
Being worth painting or writing about.
Let’s deliquidise these vessels,
Then maybe later we’ll arm-wrestle
In the melting candlelight
To see who goes on top of whom tonight.

British Goblins: The Realm Of Faerie – Wirt Sikes

2009-05-25T12:35:00.011Z

Growing up in Wales I don’t recall the folklore of faeries being as oft-explored as one might imagine it to be. Of the folkloric tales of the land the grand romantic narratives of the Mabinogion were much more valued by the schools, and the dim memories I have of Catholic Church don’t include any allusions to that particular element of the supernatural.

Perhaps that’s no surprise. One would hardly expect the stories of the common folk to be taught in schools alongside the quasi-historical tales of ancient wars between the Celtic nations: they were all written down on paper, for one thing, (or whatever papery equivalent they had in mediaeval Wales). And the modern church has an oddly-scientific approach to its doctrine.

100 years (give or take a month or two) before I was born, American journalist and writer Wirt Sikes died in London. In 1976 he had been appointed by president Ulysses S. Grant as United States Consul at Cardiff: a post which he held for seven years until his death. During this time Sikes wrote extensively on Welsh history, archaeology and social conditions.

‘British Goblins’ was one of his lengthier publications, including four volumes:

1. The Realm of Faerie.
2. The Spirit World
3. Quaint Old Customs
4. Bells, Wells, Stones And Dragons.

The first of the four is definitely the most readily-available today; the full volume seems hard to come by, and although many editions aren’t sold specifically under the 1st subtitle you can generally tell by the length of about 130 pages that it’s not the full four-part collection. (I assume Sikes did in fact complete the collection, but I can only find scans of the contents online, never the full folio.)

Dodo Press republish out-of-print books such as this and the newfangled affordable Forgotten Books (which seems to be some bizarre team effort involving Google, Amazon, and some presumably-rich benefactors) also reprints the first as well as housing its entire contents online for free, though I have noted complaints about the ‘low production standards’ from one Amazon user: these books are all retyped from the originals so mistakes are inevitable, (though my own copy of Hyde's ‘Beside The Fire’ was fine).

My edition of British Goblins is subtitled with the first book’s name and has a yellow cover with one of T. H. Thomas’ fine illustrations printed in dark red. I can’t find the exact same image online and I have no camera, but I can tell you it was reprinted in 1991 (from facsimile – so no room for error) by Llanerch Publishers, a small Somerset-based publisher specialising in out-of-print books. The image I took from their website, though blue, is the same one, and the book itself is very fine-quality (though I picked it up 2nd hand) and quite a lovely thing to hold.

Anyway – the introduction is rather dry and exactly what one might expect from a 19th century scholar: Sikes makes sure to distance himself from the belief in any of the topics he discusses, quite unlike the new-age, rediscovering-their-inner-child authors one might associate with this field of study, and while he comes across as a tad awkward and humourless at first, once you get used to the style and presentation the authorial comment and anecdotal additions which this format allows become a very pleasant and even useful addition to what is otherwise a collection of well-researched folktales and fairytales from across Wales.

There are a few mentions of Anglesey, which I found unexpected and pleasant – but much of the faerie mythology herein (and unsurprising, given Sikes’ location in Cardiff) comes from Glamorgan, the mining communities, Neath and Brecon.

There’s some groundwork on separating and categorising the Bwbachod, the Coblynau, the Gwragedd Annwn, the Ellyllon and the Gwyllion, (all of them Tylwyth Teg), which again makes for a slow start, but once one gets to chapter 3 (about 30-odd pages in) the pace picks up and the sheer volume of research and collected stories becomes apparent.

There’s the constant theme of loss throughout many of the Welsh stories; many a Welshman loses his fairy gold after revealing to his friends its origin, or indeed his fairy wife (usually the lake-based Gwraig) due to a lack of understanding of her ways: one can spend years shovelling cheeses and loaves into a lake to win her just to lose her after a little domestic violence.

At a christening one faerie wife weeps, saying:

“The poor babe is entering a world of sin and sorrow; misery lies before it. Why should I rejoice?”

Her husband pushes her away in anger. When later she laughs at a funeral and weeps at a wedding between an old rich man and a young beautiful woman her husband reacts similarly, forgetting his vow never to hit her and it’s a quite literal case of three-strikes-and-out.

While the lake faeries are often these incompatible but highly-desirable females whom Welshmen cannot resist but cannot understand, their mountain cousins the Gwyllion are more often than not troublesome hags who lead wanderers to their peril and/or shapeshift into goats.

Further to the study of faerie types and recurring stories there are in-depth explorations of important aspects of the lore, notably changelings, disappearances and fairy rings.

The former shows the Welsh have much in common with the rest of Europe in their technique of tricking the ugly child into revealing its age and wisdom. This section also details the numerous horrific ways in which children would (apparently) be tested and (if found to be changelings) disposed of. One wonders (and indeed Sikes wonders) at the extent of all these missing children and the cause for it and the explanation of it assuming (as we have already assumed) that nobody believes this stuff. The mythology of the Tylwyth Teg must surely have been used in Wales as elsewhere to explain the disappearance of children as well as to excuse infanticide: these are, after all, eternal problems.

But they are not only used to explain the disappearance of children: Shui Rhys, a beautiful young farmer’s daughter, would blame her lateness and lack of work on the Tylwyth Teg. She clearly showed no love for the life that was laid before her in rural Wales and when she disappeared (even in light of vague reports of sightings in far away cities) it seems the locals were happy to believe she had been taken by (or indeed willingly gone to) the ‘fair folk’.

There are detailed accounts of men and women on countryside walks who are drawn to harp music (always harps in Wales - unless they have captured a violinist), only to emerge from the dance into a world 100 years older, and then to collapse into dust on learning this:

Sometimes snippets of sheet music recounted by those who strayed into the faerie realm are included:

The oft-explored connection between the mythologies of Christianity and the seemingly-pagan folklore of rural places is highlighted wonderfully here with the study of a (real) character called Prophet Jones – a man of God who was insistent on the place of the Tylwyth Teg in the Christian way of thinking, even drawing on scripture to prove this. (Which goes to show you can prove almost anything with scripture.) He includes his own experience of seeing some little folk amassed in a sheepfold as a child with the many, many collected stories he harvested from his parishioners.

Further to Jones’ inclusion is a fairly comprehensive and illuminating section on the theories (old and new) for the origin of these strange people and their proliferation in Wales – they are souls awaiting judgement (like water babies?), descendants of earlier ungodly folk (similar to the 'Lilith's children explanation for Norway's Huldra), or even sent as a punishment for Wales’ acceptance of Christianity (similar to the Hungarian ‘Curse of Turan’ perhaps?)

There aren’t really any conclusions, of course, as Wirt’s purpose in amassing all this information was (we assume) simply to paint a picture of the Welsh people and their beliefs, customs and stories. In doing that he does so very well and while I have read that this was done better and more comprehensively in later decades there is a quality to Sikes’ prose and an ease of navigation within the order of information that makes his work a delight to read.

Indeed, his position as a cynical but interested outsider is perhaps an ideal one to write from. And what he lacks in personal experience he makes up for in journalistic integrity and academic learnedness: it is a pet hobby of his to flag up connections with the text of Shakespeare plays whenever he can, and – as we know from Sikes’ commendation of Shakespeare in his introduction – the bard took most of his allusions to the folkloric and supernatural from Wales, and was faithful to the original sources in his poetic rendering.

So where are the other three books?

I Can't Get Down And I Won't Get Down

2009-05-20T21:57:00.001Z

Genesis (A Draft)

And God created Adam from Hydrogen
And he created Lilith that way too:
Both were formed in his own image,
Just like Jesus, figs and spinach,
Formless voids and dwarfs and droids,
(Because God's in everything).

When their yin-yang embryo was segmented
In the belly of some ancient ape
They'd no idea the further pain they'd face
When light years after their escape
Forces out of their control
Would build and break and drive them further
And further away from the unity they had
In their nativity to a dismal judgment day.

They cavorted for a while
And enjoyed the kind of innocent idyll
That most children still enjoy today
In civilised Western lands
Provided they stay away from drugs and thugs
And predators, hip-hop, porn and Islam.

But Adam felt uncomfortable
With loving something so much like
But yet unlike himself.
Mirrors had not been invented yet
So he couldn't stand to look so often
On a face he hadn't helped create.

He couldn't wear her like a glove;
He couldn't fit his fist in her,
And she could hit him back
If he kicked out against her.

He shivered sleepless nights
Imagining she'd perhaps catch fish
Which were bigger than him, or learn to hate,
Or slip snugly into some other animal's skin,
Or sit on top of him,
Pinioning his arms,
And look him in the eye.

He had a word with God
(Who was a man, back then, after all)
And with a wink and nod
He ripped a rib from Adam's side
And beat her half to death with it.
Indicating her shaking form,
He bade Adam spit.

So Lilith's life, like this poem, was cut short.
But she crops up now and again
In the oddest circumstances
To remind us of what we can’t or won’t remember.

His other lover, Eve, was better
Equipped for the life he had to offer
And soon doomed him to his own exile,
Forever keeping the secret
Of procreation to herself.

Ariel - Sylvia Plath & Old Stories From Mols w/ Illustrations by Axel Mathiesen

2009-05-20T13:35:00.008Z

As much to keep a record as to prove to nobody in particular that I have been reading in the last few weeks, this post briefly deals with the above two volumes, which have very little in common other than being part of my recent haul of second hand books.

As it happens I'm in the process of (very slowly) reading about 5 books at the moment and I'm yet to discover whether it makes me read better or remember better, though it obviously makes me read more slowly.

Anyway:

I've barely delved into Plath's body of work since I read and thoroughly enjoyed (if that's an appropriate word) The Bell Jar at 17. Why? Not sure - I was never a keen consumer of poetry by volume until a couple of years ago when I read about half of a Robert Frost collection during a summer holiday and realised there were poems beyond his handful of famous and oft-exchanged numbers that could affect me as much or more.

Similarly I suppose, a coupe of poems in this collection - i.e. 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Daddy' - have cropped up in anthologies before and the latter at least gradually wore down the defences I'd long maintained against poetry that shunned the traditional constraints of regular rhyme schemes and metre.

T.S. Eliot single-handedly broke down that barrier really, though, with the might of Prufrock and (to a lesser excent though no less mighty) The Wasteland.

But my first experiences of Plath's verse were around the same time and I've since found few others can work so well almost entirely without a sense of order. Plath's internal rhyme and constantly-vivid imagery more than make up for her shunning of rhyming couplets, and her several pet-obsessions (The Holocaust, Greek mythology, the moon and apiculture, notably) serve her well in terms of forming her poetic character and setting her apart from others, although they do often suggest strong links between poems which otherwise might not be readily associable but for their common author.

There's still a large proportion of her poems which near-enough pass me by, leaving behind them just a few affecting lines, a ghastly or wondrous image and a sense of a greater part hidden but too hard to reach at this time, with these tools.

She totally did my head in some months ago when my iTunes shuffled upon an almost-comprehensive collection of her own readings - she's a great voice but it demands attention that simply cannot be given when turning the cogs of industry.

I'm fortunate enough, though, to have got beyond the need to understand and explain everything I read, and have found that my enjoyment (particularly of poetry) has increased because of this.

I must confess, however, to being mostly drawn to those grander poems: usually more famous - and recognisable by lines pilfered by (mostly male) songwriters down the years; the "confessional" poems that deal with the poet's own state of mind are by far my favourites. (Which is rare, actually: I normally favour narrative stuff.)

Those who are drawn to Plath's work are often very protective of her and I can see why: regardless of whether you truly empathise with her or "feel her pain" as it were, her skill as an arranger of words is worth celebrating: worth defending, even. For the feel of the words forming and taking flight, few poems are as good to read as 'Lady Lazarus'.

As for this Mols thing... it's a collection of Danish short stories I found hidden away in the 'Mythology' section of Black Gull Books in Camden. It's a real curio and is sold (though probably not bought) for over $100 dollars on Amazon, which makes the £3.50 for a small volume seem a bit less steep than I'd thought. Still, it was cute and curious enough to convince me of the necessity for my purchase.

It's an illustrated collection of "Molbohistorier" or stories about how stupid everyone from Mols is. Apparently they are still big business in Denmark!

Mols is a peninsula to the north of Aarhus and apparently its folk are famous in Denmark for being slow-witted and countrified. Amongst Danes, eh? Wow! That's saying something...

The stories are English translations of 20 child-friendly sly digs at the poor unfortunate Mols folk, and this volume was published (presumably for tourists?) in 1952 with accompanying illustrations in full-colour by Axel Mathiesen, whose work has/had also adorned the pages of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, if my brief Internet research is to be believed, (which it is, if you please).

These vignettes are daft, eye-rolling, groan-inducing, and ultimately a lot of harmless fun. The closest equivalent in English would be the oft-explored jokes about Irishmen, though I have no recollection of any written tales of this sort being in existence. If they were they would probably choose people from Norfolk as the butt of the joke. Or Somerset. Or Cornwall. Or Kent. (Or anywhere in Zone 6, really.) Actually, it would probably work better as an inverse look at Londoners. If I was inclined towards humour I may be tempted to try my hand at an adaptation.

Examples of stupidity:

* Mistaking lobsters for Norwegians.
* Hiding a bell in a lake, then marking the location by cutting a notch out the side of the boat before rowing to shore.
* Ensuring a man's tread through the cornfield does not ruin the crop by getting six other men to carry him.
* Sentencing an eel to death by drowning.
* Accidentally decapitating a friend. (Yeah, that one's a bit dark.)

Stupid Mols folk! Learn your lessons!

It's a quaint book and a lovely one for a collection but, to be honest, if someone actually offered me a hundred dollars for it I'd probably take the money and run.

But I'd fax it to myself first.

Eh?

Eh?

Who's got me?

As I Live And Breathe, You Have Killed Me - My Top 30 Murder Ballads

2009-05-18T17:11:00.006Z

Top 30 murder ballads, give or take a few I forgot or found out about after compiling. Thanks for suggestions.

STREAM/DOWNLOAD HERE.

If you don't

want to know

the playlist,

look away now.

30) THE CURSE OF MILHAVEN - Nick Cave

"Oh fuck it, I'm a monster, I admit it."

Say what you want about Nick Cave's wilful revelry in the macabre and grisly - at least he's up for shaking it up a bit: teenage murderesses and psychopathic school kids, crucified dogs &c. Nick Cave brings a fiendish imagination to all of his Murder Ballads album, and this is my personal favourite from the self-penned number thereon. The creative sadism, the jaunty organ, the middle-aged man channeling a psychopathic young girl - it's all good.

29) I HUNG MY HEAD - Johnny Cash

"I felt the power of death over life,
I orphaned his children, I widowed his wife."

I guess Johnny Cash has done a number of similar songs in his time: covers, quasi-originals, staples &c. but as unlikely as it may seem this particular exploration of the human condition is by far my favourite of Cash's murder songs; the heavy-hitting piano and forefronted old-man-voice that go with most of his 'American' recordings are the perfect presentation for this vivid and somewhat surreal expose of the cruelty and curiosity of man.

28) THE BEST EVER DEATH METAL BAND IN DENTON - The Mountain Goats

"If you punish a person for dreaming his dream,
don't expect him to thank or forgive you."

A work of inspired genius by anyone's standards, this story song is as much a character sketch as a narrative. But it had never even occurred to me to think of it as a 'murder ballad' as the outcome of the tale is so ambiguous. It's all in the "plan to get even" line though. Once you have the idea in your head of that "plan" being mail-order ammunition and an adrenaline-fuelled high-school massacre you can never really laugh at the whimsy of the song again - it's just so sad.

27) THE WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS - Jim White

"Blinded by their memory,
seared by their pain,
she'd like to kill 'em all,
yeah: kill 'em all again."

Jim White is the master of gothic country, and his inventive use of subtle production techniques and oddball angles on the dark sides of life. This is a sympathetic, even tender, character study of a troubled young female serial killer whose psychopathic ways are viewed with curiosity and (perhaps) pity by the distant narrator. A sublime work.

26) HENRY LEE - Dick Justice

"Lie there, lie there, loving Henry Lee,
till the flesh drops from your bones."

The oldest recording on the podcast? I have many 50s and 60s versions of folk staples and many I enjoy privately but few seem really distinct enough to hold their own amongst a sea of modern interpretations, originals and genre-transcending contemporary compositions. This version of the classic tale of jealous lover-turned vindictive killer is purer though in its narration, in its pastoral beauty and in its brutality than the (admittedly excellent) version by Nick Cave and Polly Jean Harvey - there's also an extra verse including a tell-tale bird.

25) MARY HAMILTON - Joan Baez

"I put him in a tiny boat
And cast him out to sea
That he might sink or he might swim
But he'd never come back to me"

Joan Baez has one of the best voices of anyone. I can't think of someone with a better voice offhand. I actually heard her own rewritten spin-off of this tale first: the wonderful 'Michael' from '77's underrated 'Honest Lullaby'. She's also written another song possibly about the doomed child in this tale, 'Georgie'/'Geordie'. Clearly something about this story of the Scottish servant woman impregnated by the king struck a chord with her.

The murder here is apparently infanticide - the mother disposing of her unwanted baby boy - but she herself is executed for this act, the result of a sexual crime in which her own part was not necessarily wilful. It's a vague and really quite nasty little story and like all great folk songs the chosen details of language and music give the sordid events themselves a transcendence which romanticises and (almost) celebrates them.

Note: a mother's infanticide is also the subject of 'The Cruel Mother' and its variants - sung by Baez and Steeleye Span amongst others.

24) BUTCHERS - Slobberbone

"His voice says 'ladies' but his mind is thinking 'bitches'
But his pitch is just too much for most of them to withstand"

These three short stories in song form say a lot more about the town and the time than they do about the individuals involved (two of whom are murderers - one a serial killer, one a one-time killer(?) the other a slaughterhosue worker): they remain half-faceless as they move through the shadows of this number, itself disguised as a cow-punk country rawk foot-tapper. Lyricist/singer Brent Best is never one to waste a song on any 'la-de-da' outpourring and seemingly fills this particular musical frame with a vision of literary macabre rarely matched by those whose praises are sung far more often than his.

23) NEBRASKA - Bruce Springsteen

"I guess there's just a meanness in this world."

The Boss' take on Charles Starkweather's 57/58 killing spree in the titular state does a good job of humanising a pretty dehumanising crime - but that's not really the point is it? This album more than any other by the usually-optimistic (is that fair?) rock 'n' roller-laureate truly wallows in the miserable, the hopeless, the stuff that does well to convince one there is no God. It borders on nihilism, self-destruction, blind-eyed misanthropy, and this bleakly-gorgeous opener is the song that clasps your hand and walks you into the darkness. The idea of the (supposedly-intended) band versions of these songs being workable seems ridiculous, but who knows? Unlike many murder ballads though, Springsteen's 'Nebraska' does not wallow in evil for evil's sake: it isn't that gratuitous - this really feels like a window into a dark place, but via Bruce's narration, we are not so much passing through the gloom on the ghost-train as pressing our faces up against that window looking into the blackness for any sign of a light switch.

22) CRUEL SISTER - Rachel Unthank & The Winterset

"The eldest she was vexed."

It's only a matter of time before Lady Sovereign or somebody like that does a modern update of this tale of sister-on-sister crime - because though the Unthank sisters' version is my favourite, it is very much steeped in tradition, down to the curious pronunciation of words like "stone" and "vexed". Also known as 'Binnorie' and 'The Twa Sisters' this traditional (Scottish?) tale of sisters turned jealous lovers is doubly great as it moves from the all-too-well-known to the 'eh, what the hell? Some dude made a harp out of her dead body now it's playing itself' in a matter of minutes.

21) EXCITABLE BOY - Warren Zevon

"He raped her and killed her then he took her home"

Zevon has a knack for saying odd things in classic sounding songs - so much so that you could blink and miss it and barely realise what the song was about. The amusingly surreal way in which the 'excitable boy''s crimes are surmised in those two words is sort of reminiscent of the blindness of the world to Bateman's state of mind in American Psycho. (I admit I have only seen the film.) One could go to great lengths to analyse just what Warren was trying to say about society's treatment of criminals here but one imagines he just thought the song was funny. It is.

20) ARLENE - The Handsome Family

"This long dark cave will always be our wedding bed."

Rennie says that her husband Brett was having trouble writing lyrics (the trouble being he wasn't very good at it). When presented with his latest country love song she applied what she had learned from such great traditional tales as 'The Knoxville Girl' and offered the following advice: "Well, he could kill her." And thus a writing partnership was born. This wonderful little number is still in their live set over a decade later.

19) DIANE - Therapy?

"I'll put all your clothes in a nice neat pile"

A horrible song, really - who'd have written this? Well, Hüsker Dü apparently. Though I always knew it as a Therapy? song - they were a band drawn to darkness, though usually with tongue in cheek. This single, conspicuously free of electric guitars, and with strings aplenty, is an altogether more serious affair. I remember my brother Marek saying (quite rightly), "you've got to be a weird guy to stand up on stage and sing 'masturbation saved my life'." You've probably got to be even weirder to sing this murder ballad from the point of view of murderer/rapist Joseph Ture. But there you go.

18) JULIAN COPE IS DEAD - Bill Drummond

"The records weren't selling
and Balfie was drooping
and Gary had a mortgage to pay"

In this song Bill imagines himself as the pragmatic murderer of the Teardrop Expoldes frontman during the height of said band's fame and presents the events in cute nursery-rhyme form, even resurrecting "J.C." ominously in the last verse. Hardly vindictive - more of a playful stab at the rock 'n' roll god complex. Interestingly, Bill really was their manager at some point. Where's the melody from? That question bugs me still...

17) MOLTEN LIGHT - Chad Van Gaalen

"I found you and I killed you."

A mysterious and indeed haunting number that has the feel of a feminist fable. The murder is (seemingly) committed at the end AND the beginning - it's a rare example of a modern number that has the sense of catharsis many old folk songs did include (see 'Cruel Sister' and (some versions of 'Henry lee'). Nice.

16) YEAH, OH, YEAH! - The Magnetic Fields

"I die, I die, I die -
so it's over, you and I.
Was my whole life just a lie?"

Merritt conquered the love song with his 69 of the buggers and this was his stab at the genre. No token gesture though, this stands up as one of the best - a vivid and detailed (even believable) storyline with darkness, sadness but definitely humour. And, most importantly of all, an inimitable knack for songwriting.

15) SADIE - Alkaline Trio

"You tried to set them free,
but they've thrown away the keys."

With a similar need for understanding as was shown on Springsteen's Nebraska, this particularly awesome song also lays bare the singer's admittedly weird obsession with the morbid, the awkward and the impossible-to-empathise-with. And it's sung as a kind of love song: trying and never quite managing to explain the crime, even to excuse it. This is the closest thing to a Beatles reference on this podcast, by way of Charles Manson, and stands some miles deeper than 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' yet will be taken seriously by far fewer. We live in a strange world and none are more aware of that than these folks.

14) WHISKY IN THE JAR - Thin Lizzy

"I jumped up, fired off my pistols
and I shot him with both barrels."

The Dubliners' version wasn't a murder ballad. This one is. Thin Lizzy were an amazing band and managed to borrow so much from America while retaining an identity very much there won. Perhaps this was never more explicitly illustrated than in this song - a supposed traditional but really their own creation.

13) HUMAN(E) MEAT (THE FLENSING OF SANDOR KATZ) - Propagandhi

"Let me the fuck in!
I just want to 'fully relate'!"

Few bands display the intelligence and inventiveness when it comes to lyrical content as these dudes. This is one of their finest moments. They are imagining killing a real person because of his choice of diet and his comments about theirs. It's nuts, but it's awesome.

12) SAWNEY BEAN - Sol Invictus

"Some are haunted by the tolling bell
Some by the fiery pits of hell
But what haunts me is what we did see
When we entered the larder of the Sawney Bean"

This is as grim as things get and the vocal from (I think) one-time Sol Invictus member now Fire + Ice main man Ian Read works so well with the eerie trademark minimalist percussion and dismal tones of Wakeford & co.'s dirge. When I first heard it I was convinced it was an authentic folk song and murder ballad. It is - it just happens to have writing credits. The reality/fantasy/intrigue surrounding the subject only adds to the veil of menace around this tale of Scotch cannibals.

11) TWO DAUGHTERS AND A BEAUTIFUL WIFE - Drive-By Truckers

"Is there vengeance up in heaven
Or are those things left behind?"

The best of these songs - as with most art - ask questions, rather than simply transfer information. This very sensitive and reflective take on the murder of musician Bryn Harvey (not Brian Harvey) and his family does just that, and is one of the best songs the band have produced, amid competition from some of America's greatest contemporary songwriters

10) CRAZY MAN MICHAEL - The Fairport Convention

"His eyes they are sane
and his speech it is plain
and he longs to be far away-oh"

Both Sol Invictus and Kutna Hora perform excellent dark folk versions of this ballad (the latter's presumably based on the former's) but I feel the Fairport Convention version with its off-kilter levity has a conflict between tone and content that suits the story of the song. It's a sad and a cruel tale.

9) AGAINST POLLUTION - The Mountain Goats

"A guy came in, tried to kill me, so I shot him in the face"

Wow. The murderer in this song appears to show a lot of remorse, which isn't common. He holds on to his religion desperately, obsessively, as a way to cope with... is it guilt? Or simply the pain of life and the things we must do to survive? One is almost convinced he is either mad or falling apart - yet in his self-searching he describes his crime with such simple language, and the mundanity of the world around him with such sublime poetry, and really only concludes with this: "I would do it again."

8) LAS CRUCE'S JAIL - Two Gallants

"I shot one man on the county line, took his dime and I blew his mind"

For those who appreciate their works there is really a sense of this impolausibly-young and awkwardly-trendy duo teaching their grandfolks to suck eggs. The raw energy they channel into their music creates a rambling wreck of a thing, spilling over with ideas: drums, guitars, words and delivery all falter at the brink of perfection and all threaten to fuck up or fall in on themselves at any point. As far as story songs go there are few who can compete at this level.

7) THE RAKE'S SONG - The Decemberists

"I guess you think that I should be haunted, but it doesn't really bother me"

Good old Colin Meloy really embraces the genre here, not so much breathing new life into it as raping its corpse and shitting on it with this happy-go-lucky tale of remorseless infanticide by a restless bachelor and unwilling father. It's by far the best rock song they've ever done and brimful of the colourful storytelling they've come to be known for.

6) HENRY MY SON - Andrew King

"Who gave you those eels?"

Andrew King reels out murder ballads like nobody's business - not only does he sing them better than most, he's also one of the world's foremost authority's on the history of folk songs. There are numerous versions of this song - including a bizarre cockney music hall version and 'Lord Talbot' - but Andrew's recordings are stark, simple and full of menace. He also inserts extra consonants into words seemingly at random. It works wonders.

5) STAGGER LEE - Nick Cave

"She saw the barkeep, said ' God, he can't be dead'
Stag said "Well, just count the holes in the motherfucker's head'"

Wilson Picket, Modern Life Is War, Taj Mahal - they all do great versions of this classic (based-on-a-true-murder) American blues number. But Nick really goes to town on it. If ever you want to clear a room of old people, or girls, or lefties, or... faggots!!! for any reason, playing this would be a good start. Really though - you can't be offended by this gratuitously violent, sexual, sexually-violent, ridiculous song once you know it back-to-front, because it's so bloody groovy. Nick's reimagining of the title character as a throbbing lunatic whose world is his bitch is a singular achievement.

4) NATASHA - Pig Destroyer

"I put her in the ground like a flower"

This song, with its evocative soundscapes, horrible violence and tender, awkward exploration of the mind of a murderous lunatic was the song that gave me the idea for this collection, so good work Pig Destroyer. Usually knwon for their 36 second outbursts of unbearable noise, they went the other way this time and recorded an EP over half an hour long that owes as much to prog as it does punk, and (I would argue) as much to folk as it does metal. With sadism, poetry, retribution, tension, lots of screaming and all sorts of well-executed techniques woven into the (barely-discernable) lyrics, this song has so much in it that it manages to be both more and less evil than many easily-excused but really just unpleasant and relatively-dull murder ballads.

3) THE GERMAN - Naevus

"He didn't think it was too much to ask
To be separated from his past."

As soon as he walks into the bar there's a sense of menace in the word 'like'. He is not "made of the place he was in". What is he doing there? What will happen to him? This song is so uncharacteristically breezy and light for Naevus that one fears for 'The German' as soon as one hears him mentioned - perhaps even before that, when one reads the title of the song. And there's so much rare menace in the casual use of the F-word when the punters in the pub ask "Do you think we're fucking blind?"

Quite what it is that The German has done we are allowed to wonder, and our own conclusions no doubt say more about us than they do about him or them or the others. It's such a sad song because there is - on the surface of things - so much promise to begin with: the promise of a new beginning, and it's soon torn down by anger and hate, and by whatever it is that has come before. It's the story of everything and always, but it would be a fantastic creation if it existed in a bubble, because the ditty is as good as ever was whistled, and the words are chosen more carefully than they ever are in real life.

2) EDWARD - Sol Invictus

"It's too pale for your greyhound's blood..."

Probably my favourite traditional murder ballad sung by probably my favourite non-traditional folk singer. There are other variants of this song (one of whcih involves incest and KAte Bush span-off for 'The Kick Inside') but I love the simplicity of this: the repetition and the growing sense of dread echoed wonderfully by the faded-in-and-out guitars and the laconic delivery of Wakeford's ambiguous vocal. Is he emotionally attached? Is he sympathetic? Is he an artist or a medium? Whatever he is, he's damn good at it.

1) LESS THAN QUEER - David E. Williams

"You are a son of this town,
You are soon to be a dead son of this town"

I want to quote the entire lyrics in the introduction but you can read them here.

Ostensibly a song about getting back at a childhood bully, this is also my favourite murder ballad today. David E. Williams is not like other songwriters - he's not even much like other singers, or keyboard players. He's a genuine weirdo and not the cool type that sits in corners pouting. That really comes through in this song. The sadism here is none of Nick Cave's hillariously brutish "I'm gonne £$%& you in the £$&$" type business. Here, Williams' narrator is so moved by (or rather 'to') hatred that his retribution against the adjudged perpetrator of the world's wrongs involves really fucking scary methodical torture: soldering irons, mutilation, and... well...
I know of no other song in which the protagonist toys with the idea of starving their victim to see if they will eat their own excrement.

The juvenile yet somehow truly elevating taunt, "If I am queer you are less than queer", is one that you want to sing or shout along with - perhaps print on T-Shirts or write on pencil cases if you were still into that sort of thing. It is to his credit that he does not overstate or needlessly repeat this or anything else in the song. The use of repetition in this song is very, very subtle and very, very powerful.

And the delivery is incredible too: the melody is more suited to a lilting love song, yet whatever the subject one imagines David E. would sing it in the same croaking, playful, menacing and quasi-casual way, as though he were awkwardly reading the lyrics off some crumpled notepaper while thumping the keys of a wobbling keyboard in a dingy club with about eight people watching.

This song is truly sadistic, curiously appealling and weirdly cathartic, like some others. Unlike any others, it presents a criminal in a truly unhinged state of mind - one who is breaking many of the rules of... polite society, shall we say, and one whom I find myself fully behind. It's like the hypothetical ending of the first of The Mountain Goats' songs combined with the just cycle of Chad Van Gaalen's number, with the added word-perfect skilfulness of... say Naevus, or Two Gallants... but even better than that... it's presented in this frail, half-baked genius-like manner. Like your favourite Bob Dylan bootleg.

Hats off.

The Girls In Their Summer Clothes

2009-05-13T22:21:00.003Z

Playing catch-up on bits of paper with half-written verse on them. None is spared.

Walking Through Westminster On May 2nd, 2009

The city unfolds underneath my feet
In slabs of bold historic concrete,
Pockmarked with moldy medicated gum,
Chewed to death by a million dumb.

I was so high
I wasn’t thinking when
I was drawn magnetically
Into the calm of Vincent Square
Its cool walls containing a cricket match
Spread across its open sandwich turf.

I stood and stared
And, after some minutes, saw
They were all Pimlico schoolboys.
It wouldn’t do to be seen spectating them
So I left under the watchful eyes of pigeons,
War-torn, suspicious, silent and bored.

At crossing the road I am visibly nervous,
Stood at the centre of a spinning compass
With synaptic flashes of past car crashes,
Sensory flooding in the parched plains of now.

How now? Why here? What for?
Where to? When Ever? Who knows?
Compare this moment to another
Find it a place in the database
Behind my kind face:
Behind my latex, Botox, Sta-Pressed skin,
Covering that grimacing unconvincing grin.

I fail to find a park uninhabited
I fail to find a park uninhibited
I fail to find a park concinving
But I do not fail to find a park.

He Should Have Passed The Ball...

2009-05-12T22:51:00.003Z

Hello, hello. New podcast to listen to for pleasure. I'm very proud of the cover for this one. It looks hot. It makes me want to reclaim my country. (No offence.)

This lot: new wave, no hope, folk rock, gypsy punk, country, hip hop, soft rock, c86 and esoteric excellence.

Yes!

DOWNLOAD/STREAM HERE.

Now Is The Time For An Iron Hand

2009-05-11T21:12:00.003Z

Against my better judgement, which told me to do some Wikipedia scouring on Christina Rossetti's brother (the painter)'s various squeezes and how they all looked like the same person, I have done this, for Marjorie:

A Verse For The Averse

The muse, the muse who used to hue my blues,
The muse who used to choose my don'ts and dos,
Who used to help me find right words and lose
The wrong ones from my poems and my songs,
Has gone, has donned his (or her) shoes and split,
Has quit, has buggered off, and won't come back.

Alas, alack: lack of inspiration
Is all that follows my perspiration
Now, my pencils are blunt, my paper's blank
And my back aches from hours hunched over black,
Plastic keys with white capital letters,
I'm no better than the gaps between them,
Where dust collects and maybe mates with crumbs.

I succumb to something I've heard bemoaned:
Something studies have shown strikes artists down
Like a common fever: a snapped lever
On a runaway train, or a dry rot;
The Writers like to call it 'writer's block'.
(Note the apostrophe - all me, me, me.)

I wonder what the painter calls it, though?

Anyway, once upon some times like these
I'd sojourn mournfully and talk to trees
Or else thumb through embarrassed diaries:
Try kissing back to life a younger me.

But now - in my finite wisdom - I sigh,
Laboriously blink dry sleepless eyes,
And theorise my self-diagnosis,
Causes, symptoms, treatments and prognosis:
Could hypnotism help end this schism?

Who cares? I come over all laissez-faire,
No longer grind my teeth or tear my hair:
I stare dog-dumb at walls, dial old close-calls,
Ask questions I'm not sure I want answered
And find them all as useless as ever
Whether more or less patient or clever.

One doesn't want to write for the needing:
Sometimes one doesn't need to write at all.
But mostly one can't write for the thinking:
Thinking one need cast light over it all.

I thought on till I'd tied my mind in knots.
I expected an answer. I found lots.

Now I amuse myself by searching for
The muse in me: try to inspire myself,
Because no one else will line my book shelf
With what I could have written had I not
Been smitten with that concept of the muse.

Though the world is filled with many fine feet
Each prowling their own beats, completing feats,
No four are the same: none can fill my shoes.

Al Stewart & Laurence Juber @ The Lyceum, London

2009-05-06T21:59:00.007Z

I first and last (but not always) saw Al with Dave Nachmanoff in Bilston five years ago. Glamourous times they were, and Al did not disappoint; we were up close and personal with the ageing not-quite hippie and his half-historical half-romantic balladry.

The Lyceum gig was my second experience of Al and on a par with the first.

Certainly it was more comfortable than standing for a couple of hours, and the inside of the Lyceum is well worth a look, though I did have strange mumbling bearded fellow sat next to me. (You know who you are.)

The support came from Al's second (well - more like lead) guitarist, the esteemed Laurence Juber, who is undoubtedly proficient - nay, excellent - in his field of fingerstyle guitar playing, but whose noodling and musicianship is at odds with the appeal of Al's own music to me, which is very much to do with the storytelling.

Not to say Juber's work gets my goat: I've found his style takes some getting used to, but ends up being the perfect accompaniment to the songs on Al's recent albums (which Juber produced and co-wrote many songs on), and as such, live, Juber's touch works very well on 'Night Train To Munich' etc. but perhaps not quite so well on 'Carol', 'Lord Grenville' and other oldies.

That said, it's amazing how much one doesn't miss the 'band' sound that would be there on almost all of Al's albums - the only accompaniment tonight (and at the average Al Stewart gig) is the complimentary guitarist and (in this case) a couple of supporting voices (I can't remember the names! Gaby someone or other? And a dude with a band that's the same as his last name,) who are both strong in their own rights, though in possession of voices both markedly different to Al's own distinctive nasal tones.

It's my earnest belief that you could perform Al's songs on nothing but a synthesiser and you'd loose none of the depth and love therein: look at his 80s work. Or... The Pet Shop Boys! They're alright...

Anyway, a few gig-related facts:

Most hilarious heckle was the guy who asked for 'Nostradamus' right after 'Roads To Moscow' (itself a request acquiesced to), after which Al observed that he could probably play a whole gig in just four songs.

He's right:

Trains
Modern Times
Love Chronicles
Nostradamus

That's 45 minutes right there, and he spends half the gig talking anyway.

(Which is no bad thing at all.)

Also, amongst the other gems of information about himself, the world and everything, Al explained the "churchill's Hiccup" reference in the excellent 'League of Notions', which was a far more significant aspect of the song than I'd thought and absolutely typifies the jovial tone and very serious underlying concerns of the subject matter - admittedly Al is rarely preachy when it comes to his historical songs, but he is more emotionally involved than a good historian would be: and you'd hope so - he's a great songwriter.

He also taught me who Jean Louis Chave is, and explained that one afternoon in his (Californian?) home he was presented with the unexpected (and dubious) pleasure of playing the song he'd written about the man himself in JLC's presence! Ha! But fortunately it went down well and thus can nevermore be argued with on a lyrical level.

NICE.

Out of interest, here's the representation of songs from each 'proper' album - though, naturally its accuracy is subject to my powers of recollection, which are average at best:

Bed-Sitter Images (1967) -
Love Chronicles (1969) -
Zero She Flies (1970) -
Orange (1972) -
Past, Present and Future (1973) - II
Modern Times (1975) - II
Year of the Cat (1976) - III
Time Passages (1978) - I
24 Carrots (1980) -
Russians and Americans (1984) -
Last Days of the Century (1988) -
Famous Last Words (1993) -
Between the Wars (1995) - II
Down in the Cellar (2000) - I
A Beach Full of Shells (2005) - I
Sparks of Ancient Light (2008) - III

And it's based on my own recorded tracklisting of the gig, which is this (from memory):

Angry Bird
Lord Grenville
Roads To Moscow
Gina In The Kings Road
Night Train To Munich
A League Of Notions
On The Border
Down In The Cellars
Soho (Needless to Say)
(A Child's View Of) The Eisenhower Years
The Dark And The Rolling Sea
Carol
Hanno The Navigator
Year Of The Cat

Almost Lucy

Something like that. (Corrections always welcome.) And though there are many others I'd love to hear I can't exactly fault it. I mean, look at it!

Unsurprising that there was no representation pre-PP&F - at the time Stewart referred to it as his "thesis" compared with the "apprenticeship" of his former albums. No doubt he has as much affection for some of the earlier work as his fans do, but with a back catalogue as substantial as Al's and a companion whose association with him only began with Between The Wars, I was impressed by the 50/50 spread of modern Vs. classic Al in the setlist.

80s Al generally gets all but forgotten in the context of what modest fame he enjoys, which is a shame, because the brief variation in style relinquished none of his quality and/or integrity. But one can appreciate how 'King of Portugal' might be hard to translate to Juberism.

I recall my first (and so far only) encounter with Mike Scott's Waterboys live, when a drunk enthusiast at the back repeatedly yelled for 'Be My Enemy' from the band's early 'big music' period; eventually, after about 45 minutes of this, Mike Scott indicated the modest and mainly-acoustic-oriented backing band and hissed into the microphone through his mop of thick hair: "Do we look. Like we're about to play. 'Be My Enemy'?"

Great artist are always moving on, and we should be grateful for that.

Al's latest album, 'Sparks of Ancient Light', is available from http://www.alstewart.com/ NOW. (And it's ace.)

Al Stewart - what a guy...

Loafing Oafs In All-Night Chemists

2009-05-06T20:32:00.007Z

Hello and... hello.

This seems to have taken longer than it recently has but then one cannot realistically set one's self a twice-weekly goal for an hour's worth of good music when one (I mean me not one, why do I keep saying that?) has been walking myself to death, having indigestion, hanging out with family and spilling read wine on their furniture, watching Al Stewart live in concert and mourning the loss of a beloved family pet.

So here is the 13th podcast of lovely (partly) new music from me this year.

In this edition: modern classical, synth-assisted soul, C86, miserable old men, Xfm fodder, UK hip pop, brit pop death folk and more*.

DOWNLOAD/STREAM HERE.

* More may equal less, depending.

Adios

2009-04-30T20:54:00.002Z

Hybrid Megafauna, Toast Of Botswana

2009-04-27T20:01:00.014Z

TOP TEN HYBRID MEGAFAUNA - counting down:

EDIT - almost EXACLTY THE SAME blog but better is HERE.

10) Marlot

Hybrid betwixt Margay (no MARgay - haha) and Ocelot (sexiest cat award - thesvenhunter.blogspot.com 2008). Only one of these ever happened and was annoucned by the Long Island Ocelot Club. I wouldn't want to be in any Ocelot club that would have me as a member. EXCEPT that one. (NB Not to be confused with "The American Mystery Cat". Or that thing in Falmouth, whatever that is.) Could have been called 'Ocelgay'. Isn't.

9) Zonkey

NTBCW Zorse/Zony(!) The zonkey is a... well you can guess what it is, and it is mainly here by virtue of its truly ridonculous name. Thanks.

8) Pumapard
A politically incorrect cross between a Puma and a retard. (Gone mad.)

7) Cark / Shat

Not a real animal - but looks cool:

6) Tigon
The lesser known but equally impracitcal version of the Liger. This way around = male tiger and female lionesses, which is better because male lions are shit. Hardcore. But no good at breeding. Like most of these poor foolish creatures.

5) Wholphin
Half "False Killer Whale" half Dolphin: real killer whales are as bogus in this mix as, for example, granulated sugar in a Delia Smith cake recipe. The wholphin is a fairly boring but cute fish-mammal and has an amusing name.

4) Cama
A pun-prone re-acquaintence of the camel and llama genres of irritable beast of burden, bred specifically (and artificially) for the purposes of combining the better points of the two animals. (So in my experience that would be the fact that there are none of the former in England and the fact that the latter sneeze in my face and bite my shoulder.)

"This first Cama has been a disappointment behaviorally, displaying an extremely poor temperament."

Drag.

3) Squeagle
Still can't believe I searched for this and there WAS one. Not a real animal - but looks cool:

2) Grolar Bear
Not to be confused with the pizzly bear, this is the meeting/mating point of the world's mightiest ursids. The naming convention for this mighty beast is all up in the air. 'Polizzly' has even been suggested, which - at the risk of sounding like a shit washed-up 90s comedian - sounds like something Snoog Dogg might call a bear, if he had one, which he probably does. Being a large beast this chap has the double-bonus of having been "reported AND shot".

Haha. Awesome.

Double-lame.

1) Toast Of Botswana
What is this? you ask. Well, it is either a geep or a shoat - a hybrid with an odd (in both senses) number of chromosomes - 57.

"Although infertile, the hybrid had a very active libido, mounting both ewes and does when they were not in heat. This earned the hybrid the name Bemya or rapist. He was castrated when he was 10 months old because he was becoming a nuisance."

Is rape funny when it's commited by a sheep-goat hybrid called 'Toast'? It's simply not for me to say.

Anyway...

Holla Back Girl Decoded

2009-04-26T15:25:00.008Z

For years the song 'Holla Back Girl' by Gwen Stephanie (who suffers from the same multiple-first name disorder as John Terry) has baffled and infuriated critics with its apparently meaningless lyrics and inane catchiness.

The former issue I can now Decode, for I have solved it:

When Gwen Stephanie sings "A few times I've been around that track / So it's not just gonna happen like that" she is letting us into the secret of her age: that she is much, much older than she looks and indeed claims to be. Probably over 100.

This means she must be either a witch (unlikely - witches rarely pursue careers in pop music) or a faerie creature (for time moves differently for these people).

When she says "I'm ready to attack, gonna lead the pack" she clearly warns the listener that her breed of elf hunts together, which narrows it down somewhat.

Her repeated claims that "This shit is bananas" refers to the fairy folk's capability to deceive us humans by disguising base objects as treasure. Indeed, goblins pass off all sorts of horrible things as "fruit", and Goblin fruit, like faeces, can be addictive once you get used to consuming it.

Finally, though - in the title of the song she insists, repeatedly: "I ain't no hollaback girl / I ain't no hollaback girl".

Research has led me to the conclusion that this is American slang for "I am not one of those hollow-backed girls," referring, of course, to the curious deformation found in the huldra or huldrefolk women of Norway and other north countries. The huldra are also known for being easy lays so with Gwen and her "pack" it's not "just gonna happen like that."

This leads me to conclude that she belongs to the enemy clan of the huldrefolk: the trolls.

Gwen Stephanie is a pop troll. Case closed.

I Still Try Holding On To Silly Things

2009-04-25T14:15:00.006Z

The rule is that I make one when I have an hour of new music (new to me, at least) that I want to share with you (the world).

So you are lucky this time that it happens to be following on just DAYS after the last one. Will this controversial technique mean more or fewer listeners? Will I care?

Tune in next time to find out, or alternatively, don't bother.

This time: folk pop, ambient folk, ambient jazz, ambient trance, trance pop, hip hop, pop punk, shoegaze, A.O.R. and all or none of the many points inbetween.

Enjoy (without - as I should have pointed out earlier - the need to install pointless software) here:

STREAM/DOWNLOAD.

Incidentally, the titular lyric always makes me think of hot saucepans, hedgehogs, electric fences and the like. How about you?

This Is Where The Party Ends

2009-04-22T22:28:00.004Z

Yeah, that's right: new look.

This new look will dramtically improve your listening experience.

Guaranteed.

So: the usual - Canadian punk, MOR, Belgian art punk/sludge, esoteric folk, Swedish avant-pop, leftfield hip-hop, indie and GOTH.

Love it, here:

STREAM/DOWNLOAD.

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter

2009-04-21T12:57:00.007Z

Somebody recommended I read this about a year ago but I can't remember who.

Being a collection of 'rewritten' fairytales (tricky subject - all fairytales are rewritten. That's sort of what makes them fairytales), the only thing that put me off was the fact that it wasn't readily available in shops and that, essentially, fairytalesque or not, this is a collection of short stories. And I don't have much experience with those.

What's more, I don't know any of the fairytales these are based on. Well - that's not strictly true: I know them all, but have not read what I would consider to be 'original' versions of any of them. (Not that there can definitively be an 'original' version of a fairytale, obviously.)

'Beauty and The Beast', 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Snow White' are all such high profile examples of the genre that the stories are embedded in our consciousness, and usually as sanitised Disney or Disney-style children's versions.

The idea of a "children's version" of a fairytale may seem tautological to you, and if it does then you don't know fairytales. Interestingly, Angela Carter took exception to these stories being marketed as "adult versions" of fairytales, and rightly so. Of these stories she says (I prefer paraphrasing to quoting because it's a more reliable way of communication my own understanding, which is after all what I am doing here anyway) she was trying to extract the essence of the tales - to retell them (in her own rich and evocative prose) with their deeper meanings brought closer to the surface.

Something like that.

The collection has also been identified as providing feminist perspectives on the stories, and while this may at times be true there is no over-riding sense of an agenda or of "writing back" here, which is surely for the best. The writer's prejudices are kept below the surface.

'The Bloody Chamber' itself does this best of all, perhaps, with its depiction of the terror of the young virgin bride and the curious and abhorrent power balance at play between the rich, powerful, mature groom and his impoverished, innocent child-like bride.

It descends nowhere near the depths of morbid depravity that the (apparnetly related) Gilles de Rais "history" (fantasy is more likely) does, but contains the same very French idea of the inherent corruption of aristocracy, despite being set centuries later than its direct source material - Bluebeard. It's an excellently-conceieved piece and second only in the vivid gloriousness of its prose to the (more-or-less) self-penned gem 'The Lady Of The House Of Love'.

The following pair of aces in 'The Courtship of Mr. Lyon' and 'The Tiger's Bride' could have been (but presumably was't) written as one story whose centrepiece was a two-way mirror. Both retell 'Beauty and The Beast' and both do so with style and purpose. But the second, in which Belle's father loses her to the beast (a masked Italian nobleman) in a game of cards presents the father-daughter relationship as the polar opposite of the loving and mutually-respectful one in the former. Indeed the former is as close to Disney as this collection gets, but Carter's craft[wo]smanship ensures it strays away from cloying self-indulgence.

I'll refrain from entirely spoiling the ending of 'The Tiger's Bride' but suffice to say that the 'alternate ending' is a technique Carter uses playfully, unpredictably and sometimes shockingly throughout these 'versions'.

A few of the more meandering pieces such as 'The Erl-King' and 'Wolf-Alice' tend towards the more 'magical' side of magical realism, which I find it hard to get my teeth into, but the inclusion of 'The Snow child' (based on an obscure variant of Snow White) vignette is most welcome; this expertly-crafted and almost bafflingly-brief foray into an absolutely classic distillation of the sex/death/magic thematic triptych, (reminiscent of Douglas Hyde's translated Gaelic story in its surrealist tone), suggests Carter's work - while quite wonderful - could have benefited from further exploration of brevity.

That said, my favourite of the ten stories in this collection is undoubtedly 'Puss In Boots', which is a mid-legth exploration of the well-known variant of the 'cat as helper' (or even 'magical familiar') fairytale type, which was made famous by 15th Century Italian chap, Giovanni Straparola.

There is no ogre nor stolen peasant workforce in this version. In fact, it's an unusually urban fairytale, focusing on the wily adventures of the booted tom as he endeavours to secure the affections of a woman for his master. The man, a (sort of) reformed libertine is well-used to using his cat as a pimp, and the cat himself plays the role to perfection, enlisting the help of an adoring tabby to arrange unlikely situations in which his master can get his end away with the desired 'lady', the wife of an aged impotent and very rich landowner.

As the Wikipedia write-up notes, "if there is a lesson to be learned from "Puss in Boots" it seems to be that trickery and deceit pays off more rapidly (and handsomely) than do hard work and talent, or that clothes make the man."

Never has this been truer than in Carter's version, where living a life of idle lechery is rewarded with untold wealth and the undying affections of a young, beautiful and sexually liberated heiress.

As well as being a successfully (and deservingly) modernised fairytale, Carter's 'Puss In Boots' is a farce, and a most refined one: the crowning moment of an excellent collection.

As They Should(n't) Sound

2009-04-17T23:36:00.004Z

This is me with a cold reading and commenting on 6 poems chosen from my 92 volume opus 'Goodbye Misery Hello Joy'.

Like everything I have ever done, this is more for my own benefit than yours, but feel free to listen in if this sort of thing interests you.

The main reason I'm uploading this is to prove I'm not spending my time glorifying terrorism or anything like that.

The recording comprises 25ish minutes of me reading poems then complicating them by way of explanation. One from each of the 6 parts of the 6 part, 92 poem collection. Chosen at random, for reasons of laze.

Enjoy!

CLICK HERE TO HEAR.

What Will I Do To You / Now That I've Paid For You?

2009-04-16T19:43:00.003Z

New podcast is here.

You can stop starving your cat in protest.

Enjoy.

STREAM / DOWNLOAD HERE.

Coin De Médecine - Treating Sinusitis / Sinus Infections

2009-04-15T13:50:00.003Z

Coin De Médecine # 1

Fact:

Nobody knows what sinuses are for - you could probably remove them and go on to live a happy untroubled life. Let me know how that works out for you if you try it.

Opinion:

Hopefully not a regular feature on the site - not least because I'm non-too confident about the number of common ailments I can effectively treat with non-chemical methods. What do they call it? Homeopathic? Herbariffic? I honestly have no clue. Either way, that's what this is about - self treatment.

I found out I had sinusitis last night at about 1:00 a.m. when the cold I'd developed suddenly went one step further and spread throughout half of my face causing a severe aching pain which lasted until about 5:30 a.m., thus announcing itself as a type of virus/infection/illness/nasty that could not be kept at bay by scotch alone.

And allow me, at this juncture, to announce something myself (some knowledge, actually): Beechams FLU-PLUS is a pile of crap and does nothing. It couldn't decongest a funnel, or a brown paper bag, or a large, wide open space covered in lubricant and magnets with reversed polarity. It's shit. It's just crappy paracetamol and caffeine. It didn't alleviate pain, unblock my nose, soothe my aches and/or pains or any of the above. It just looked horrible, and probably had nasty side effects I've yet to detect.

Now then:

Sicilian Peasants' Poultice

Ingredients: ground cloves, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, ground basil (you will find most of these useful things live on the ground), honey, water, old Waterboys T-shirt.

Method: take a generous tea spoon (all tea spoons are generous, stirring tea without payment and all) of each of the ground ingredients then grind all the ground ingredients in a pestle - no, mortar, with a pestle, right? Either one will work - then when the mixture is a sort of earthy consistency add half a teaspoon of honey and keep grinding, then pour in a little hot water and further grind and twist and mix and mash &c. until it's about the consistency of the henna you failed to make tattoos with in 3rd year. Not a dissimilar colour neither. (But smells far nicer.)

Now apply to forehead using a tea spoon (generous aren't they), or something less ridiculous, until it looks like you've fallen on a cow pat, next take the old Waterboys T-shirt and reminisce about how great Mike Scott is/was but regret for the umpteenth time buying a pink T-shirt that you were clearly never going to wear merely to flout the sexist signage that indicated these particular items of Waterboys merchandise were for 'WOMEN' - come to think of it they're probably right because it didn't fit you and you aren't that big - maybe you should have got a bigger one? Some girls are bigger than others, apparently. They all look the same to me cos I'm a feminist(!)

Never mind - tear a strip from said T-shirt and imagine momentarily you're in one if not more of the Napoleonic Wars, tie as bandanna/tennis-player sweat-band around and indeed over the aforementioned pasted forehead.

You have now created your poultice which will give (admittedly mild - but fragrant) relief while your sinus infection lasts, which is about a week apparently. A week? Christ.

Now decide whether to kill yourself and get all the suffering over with or face it like the man/woman/child/other that you are.

Our Saviour's Fallen Ill (that's 'ill' not '3' by the by)

2009-04-08T21:09:00.006Z

MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC.

Right here. One hour of it.

All sorts. All good.

Guarantee.

Enjoy or receive a free Colin Powell biography.

STREAM / DOWNLOAD HERE.

Llewelyn to republish Nancy Arrowsmith's 'A Field Guide To The Little People'

2009-04-08T12:38:00.009Z

Not to be confused with 'Gnomes And Gardens - A Field Guide To The Little People' (2000) - which, as its title suggests, is exclusively about gnomes, nor the identically titled (but humbly-prefaced with "From the collection of noted astrologer and author, Linda Goodman") book by Linda Goodman, which was also published in '77 and seems likely to be a false-attributation goof of somebody's down the line...

No - this is the real deal. My own copy arrived today and it's the third copy I've had.

The first was actually my mum's and I think she gave it away to a charity shop accidentally a decade or two ago. I actually have a memory of encouraging her to get rid of it because it scared me, but I don't know whether that's one of those real memories that actually happened or one of the other kind.

The second I lent to a friend and colleague (you know who you are) a few years ago and couldn't be bothered to ask for it back.

So I just bought another one; this is the best yet: a hard-back copy that's spent goodness-knows how many years in a library in Jersey before being sold off to some Internet-based book-store. It arrived this morning in a packet festooned with picturesque stamps depicting shaggy ink caps, phragmipedium, heraldry, tapestry and cattle.

Nice.

Anyway, I found out today that a Welsh publisher called Llewelyn is planning to rebulish (or rerelease or reprint?) it this year! (See here.) How lovely! I wonder if it will be edited or if it will have a new introduction or anything interesting like that? I know it's subtitled (which mine isn't): A Curious Journey Into the Hidden Realm of Elves, Faeries, Hobgoblins & Other Not-So-Mythical Creatures.

Whatever. Buy it. Buy it. Buy it.

Anyway, I'm glad it'll be finding its way onto more shelves; it's a wonderful collection. What sets The Guide apart from other books of its kind is the sheer volume of love that has gone into it. (Though I'd probably say the same of the other guide I read last week.) Nancy Arrowsmith is obviously somebody with a real passion for and belief in her work.

She also transaltes stuff into (and presumably out of) German these days, from what my Internet research tells me, and has published several books in German, in Germany, for Germans.

I almost felt a little guilty swiftly removing the gorgeous dust-jacket (not the same as the one shown here), depicting as it did an abundance of the little folk frolicking (as they do, sometimes) in the bushes at the edge of a lush European field. It is older than I am.

Still, the stark honesty of a blank, dark green cover with a gold-lettered spine is incomparably beautiful to my eye. And there are plenty of awesome illustrations inside courtesy of one Heinz Edelmann.

And with this book's exploration of the Norwegian 'mound folk' or 'huldra' or 'huldrefolk' (it's comprehensive where pseudonyms are concerned) I now have 3 sources for cross-reference close at hand. Hurrah!

Why am I telling you all this, you ask?

Invalid question.

You lose.

I win.

Coin De Vin #2 - Wolf Blass Cab Sav

2009-04-06T20:15:00.007Z

Coin De Vin #2

Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon (2007)

Fast work, huh? Well - one is dedicated, one is.

This is worthy of mention simply for indicating from what a far-flung no-man's-land of ignorance I am approaching this whole wine subject.

Today I had prawn sandwiches for lunch. (Nice.) Having most of said prawns left at tea time I decided to cook them up with some garlic, and so I ventured to the hell that is Tesco's for some créme fraische and parsley.

Parsley is an herb (seriously - trust me on this one - it is - - -- - --- -) which I have hitherto found no favour with. All I know is that it has a subtle flavour and (according to Canadian art students) helps induce premature labour.

I knew I would need a robust white to help me through this experimental cuisine.

But I somehow ended up with Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cab Sav (2007). You see - it was on the discount shelf which was otherwise made up entirely of white wines! I saw white wines, I saw Wolf Blass, I saw £3.89 (£5.00 off!) and I saw DEAL.

It was only when Ralf asked me why I'd put the red wine in the fridge that I realised the horrorful scope of my mistakenness. How awful: a wine-blogger such as myself with a chilled red wine for dinner. Fortunately Ralf had a splash of blanc to season the sauce. But more on that later(tm).

I have always found Wolf Blass to be a reliable and robust wine-making bunch of dudes - with the robustness of the Germanic (but hopefully not depressive) name and the reliability of being Australian - Australia is probably the best wine-producing nation for the target market that is the lower to middle-lower price-range schlong such as myself.

Cab sav doesn't generally get me hot and bothered but not sooner had I screwed the top off this number than I knew I was in for no disappointment; blesséd as we (I) were (was) by fine tannins - not too overpowering - and a bit of oak (or was it Dutch Elm? (Joke) ) in the mix, a ruddy plum-cheeked fulsomeness coating the capillary-heavy flesh of my cavernous mouth-hole and, and, and a relatively-smooth finish conducive to devouring the manageably-weighted bottle in no. time. at all.

Interestingly, I'm told it's full-bodied by the Waitrose website, from whence I stole yon image. Does that preclude my accusation of a smooth finish? I finished it pretty damn smoothly I can tell you!

Still, I can't help but feel Australian cab savs almost always benefit from a screw or two from the shiraz tree, though. They lack what others may call many things, but I call, simply, "Xziungk". (You may pronounce this as 'zing'.)

The real issue is that after a straight bottle of cab sav I always end up with a "What's next?" feeling. And this is a weekday...

I am advised, by the back of the bottle, to try their 'gold label' regional variations. Yes, well, when they began in 1966 Wolf Blass also claimed to "make strong women weak and weak men strong", which makes it sound like the wine of choice for rapists.

But I'm sure that's not the case.

(Wait... I said 'case'! Is that a joke?)

(It is now!)

I'm sure this wine would have impressed me more than it did (which was 'enough' but not necessarily 'too much') if I hadn't accidentally partially chilled it, and if I'd eaten something more marriageable to it than whatever the hell that prawn-parsley thing I made was, was.... is... for.

The end.

Whole New Thing #328: Wine

2009-04-06T17:48:00.007Z

I've always wanted to blog about wine but have been cruelly set-back by my complete lack of understanding of it.

Yesterday as I was sipping my Shiraz I had an epiphany: it hit me like a wet sock filled with beetles - I had no authority with which to write about any subject, so wine was no different in this respect to food, books, music or politics. Hurrah!

And so, with no further ado:

Coin De Vin #1

Enrique Mendoza Shiraz (2004)

I never knew that shiraz and syrah were the same thing and shiraz is my grape of choice - but then I also never knew that the Spanish grew grapes for which to make the shiraz - i.e. the shiraz grape.

Indeed, on my recent holiday in Spain I falsely identified an olive plantation as a fine crop of pinot noir; I'm basically an idiot! Nevertheless, I was a very happy idiot when, some few days ago in the sunny courtyard of a wine bar/museum in Mijás, Andalucia, I was presented with a glass of the finest shiraz I've had all year. And it was Spanish.

I forget what the admirably-knowledgeable (and, admittedly, pretty cute) sommelier/shopkeeper said about that wine, all I remember is that the affable Germans with whom we exchanged group photographs made off with the last couple of bottles. Proof - if proof be needed - that Germans have taste.

Anyway, that being the case I picked up a bottle (not a case) of the next best thing - a 2004 Shiraz whose name is given above. I don't even have any evidence that its Spanish, because I can't read what it says about it in Spanish on the back of the bottle.

And that was going to form the basis of my review. Shit.

Fortunately, the Spanish lady who sold me the bottle (and another - to be drunk forthwith) enthused about the "peppery" taste that would greet the tongue, and the splashings of grenadine that washed it down. (Or something like that.)

And boy was she right! Certainly I'm not going to disagree with her: this being perhaps even better than the bottle I drank from in the afternoon heat, while surrounded by good cheer, good tapas and half-price pottery.

In my dingy Pimlico den watching Stewart Lee's comedy vehicle with my house-mate Paul, none of the sun-kissed sultry goodness had been lost, despite the beating my bag no doubt must have taken in transit.

Hell - even Paul loved this wine, and Paul cares for wine about as much as I care for Paul. (Not much.)

It'll be tough to find its match in my locality amongst Oddbins' chiefly white and much-depleted stock, not to mention the plethora of bottled filth Sainsbury's has been trying to pass of as wine lately. I've taken back twice as many bottles as I've bought from there this spring. And you don't need to tell me that makes no sense.

Enrique Mendoza's 2004 shiraz is fruity and flirtatious with a mastery of many a tongue - strong but gentle, its focus is on flavour, not force and while its sweetness shines through it is, above all, very much a red wine.

The bottle is now completely unfull.

A Field Guide To Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels And Other Subversive Spirits - Carol K. Mack & Dinah Mack

2009-04-06T14:25:00.010Z

The publishers of this book - a sort of mythological bestiary, as its title suggests - profess it to be "the first of its kind" and "soon [to] become absolutely indispensable in every household".

Grand claims, both, but the first might actually be true. I can't remember reading or spotting on Amazon (or anywhere else - like a book shop) another such volume that lists pagan deities alongside house elves and Biblical fallen angels. The starring roles of ancient civilisations' creation myths are prancing and gurning right next to a beardy imp who trips people up on their doorsteps. Weird, eh?

I guess the common ground here is the 'subversive spirit' bit - they are all incarnations who have at one time or another been a thorn in the side of humanity. And they are all 'spirits', existing somewhere inbetween the real world and our imaginations.

It's difficult for believers such as myself to explain (or to bother trying to explain) how such things are worth exploring outside of the context of kids' colouring books. So I won't bother just now.

What I will say is that this compendium would make an excellent introductory piece for kids. The illustrations where they appear are wonderfully-simple line-drawings and ever so intriguing. And the lack of colourful spreads is always going to be more than made up for by the fine writing and its work on the imagination of a fully-functional child or adult.

Take the Kuru-Pira of Brazil: with its red eyes like burning embers, erect ears, hairy chest, huge pendulous genitals, lack of knee joints and backward facing oversized feet, how could this creature be artistically rendered so as to improve upon our own mental images?

Anyway, the breadth of cultures included in this collection, while sometimes lacking any obvious coherence, is impressive; all the continents get a look in, with particular focus on the Far East, the aboriginals of Australia and North America, and the closely-linked Northern European and Middle Eastern cultures, with a few African tribal tales thrown in for good measure.

The attempts to distill notoriously vast and complex Hindu narratives into digestible paragraphs are quite comical, and yet not without their merits.

It's hard to picture them all living together in the world - these creatures sometimes quaint and sometimes terrifying - there are surely not enough iron horseshoes, scattered ash and magic lamps to hold the lot of them. Such as it is, many are unique to certain areas and - for the native humans - account for much if not all of the supernatural goings on thereabouts.

The djinn and their importance to Islam are very well accounted for here, along with Iblis and some of his pseudonyms, as are the many guises of the Christian Devil, but perhaps the most pleasing singular version of events to a northern European such as myself is Norway's Huldrefolk (or Huldra - possibly the children of Adam's 1st wife, Lilith) - a race I've come across before in Nancy Arrowsmith's exhaustive Eurocentric 'A Field Guide To The Little People'. (Also a great book and worth owning.)

The Huldrefolk live in an inverse or mirror world that sort of overlaps with our own and rarely converges, except when they need "human DNA" to better their ailing race(!) As a people, their story here is one of the most complete and (dare I say it) believable: one most in tune with the sense of the inexplicable that accompanies a rural upbringing in this corner of the world; their kind are reported across Scandinavia, Finland and Germany, and their direct equivalents are talked of in The British Isles, and further afield.

These stories will not be of interest to those in search of "narratives" or "tales" as we have come to understand these terms in relation to modern literature. They are often disjointed and strange and lacking moral or logical closure - but such is the way with these fragments of (super)human understanding that predate (but do not exist in exclusivity to) monotheism.

That one can not produce the head of a White Monkey or a photograph of Lilith is enough to persuade many of their fictional status. Such is the very literal idea of a border between reality and fantasy in the 21st century.

But, in the words of Circulus, "Reality's a fantasy": and, according to Schrödinger, the cat in the box remains both alive and dead until proven one or the other (I don't think he was trying to make the same point as me, but quoting a modern folk band hardly seems sufficient - and he was mentioned in the conclusion to this book), so where does that leave us?

Frustratingly, the book saves but the last few sections for the important questions about the relationship of the modern world to these mythological figures. One almost feels that the subject had been best avoided if not tackled more comprehensively. This parallel between Pandora's box and the unique and very personal demons we bear in our unique and individually-focused world becomes a bit woolly and doesn't have time to fully unravel, (though the build-up through the 7 deadly sins and their Middle and Far Eastern equivalents is quite exciting).

Still - as this mother and daughter-penned volume primarily aims to encourage further reading, according to the many receipts piling into my inbox from Amazon, it can only be judged a resounding success.

A Field Guide To Demons... on Amazon.

This Stone Called "City" Takes A Bite Out Of Me!

2009-03-24T23:46:00.005Z

Over a WEEK since the last podcast?
Unbelievable.

And not in an EMF way.

This one took a while because I had to reinstall iTunes AND the podcast program.

Oh well, it's still the BEST podcast yet.

Possibly the best ever, by anyone.

Great music, old and new.

And you won't get one next week cos I'm in Andalucia.

Word.

STREAM/DOWNLOAD HERE

Your Italian Ex-Boyfriend's Coffee Machine, Which I Stole When He Left For Bologna

2009-03-23T18:45:00.006Z

coin~de~cuisine (#12: Diet For Your Government)

Discovery:

Harbouring foreign nationals (for a month!) means you don't have to cook. Ever. The type of foreigner you harbour will obviously have an impact on the direction your diet takes. I chose Canadian and therefore my meat intake went through the roof - not just more meat, more types of meat, too: squid, for e.g.

However, the overall balance of my diet was not necessarily more 'un' than usual - and although I have definitely put on some weight, It's nothing that a bit of squash won't fix. Unfortunately, I never play squash, because I don't understand how to. Or why to. So I will be fat forever, now. Whole new thing.

Fact:

Bolognese Rarebit

If you don't know how to make good Bolognese then you're no Bolognan. I've been making Bolognese, (or English Bolognese), since I first was forced to sustain myself without external aid, somewhere in Devon, some time at the beginning of the century. Bolognese can contain anywhere between 1 and 109 ingredients. I aimed somewhere around the middle, this time.

Ingredients:

Thick, organic mince (the cow was minced less finely so it suffered less, and it was organic so... whatever that means too. You will find British Beef is more expensive and no different in quality, so buy it you unpatriotic scum), Two large red onions (or one, I forget), 5 cloves of garlic, half a jar of sun dried tomatoes (and the oil thereabouts, which'll save spending on... well... oil, obviously), a punnet of oyster mushrooms, two tins of chopped tomatoes or plum tomatoes or whatever, half a tin of what is hopefully tomato puree but has Cyrillic writing on the label, oregano, basil, pepper, salt, one Oxo cube dissolved in hot water, a few splashes of wine (you can buy wine in splashes from most good wine merchants), cheap white bread, pilgrim's choice cheddar, or whatever that cheese in the fridge is that probably belongs to Ralf.

Method:

Make the bolognese.

(What, you don't know how to do that? Oh for God's sake.)

Cook the things normally in a normal pot until they are ready then add the other stuff, mix in the rest and leave to simmer.

Devour with haste and a few splashes of wine splashed into a large glass, hopefully while watching The Office (US) (Not UK - screw that). Probably with spaghetti or fusilli or versace or Mussolini or something else with a lot of wheat in it.

Realise you have approx. 4/5ths of the bolognese left, because you forgot to invite anybody to your dinner party.

Refrigerate, then, for the next week or so, spread cold bolognese onto a half-toasted piece of crap white bread. Then do the same to its friend, both times being sure not to spread the mixture onto the already toasted half. Mound a mound of cheese onto the top of the cold bolognese with loving dexterity, then grill the bejesus out of it under, for example, a grill, until the cheese has melted all over it and definitely not over the bottom of the oven, because if it's done that you'll have to clean the oven, you idiot.

Enjoy your Bolognese Rarebit at your desk while chatting to your pretend colleague, who is actually some of your old clothes stuffed with some of your other old clothes, wearing gloves and a mask.

****iiiBonus section!!!****

Fanmail:

Regrettably, there has been no fanmail this month, so we've had to employ a new bonus section:

Hatemail:

Dear Alexander Velky,

You really suck.

Why do you suck so much? You didn't even invite me to your dinner party. After all we've been through, this truly buggers belief.

Yours, in deluges of tears,

Richard 'Elizabeth' Grant.

Dear Liz,

Very sorry: a complete oversight on my part, not to mention the part of my secretary, which will hithermore be played by somebody MUCH MORE EFFICIENT. And cheaper too - I ordered her from The Ukraine. Is it racist, Liz, to prefix the name of a nation with a definite article? Oh, sorry, I'm meant to be answering the questions, aren't I? I mean: I am answering questions. I am. See how I do it:

Anyway, Liz, you never invited me to your baby shower, or whatever middle-aged middle class people do for fun these days. If you resend me your address I'll pop you a bolognese rarebit in a jiffy bag and we're square, right?

Diamond.

A. Velky

Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

2009-03-17T13:49:00.008Z

Yup that's right, I'm keeping up with the Jones's. Hot on the trails of each fictional flash in the pan of literature. Up-to-the-minute clashings with contemporary culture.

Actually - I had no idea just how late I was getting around to reading this as I always think of it as a post-millennial thing. Not so, Not so: published in 1996, donchaknow. The same year Placebo released their debut album. I quite clearly remember a taped copy being lent to me (back to back with Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill) by my friend Amy, and I was THIRTEEN.

No wonder I didn't read it when it came out! Single I may have been, but I can't imagine I'd have identified too closely with the titular thirtysomething heroine and her obsession with dieting, nicotine addiction and other people's relationship problems. I was more into choosing my GCSEs and suchlike.

That said, even at that age, we shared a love of Jane Austen - or rather, Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

The influence of the mid-90s TV adaptation of Austen's best-loved work, 'Pride And Prejudice', can not be misunderestimated on this, the book responsible for the proliferation of an entire genre of novels in which bumbling-yet-adorable flawed-heroines search for their Prince Charming - sorry - their Mr. Darcy.

In Bridget Jones' Diary, though, the heroine is less "accomplished" (to use the 18th century term) than Elizabeth Bennet, if no less charming; she's got an English degree from Bangor university, which isn't anything to be ashamed of, but seems to have very little interest in what the world has to offer outside of booze, blokes and television. Even her diary, which isn't explored as a tool in itself - disappointing for an apparently postmodern novel, seems to be little more than a convenient tool to tell her story and catalogue her cigarette and calorie intake. It's almost hard to believe someone like Bridget would keep a diary for a whole year.

Admittedly, the story arc - defined by the two men who court her - is conveniently year-shaped. In fact, Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver are so convenient in every way as to utterly belie their status as real men and almost reduce them to plot points. The former has no personality as such, just virtues and blank spaces passed off as 'mystery' but coming across more like vapidness. The latter is more fully-formed and despite his obvious obnoxiousness, more likable, more attractive than Darcy, whose similarity to the other Darcy, specifically the TV-friendly Firth version (composed mainly of manly silences), is such that he cannot properly exist as Bridget does, as a real person - a real character, at least.

Yes, Bridget is pretty believable, which is the key to the novel's success. What's more, the effortlessness of the writing allows the year to whizz by in the space of a week (or an afternoon, if you're on holiday or something). No wonder so many others picked up their pens (keyboards/laptops, probably) and came up with their own Bridgets.

The two other 'chick lit' books I've read in my time are Freya North's 'Polly' and probably the worst book ever written, 'Camden girls' by Jane Owen.

The former I picked up in a charity shop (these things fill charity shops) and it was a perfectly daft sub-Fielding yarn spun by a less-likable but equally believable young female. Even more fantasy elements, wish fulfilment, and poor character-development. Just as much fun. I'd still recommend it. Why the hell not?

The latter was a hideous exercise in purported depth and purpose, set over a weekend in Camden, starring a few truly detestable airhead d-list local celebs, bar-hopping and holding forth their faux-feminist bullshit conversations at full volume in public places, dressing terribly (leggins and Dr Martens. Christ), while their friend/drug dealer tries (and fails miserably) to kill herself somewhere nearby in a skanky flat. It's a close contender for the worst book I've ever read. I found it in an honesty basket in a south London pub and it was the worst 50p I ever spent. Still, well worth reading if only to show you how corrupt and nepotistic publishing is. (She proudly/foolishly announced her dad owns a publishing house in the blurb. Idiot.)

Anyway. Helen Fielding's book struck the right chord with enough people inside the press/publishing industries to launch its cultural ubiquity. Everybody knows this book now, though not necessarily everyone has read it. Salman Rushdie condescendingly states that "even men will laugh" on the back, and despite this I'd wager I'm one of a very small number who's been tempted to read it. Having done so I can and will recommend it as pleasurable light reading but have to say I'm ultimately disappointed by its lack of depth, lack of willingness to deal with any serious issues, wet plot and hammy characters. Bridget is indeed a "brilliant comic creation", but the novel itself is no classic. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's age is already showing.

To be fair, the book never purports to be anything groundbreaking or philosophically deep, but it begins to grate towards the end how everything is entertaining, but everything is also so trivial - all of the comedy is light and breezy, but none of the tragedy is tragic: there is never any indication that Bridget's many real problems (severe lack of self-esteem, destructive maternal relationship, borderline alcoholism etc.) might actually matter, because of course she's going to get the guy. And not just "the guy" but the guy with the ridiculously well-paid job and perfect balance between utter passivity and total dominance. A number of Bridget's friends (male and female) seem to get treated awfully by their boyfriends, but it all sorts itself out when they get back together.

Bridget's battle agaisnt the adult fallacy that being in a relationship (any relationship) is infinitely preferable to exploring your own dreams and ambitions (while single) is lost by the end of the book.

It's all a bit of a farce really, and about as useful as a cultural product as Blind Date, the now outmoded, soon-to-be-forgotten TV show that keeps Bridget company on so many lonely nights in.

Can You Beer Me That Water?

2009-03-15T20:44:00.002Z

The good times keep rolling here.

There's just a lot of good music.

Today I went to Richmond

And looked at ducks and shit.

I'll write a poem about it soon

Which will be a metaphor

For something else.

Pax!X!

Velky.

PODCAST HERE.

I'm In Love. What's That Song? I'm In Love With That Song

2009-03-11T19:53:00.007Z

Again with the podcast?

Yeah well, whatever.

It's easy listening!

HERE.

Quartet Noire / Sol Invictus / Tony Wakeford @ Ship Of Fools, Temple Pier

2009-03-09T19:43:00.008Z

I don’t tend to ‘review’ or otherwise write about music much these days. If I like something I’ll just put it on a podcast and say “this is great” or “that was great” or something similar.

I’ll make an exception for this though as unlike, say, the excellent Only Ones gig I bore witness to in Sheppy B last month, it’s not that likely this’ll be covered in Uncut or NME or any of their online equivalents.

Anyway, of all the hidden treasures that make up the neofolk scene of today, Sol Invictus (and the related output of Tony Wakeford under any name) are perhaps the most crucial and unique to England and Englishness.

Having weaved his very own path through punk and industrial and having stood at both far sides of the political spectrum at one time or another, Tony W is something of an enigma – his music too, is full of interesting dichotomies; the original songs he crafts are in many ways more authentically-traditional sounding than your average folk-festival troupe, yet his background was in first-wave punk (Crisis) and much of Sol Invictus’ work makes heavy use of samples and loops – still present in Quartet/Orchestra/Duo Noir.

For someone so enigmatic, he comes across as a pretty pleasant, regular guy. Larger than life, there's no mistaking the sight of him, and the sound too, as it happens; his voice is instantly recognisable: distinctive, evocative and altogether haunting, yet technically, I suppose, it’s not what you’d call “good”.

The lyrics are doleful, doomy, depressing, yet can be quite beautiful and oddly-enlivening, even darkly-humorous at times. The songs explore identity, personal and national, and the relationship between past and present. They do so in a way that is utterly unique to Wakeford and in a way that is only normally expressed so well in traditional folk songs crafted ages ago by faceless individuals (more likely many of them, and over time).

Songs like ‘The Black Leg Miner’, ‘King & Queen’, ‘Old London Weeps’ and ‘Down The Road Slowly’ occupy a place all of their own in the vast clutter of music that fills my head. It was a real pleasure to hear them live for the first time at the first of three (currently scheduled) Ship Of Fools events in the rocking bowels of a boat off Temple Pier.

The narrow squeeze between bar and stage enforces a proximity between band and audience that would quiet any crowd. Mind you, another consideration is that the chances of accidentally stumbling in are pretty close to zero, so everybody here, (goths, skinheads, crusties, Vikings, wizards, the Dutch, all sorts really), probably has an idea what to expect, and is therefore silent reverentially, as opposed to politely.

The setup is a classical/folky combo of flute, violin, sparse and heavy percussion, and Tony W’s distinctively desolate guitar sounds. Andrew King is also on hand to provide vocals and additional instrumentation on a couple of tracks, as is the accordionist from Naevus. The atmosphere is somewhere between an informal jam session amongst friends and a long-awaited greatest hits set from a rock god.

The close proximity of such an odd bunch of characters (I don’t necessarily disclude myself) makes for a surprisingly comfortable vibe too, despite the occasional unannounced jolts and rockings caused by the wily whims of the Thames and the resultant necessity for apologising to the same person several times for standing on their foot.

Sieben, Naevus and Andrew King are amongst those lined up to occupy the cramped space of the Ship Of Fools in coming months. Those with an interest in decent forward-thinking folk music would do well to come on down. Though I’m not giving you directions. Actually finding the bloody boat is a test of faith.

Look out:
www.kaparte.info/

Listen Up:
open.spotify.com/artist/0JCc6x48WkGlDve4f5ZBZj
www.myspace.com/solinvictushq

Oh! Blimey!

2009-03-09T12:58:00.005Z

What's that you say - TWO podcasts at once? TWO hours of lovely music with minimal banter? Special guest co-presenter called James? With these treats, Alexander, you are spoiling us.

Although we don't do themes on Witching Hour podcasts, if there were one to these two, you'd probably be able to guess it by writing the words "regressive" and, erm... "liquid" on a piece of paper, then holding them up to a mirror. Perhaps. Or perhaps you wouldn't...

Part one - download/stream here.

Part two - download/stream there.