Paranoia in the Launderette

My walk into work this morning led me past the fabulously named Bernie Spain Gardens by Gabriel's Wharf. Here I passed a man wielding a very large chainsaw device, who was neatly trimming the hedges. My immediate reaction was to take stock of the situation, think fast and wonder if - as I approached - he would let loose, turn and slice me into slithereens with his nasty, rusty, angry looking chainsaw.

Such paranoia is commonplace in my mind. And while I'm pleased to report that I managed to walk past the man without incident of any kind, it did remind me of one of my favourite short stories: 'Paranoia in the Launderette' by Bruce 'Withnail & I' Robinson (a snip at £2.99).

Published (and first read by me) in 1998, I never tire of turning the pages as the unnamed protagonist, a failing writer, takes a reluctant trip to the launderette in order to wash his only set of clothes before embarking on an interview for a job he doesn't even want... and that he fears may well lead to his death. Between getting in a scrape with the police and worrying about what the launderette's staff think of his pants, this is a reassuring anxiety trip inside the head of the truly paranoid. The final scene contains a true gem of a line: "I'm not in here to hurt anyone. I'm a professional writer."

Fandom

As a former fanzine writer (remember the three ground-breaking editions of Arketino that were published from my Somerset bedroom between 1994 and 1996? Hmm, thought not), I must admit that I'm loving all these grown-up takes on the fanzine that I'm increasingly coming across. By that I'm not referring to these wretched blogs that people keep writing (I mean, really, it is self-indulgent, and really, as Matt says, there is no outside editorial input, and really, it's on the bloody internet so by default it's geeky), but to the lovely publications I've come across like Matt's Smoke; Pen Pusher; and the, erm, Persephone Quarterley (it's essentially a magazine, OK). If you know some more, please feel free to share.

Writing a fanzine (aged 16-18) was a fabulous outlet for indulging my creativity and getting some free records... as well as 'kind-of' access to musicians (my regular interviewee being Stephen Duffy, who used to be underground and respectable, but lately he's teamed up with RobbieBloodyWilliams and I've since lost all respect for him, SD that is). Hell, I even had an interview with Bernard Butler straight after he left Suede... at a time when even Melody Maker couldn't get an interview with him.

It was in the days before email and the internet, and most things were done through the post or on the phone - being only 16 and living in a tiny village in Somerset, actually meeting anyone who lived further afield than Bristol was never very easy. And typing up bits of paper, photocopying them to size (as we didn't have a computer to fiddle about with it on), and Pritt Sticking them onto the page was great. Sending the pages off to the printers in Sheffield and waiting eagerly for them to return was the stuff that sleepless nights were made of. And even charging people 50p for the priviledge of reading said self-indulgent drivel was satisfying.

But where's the similar satisfaction in a blog (even the word makes me cringe)? (It's at this juncture that I should stress that my main reasons for starting this blog are 1) to give me an outlet to remember that I am capable of stringing a setence together even though my living is current earnt by re-writing other people's shoddy copy, and 2) because I have ideas above my station. Get me, etc.).

In the words of Councillor Duxbury, 'Think on'.

A Postcard From Kennington

An anti-blogger (and old friend from my fanzine days, so he's allowed to say what he likes - not that my approval or otherwise would stop him) writes:

"As for blogs... I think I just work on the basis that lack of outside editing is always A Bad Thing. I know that seems slightly contradictory coming from someone who publishes his own magazine and used to release records on his own label, but the economics of printing (or record-pressing) act as the editor - I can only afford 52 pages, therefore I have to make sure they're the best damn 52 pages currently on offer. Whereas with websites and blogs and MySpace, people can just fill the void with rubbish and no one tells them to stop it. That's bad. People need aesthetic policing."

Oh, hang on... there's more:

"I disapprove of your blog on the grounds that your profile includes something called Astrological Sign and something else called Zodiac Year. These are two more Bad Things."

(By the by, I hadn't realised such rubbish as my astrological nonsense had appeared on my profile, but please rest assured it has been swiftly removed. Yuk.)

A Word about Ulysses

And the word is, 'No'!

I'm sorry. It's indecipherable, insufferable and incredibly tedious. I've read a third of it (which is more than my aunt who used to work for the Oxford English Dictionary so *must* be clever) and I just can't face any more. I might skim bits and I'll read the chapters I have to for the MA, but I just can't punish myself any longer. I'm really starting to wonder what I did to deserve such torture.

Abandoning a book halfway through is something I hate doing, along with most people. But lately I've really started to relax my morals. Life is so short, that I have to wonder what the point is of slogging through an utterly miserable and life-stealing read just for the sake of getting to the end.

So James Joyce can loiter beside Erica Jong in my recent abandoned books pile, and they are welcome to see what they make of each other. Not that I think they'll get on. James will doubtless be horrified at all her nasty little Americanisms, and Erica will be equally up in arms at James' atrocious representations of women. Ho hum.

On the plus side - 'The Brontës went to Woolworths' arrived yesterday and I can't wait to get started on it in my lunchbreak today. I'm so excited. Not least because 1) it has the beautiful cover I mentioned yesterday, 2) Rachel Ferguson *must* be a great writer if Persephone endorse her, 3) all the Googling I've done on the book has made it seem like a cult read, and 4) the out-of-print edition I have is published by Virago Modern Classics seems to be a blueprint for the Persephone way of thinking.

War of Words

I have just returned from my lunchbreak (which is an achievement in itself, considering I'm working on the 29th floor this week and, being claustrophobic, I have to take the stairs) and, on my way to the nearby Konditor & Cook for cake, found myself caught in a war of words between the various freesheets now bombarding the pedestrians in London.

Not content with abusing the mentality of every single London citizen with the Metro every morning, Associated Newspapers has also been throwing the Standard Lite (an appalling misuse of spelling) at dinner-timers for the past few years (enticing them to cough up for the Evening Standard on their way home). Last year the diabolically dull City Am was launched, which, from the name downwards, is one of the most boring publications to go to press. Now, with News International having launched The London Newspaper (I refuse to pander to their lower case obscenities), last week, the Standard Lite has rebranded itself with a hideous new masthead and a vile new name, London Lite.

Personally, I feel abused by these glorified press releases, with TV listings attached. They're ugly, poorly designed, poorly written, poorly spelt ('Lite' and lower case titles being just the tip of the iceberg) and, apart from anything else, they're something else to 1) litter the streets of London with as filthy people just chuck them on the pavement, and 2) clog up landfill sites with as people chuck them on the pavement instead of recycling them (see point 1).

The Brontës Went to Woolworths

I love it when one thing leads to another and the power of distraction and procrastination means you end up somewhere you really didn't expect.

Friday lunchtime saw me dash into the wonderful Persephone book shop (59 Lambs Conduit Street, Holborn) to pick up three more dove-grey tomes ('Cheerful Weather for the Wedding' by Julia Strachey, 'Every Eye' by Isobel English and 'Alas, Poor Lady' by Rachel Ferguson) - as well as the brand new Persephone Quarterly (as I was too impatient to wait until Saturday for it to arrive in the post).

And Friday evening saw me doing the night shift at a celeb mag... so with lots of time to kill waiting for the repro house to send over the cromalins, I amused myself by reading the Persephone Quarterly (resplendent with a beautiful picture of some Victorian-era ladies parading on the beach in their finery) and flicking through my new Persephone purchases. From reading the blurb on 'Alas, Poor Lady', I learnt that the author, Rachel Ferguson, had also written a book called 'The Brontës Went to Woolworths' - which must surely be among my all-time favourite titles for a novel. So I promptly went to Amazon and ordered up the last remaining copy from the Marketplace and I eagerly await its arrival. I would also like to add that by strange coincidence, the cover of 'The Brontës Went to Woolworths' is the same picture that graced the front of the current Persephone Quarterly that I admired so much. (I'd have liked to post it here but it's disappeared from the site now that I've bought the last copy.)

Rest assured that I shall keep you posted on how I get on with the Brontë book.

But in the meantime, I've already finished the brief 'Cheerful Weather for the Wedding' (more of a novella than a novel), which was originally published by the Woolf's Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf went so far as to call it one of the most perfectly formed books ever written. High praise indeed. The book wasn't quite what I expected having read the write-up, but I enjoyed it as a period piece, as a lesson in long-lost etiquette and for the timeless emotions of two people caught in a situation their hearts don't want to be in. And, as always, beautifully presented by Persephone.

Scritti Politici (sic)

A weary word about the Mercury Music Prize, which took place on Tuesday night. (NB: I never normally take any notice of dreary industry back-pats like the Brits and Mercury, but this year I was mildly curious for reasons that become apparent.)

Just how predictable was it that student bores the Arctic bloody Monkeys were going to win? When, as all the critics and writers seem to quite rightly suggest, the group that should have won was Scritti Politti.

Scritti frontman and musical genius, Green Gartside has been steadily and consistently producing timeless music since the 1970s, and his latest album, ‘White Bread, Black Beer’, is the best album I’ve heard all year.

I first heard Scritti Politti (‘The Word Girl’) in 1985, while sitting on the floor of a cricket pavilion at Brother Number Two’s school in Somerset. I might have been only seven, but I remember it so well. As a result, my school days were soundtracked by Scritti long-players ‘Songs To Remember’, ‘Cupid & Psyche’ and ‘Provision’, and my university years by the unexpected release of ‘Anomie & Bonhomie’. And this year I was thrilled when ‘White Bread’ followed a repackaging of Green’s 1970s output on his own St Pancras label, called ‘Early’.

PS: Brother Number Two currently lives in Dalston and informs me that Green not only pops into the local pub for a few drinks… but is ALWAYS in there – apart from on Tuesday night, when he pulled on a suit and headed out to the Mercury Awards to play one of his very rare live performances in the past 25 years. Good on him.

Holiday reading

As is now established, I’m freshly returned from a fortnight in the south of Italy… largely spent reclining under some olive trees, eating European Kinder treats and flicking through a variety of books. I impressed only myself by working my way through five of the seven paperbacks that accompanied me on the trip. And they were:

‘On Beauty’ by Zadie Smith
Largely, I’ve been reading books related to my MA in the past few months, but I’d promised myself a break while on holiday and resigned (bloody) ‘Ulysses’ to the bedside table in London – so I’d been really looking forward to Zadie’s third outing. Brushing aside the dismal ‘Autograph Man’, Zadie continues to impress with a book that shows Miss Smith herself has taken on board the criticisms of ‘The Autograph Man’ and gone back to the tried and tested format of ‘White Teeth’. She gives us a pan-Atlantic tale of two warring families and their various inter-personal relationship skills. A pleasure.

‘Pnin’ by Vladimir Nabokov
Fantastic! Like many people, the only other Nabokov I’d read is ‘Lolita’ (and enjoyed it enormously), but stumbled across the existence of ‘Pnin’ after Zadie Smith recommended it in a recent interview. So it made a nice bridge to read her choice after her book. 150 witty pages of dry humour, heartfelt bafflement and endearing eccentricities. Professor Timofey Pnin is a Russian bewildered in America… and the result in these pages is something that everyone should read.

‘The Scent Of Your Breath’ by Melissa P
Turgid, adolescent nonsense. What a waste of paper. Two years ago, 17-year-old Melissa threw up ‘100 Strokes of The Brush’, which purported to be her diary of her teenage sexual shenanigans. Having successfully whipped the world’s media into a furore, the lying brat now admits it was a load of codswallop (as most of her critics correctly suggested at the time). It was quite amusing though, so I picked up her sequel for some further light holiday reading. Written as a preposterously precocious letter to her mother, it’s pretentious beyond belief and took approximately one hour to read from cover to crumpled cover.

‘Fear Of Flying’ by Erica Jong
I’d never read ‘Fear Of Flying’ and felt, as a young woman of the world, that it was my duty to do so… and on holiday seemed as good a time as any. But half way through, I realised life was too short and left it out in the Italian rain one night and helped myself to another white wine. As an undergraduate I ploughed through ‘Of Blessed Memory’, but freely confess I remember one of it… not even the saucy bits. And on that note, I was disappointed to find nothing even remotely saucy in ‘Fear Of Flying’. On admitting this to the boyfriend (who found my soggy paperback the morning after I abandoned it to the weather), he shook his head in disappointment and reminded me what a classic feminist tome it is. At which juncture I’d like to add that yes, I recognise it’s a book of it’s time… but I’m a girl of my time and it’s not the ‘70s. Sorry.

‘Pgymalion’ by Bernard Shaw
Of course I’ve read this before. But it’s short, sweet and needed to be read for the MA (the only holiday read that did). Thoroughly enjoyable, it saw me through the torturous plane ride home… and not a hint of Martine McCutcheon in sight. Amen.

Good Goth!

Recognition at last! Paul (of Paul's Blog, on the left, fame) has seen fit to use one of my email ramblings on his site. In the absence of time to write a proper blog myself, I felt the need to share in someone else's.

http://frombeertopaternity.blogspot.com/2006/09/goth-watch-update.html

A complaint - already (hurray!)

"Any more updates on your blog coming? It seems you started and then stopped immediately... Or now that Love Island is gone, is that it... nothing worth talking about?"

Well!

You know who you are, and you also know darn well that I've been tucked away in Italy for the past fortnight. And as if you'd think I had nothing else to say now that 'Love Island' has gone, tsk tsk.

To set the record straight, I have plenty to report back from my holiday reading. I'm just waiting for a gap in my tedious working life to allow me the time to do it. So hold your horses...

Queen Of The Underworld

Surely the greatest publishing discovery round my neck of the woods has to have been that of Persephone Books. Based on the charming Lambs Conduit Street in London's Holborn, Persephone is a wonderfully traditional, largely-female publisher of long-forgotten favourites that have been out of print for ages. The website explains, "Our titles include novels, short stories, diaries and cookery books. They are all carefully designed with a clear typeface, a dove-grey jacket, a 'fabric' endpaper and bookmark, and a preface by writers such as Lyndall Gordon, PD James and Eva Ibbotson."

On the whole, of the 20 of so Persephone books I have read so far, my favourites by a long shot are:

* "Lady Rose And Mrs Memmery" - Ruby Ferguson
This was one of the late Queen Mother's favourite books of all time - being about a super-priviledged Scottish girl who grows up to inherit a palatial Scottish empire. But after being forced into a loveless marriage so that she could unite her fortune with an equally wealthy local heir, she realised where her heart truly lay.

* "Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day" - Winifred Watson
Apparently this is Persephone's best-selling book, and it's easy to see why. Another day-in-the-life-of book (but much more readable than "Ulysses"), "Miss Pettigrew" is the fairytale of an ageing spinster who comes to work for a flighty socialite in London by mistake... and her life is magicaly transformed.

* "The Making Of A Marchioness" - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Hodgson Burnett famously wrote "A Little Princess" and "The Secret Garden", and as ever "The Making Of A Marchioness" is a rags to riches tale with a cruel Indian element... but this one has a more adult feel than Burnett's better known books.

* "Miss Ranskill Comes Home" - Barbara Euphan Todd
The author of "Worzel Gummidge" puts a new slant on the World War Two book with a story about a lady, Miss Ranskill, who has been shipwrecked on a desert island for two years, and when she is rescued comes home to find Blighty in the middle of World War Two. Unable to buy clothes without coupons, or to sleep with the windows open, "Miss Ranskill" is a fresh look at some of the absurdities of wartime practice.

Notes From A Small Island

The boyfriend laughed at me the other day – no big surprise there as I seem to be a constant source of amusement to him. Never mind the old, “I’m laughing with you, not at you” line, that doesn’t make sense when I’m always having to look perplexed and ask, ‘What are you laughing at?”

We were settling down to watch our current favourite TV treat, ITV1’s “Love Island” (about which we’re both distraught that we shall be on holiday when the grand finale airs). We’re both hooked on the adventures of La Anderton and her many vile personalities, the mewings of Playboy bunny Colleen, and their merry band of freaks and attention seekers. And we shall both forever remember the hideous war in Lebanon as having been bizarrely scheduled by the bigwigs at ITV to appear sandwiched between the two nightly episodes of “Love Island”.

The reason for his humour is best summed up by my friend Ben, who made a remarkably similar comment in an email to me only this morning: "I can't believe you're watching "Love Island". Still, makes for an interesting juxtapotision - "Love Island" and "Ulysses" - I imagine those two don't cross paths too often. I have no intention of ever reading "Ulysses", I'm afraid to say. Life is too short for that kind of thing as far as I am concerned, it sounds far too much like hard work to me. But good for you ploughing through it."

And my favourite thing about "Love Island" - Paul Danan and his Lilo Banter (see picture). Bring back the Danan!

An Odyssey Into "Ulysses"

When James Joyce first saw ‘Ulysses’ published in 1922, it was greeted by controversy and outrage. Some claimed it was blasphemous, others that it was pornographic, and most that it was unreadable. Since then, people have gone on to either call the book pretentious, or to say that it’s the most inspiring thing they’ve ever read. Virginia Woolf was so inspired she went on to write ‘Mrs Dalloway’ – another stream-of-consciousness, day-in-the-life tome.

I’ve been trying to get to grips with ‘Ulysses’ for about three weeks in preparation for the MA. To say I’d enjoyed any of it would be a fib. But I am enjoying the challenge of trying to get through this mountain of a book. True, quite a lot of the time I feel like I’m just reading word after word without understanding what they all mean strung together; and true, occassionally I give in and let myself skim a chapter… but it’s still satisfying, not least of all because so few people I know seem to have conquered it and I’ve always been a competitive cow.

Right now I’m on chapter 10 (of 18)… which, while that might be halfway through, still only seems to be 200 pages in (of 800). Even with my maths, I know that’s not good going. But that might have a lot to do with the fact that for me, reading "Ulysses" just seems to involve moving the book into different rooms inthe flat and leaving it on a different table "for later".

So far, Bloom and Dedalus have shaved, eaten breakfast, had a shit, been to a funeral and the library, and eaten a cheese sandwich for lunch. I know, I know, it’s difficult for you to imagine why I’m not hooked.

But don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted on what happens next. There’s supposed to be some rude bits to look forward to. I've already heard about Bloom going to the museum so that he can peer at a statue's bottom, so that's a start.

Rebranding

I've decided it’s time for a rebrand. Why? I'm going back to school. More specifically, in October I'm going back to university (part-time) to do an MA in Modern & Contemporary Literature.

On Sunday, my second-cousin (who teaches A'Level English Literature to middle-class kids) told me that 1) her students largely don't read books for pleasure, and 2) they freely litter they essays with text message speak, such as 'da' and '4'. She seemed to think this was merely the progression of the English language. I think it’s appalling.

But I'm sure I can't have forgotten everything I learnt in my expensive public school education... it wasn't even that long ago. We'll see...