A propos of nothing in particular .....

One small step ....

2009-07-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

I've been glued to the swathe of TV programmes celebrating the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon. I can just about remember watching them at the time, back in 1969, at the tender age of six. Just that irregular 'peep' noise that accompanies the footage of the astronauts is enough to engulf me in a wave of nostalgia about that historic moment, and the world we inhabited back then.

And I've been thinking about how that world differs from the one we inhabit now. I grew up reading every science fiction book I could get my hands on. I was fascinated by the whole concept of space travel. I was glued to 'Star Trek' every week. I told the careers advisor at school that I wanted to be an astronaut. I would stare up into the night sky until I thought my head would explode with the sheer vastness and mystery of it all.

Do kids still do that? Somehow it seems to me that awe has gone as much out of fashion as science fiction. Forty years on and we just seem so earth-bound. My children seem far more interested in their ipods than alien civilisations. We're all so obsessed with economic and environmental doom that it feels like we never look skywards any more. Even Star Trek has gone down the pan. The latest film was a relentless action-fest, packed with special effects but lacking any of the thought and intelligence of its predecessors.

Yes, the space program was expensive, but nothing compared with the world's military budgets. The US spent around $26 billion getting a man to the moon; in 1968 alone its defense budget was more than $78 billion. And the Russians spent a great deal less in getting to the big cheese.

And what we gained was immeasurable: wonder, excitement, hope and, most importantly, a sense of global unity. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watched Neil Armstrong take that incredible, daring, groundbreaking leap for mankind. And probably every single one of them was in the grip of the same emotion - awe.

Fck, Bgger, Sh*t

2009-03-19T12:07:00.001-07:00

Every now and then everything falls apart. And I mean EVERYTHING. It'll happen over a few days, invariably just before my period. It's like the Universe tires of sending me those good ol' life challenges in dribs and drabs, and decides it may as well bundle them all up and drop them on me all in one go.

1. I have a major row with my partner, fuelled largely by his decision that it's a very good idea to spend ALL weekend digging the vegetable garden, leaving me feeling like a single mother. I lose all perspective. I fantasise about leaving him; killing him; burning his socks; breaking off our so-called engagement. And spend that night fuming in the bed in my den.

2. The hot water decides to take a holiday - naturally said partner is away at the office. Cheerio personal hygiene.

3. I get the mother of all migraines. The kind that's still there when you wake up on Day Four. The kind that barely flinches when you bombard it with a hefty dose of naratriptan, washed down with two paracetamol and codeine.

4. Finally get an evening to myself. Tuck myself up in bed with my laptop and my Lovefilm DVD. What a treat! Insert the DVD. It doesn't play. Or rather it does play, but only in French. And my French is still too crap to have a clue what they're on about.

5. Said partner - we've made up by now - calls to say his office was burgled on the one and only evening when he'd left both his laptop and two digital cameras in it. Between them they contained every single photo and video we've taken over the last six years. And no, he didn't back them up.

6. My ex-husband's new car breaks down, which of course means I have to either lend him mine or spend several days ferrying the kids back and forth when they're supposed to be with him. I'll probably have to lend him the money to repair his car too.

7. Drive ten miles to the gym. Just about have time for a workout before I have to be elsewhere. Open my PE kit. Have brought two T-shirts and no shorts. The woman in reception, who refuses to lend me one of the ten thousand pieces of lost property gear they have boxed up round the back, suggests I work out in my silk skirt. I wonder if I could strangle her with it.

8. My eldest son bunks off university, arriving back at his dad's announcing that he plans to quit. He doesn't even bother to call me. No one tells me what kind of a state he's in so when I'm drafted in to drive him to the station - see above - I end up giving him a piece of my mind about treating me like crap, etc, completely oblivious to the fact that he's on the brink. Or that I am.

And all this in just one week. Along with all the every day irritations that give life its edge. I have reached that point where I've stopped even bothering trying to cope. I have shut myself in my den with a large glass of wine and I am feeling very, very sorry for myself. And for anyone else who happens to cross my path.

Oh hell...

2009-03-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

My partner unearthed this on the internet the other day. It's so brilliant I just have to pass it on:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

This is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term. Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following, and received the only 'A' grade given:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities: If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze."

Oh, to be even half as clever ....

As Good as It Gets

2009-03-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

Okay. I wrote bits of a book. Some time later, I wrote other bits. I thought I had a book. But then again, I wasn't sure. I put it in a back drawer.

Several years later, I took it out again. I read it. It made me laugh. It made me cry a bit too. Hey, this book isn't so bad, I thought. This book might just be a real book.

I tidied it up. I tweaked it. I sent it off. One agent asked for the full manuscript. Two said no right off. The first agent wrote back saying they'd talked about it a lot but basically it didn't work. I put the book back in the drawer and sulked for a year or so.

I got the book out again. I read it. I still liked it. I still had the nagging feeling that something was missing. I sent it off for a literary critique. The author who critiqued it also had the nagging feeling that something was missing. She had the nagging feeling that a lot was missing. It was a very flawed book, she said.

I sulked for another year. Then I dragged myself on an Arvon course. Then another. On the second, one of the tutors made a couple of really helpful suggestions. I went home and wrote a new subplot for the book. It was undeniably better. But I wasn't sure. I was worried for my book. I didn't want to send it off again prematurely into the world.

So I waited. I worried some more. Then I tweaked it and sent it off for another literary critique, this time with a different agency. The nice lady said nice things about the book. She said it could be a real book. And she made some really helpful suggestions.

I've acted on those suggestions. I've written in new bits and I've gone over and over it until I don't think you can see the joins. I've read it through a hundred times. I've changed words in sentences over and over until the words swim and the sentences don't seem to make sense any more.

Today I finished. Today, I've finally had to admit that this book is as good as it's going to get. It's time for this little would-be book to go out and try and make its fortune.

And I am terrified.

Haven't we been here before?

2009-02-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

I used to be a real Lynch fan. I practically knew every line in 'Eraserhead' off by heart. I was glued to 'Twin Peaks'. Loved 'Blue Velvet' and 'Wild at Heart'.

Twenty odd years later I sat down to watch 'Mulholland Drive'. Two hours later I really wish I hadn't bothered. It was like a protracted deja-vu. A rehash of all the old Lynchian themes he'd done to death years ago. All that 'mysteriousness', that obsession with the macabre. The stage scene that was just a replay of 'In heaven' in 'Eraserhead'. Scary strange people with odd expressions and maniacal laughs. Dreamlike sequences. Impossibly convoluted 'plots' which are actually nothing but inane meanderings posing as complexity. Years ago I might have been captivated, convinced there was some inner meaning to it all. Now I was just bored. There's no meaning here. It's just idiotic. All surface and image. Not profound, not mysterious, just ridiculous.

And more than that, there's something really quite repellent about Lynch's fetishistic obsession with women and their appearance. The way he likes to make them look all wooden and vulnerable and doll-like. The hints of violence - bruises on the prostitute's arm, the druggy woman collapsing on stage. There is really a nasty underbelly to Lynch's psyche that makes me very glad I don't have any personal acquaintance with him.

All in all, I was left wondering what's the problem here - that I grew up or David Lynch didn't?

Nihilism and Dystopia

2009-01-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, I guess it was my fault. I chose the book. I fell for the blurb on the back cover and the 80 odd 5* reviews on amazon. And I tried to read it. By the time the book club meeting came around I had ploughed through 450 pages of "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. The sort of book reading where you have to promise yourself a treat if you make it through another chapter. (In this case said treat was a few more chapters of Haruki Murakami.)

And everyone at the book club loved it. And had finished it.

I'll leave aside the fact that this book has, in effect, no plot - indeed the first half is nothing really more than backstory - and often reads like an Indian party political broadcast, and just focus on what really irked me. And here I'll make another confession. I've no intention of finishing this novel, which is a rare thing for me - I usually feel it's a point of honour to get to the closing pages, even if I'm truly suffering in the process. But in this case I checked out those amazon reviews a little more thoroughly, and found out that the remaining 200 odd pages basically involve one sadistic turn of event after another, until all the characters are all but annihilated. 'Utterly without hope', seems to be the consensus of this work of apparent genuis.

Now, with a tendency towards depression and an overdeveloped capacity for worry, I tend to avoid 'utterly without hope'. And I also happen to believe that it has no place in literature. I loathed Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" for this very reason. I'd throw in Michel Houellebecq's "Atomised" onto that heap, and possibly toss on J G Ballard's "Cocaine Nights" for good measure. Then set light to the lot. Farenheit 451, anyone?

I'm not saying all novels should be uplifting, not at all. But there should be some purpose in all that negativity. Take George Orwell's "1984", which I read at the tender age of 12. Negative, yes. Depressing, perhaps. Nihilistic, no. "1984" was a warning, an intelligent exploration of totalitarianism. There was sense and meaning in the protagonist's suffering. Ditto Kafka or Dostoevsky - they're not exactly giving us a sunny view of the world in their novels, but they are nevertheless truly satisfying reads.

But what point is Rohinton trying to make in so torturing then abandoning his central characters? What message are we supposed to take from McCarthy's relentlessly awful portrayal of the end of the world? It's like watching a slasher movie where everyone winds up dead. You're left wondering what's the point of it all? And in my opinion, that feeling has no place in good literature.

Which forces me to evaluate what I do think is the 'point' of literature. Why are we drawn to fill our lives with stories? What purpose do they serve? And what makes a satisfying story, and transcends it into art? I've concluded that the answer is human nature. Good art, good stories, tell us something about ourselves, about our light and dark sides, about our potential and the pitfalls along the way. If you're at all interested in exploring this further, I can do no better than point you in the direction of Christopher Booker's absorbing opus magnus "The Seven Basic Plots". It sounds reductive. It isn't. It provides one of the most conclusive explanations I've come across as to why art and story is so important to us.

Stories need a beginning, middle and end. They need conflict, and they need resolution. They need a satisfying conclusion, although that doesn't necessarily mean a happy ending. And we need to learn something along the way, or see some part of our basic human psychology reflected in the 'hero's' journey, which is alway, fundamentally, a psychological journey. The protagonist either matures, and is saved - comedy - or fails to mature, and is lost to himself and the world that surrounds him - tragedy. But taking a character or set of characters and throwing impossible circumstances at them is not literature. You may as well just watch a cat torturing a mouse, then biting off its head.

Magnificent

2008-11-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

I read a fair bit - at least by most people's standards. And I watch quite a few films. And the vast majority of what I read/watch leaves me feeling just so-so. Take it or leave it. Though now and then I'll think something is good. Maybe very good. Five-stars-out-of-five good.

And then - very, very occasionally - you come across something which is another-order-of-magnitude good. Something which just takes your breath away and doesn't give it back until you turn the last page or watch the closing credits roll up in front of you. And you realise that what it's all been for. That's why you've ploughed through all those novels or sat through all those movies. To get to here.

Last year I got there with Victor Pelevin's The Clay Machine Gun. Last night I found myself there again when I watched a film I knew nothing about - I had simply popped it onto my Lovefilm list after seeing an interesting review. Magnolia. Where was I in 1999 when this was released? What was I doing? How could it possibly have come to a point where, nine years later, I'd never even heard of this film?

I won't even try to describe it to you - beyond saying that it follows the interlocking lives of a series of characters in Los Angeles - but it was absolutely captivating. Several minutes into the opening montage I had that feeling of absolute 'rightness'. That sense that there was absolutely nothing in the world I'd rather be doing at this moment than sitting here, laptop propped up on my knees, watching what was unfolding in front of me. And three hours later (yes, it's long, but then, hell, so is War and Peace) I was still captivated. And open-mouthed. Literally. Towards the end my jaw actually dropped, I was so astounded and moved and transfixed by what was happening on the screen.

This is a work of consummate genius, at once puzzling and heart-rending and wise and funny and tragic and uplifting. The acting is astonishing. I've never been a particular fan of Tom Cruise but in Magnolia he proves he's more than than just a pretty face with one of the most powerful performances I have ever seen. The musical score is hypnotic, and the frog scene is probably the most dramatic use of special effects in cinema history.

If only everything in life were this good.

God help me....

2008-11-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

OK. I've deleted Minesweeper and every form of patience game from my laptop. I have strictly forbidden myself ever to go on Puzzle Pirates again, after losing a whole day to it some months ago. I have resisted loading in SimCity or even the kids' Zoombinis game.

But I stumbled on this today: www.timesspellingbee.co.uk

Will somebody come straight round and press control-alt-delete for me please?

Exquisite

2008-11-18T05:25:00.001-08:00

I'm not watching much TV these days - six months without one seemed to snap me out of my addiction of lying half comatose in front of the box for three hours an evening. And truly half of what's on there is rubbish. Freeview has given me access to god know's how many channels, and there's rarely anything I want to watch on any of them.

And then suddenly you discover something so wonderful, so exquisitely produced, so lovingly crafted, that it makes you want to weep. In this case I am talking about BBC4's current series, Picture Books, covering the history of children's writing from picture books to teen fiction.

Catch up with an episode on the BBC iplayer - assuming you've not caught it already - and you'll see what I mean. Amongst other things, the series is a homage to great children's illustration - original drawings from various classics form gorgeous backdrops behind the commentators in some scenes, while in others the camera pans lovingly across the artist's images. It makes you want to run out the room and root out your old copies, to feast your eyes all over again on John Tenniel's illustrations for 'Alice in Wonderland', or E H Shepherd's for 'Wind in the Willows'and 'Winnie the Poo'.

Simply unmissable for anyone with a passion for children's literature - or for that matter anyone lucky enough to have had these books and images form part of their childhood mental landscape.

Good grief....

2008-11-16T04:05:00.000-08:00

Second son, clutching the adaptor plug to his digital radio.
“Look, Mum, I put my tongue on the end here and I got a really bad electric shock. Even though it’s not plugged in. Look.”
He puts the plug to his tongue. “Aaargghhh," he yells, "That REALLY hurts!”
He does indeed look pained.
“Look. I’ll do it again.”
He does it again. More squeals of agony.
When he's recovered, he hands it to me. “Go on, you have a go.”

Can you believe this child is nearly 15?

Sheesh

2008-08-29T03:47:00.001-07:00

I was doing a bit of surfing, prompted by a newsletter from the Arvon society, which runs a slew of creative writing courses. Try one - they're jolly good. Anyway, I landed up on the website of a female novelist/journalist, who kicked off with the following: "Xxx is one of Britain's most talented contemporary writers." I shan't tell you her name, since anyone given to such shameless self-promotion may well be the type to flame anyone who objects.

But really, how can you have the nerve to actually write that about yourself? Especially given that frankly, Ms Xxx, I for one have never heard of you.

Not barking, but howling

2008-02-11T06:36:00.000-08:00

I'm going to take a deep breath, then repeat this only once. When you're not interested in something, you're uninterested in it, okay? Uninterested. Not disinterested.

Got that? Not interested, as opposed to impartial. Please try to remember it. Please.

I've been feeling pretty much like this....

2008-02-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

Simply irresistible

2007-11-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

My youngest son - now 12-years-old - gave me hell this weekend in the way only he and his oldest brother know how. Sheer bloody-minded unreasonableness mixed with a good dose of contempt and belligerence, and seasoned with a liberal smattering of swear words. I declined into that feeling of absolute maternal desperation - the one where you don't know whether to murder your offspring or yourself. Luckily, I had a trip to London scheduled, and escaped on Sunday morning with two days to calm down.

Said son phoned my mobile while I was recuperating in my favourite Japanese restaurant. After enquiring whether I wanted him to go up and see the dog, he then apologised for hie earlier behaviour (that is where he and his elder brother differ - the latter has NEVER apologised for his verbal atrocities). Then he said, and I quote: "Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this quaint turn of phrase - what has he been reading recently? - but it had the desired effect. I forgave him instantly.

The best things in life are free

2007-10-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

Actually, I feel the need to sing the praises of craigslist a bit further. I've spent a lot of time on the net - some might say an inordinate amount - and I really feel it's the jewel in the crown. Yet almost no one I know has heard of it.

Here's a bit of the blurb about "24 Hours on Craigslist" - the film of the concept (no, I am not kidding) Anyway, it will give you the general idea. Basically craigslist:

Is responsible for billions of dollars of interpersonal commerce—more than any other stop on America's internet.
Provides the majority of housing and jobs for the nation's urban population.
Has hooked up more people than ALL other dating sites combined.
Has grown in web traffic 100% a year since it's creation over a decade ago.
Is 99.99% FREE to use and 100% FREE of banner adds, pop-ups or any other annoying internet advertising which you are probably seeing out of the corner of your eye at this very moment.

Since Craig Newmark founded the site in 1995 simply to "help out, in a very small way" he has resisted an onslaught of advertising offers, multi-million-dollar buy outs and even the courtship of national TV shows and Hollywood studios.

Now that is my kind of guy. And craigslist is my kind of site. I've used it to arrange houseswaps in NY, rent rooms and apartments, make friends and find dinner dates (back in my halcyon single days). Not to mention just entertaining myself reading people's ads - the personals alone will keep you amused/bemused for hours. The 'Best of' section on the left contains some of the funniest prose I have ever read. Anywhere.

So, if you've not discovered it, don't waste another moment. Check out the NY site (newyork.craigslist) to see how good it can get. Then find the one for your local town and get posting. Grass roots participation doesn't get any better than this.

2007-09-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

The definition of writer's block - when you'd rather fill in your tax return than work on your novel.

What a wonderful town

2007-09-26T03:35:00.000-07:00

September was a bad time to go to New York. Not in terms of the weather – Manhattan was bathed in glorious sunlight for almost the whole week we were there – but in terms of timing. We came home to the beginnings of autumnal gloom, along with all the hassles of the new school year, marginal progress on the building work (yet another missing ceiling), more financial problems, and a foot-and-mouth crisis that threatens to devastate my partner's business. What with the jetlag, and ensuing queasiness and marathon migraines, I have not been in the best of spirits.

Not that coming back from New York is ever easy. I have an inexhaustible passion for the place, having been swept off my feet on my first visit five years ago. It was truly a case of love at first sight. The moment I set foot on Manhattan tarmac I knew there was nowhere on earth I would rather be. I just love the energy and exuberance of the place, the diversity and chaos. The busy-ness of it all. I love the way the city fosters contrast and paradox, eccentricity and extremes. I know of nowhere else with such an abundance of life.

I thought maybe I’d get over it eventually, like you do most infatuations. But this trip proved that time doesn't always heal. The moment we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge I was bouncing off the walls with excitement, drinking in everything I’d missed - the constant blare of horns and sirens, the avenue-long vistas, the downtown dinginess, the ubiquitous smell of vanilla, the streaming yellow taxis, the iconic skyline. Oh, and the cheesecake.

Everything about New York makes my pulse race and my heart sing. It's the only thing on earth that ever made me wish I could live my life again and do things differently. Yet I know that even if I could go back and live out my life there, it wouldn’t be enough. Even a thousand lives wouldn’t really get you under the skin of the place.

As it is, I’m confined to all too infrequent weeks out there, and occasional meanderings around the wonderful New York craigslist (newyork.craigslist.org - check out the 'Best of' section on the right when you need a few belly laughs). I know I don’t have much to complain about in life. I’ve been exceptionally lucky in the greater scheme of things. But still, it’s a hard thing when your heart belongs in one place, but your body is stuck in another.

It's a dog's life

2007-09-12T01:53:00.000-07:00

I am suffering from a bad case of dog envy. Basically, I want to be the dog. I don't care about the fleas or the endless diet of cardboard dog biscuits. I don't even care about the halitosis. I would still the be the dog in a heartbeat. Why? Let me count the ways...

1. The dog doesn't have a to-do list or a diary.
2. The dog never worries about whether it's putting on weight. Even if it is, it doesn't care.
3. The dog isn't concerned about finishing its novel or getting it published.
4. The dog never has to wander around Tesco wondering what the **** we're going to eat night.
5. The dog doesn't have to cook it either.
6. The dog doesn't get spots.
7. The dog never loses its car keys. Or its phone.
8. The dog only has two periods a year.
9. The dog never worries about keeping fit. It just is.
10. The dog doesn't feel guilty when it sees the growing pile of ironing in the utility room. It lies on it.
11. The dog isn't wondering how it will pay the latest request for a large amount of money from the builders.
12. The dog doesn't have to enter into protracted negotiations with the children over every single insignificant decision. It just looks bored and walks away.
13. As far as I can tell, the dog doesn't get three-day migraines.
14. The dog doesn't have to speak to someone in Delhi every time it has a query on its credit card.
15. The dog doesn't notice when its having a bad hair day.
16. The dog never, ever has to go to the dentist.
17. Nor will the dog ever have to consider Botox. The effect would be lost under all that hair.
18. The dog gets to lie around dozing all day, either in the sun or out, depending on its mood.
19. The dog thinks that a walk around the scraggy woods up the road is the nearest thing to bliss.
20. The dog seems to actually enjoy running until it pants.

Mind you, the dog isn't going to New York next week for a good dose of urban indulgence. Sucker.

A little light relief

2007-09-06T03:09:00.000-07:00

This is taken from a little plastic pinball game we bought in a French supermarket some years ago, for a few francs. The kind where you pull back a little springed piston and shoot little coloured balls into numbered baskets. The instructions were on the back: Chinese on the left, an English 'translation' on the right. I have reproduced the English version exactly as it appears, including spelling, spacing and punctuation. Enjoy.

Intelligent Marble and Color Wheel
Intelligent and Lucky

A GAME OF MARBLES AND COLOR WHEEL
- Marble and Color Wheel is a kind of game that is very mordennow. It collects excitement,fascination.It's a very interesting game.It can not only train lover's skill and intelligence but also is a best way for lover's to make friend. It's an intelligent game for a family to be a happy field. Spring your miracle,competite your level.
-Play ways: 1 The two parties of intelligent competition must own themselves "Marble and Color Wheel".Within the fixed time if you shoot the five provided plastic teased pearl early or late,you'll get a grand tolal. If the last digit of the grand total has an "EIGHT",you'll get an "Auspicious seat".If the last digit of the grand total has a "FIVE",you'll get a "LUCKY SEAT".
2 Other, the two parties willjudge winning or losing,according to the highest grand total. The one who get the hightest grade is a big winnet. 3 Before a game begins,players may also engage to shoot the five provided platic teased pearl early or late,getting a grand total.We winner according to how manypoints it can reach.
-Where there is a will be your best ladder of success. it is your best training of will,intelligence,skill will be best ladder of success. It is your best training way of defeating everying.

Find similar at www.engrish.com

Back in the USSR....

2007-09-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

Just spent three days in Estonia, in the company of one of East Europe's new entrepreneurs. Aside from the fact that he talked incessantly - and I mean ceaselessly - and only had two topics of conversation - business, and himself - it was all a little depressing. Shocking to see how huge the gap had grown between the mega-rich and everyone else. And how unreservedly they had embraced consumerism. The relentless march of McDonalds and Coca-Cola, top brand cosmetics and Versace T-shirts.

I spent a month in Leningrad back when it was still Leningrad, nearly 25 years ago. I was learning Russian, and it was a fascinating time. I had mixed feelings about communism. I could see the problems, and like everyone I was relieved when its demise meant I didn't have to assume that every siren that went off was the four minute warning. But I also feel that its failure was a defeat for all of us. The Soviet Union, back then, at least offered an alternative to the rampant consumerism that has now spread across most of the globe. The Russians I met had real character and soul, and I can't help wondering how much of that was due to their not spending most of their existence planning their next trip to Bluewater Mall or when they'd purchase their new Wii.

And much as I concede that communism had some very undesirable outcomes, I still feel that democratic capitalism that now predominates across the Western world is fraught with problems. Two stand out for me. The first is that party politics means that no government can afford to make unpopular but necessary decisions, and short terms of office mean none can take a truly long term view. Unfortunately, we need governments which can do both. Our inexorable appetite for more of everything - food, luxury, lots and lots of things - has brought us to the brink of environmental catastrophe, and only some very unpalatable decisions will bring us back from it. Assuming it's not too late.

Secondly, the rise of the multinationals and immensely wealthy corporations means they can employ legions to bully, cajole, and derail any governments that dares to go against their interests. Oil companies, sugar manufacturers, tobacco peddlers - you name it, these companies are very adept at getting their own way, and rarely is their own way aimed at the greater good of individuals or mankind. Just their shareholders.

I can't help thinking of my new testament lessons at school. Jesus overturning the tables of the money-lenders in the temple. His warning that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. A wise bloke, the messiah. But who's listening now? We've got our new religion, and its name is shopping.

Still sniffy

2007-08-21T03:08:00.000-07:00

Another day, another box of tissues. Will I never shake this off? Mind you, at least one nostril has now made itself available for the mundane process of inhalation and exhalation. Which means I can now close my mouth when I eat. And possibly taste my food.

Tried to put in my daily quota on the book. But my willpower just wasn't playing ball. It simply refused to apply itself to the suddenly very unappealing task in hand. The voices kicked off, the usual litany of 'why are you wasting your time... everything you write is shit'. Yeah, yeah, I know, a true writer never listens to the pixies of doom, but today I simply caved in. Succumbed ...tut,tut.... to a major bit of surfing instead.

What with the builders banging and sawing incessantly overhead, Radio 1 blaring away (are there really only ten songs in the whole universe?), several children downstairs wondering when I shall ever emerge from the bedroom and actually do something with them, yet another day of cloudy skies, and the ever-present burden of what to put in all our mouths next, I am having one of my caged-desperation moods. This mainly involves running a line of Larkin - "Beneath it all desire for oblivion runs" - on a continual mental loop and fantasising about getting in the car and driving until the petrol tank runs dry or I fall off the edge of England somewhere.

Oh bugger it, I'd better go and see what they want for lunch....



Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

2007-08-19T07:08:00.001-07:00

I've been in bed for three days with what seemed, at first, quite an innocent little virus. Just a minor head cold, a slight sore throat. Not much more than in inconvenience, so I thought. But the next day I felt myself gradually sapped of energy, and then of appetite. My nose would run suddenly, entirely without warning, like someone had just turned on a tap. All I could do was lie in bed with a box of tissues, playing Spider solitaire and loitering around amazon.co.uk, feeling increasingly sorry for myself.

Mind you, I also got a fair bit of reading done. "Just in Case" by Meg Rosoff (Verdict: started well, then floundered through lack of satisfying plot) and "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield (Verdict: storytelling at it's best. Absorbing, escapist, and exquisitely written). I listened to the latter on my ipod, courtesy of audible.co.uk. If you've never tried audiobooks, I can't recommend them highly enough. There are few stories that aren't enhanced by being read aloud, and there's nothing like being able to immerse yourself in a novel while doing something 'useful' at the same - in my case, walking the dog, ironing, or simply lying in bed feeling like shit.

Back to Setterfield. I read her bio on the net. She's a veteran of two Arvon courses, which cocks a snook at anyone who thinks that creative writing tuition is a waste of time. But I can't help thinking about her tutors, and how they must have felt when they heard that one of their students had managed to snare over £1,000,000 in her first book deal.... ouch!

2007-08-13T08:37:00.001-07:00

Terrible weekend. My father paid one of his hit-and-run visits. Just long enough to stir up the viper's nest of nastiness that is our family history, short enough to ensure nothing would ever be resolved. How I wish one could divorce one's family once and for all. I'd cite mental cruelty.

I finished Michel Houellebecq's "Atomised" this morning. Hated it so much I dedicated an hour to giving it a good pasting on Amazon. Here it is, if you're interested:

"Les Mots Unjustes"

"It's a long time since I disliked a book this much. Not since I read Iain Bank's "A Song of Stone", probably ten years ago. Perhaps if I had been a) male b) adolescent c) experiencing an existential crisis I might have enjoyed it more. But frankly I thought nihilism died a welcome death with Sartre et al. I tired very quickly of Houellebecq's preoccupations - sex devoid of emotional connection; violence; the ascendence of intellect, individualism and appetite over any of the more 'feminine' values such as compassion, hope, faith, commitment and community.

We are given four characters living at the margins of life, obsessed by ageing and sexual decline. Three of them commit suicide, one goes mad. Unless Houellebecq is some kind of literary double agent, subtly satirising the very beliefs he seems to expound, we’re supposed to accept that these people represent all of us, and the purported malaise at the heart of the human condition, at least in the West. But these narrow caricatures, these bundles of obsession and neurosis are not real people and they are not representative of how most of us live. Which makes "Atomised" less a trenchant and encompassing analysis of life in the latter half of the 20th century, and more a silly, one-sided, obsessional uber-masculine polemic, clearly shaped by the author's own proclivities and persona. It isn't groundbreaking, or even stimulating, but dull, like being stuck next to a vain, ageing academic, tipsy and tedious, at a Parisian dinner party, grinding on about his own fixations, mocking everything he doesn’t understand. There’s no plot or story to speak of - just endless exposition, intellectual posturing, cynicism and pessimism.

I’m left wondering if there can really be anything more arrogant, more short-sighted or sollipsistic than a middle-aged male author, who assumes that the whole of Western civilisation is going down the pan just because his own body, his own faculties are beginning to fail him? That kind of thinking smacks of the self-obsession of adolescence. But then Houellebecq's real subject, his genuine area of expertise, is undoubtably men who have never grown up."

I like to think of Houellebecq reading it, chain-smoking Gitanes in a fit of pique. Well, I can dream....

Here we go.....

2007-08-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

This has to be something of an inauspicious start.

a) I am very tired (less than seven hours sleep for two nights running - bad news for a nine-hour-a-night sort of gal)

b) I have absolutely no idea what to write about or why on earth anyone would want to read it (but then again, I just saw that 514 people have read my Favourite Books list on Amazon so clearly there are a hell of a lot of people around with nothing much better to do)

c) I should be doing some proper writing (but I am too knackered for that (see above)

But hey, it's a sunny day, and I too have nothing much better to do. And if you're reading this, i guess the same goes for you too.