It turns out that the Radio Times listing only mentions me in the website version of the magazine, not the print version. I say ‘only’, though it IS about people who use the Internet, so on this occasion you could argue the web version is more important.
But print IS all. The main reason I’m writing a diary online is because no one has employed me to do it in print. I see the other advantages (complete editorial freedom, instant access to a global readership and so on) as perks of the format. The advantage is the freedom and lack of filters. The disadvantage is also the freedom and lack of filters.
Books and magazines are real, websites are… an aid to the real. A reference. Maybe that will change, but I still wince when I hear people discussing websites or blogs in public. It still seems ‘faddy’, like Tamagotchis. But then, I’ve been doing this for nine years, and I feel the rest of the world catching up with me (ho ho) is like the way even a stopped clock keeps the right time twice a day.
At least BBC1 is a ‘real’ channel that even old people have heard of. And although there’s been news reports about the way the Web is stealing leisure time from TV, this only matters to those to whom it matters. Yes, I get most of my TV via downloading from torrent sites and watching on my laptop. But that’s not most people. Not yet. I don’t think TV will quite be replaced by the Net, if only because, like books and newspapers, people need a professional, authorised filter as a kind of handrail to the Web’s madness of infinite choice.
The producer did email me to say I’m definitely in the Imagine programme next Tuesday, but you should never count your chickens till you cross them.
Hope is such a destructive demon. There’s that wonderful line from Michael Frayn’s Clockwise:
“It’s not the despair. I can handle the despair. It’s the hope.”
Likewise, I shouldn’t have said I’d have a new entry done in the morning, as this is late afternoon. I was up till about 6am dawdling and dreaming without actually sleeping. And then I fell asleep, of course. This is the luxury of the man who can do what the hell he wants to do, but also the curse. I always feel I’ve missed out. And I have. I used to think nights are more fun than mornings. Not anymore. I like dawns, sunrises, shops about to open, people on the streets who’ve decided that life is actually worth living today, despite what the news says. That work is worth the less fun bits.
Noting Laurence Hughes’s advice, I’m trying to take a lot of brisk walks into town by way of daily exercise, avoiding public transport entirely where possible. After all, walking has more practical side effects than other forms of exertion – you actually get somewhere at the end. You save money. You feel free and alone. You don’t have to wear unflattering clothes. And there’s the whole flaneur connotations as well.
I usually take a vaguely scenic route in order to avoid the main roads as much as possible: up the hill to Highgate Village, through Waterlow Park onto Swain’s Lane, down to Camden Street. Maybe stopping in by St Pancras Old Church for a bit, and muse upon the Dark Ages ghosts that must gather there, as it’s been a site of Christian worship since the 4th century.
The first time, I arrive at the Library wheezing, gasping, absolutely exhausted. The second time, it’s a lot easier. Breaking myself in.
These days, the homeless Big Issue seller outside the British Library is losing his pitch to the more aggressive pushers of free newspapers like London Lite.
He shouts, all too aware of this usurping on the London streets:
“Big Issue! Big Issue! Yes, I know it’s not fashionable anymore…”
Last night, to a Dedalus Books reading. ‘Marthe – The Story Of A Whore’ by JK Huysmans, in a new translation by Brendan King. Huysmans’ 1876 debut, it was rather hurriedly finished when he heard another novel about the life of a prostitute was about to be published. He wanted to be the first one in the Naturalistic Prostitute Novels genre. And he was also trying to be a writer as opposed to just write, using this first work in order to get into the celebrity literary circles of the day (eg Zola). Still, rushed ending or no (and barely 150 pages), it is beautifully written, sensitively translated, and vividly takes the reader to that whole Paris demi-monde world.
In King’s introduction, we’re told how Huysmans had the first edition published in Brussels in order to avoid prosecution in France, but then made the frankly rather silly mistake of trying to return through customs with 400 copies at once, hoping he’d be lucky. Half his print run, confiscated in a second.
At the reading, Mr King is friendly, nervous and gentle, which makes you want to buy all his books, of course. It shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does. Whenever someone says they’ve met a well-known author or artist, the automatic question does seem to be:
“But is he nice?”
Never mind an author’s biographies, the letters, the diaries, the memoirs. The actual books. We just want to know if they’re nice. Reading a novel is effectively deciding to spend hours in the company of a stranger, so maybe it’s something to do with that.
The reading takes place in the basement of a wonderful bookshop called Treadwell’s, in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. Upstairs is Treadwell’s itself, selling used books on witchcraf, folklore, the occult, philosophy, travel writing and so on. The sort of place you expect to find a genuine book of spells. They also sell home-made soaps and spices, making it surely one of London’s best smelling bookshops. Downstairs is Offstage Books, specialising in Theatre and Film. The staff on both floors are the sort of independent shop workers who are so friendly, they often forget they’re working at all.
[Links:
http://www.treadwells-london.com
http://www.offstagebooks.com ]
I get the tube home with Mary Groom, a proud glasses-wearer who’s annoyed by a current ad campaign on the tube trains. It’s for contact lenses, aimed at women, and implying that women really shouldn’t wear glasses, not if they want men to fancy them. “I looked deep into her… specs.” That sort of thing.
It’s not the same the other way round: Jarvis Cocker, Graham Coxon, etc. Even David Tennant’s Dr Who is allowed to look good in specs. Maybe there needs to be a heavy Nana Mouskouri comeback.
