Bumped into a Diary Angel today in Camden, so was instantly shamed into updating the diary.
Am housesitting in a family house in Primrose Hill, with Dad staying here for a few days too (the owner is a friend of Mum’s).
Primrose Hill is such a world away from the district next door, Camden. From the market clutter, filth and ubiquitous tattooed teens sucking fried noodles from trays, to pretty Victorian terraces, sparse traffic, low noise, spotless pavements, even spotless pigeons. Not always a happy history, though: around the block in Fitzroy Road is the flat where Sylvia Plath gassed herself. Today I found out that English Heritage wanted to put a blue plaque there, but her daughter Frieda had it moved to her previous flat in Chalcot Square, where she wrote The Bell Jar. Rightfully so, I think. Death may be more of a story than art, but it’s less of an achievement; despite what she says in ‘Lady Lazarus’.
Dad & I spent this afternoon in the new science fiction exhibition at the British Library, Out Of This World. Certainly kept him happy. For my part, I’m always fascinated with original manuscripts on display, including Ron Grainer’s pencilled score for the Doctor Who theme tune, a page from the longhand draft of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (for a while it was considered something of a spoiler to label the novel as science fiction – I presume no longer), and one for Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (his handwriting is like a school teacher’s, which makes sense). Also: Â a Steampunk K9, a suggestion that the first time machine in fiction may not have been HG Wells’s, and a quiz about spot-on predictions in novels; Asimov’s pocket calculator being the most spooky. The main literary forecaster of the Internet still seems to be EM Forster in The Machine Stops.
Tags: British Library, dad, primrose hill
