Time Gentlemen Please

Finished Last Orders, the story of four ageing cockney geezers taking their friend Jack's ashes to Margate to be scattered and ruminating on life, war and misery along the way. Based loosely on Faulkner's far more satisfying As I Lay Dying it deals with mortality, truth and lies and the secrets which lie in every heart.

I found it pretty good. I feel the novel took a while to get going and for a while Swift's attempts to reproduce the voices of embittered, sozzled, working-class Bermondsey men is an act of ventriloquism rather than of characterisation and at the beginning, I can see his lips moving.

That said, the novel does have strength, although whether the convoluted time-structure was needed to tell what is essentially a simple story is unclear. Like many very male books it comes to life when the women finally get their chance to speak. Amy's sections are illuminating and tender and one feels that for all the talk about Jack it is Amy's tale, and maybe June's. One thinks of the way that Molly Bloom's monologue sets light to all that has come before in Ulysses or how Addie Bundren, speaking from her coffin in As I Lay Dying, opens up can after can of tender, heartbreaking worms.

I have now received and begun Chatterton, which so far is rather mannered and baroque but I like a good literary puzzler so shall persist.

Remember Ride?

I was a bit of an indie kid in my youth and in many ways still am. The sun came out this weekend, co-inciding with my purchase of "Waves", the BBC sessions buy one of my favourite bands of the nineties, Ride. Ride started as a melodic, white-noise outfit (kind of Sonic Youth meets The Smiths) and progressed to more and more hippy, trippy, 60s influences until imploding in the second half of the decade.

On "Waves", a great selection for fans, I came across a hitherto unknown and joyous cover of The Pale Saints' Sight of You which has put a grin on my face which a day at work has not yet rubbed off. Beautiful. The BBC session of Like a Daydream is luscious too. Ah, indie, what has become of you?

The Orphanage

I love a good scare and last week my friend Simon and I went to see the new Spanish shocker The Orphanage (El Orphanato). It is highly recommended and one of the more frightening ghost-type films I have seen, like a scarier The Others or a more intricate Sixth Sense. The central set-piece with Geraldine Chaplin in green-screen infra-red light is truly pant wetting and I think Simon and I watched most of it through parted fingers, popcorn forgotten.

Early in the Morning

I generally cycle anywhere I can. I have a Black traditional style Giant bike and favour the towpath of the Worcester canal as a route to work. I have quite a stressful job and that 15 minute trundle calms me down and sets me up for the day.

Last year I would generally have Nick Drake or Belle & Sebastian on the old MP3 player but since spring has come I am finding just the birdsong to be enough. There are chiff-chaffs everywhere at the moment and as I pass this bridge (not my photo, but the real bridge) there is a thrush imitating a mobile phone. I have heard it two mornings in a row. You can't beat the sound of birds on a spring morning, nor the sight of the mist rising from the water while the denizens of the boats and launches are still fast asleep.

YouTube - Richard Thompson - Bright Lights Tonight - Videowest 81

YouTube - Richard Thompson - Bright Lights Tonight - Videowest 81
Song of the week for me! I bought the LP last week and as lovely as it is, nothing touches this central song with its wintery glamour and Linda Thompson's luscious voice. What tips it over the edge of greatness is the spinechilling silver band offering backup, something I've never heard before and matched only by The Pale Saints' limited 7" of "A Thousand Stars Burst Open" covered by a colliery band. That was somthing else.

This cut isn't the original of course but flip, can that guy play?

A Bit Of Ackroyd

Too lazy to keep a diary I thought I would blog. Visitors are welcome to the site and I would love to recieve messages but this is as much for me to record the things which make me feel life is worth living as to share it with others. I am on a bit of a Peter Ackroyd Kick at the moment, having just finished his excellent novel "The Fall of Troy".
As this is based on the life of the real archaeologist Heinrich Schlielmann it sent me scurrying to Wikipedia for some welcome innacuracies. I am waiting on a dirt-cheap internet-bought "Chatterton" by Ackroyd and in the meantime am keeping myself busy with Graham Swift's '96 Booker Winner "Last Orders" which is just getting good. Last night I stuck on Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and got lost in the book.