I got back late-ish from Manchester last night and after I started the process of bringing my laundry up to date, I got onto the BBC’s iPlayer to watch the Remembrance Sunday service from that morning.
I was tired as I say and after a while I paused it and went to bed.
I woke up this morning to discover that I had missed a scandal.
My favourite geek site, RPG.Net, had a lot of buzz in the ongoing British politics thread about the fact (is it? I dunno) that the BBC were doing Boris a favour by omitting the video actually taken of him at the ceremony and using one taken some years back, presumably when he was Foreign Secretary.
Why? Because he got his wreath the wrong way up. There were some other comments that he looked particularly confused but when I went back to iPlayer and watched the moment he looked as he normally does. I mean, how could they tell?
But he undoubtedly got his wreath the wrong way up and when Jeremy Corbyn went forward he had a look on his face that said: ‘Why did he just do that?’
There are two things here. Firstly, can one ever in future rely on BBC News to report ‘without fear or favour’ if they are willing to grovel in such a way? Did they even need to be leaned on?
And second, if Boris can’t absorb a simple instruction like ‘Turn it round Prime Minister and put it down like this…’ then what sodding hope have we he can learn a brief on anything substantial? Negotiations with the EU? Pressure from the US? Global warming? Russia assassinating people in English cathedral towns again? Best to make an elevator pitch, I think.
I see that the government has included in the Queen’s Speech mention of requiring photo ID for people who want to vote. There was a test of the requirement at the European Elections and in the areas where it was tried numerous people were turned away. For some reason the government took this as evidence that it was a good idea.
I used to be able to point to our liberal and common sense attitude to registration as one of the triumphs of British common sense and decency in contrast to American paranoia on the topic of Those People being allowed to vote. But apparently the Tories are so impressed by the effects it has for their cousins over the seas that they want to introduce it without bothering with the propaganda effort to make it appear necessary, the lazy buggers. And a lot of their voters fall into the ‘elderly’ category and that’s a primary group that is likely not to have a driving licence or a passport.
If they try to introduce this via secondary legislation before the next election I would hope people would march!
(Not me of course: I plead my bad foot. And my duff left knee. Do I love democracy enough to hire a powered wheelchair for the day?)
I also see that Jacob Rees-Mogg has taken to calling those of us who disagree with his favourite policy ‘Remainiacs’.
By Jove, I am most frightfully obliged to the fellow! I’m fed up of being called a Remoaner and being a ‘Remainiac’ is just the thing to kickstart my flagging energy at this stage of the game! I thank you, sir! Most gentlemanly of you!
I don’t think he could have spent much time watching children’s cartoons back in the 1990s or he’d know that he’s just handed us a marching song. All it requires is someone (not me: John M. Ford for preference except for the fact he’s dead) to rewrite the lyrics a little.
All together now: “We’re all Remainacs/And we’re zany to the max…”)
I stayed at home today.
The weather was glum when I got up in response to the post plopping through my letterbox (1) and having had a look in the fridge to check on supplies I decided I could ignore the nagging note I’d left myself just before going to bed last night about going out today and getting my hair cut and beard trimmed. I do look rather bohemian in the mirror at the moment but am not yet at the full Biblical prophet stage. (2)
So I pulled on my sweatpants, not my jeans, stayed at home and read, which is a nice way to spend a day if a little lonely. I only ever had one occasion on which I had a beautiful woman burst unexpectedly into my flat (3) and I do sometimes find myself hoping for a repeat performance so I can see if I handle it any better.
Be that as it may: I was reading a book I picked up at the Worldcon in Dublin WARHOON 28, a one off hardback edition of an American SF fanzine. This particular volume was dedicated to the work of an Irish fan, Walt Willis for whom the editor had a great regard.
And I came across the story of a fan feud of the fifties, a minor clash of personalities in the pages of american APAs in which an American lady fan accused Walt Willis of all sorts of things. All over nothing at all really and you could probably ascribed it to misunderstanding if the lady hadn’t decided to push the whole thing to another level by using it as an excuse to express her feelings about the worthlessness of European culture compared with American.
“I can understand that this problem of establishing a caste system in fandom impinges on a very real and basic difference in social attitudes between Europe and America. The unsportsmanlike way you have behaved in expressing your disappointment that your favourite candidate did no win has been a disgrace not only to yourself but to all the United Kingdom. Don’t you think it is time you apologized for your unfounded accusations and your lack of confidence in the Americans?”
And when I read that I thought bigod! There’s the whole Internet in miniature! There’s the process that drove Brexit in essence!
There’s taking someone you’ve never met and making them the focus of all your outrage, all your tribal support of your group and your nation, there’s digging out all the fears and hatred you don’t express and pouring it out onto someone.
Oh, dear me: the parallels between this and poison pen letters.
(I will pause for a moment and feel guilty about the things I have sometimes said before coming back to my normal level of self regard and pomposity.)
The fans of the 1950s didn’t have Twitter but they had mimeograph machines and a world wide postal service and they had powerful imaginations and strong feelings which were looking for a focus. Feuding between fans is a fine spectator sport and has broken not a few hearts (and some minds): only the fact that it isn’t about anything much keeps it under control.
And in the twenty-first century we take that and supercharge it with instant messaging and the ability to send your ill considered opinions around the world in a moment. I’ve known people (4) who find themselves out of a job because they didn’t take a moment to review the angry reply they feel like sending.
I’ve a friend in the Far Isles (5) who likes to argue that we humans aren’t really designed to handle more than a strictly limited number of human interactions, about the size of a large hunter gatherer group or a medieval village. Anything more than that causes us distress.
He may have a point but somehow we have got to get across to people the idea that there are people out there who aren’t like them… and who aren’t necessarily monsters.
I really don’t know how to start. (Cue Lindy to tell me how.)
(1) Nothing interesting. A misdirected letter for my next door neighbour and a catalogue from a gentleman’s outfitters I once bought some socks from. They were very nice and durable socks, if expensive and the next time I need some I will be going back to Joseph Turner of Yorkshire. Unsolicited commercial there.
(2) Meanwhile my friend Roger is moving into Z Z Top territory.
(3) It was the festive season and she was either rather drunk or the victim of a malign enchantment.
(4) All right, one person. Hi Chris if you ever read this.
(5) And hi to you Hafoc!
Three weeks to go to the start of the Golden Age.
I wonder if I should start stockpiling again. I got as far as a few tins of corned beef last time but those got used up quite quickly.
It would be a good idea if I were to eat less in general, what with my left knee as well as my right heel giving me pain and discouraging me from going to the gym. But I should in that case probably eat more fresh fruit and veg which is precisely what will be lacking if things go tits up.
It’s interesting to watch the various sorts of cynicism that pop up. (The picture you’re seeing is Diogenes the Cynic.) There are the people who view the idea of leaving the EU as impossible, not because it would be bad for us necessarily but because ‘they’ would never allow it. You can learn a lot about people by digging into who their ‘they’ is.
There are the people like my friend Drak, who has Boris Johnson as his MP (and I thought I was oppressed having Steve Baker!) who goes with the ‘disaster capitalist’ hypothesis: that there are people who have a lot of money riding on them being right about when Brexit will happen and how. How I feel about the savings I have invested for my future and the trust I have to put in the people managing them gets… complicated when I think about things like that.
The idea does tend to drive the feeling that we are going to leave no matter how hard we try not to.
At least Drak gets the pleasure of contemplating turfing Boris out of his constituency: they don’t deeply love him there.
And just this evening the Taoiseach is making noises about how he could see a path to an agreement… So maybe I’m wrong about the incompatibility of letting Stormont decide how long any post leaving arrangement goes on with the requirements the Irish have put forward. I still don’t see how they could get that anywhere near done and dusted by the end of the month.
And if we leave I will be so disappointed with my country.
I put the loaf I was making away to rise, grabbed my bag and my walking stick and tottered off towards the High Street, to get myself something for lunch and supper from Iceland.
(My knee is getting better, mostly, thanks for asking. Hope to back to the regular gym visits soon.)
And between me and Iceland was a chap standing outside the Santander bank (formerly the Abbey National whereby hangs several tales). He was handing out what looked like hand-inked flyers with the title ‘A FREE COUNTRY?’ and below it a diatribe which began by berating the rich and went on to berate every other bit of the Establishment. Yes, of course I gave it a cursory scan: he might have been saying something interesting. He didn’t appear to be and I went on my way.
Coming back past him, with my bag full of tinned tuna and other such luxuries, I took a second look and noticed the design on the top right of his leaflet.
Which was the Eye-In-The_Pyramid.
I found myself protesting. “Seriously?” He told me to go and see what the Masons had to say. I staggered away shaking my head. I thought that particular sort of craziness was restricted to the other side of the Atlantic.
I got home and I wondered: Did I contribute to that? Me and thousands like me.
I first ran into the conspiratorial mindset when I picked up Wilson and Shea’s ILLUMINATUS! trilogy at Manchester in the 70s. It’s one of the regrets of my dwindling professional career that I didn’t even write to ask if I could audition for Ken Campbell’s massive stage version. (There was no money involved and a lot of commitment.)
I featured the various weird conspiracy theories and several more that are only believed in by SF fans in my games, most recently by running THE DRACULA DOSSIER and writing it up for A&E.
Us geeks love the secret conspiracy idea but by and large only for play.
I spread those ideas. Am I responsible in part for that guy’s craziness?
And then my exaggerated sense of guilt fluttered out. No, if it hadn’t been the Illuminati and all their chums it would have been another set of ideas to give shape to the poor fellow’s hypertrophied need to find meaning and significance in the world. Perhaps the workings of Satan and his minions.
A second level of guilt flickers briefly: all conspiratorial stories share the nature of anti-semitism. They aren’t always dog-whistles for blaming International Jewish Bankers but they serve the same emotional needs and perhaps give cover to those who find it ‘Odd of God to Choose the Jews’.
And I remember a story where I can’t recall the actual names involved: about a poet who was being told by a psychiatrist that his wife’s distracted mode of speech was clear proof of mental illness. “But I use those same forms of language myself in my poetry every day.” “Ah, my friend,” replies the shrink, “you are swimming. She is drowning.”
There’s a lady I know who greets me cheerfully when we meet on the streets, though I can’t recall when we first met. Perhaps when I was doing physio after my heart attack? When she’s in the manic phase of her cycle she will tell me all about how the psychiatrists are always watching her, always watching everyone, all the time. For some reason she has decided I’m all right and on her side. At least I don’t feel any indirect guilt about her peculiar construction of how the world works.
I am turning into an old man (1) who is feeling guilt about the dubious pleasures of his youth while simultaneously wishing for the ability to commit them a few more times. I am one step away from being a conservative telling young people how he was radical when he was young and how much he regrets the things he said and did back then. Keep an eye on me, friends. I’m feeling fragile.
(1) A cry of “what do you mean ‘turning’?” comes from the cheap seats.
I was trying to follow the countdown to Brexit at the start of the year but they went all squishy on me. We’ve nearly run out of the time given back in March and the Prime Minister has brought out his ‘final offer’.
And now we’re in fact on two countdowns. One to October 17th when the PM is supposed to ask for an extension if he hasn’t go an agreement negotiated and passed and one for the 31st where ‘come hell or high water’ he says he’s determined we shall leave.
And I have nothing but questions and no answers.
Are the Irish going to regard this as good enough? Are they going to like Boris kicking the responsibility for continuing the arrangement to Stormont? What happens if Stormont cannot get organised enough to hold any vote? (They haven’t been showing a good record of this lately.)
Why are the DUP regarding this proposal as significantly better? Is it because they think they can abolish it at the first opportunity? Because it puts them in charge and not the Republic or Westminster?
Does Boris really think anyone believes that this can be negotiated before October 17th let alone agreed by either of the two sides? Or does he think he can throw the blame on the EU and claim that it would have been perfectly easy if only Brussels had listened? What is the Cunning Wheeze (I’m sure there is one) that he thinks can get him out of having to ask for an extension?
Frankly, an extension would be needed even if all concerned said they could live with the basic principles.
Ah, interesting times…
My friend Monty has left us.
Over August he lost his appetite and then a great deal of weight. He began to be unsteady on his feet and unable to jump up onto my lap, onto the dryer where his food and water were set up, onto the bed at night.
And when I eventually figured out this was more than a passing distemper and worked up the courage to call in the vet she told me his kidneys had pretty much totally failed and he was dehydrated and dying.
I brought him home for one more night and worked up either the courage or the cowardice to call them in the next morning. I took him out into the sunshine of the London Road at the end and held him as he died.
I knew this day was coming when I took the responsibility on but philosophy fails me in the face of the fact of the thing. I can’t work out if his death was for his comfort, to avoid any further pain and humiliation, or mine, to avoid having to watch.
He was a kind, gentle cat, a bit too needy perhaps. He was the most vocal cat I’ve ever lived with, which I’m told is a characteristic of ginger moggies.
He was brave when push came to shove and his memorial title should be The cat who slew at least one rat because who knows how many others he may have faced down when he was on the streets in his youth.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
Which is Christopher Smart in For I will consider my cat Jeoffery. But you knew that.
As I said a year ago, August Bank Holiday Sunday is the anniversary of my father’s death.
It was a hotter day than last year (the news tells me the hottest such Sunday ever) and a lot hotter than the day twenty five years ago that we went through Burnham Beeches to see my father for the last time. That was sunny but cool, I recall, the sunlight dappled through the leaves of the trees.
As I did last year I went and looked in the storage space under my bed for a copy of the poem I wrote at the time. Didn’t find it this year either: I don’t know why I’m convinced it’s down there. But I searched all the way through two crates before giving up.
I resolved to shred almost all the stuff I found in the Far Isles box: under Data Protection I probably should have done so some time ago and getting rid of most of the old forms should be done before I hand over to the new Secretary next year.
I was going to get rid of a lot of stuff from the ‘memorabilia box’ too but after a while working with good intentions I just found myself unable to get rid of much: which accounts for the accumulated piles of paper in there in itself.
There are old theatre programs and reviews. There’s stuff dating back to my university career. There are notes from old role-playing campaigns and writing exercises. No one will care about this stuff when I go and if I were being kind to my nieces and my nephew (who are likely to be my executors) I’d get rid of it all. But I can’t: my memory is getting terrible and some of this stuff I wouldn’t remember at all if I didn’t keep the physical remnants.
There’s so much stuff that evokes the past and so much past I don’t think of from one year’s end to the next. Perhaps next year I’ll get out a different box.
Perhaps I won’t find that poem till I either move from this flat (very unlikely) or decide it’s time to simplify my life and give a whole lot of my books, games and other possessions away to the people I’ve bequeathed them to. (Something I consider almost every time I can’t find things.)
I attach the order of service from my father’s funeral which I found while searching. I’ll put it in my scrapbook which is where I should have put that poem if I had the sense God gave a peanut.
I keep dreaming of Dad and it’s sad that we always seem to be in some sort of quarrel when we meet again. The poem I can’t find was about that too, if I recall it correctly.
Monty, by the way, is showing that he was not getting old and unwell over the past few months of not eating much of his evening wet food, merely on hunger strike. He has decided he is going to relish the alternate kidney-friendly cat food I got him. He refused to touch it the first time I tried it on him. Cats!
Well, he said, I’m back….
Having gone not quite to the havens where you can set sail to the uttermost West but to somewhere adjacent I am back and Monty is clambering all over me in recognition of the occasion. Typing on this may be a little uneven as a consequence.
It was a mixed sort of a Worldcon with pleasant sentimentality, both personal and cultural, making it fun overall.
However it was a con where I had to recognise that my current physical limits are something I have to take into account. I should not have tried to be a tough guy and should have asked the committee for early access so I could get a hotel nearer the convention centre. After standing in line for fifteen minutes to get into a panel item, with my foot in agony by the end, and failing to get in after all that noble effort I went and saw the access team and they kindly said yes, I should have the privileges of the halt and the lame. I met a lot of new people with walking aids and in wheelchairs as we waited in line. One of the panellists on the ‘Player to GM’ panel turned up in a powered wheelchair the con had provided for him that very morning and there was nearly a nasty accident as he tried to manoeuvre it around the panel’s table.
I also re-discovered my tendency to panic when I think I’ve lost things: I wasn’t in the city centre five minutes before I’d lost both my way and all the documentation I’d printed out at home. I left both my iPads behind in one panel item and the nice young staff person seemed to think it was a bit theatrical of me. Well, that can’t be helped.
The con was only about a third of the size of LonCon at 5,800 warm bodies and it was stretching Dublin’s convention facilities to the limit as it was. The staff of the convention centre seemed a little stunned by our peculiar habits and semi-chaotic organisation but they rallied well and by the end were qualified geek wranglers all.
One lady suggested fandom might try buying a large luxury liner and using that as the semi-permanent floating site of Worldcons. Alas, LonCon went to 17,000 people and the world’s largest liner has only 2,759 rooms. I think taking over a small and helpless nation may be more within fandom’s capabilities and more likely to work, long term. (A Hugo winning short story briefly crossed my drunken mind at this point but is unlikely to get written: the customs and religion of said nation after several generations of serving the Wise Ones in their peculiar rituals would be remarkable though. Actually, isn’t this a GURPS Traveller supplement? The one about the Pleasure Planet?)
The people of Dublin were friendly and considerate. On one occasion I got out of the taxi outside the convention centre and my panama hat was blown high and far across the main road by the Liffey. A nice chap stopped his car to go and retrieve it and then handed it over to a lady who went and returned it to me. What a friendly city!
On the other hand I took a dislike to the herring gulls who were strutting everywhere and took a delight at shrieking near my window at dawn.
Dublin looks like they are attempting to build a modern European city atop the remains of a nineteenth century British provincial capital and though bits of are rather tatty there’s a feeling of hope about the centre of the town which I worry might be crushed by the idiocy of my own country’s rulers.
The city’s weather was weird however: shifting from icy cold rain to humid oppressive heat to blustery wind in an instant. No weather forecasts seemed to apply. One of the taxi drivers I rode with said that the weather had been ‘bloody weird’ for the past ten days or so. I told him I hadn’t done it.
(Apart from the guy who was listening to IRA rebel songs about how they humiliated the Black and Tans and the hanging of Sir Roger Casement all the taxi drivers wanted to chat.)
I gave in to temptation and bought a whole lot of book, mostly first volumes of series. I nearly did myself an injury getting my case home: why they didn’t charge me for the extra weight I’ll never know. Rob being blind was smarter than me: He went to the book rooms and scanned the lists of publications the various firms were providing so he could look them up when he got home.
It was a good con for the various panel items I was on. (I give only a qualified success to the LAUNDRY FILES game I ran in the con room: I’m fairly certain looking back I buggered up some of the rules.) However this meant getting up early most days of the con and that led to me going to bed early most days of the con. Another good reason for being closer to the convention centre if possible. I found the parties a little too much for me though the Dead Dog was a lovely pub meet with a lot of my friends there.
I begin to think that panel items are for appearing on not for watching though. I kept getting irritated at the low quality of some of the discussion and despite the occasional burst of brilliance I felt the ones I got to mostly just raised my blood pressure.
But there was a very funny panel game with Joe Abercrombie and some other very talented people under an incredibly funny quizmaster from Trinidad and Tobago. Chickens, vampires, genies and would you work for Skynet or join the Rebellion? (“Who gets the better outfit?”)
It was a bad con for looking in the con newsletter (THE SALMON OF WISDOM) and discovering that writers I liked had just died. J. Neil Schulman, one of the better of the wave of libertarian authors in the 80s and 90s went at only a year older than me. Barry Hughart, author of the exquisite BRIDGE OF BIRDS and its sequels, was a fair bit older. This made me glumly sentimental or sentimentally glum.
Josh and Lisa were about, pursuing their careers as insidious Masters of Fandom, smiting hip and thigh in the Business Meeting. Their triumphant progress was qualified by the referring to committee of the proposed gaming Hugo. (The Business Meeting did a lot of sending stuff to committees this year.) The provisional definition of ‘game’ is complicated and potentially philosophically interesting. They feel they may have to volunteer for the sub-committee. Poor them.
And I met up with Malcom who was a member of my Monday night group about twenty years ago before he moved to Japan for his work and then settled there. He told me about his life in Japan, his horrible journey from Japan which involved losing his luggage for about forty-eight hours (he swears never to fly KLM again) and the fact that he too got off the bus from the airport and got lost. Being healthier than me he managed to walk as far as College Green. We chatted about our medical issues s as aging gents do and we drank a little together. I said I’d remember him to the Monday night group. And I felt sad again, as we walked away from each other, that I let Mike Damesic down all those years ago.
Speaking of drink, the con bar had one decent ale that I only found on the last day. They had named the bar after Martin Hoare, a friend of mine from university who had been the beer guru of British fandom. It was odd to be in a bar with his name on it where there were no real ales in kegs and where at one stage they managed the feat of being a bar in Ireland with no stout.
As I took my last taxi back to the hotel I watched the sun setting, blue and grey and red, over the city’s modern buildings and felt so sentimental and content that I even forgave the ruddy herring gulls.
Random Worldcon thoughts:
In future book seats on the plane so your bad foot can stick out into the aisle.
I must take better care to maintain my caffeine levels at future cons. Starting to snore in the front row would have been more embarrassing if a friend hadn’t been sitting beside me to poke me in the ribs.
There was a rather tacky roadside shrine of Jesus displaying the Sacred Heart. Reading the inscription I saw it was calling down the blessings of Almighty God on the taxi drivers who used the nearby taxi rank and I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.
Kari (who is a Respected Academic) thinks that the Bull Laudabiliter was probably genuine. Who knew? She also read from her upcoming novella about why Gaheris killed his mother.
Went away from the panel on THE THIRD POLICEMAN wondering if the theory of bicycle/Irishman interpenetration means that Irishmen in the forties habitually rode about the streets of Dublin in the nude.
Thanks for the good wishes and my best to your Mum on her 93rd and to you for having to handle it!
Alas the weather didn’t quite co-operate. I went out for about half an hour last night hunting shooting stars but all I caught was a slight sore throat from the cold night air. I keep telling myself that one year, one year! I’m going to get myself organised enough to go where there’s no light pollution and spend the night of the Perseids shower celebrating my birthday in style. But this year wasn’t it. What with me going to the games convention Handycon at the weekend (1) and one thing and another it wasn’t to be.
Instead I took myself to a nice but tiny restaurant in Marlow where I treated myself to their ‘Lunchtime Gourmand Menu’. I nearly didn’t because to me ‘gourmand’ implies eating far too much. Whereas what they gave me was a large number of courses but with smaller portions than if I had ordered their a la carte or set menu and with wines selected to go with the meal (and introduced by a cute young lady who told me what I might expect to taste: dammit now I wish I’d written down the names of the wines…). It was lovely from the ‘amuse bouche’ to the ‘panna cotta’ and I must see if I can do it again some year. My brother and sister in law are taking me to a posh place in Radnage for their ‘tasting’ menu when I get back.
There was a fellow at a nearby table who used the phrase ‘our Polish friends’ in that jolly but defamatory way. And I thought “I bet he reads the DAILY TELEGRAPH.”
This was what sprang to mind because there had been a question on Quora (my favoured internet pontificating platform) about what British people think about the Torygraph and I was thinking of answering it. When I got home I tried to use the incident in my answer… and discovered that I have what can only be an irrational prejudice against the publication. I haven’t read it since I was bored and without reading material one day in the nineties. I picked up a copy of the TELEGRAPH someone had left lying around and found myself reading to my astonishment that John Major was an orator for the ages and bound to be a great asset to the Tories in the upcoming election. I put it down under the conviction that it was clearly a newspaper for lunatics. And the fact that Major won the next election has not dissuaded me of this conviction. But when I came to write it down as a formal answer it seemed mean spirited and close minded of me so I didn’t bother. (2)
I read and approve of your exercise and diet program. It would be nice if the difficulty I have had getting into some of my shirts when I was deciding what to pack for Dublin inspired me to get back on the diet… Perhaps it will. After the Worldcon. Perhaps.
I envy you the chance to refurbish your place and tremble at the responsibility of owning property. It’s just as well it isn’t a temptation for me but only a fantasy.
As to reading I just finished CIVIL WAR: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms by Trevor Royle which was massive and told me a lot more than Christopher Bloody Hill did back when we were doing the seventeenth century for A-Level. Everything from the Scots throwing their prayer stools at the Bishop to Samuel Pepys going to see Major General Harrison hung, drawn and quartered ‘and he looking as cheerful as a man could under those circumstances’.
And then I read a John M. Ford fantasy ‘The Last Hot Time’ which is beautifully written if rather light. The elegiac tone might be because Mike Ford was dying when he wrote it. (Goes and checks the facts… Hmm he died (very young) six years after this book was published.) The poems he composed to be the lyrics of the songs sung in the nightclub are just lovely and I would like to think someone has the good taste to give them music.
And as to writing… This is what I’ve managed to do today. I think I’ll go and post it on WordPress for the enjoyment of a greater public.
Best
Michael
- Which was fun and allowed me to shift a large number of games I’m never going to play again and replace them with more games…. I also came down with something that made my nights sweaty and unpleasant… But went away with extra strength LemSip once I recognised what was wrong with me. I expect to come down with two or three varieties of Con Crud in Dublin. Note to self: pack some Lem-Sip….
- There is further evidence of the narrowness and prejudice of my political judgement in the astonishment I felt when I first heard that Ken Livingstone was a rising light in the Labour Party right after first seeing him interviewed.
Asleep in Room3b 