Oh crikey. My last post on here referred to Jade Goody running a marathon. It is clearly time for my annual update. (Why shouldn’t blogs be updated annually? What a strange perspective we have on the internet, it is so young.)

I have moved back from Wales to London and am living back in East Dulwich, where I was a child, and working more in the middle (sort of) (and I don’t mean Elephant and Castle). Suddenly I have written two short stories. It is funny how things go. I am reading lots and lots, but rather quickly, because I am reading them in the wake of having to shift them from Wales, and the shame that having lots of unread books brings.

I was looking at them, all lying on the floor in two piles, four bags and six boxes. Not all of them unread, of course, but Librarything tells me that I have about a hundred books in there that are marked “To Read”. I suddenly realised that ever since I was a child with too many books, I have had this feeling that there are other things I must read first. It is never time for me to read the thing I want to now. I had already begun the process in Bangor – well, I can feel it’s been happening for a while – in fact at Christmas, I began reading The Graveyard Book only a few days after Luke gave it to me. I enjoyed it but also there was a warm sensation of context and continuity. Since then I have not been buying new books and I have been reading books that people bought for me (Memories Dreams Reflections must have been waiting nearly ten years!) and books I always assumed I would always want to keep, without having read them (now I can get rid of The Thief’s Journal but plan with excitement on reading The Hearing Trumpet). It is a strange, frustrating, wonderful process, a bit like washing some old statue and bringing the old colours out again. Because I have about an hour’s journey either way each day, I am whirling through stuff. Last night I finished The Club Dumas and began The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (both presents – one from roughly 2004, one from – yes, probably ten years ago).

But this weekend I expect to read some Eliot. I think about Eliot a lot without rereading him, which seems ridiculous when you consider how short a poem is (not that you can read it quickly of course). I think some things slightly repell me because I want to preserve my ideas and theories and good opinions of a work. But Lord, it is time. Also, I keep thinking that if I ever did a PhD it would be a survey of the writer Lucy M. Boston, who I am convinced shows interesting influences of Eliot in her work. Next month I will be able to visit her house in Cambridge, so I need to begin thinking about her again and reading the Green Knowe books in the short term.

So yes, I am writing short stories and wandering the capital again. Feeling in love with flaneurie, exploration, looking, the flirtation, the dream, the lost mystery, the chance encounter, the garden glimpsed over a wall. And I am going swimming tonight for the second time, and listening to new music. I also went to the cinema the other day to see a film I knew nothing about. Basically I am sixteen again. Surely we can manage things better this time.

No NaNo November

I haven't updated this for a year! Crikey! But since it links to my Librarything, I feel I ought not to leave it there, in the doldrums of November 2007, a funny time...

Viviane Schwarz’s blog (http://vivianeschwarz.blogspot.com/) reminded me that I was supposed to be NaNo-ing this month. As in previous years, my marathon was over pretty soon, less Paula Radcliffe, more Jade Goody. I’ve had the curries, the Chinese food, the booze. I didn’t put in the training. I didn’t know what a word was. Actually, that’s going a bit far with the metaphor – I have some experience with words. I see them every day. I’ve written short fiction before, some of it’s horrendous but some of it has been not bad, and I had a whole slew of ideas that I needed to pick something from, and test myself on the process of dedicated crashing away at a keyboard, dedicated squeezing out of the voice-from-just-behind-the-ears. I wanted to get away from pastiche, which is my cosy slippers and comfy armchair. I had two straightforward ideas – one of them (cats start talking) seemed a bit slight for what seemed a daunting word length (50,000). The other felt nicely go-anywhere, do-anything – ostensibly about my Mum’s Mum, doing a sort of psychogeographic job on Peckham – a lot of revelation, a bit of mystery. On NaNoWriMo’s webpage I described it as ‘Joyce Grenfell meets Angela Carter’. The main reason it only made it 1/5 of the way through its wordcount is that I suddenly became busy with stuff that people in the real world actually wanted (rather than the great magic realist novel of South London that nobody knows they want, yet). It was meant as a test of myself and I failed, but I learnt some good stuff.

The first thing – which had been a block for a while, if I’m honest – was that I had to change a real person into a fictional one. I’ve read them so often that I didn’t think about how hard it is to do. Joyce Brazier was a sort of guiding light, towards which I thought I would sprint. When it came to it, I found I couldn’t do anything with her as a character – allow her to make mistakes, describe her body, tell a story about her boyfriend. Making her Joy Grant wasn’t enough – I had to relocate her from close by Rye Lane to just around the corner from the Imperial War Museum, which meant renaming the novel and rewriting the section where her brother’s best friend drives her to a funeral.

Around this time, geography became vitally important. I wanted to write this novel about the fabric of Peckham, about the way the texture and shape of it shifted, suffered and regenerated across the twentieth century. It’s a place that I’m fascinated by – but not, I suddenly realized, a place that I know by heart – not a place I’ve really lived in – not even a place I live anywhere near, now. (And when you visit your family with your boyfriend for a weekend, you don’t feel you can say: Can we go to Peckham Park Road for a novel I’m writing? And I even had to look up Peckham Park Road, just this minute! I know that there’s a pie and mash shop there – closing down, but still – and a school, and the Livesey Museum, which used to be a library, built on the bequest of a man who made his living in the gasworks up the road, and I know the Civic Centre is just around the corner, and I’ve even bought chips there, but I didn’t know the name.) Not only that, but where were the cinemas in Peckam in 1956? Did people go to the cinema? Would Joy? What was her income? How did she spend it? It came to something when I suddenly realized that, until chapter 3 when I knew Joy would begin wandering the Old Kent Road, interviewing strangers and having visions, I had to have her making conversation – and not only that, but conversation that somehow revealed her character, without turning her into one of those ciphers who already has all the answers, who ‘doesn’t suffer fools gladly’, and who maybe realizes they’re already in a novel. She came out very boring at first, so I had her throw a cup of cold tea at her cousin. It was an act of desperation. I didn’t realize that there was still more that I had to invent about this character, who I had thought was so important to me. I’d somehow found myself writing about her losing her job – so how did her Mum react? What about her family (part of the story was that Joy was part of a really big family – shit!). It was only yesterday that I thought, what about her friends? Who are Joy’s friends? And why do they abandon her so that I don’t have to write about them? In essence, I suppose I realized that I hadn’t treated my idea at all seriously before I began. It was a lesson in humility (not in conciseness, I can hear you lamenting). One of those lessons you either take as ‘I do not know what I am doing and must stop before I cause damage’ or ‘Right, how do I get round this in future’?

1010 words into Nanowrimo, not counting the stuff that doesn't count but which brings an unofficial word count into something more manageable. I think this is going to be cleansing.

85 pages into Moominpappa at Sea. It's sadder than before and getting sadder. Jansson is a genius. Every five minutes a character says "Ah, I'm perfectly happy" and still you know they're lying bitterly - apart from Moomintroll, who becomes happier at the cost of not being Moomintroll any more.

Have nearly worked out how Scratchman's grand scheme works, and just need to work out how Maggie fits into it. I think she consoles the Doctor in a Gethsemane moment at the beginning of the world.

Now have a new address and phone number. Saw Jon has sent it out to lots of friends. Don't know why I am timid and have not done this.

Friend coming over tonight who I have not met. Have decided to get a bit more Spanish/Portugese. Have fallen in love with this window into a happy, busy flat in Catalonia:
http://www.photoblog.com/magalhes5

It's cold, it's wet, it's dark, it's the end of the day. Oh, and I joined the library! Huzzah, at last, now my grand scheme is finally coming together...

I've been so tired this week. I don't know why. It ain't lethargy, it's sheer depletion. Everything's heavy. And this morning I woke up and it felt like during the night my brain had turned into a stone.

But yesterday I had enough business at work to occupy my mind, plus I decided to really forge ahead on writing my pastiche of a Dr Who novelisation for Sarah. It's something I began at my old office and put on hold - a fond recreation of Tom Baker 'Who, riffing off an unmade film fabled to have been scripted by Baker under the lovely, shlocky title "Dr Who Meets Scratchman"! Doctor Who Magazine slightly stole my thunder in July, publishing the surviving documents for the project (which was put on ice when everybody went to see "Star Wars" and went, 'Oh - oh, okay...') and the truth turned out to be slightly hammier and slightly more wonderful than my own extrapolation from the rumours. But I've decided to go ahead and do it, as a Christmas present. (When I was fifteen I wrote 'The Shining Snows of Oz' for her, and last year it was 'Alice's Adventures Up In The Air', so I have precedents). Here's the back-cover blurb I knocked up yesterday morning:

“The Universe expects that every time traveler will do his duty!”
Hold on to your scarf and prepare to join Dr Who and his friends in their
wildest and weirdest adventure yet. It will take them from
the outer edges of the galaxy to a planet of plant people, through a black hole, under the sea, to a space station in 2975 and a WI summer fete in 1963,
and ultimately it will take them to the grandest of arch manipulators,
the original evil genius, the prince of a million names,
known to the Doctor as … Scratchman.

Based on the Amicus movie
coming this Christmas 1975!

Then, arriving home with my brain finally awake, I found that my 'Moominpappa At Sea' had finally arrived. I didn't think it could stand so much impatient waiting, but it's extraordinarily beautiful, with melancholy you could eat with a spoon. The Moomins have had enough of the comfortable life, and gamble everything on a small boat, a storm lantern, an unreliable memory and a lighthouse on a lonely island, which seems to have gone out since Moominpappa last saw it. Not only is it the penultimate book in the series, the last one being 'November...', but the whole scenario and the season it happens in seem to match and shadow this move up, a desperate venture, escape to a mountain hideaway. This morning the sun on the hills was beautiful. Worth it?

I found this fantastic picture via one of my blogs - a wonderful Finnish artist called Anna Emilia, who seems to have also made some small books (very up my street at the moment). Dreamish, detailed, but also with those nice mysterious wash/blocks of colour that it's easy to lose your heart to.

http://www.annaemilia.com/

I've taken that image as the starting point for the last chapter of my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm writing the last chapter first as a trig point and a challenge to myself. I'll need both on my way through. I know very vaguely what happens, I've worked out some character names, and I've set myself tons of conditions. One of them is that there has to be a brand new neologism in every chapter.

Last week I reached a head and realised I must do something to stop being glum. Isolate the areas of dissatisfaction and zap them. It's too easy when things don't suit you, just to tune out. As Theodor Adorno will tell you, long-windedly, it don't get you nowhere! And sometimes you go to books to open up and sometimes you go to books to vanish into them (Sometimes you go to the park for a run around, sometimes you go to the park for a sit) and I've been vanishing too much, especially in this dreary little office where it's hard to connect. I'm eight floors up for one thing!

Having said that, I've been struggling to find proper time to read. Sneaking a ghost story or a chapter of Dr Who and the Abominable Snowmen is one thing, but getting down a chapter of the Melancholy of Resistance (about a little village being visited by a stuffed whale, where sentences run for pages and nothing is as it seems) is another thing. Finally got onto that, Sunday evening. We unpacked a lot of stuff this weekend too, which felt good, and drove into Chester for a little Saturday shoppiness - it feels like a metropolis compared to our little Bangor, even if Bangor does have the longest high street in Europe. I have decided to make a Hattifattener for Luke for Christmas, out of a sock and some gloves, and a papier mache Ood mask for Sarah, so was looking for PVA glue. Also am turning over story ideas, for NaNoWriMo and for a C4 TV competition.

And I must write to friends again soon. Wales is one thing, laziness is another.

Last night we went to see Two Days In Paris at Theatr Gwynedd. It's funny and sharp and rich and rude. It says a lot of useful stuff about being in a relationship. Actually about lots of relationships - sexual, family, political. It was the second time I'd seen it but it could stand a lot of rewatching. Will see some different stuff soon and get new input, I hope, though.

And some news: Russell Hoban (favourite writer) due on The Verb (favourite programme) this Friday. I excited!

I am now in Bangor, playing receptionist at a mysterious company who do funny things with wood. Staying in Anglesey in what was, for the past week, the coldest house in the world, but fortunately with two of the nicest guys in the world and plenty of cereal. Keep planning on getting back to the grindstone and finishing all those stories I began in London, not to mention buying notepaper and singlehandedly beginning a great letter-writing tradition. I also intend to take Welsh lessons, join a bellringers' society and train in Aikido, although for the next couple of months it might be Qi Gong instead. Oh, and I've shaved off my beard. I have designs on having my hair cut short and dressing like a proper Butt-reading style sonny, a proper teddy boy gay mister, a buzz-cutted Tillmans looky-likey with a book problem and a couple of novels under his belt, and whiskey in the corner cupboard. I'll be growing tomatoes in Bethesda by the end of the month, I like. Maybe I'll learn the Mbira and shun the telephone too. A life of poetry, detective novels and cursed bus timetables opens before me. Well, it is autumn, at last...

"Too much"

A man with no man is a
man with his hands free
And a man on his own is a
man who knows who he should be
But when he kissed me an
earthquake started shaking under me
And I’m as good as blind
when no-one sees what I see

But now I’m dreaming of him
As a matter of course
And I’m feeling him in me
With too much force
The love that dare not speak its name’s in danger of
Shrieking itself hoarse

And he says I’ll have to leave him
Coz I love him
He says I’ll have to leave him
Coz I love him
He says I’ll have to leave him
Coz I love him too much

I want to get up, get rough, get tough
put a bullet-proof face on it
I need asbestos in my roofspace
where there never was a trace of it
He is a shining blood red race-car
and my heart is racing it
There is a cool ice lolly way of living and
I ought to be tasting it

But I’m just tasting him
And that’s enough
I’m hard with his hard-on
And that’s when I’m rough
And I’m floating like a sunbeam happy just to be
His bit of stuff

And he says I’ll have to leave him
Coz I love him
He says I’ll have to leave him
Coz I love him
He says I’ll have to leave him
Coz I love him too much

On the street he’s so sweet
I’ve got eyes the size of stars
And I can’t stop my hands off his shoulders
and his lovely arse
When he catches his train I feel
run over by a hundred cars
I’m losing myself in my love
In the Harvey’s of a hundred bars

But I’ll run to him
Put my strength in a ball
Throw myself across chance
And just hope I don’t fall
I’ll be the bridge, I’ll be the pulley because
He’s the dream, and I will haul.

And I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him
I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him
I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him too much

And he’ll have to leave me
But he’ll leave me to my tears
And to fifteen hundred years
In hell
I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him
I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him
I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him
I know I’ll never leave him
Coz I love him too much.

We’re In Love With A German Philosophy Lecturer

I told him, and he said, ‘If only I’d known it was him back then, I would have taught him everything.’ He means everything you ought to know. He said, ‘I would have been his Robin Hood, and his Dracula, and his partner in crime.’ So, I’m coming to be taught, by you. He says he would have bought my ticket, if he was rich. He says back then you would have taken it all off for them, if you’d known him and he suggested it. You’d have danced at night together on the rugby pitch, if you’d met by chance. Saying goodbye he would have said: ‘You’re a star,’ and you would have said, ‘This can’t be goodbye, I’m too soft for the world, protect me.’ Now if I see you chancing a hunt, fag in your anorak mouth, you may have me. If you could have seen him, he would have had you, entirely. Then you might have seen him in me, before I saw you. I’ve enrolled to learn how to be what he was, in embryo, at the start. I will be the work of your art in my age of your mechanical reproduction. But I’m going back after, dressed like you, wearing whatever I discover to be your scent. I will stand before him, your image, and clear my throat like a dumb, loving animal.

Gin makes it all right

I was snagged on a hundred problems and difficulties of concentration today, about my dissertation. Then in late afternoon I started drinking and now I'm almost rocketing along. Admittedly, I've just slowed down again, and if I don't go to bed now I won't be able to get anything done tomorrow morning. But gin calmed me down, told me to write sincerely, made 'Radon Daughters' a fun read again (that is one hell of a feat) and inspired a couple of fun micro-stories for a BBC Writers competition, as well as a killer opening line for a love story that I won't write just for now. Maybe it helped that I found a song I wrote three years ago that I loved all over again, or that I downloaded mp3s of Basia Bulat and Bat For Lashes, or that chemicals made me okay with the world. But I have never been much of a drinker before, and I never really saw that potentially the crappy little edges of the world which, with luck, vanish with the fuzzy feeling of a couple of glasses of London Dry, are sometimes all that you need to get rid of to go forwards and get done what you want done in the way you want it done. Tomorrow, baking - bopping - questions - more stories - more new songs - decisions about theatre - waking up to the Happy Song - sunshine - discursive ability - autonomy - visionaries - lies - ghosts - more Finnish fantasy - Moomins due - library visits - Gary Indiana - love for anyone who walks in my sights - and maybe I will draw a sequence of snails. Drink made it right when right was just working, not being insensate. Now, SLEEEPP!