Category: Uncategorized

… Dai Lowe. A nihilistic legend amidst the online writing community.

It may disappoint folk to hear that he’s actually incredibly jolly and smiley. It’ll be less of a surprise to hear he’s witty, informed, charming and entertaining.

He talks about food. I adore foodie talk. So we did talk food for a bit – Spanish, mainly – and then about films… I like relatively obscure, foreign stuff, and it’s always good to get new tips. Dai, I think, has a stronger stomach than I for the more experimental and oft raw offering… but there was common ground on some things and a few recommendations I shall doubtless try out. Literature, life, love… I could happily have stayed and chatted for hours but, alas, he had to catch another train.

Dai is on a tour of Poignant Personal Places – he calls it his Farewell tour of the UK, measured in Cappuccinos… but he’s not really leaving, though today he did show me the map marking his tour, and the ditch in which he wishes, at some point, to curl up in the rain and die. But I suspect he’ll plod on for a bit yet. He’s barely started the tour and the weather’s too good to die in a ditch in the rain. You can follow his exploits here: Chasing the Frothy Bubbles.

As Dai’s also an artist, I figured this was good enough excuse to doctor the only photo taken today which had (for me at least) come out quite bizarrely unflattering… damn that barista and his poor camera skills. It’s not so bad now. And it sort of reflects the heat of the day…

“… fond of fun and therefore witty, wit being well-bred insolence.”

Aristotle ~ Rhetoric, Book II

Aristotle knew a thing or two about man – his strengths, his flaws, his hopes, his fears. Such understanding brings an awareness of how to engage, in order that man performs at his best. Understanding desire is the key to success in communication. It takes talent to extract the best from people. It takes talent to truly understand what they want.

And thus I introduce Freddie – man of many talents in the field of communication and beyond, a fine observer and commentator on modern and ancient Life, a man in possession of the most erudite wit I know, a sharp mind and an effective lightness of treatment… all of which surely epitomizes Aristotle’s well-bred insolence.

If you haven’t checked out his blog at Oomkenscom I’d heartily recommend you do so. It too takes talent – and experience – to apply intelligent insight and entertain whilst still provoking thought… and it takes character to do so with what I think is an admirable deftness of touch.

Aristotle also said:

“…all the valuable qualities that youth and age divide between them are united in the prime of life.”

Amen to that, say I.

It is one to me that they come or go
If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

                          ~ Sara Teasdale, “The Solitary”

1954 Bermondsey mothers’ outing

The postcard is a dying pleasure and it’s a shame. There’s something delicious about those little pieces of printed card – cheery inky sentiment squeezed into limited space in an ever-shrinking scrawl.

The Corps of Women Drivers and Grooms formed during the 1914-18 War to drive the horse-drawn mail vans

One of my favourite used bookshops in town is Simon Baynes, which has a large collection of old postards – some unused, some written on – and I can spend ages meandering through the boxes, looking at them. I never buy any and the chap behind the counter must think me a pain. But the reason I never buy any is because if I started I probably wouldn’t be able to stop. I’ve been here before.

Hackney Workhouse. ‘H’ Block, the women’s ward, 1902

In 1999, when heavily pregnant with first child, I was inexplicably struck with an obsession with feminism and found myself – that long unbearably hot summer – consuming oodles of feminist literature. There was a certain irony in reading Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch when I was in what most men saw as the sort of condition whereby doors must be opened, seats given up and for God’s sake she’s hormonal, don’t say anything to upset her kindly patronisation.

My dear Mr B, 
We arrived in good condition after a splendid crossing. Today has been glorious, the first summer day, so the natives tell us. We attended a suffragist meeting this morning and you will be surprised to hear that I made a few remarks, but they were to a man who kept interrupting with inane remarks. We have been down to the Port tonight and seen the women cleaning and packing fish. This is something that has been started since we were here last year. We have a fine room, overlooking bay, port and promenade. Hoping you are having better weather and all keeping fit. Yours in ….

Isn’t that wonderful?

… with images of Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera.

I am filled with a lust that cannot be ignored and shan’t settle until I’ve been there. And I want to go by train.

Apparently it’s possible to do the journey, via that mode of transport, within a day. So, coffee in Shrewsbury, breakfast in London, lunch in Paris, afternoon tea in Turin, and dinner in Monterosso al Mare. Perfetto! 

I idle away a fair bit of online time perusing three things: travel, food and poetry. Recently, I asked online friends where would you go with an unlimited budget?

There were some interesting replies – places seen, places craved. But a curious answer came from the wonderful Liz/Sheena who said we travel because it makes us feel a certain way, so should focus on inducing this same feeling in our ordinary lives, in ordinary places.

To some extent I get what she’s saying, but a large part of what appeals to me with travel couldn’t be reproduced in my native land.

I love being the foreigner. The detachment that comes with not speaking the language – tuning out, relaxing, knowing nothing is my concern – the sheer selfishness of just being. I love the quiet watching and pondering a person is free to do when in the role of visiting ghost.

I asked my dad – who’s travelled the world the hard way – where is his favourite place? He said he couldn’t answer. Did I mean most pleasurable or memorable or intense…? He gave a few examples of each – all exotic, dangerous ventures – before settling, briefly, on:

“…the time, having canoed 3000km down the Danube, to stand alone with my feet in the Black Sea, eyes closed, knowing I had done it and it could never be taken away from me.” 

Ah. And that’s the difference between armchair travel and the real kind… now where’s that train schedule?

Honour by Freddie Omm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Honour is a brilliant read – and quietly clever too. The fast-moving plot will certainly appeal to thriller devotees – it’s a page turner and I defy anyone to read the opening chapter and not want to read on – and yet it’s unique in its treatment, with a storyline, characters and settings to appeal to a much wider audience than just thriller fans. The wonderful pace is aided by clean and spare prose, but with delicious playful touches to the language that lift it above and beyond other books in the genre. There is a lot of wit here and it is this, and the pace, which prevent the book’s subject matter from bogging the reader down in *issues*.

Short punchy chapters, several intermingling story strands, and a fabulous cast of characters populate an involving story about an honour killing in a western consumerist setting – who is the oppressor? Who is the oppressed? What exactly is honour? The story moves briskly along with a supple use of language and glorious black humour, flitting between fundamentalists with murderous intent, advertising executives with one eye on the bottom line and one scouting for the next bandwagon, and bored aristocratic wives with a penchant for rolling in the hay…

You’ll finish this book thinking you’ve read a great romping thriller. But then you’ll realise you read something far more than that – you read an extremely clever subtle observation of the world in which we live, where norms are learned and the lines drawn constituting Right and Wrong are not static, nor absolute.

A cracking read & top marks from me.

The Beauregarde Affair by Brian M. Talgo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Beauregarde Affair is a tale told by a natural raconteur. I would love to hear this serialised on radio, or done as an audio book read by the author. Memoirs in themselves can often be self-indulgent and fall foul of the “oh well, you’d understand if you’d been there” realm, but what Talgo has done here is to fictionalise the memoir slightly – and to do so with such a strong and compelling Voice that it’s surely impossible not to be drawn into this world of stoned misfits – and so, with the edges of Reality tinged with imagined romanticism and the tidying up of events, the whole thing comes together as the most wonderful story, polished and with witty afterthought and honed to perfection. What bits are true, what bits invented, who knows – but one thing for certain it’s a moreish tale of witty hedonistic indulgence that will touch the very soul of anyone who lived through that era and, indeed, I reckon I’ll be having flashbacks for years…

But it’s also a tale of friendships and, no matter the decade, these early bonds – those people with whom we choose to spend our formative years – define and remain with us for life and are not confined to one particular decade in time. And so I don’t think this is a story purely for the stone-heads of the seventies but is a story for anyone who’s ever shared digs with others during their carefree, egotistical party years.

And the snake. Oh how I love the snake… he is almost figurative (though I’m sure he existed!) in that he holds together this story of loves, losses, drunken misdemeanours and innate will to avoid Growing Up for as long as is humanely possible… only to reach his literary peak towards the end. What happens to the snake? You’ll have to read it to find out.

It’s bliss. I cannot recommend it highly enough. But please, Brian Talgo… can we have an audio version??

View all my reviews