UniversalCritic

Dirty? Oh yeah baby!

2006-10-30T18:32:00.000Z

You see a surprising amount of good theatre in Australia - up to two years before you see it in the UK - because a surprising number of theatre producers live in Australia, and it is a superb test market for the USA and UK. Which is why we saw a Dirty Dancing preview two weeks ago on the recommendation of Universal Mother-In-Law, who visited recently from Brisbane.

Being male, I am a bit cynical about Dirty Dancing. And, in much the same way that Universal Wifey has never seen any of the Star Wars movies, and cares not for The Godfather I, II or III; I never bothered to see the Dirty Dancing when it was a film. Which is why I found myself standing outside the Aldwych theatre with two Dirty Dancing tickets in my hand, waiting for Universal Wifey to arrive directly from her flight from Switzerland.

First the theatre. (Well, you don't want me to ploughing straight in there, do you girls - gratification is better delayed.) The Aldwych theatre has been extensively re-modelled in time for Dirty Dancing so the steats work without squeaking, the bathrooms are functional, the paint un-chipped, the carpet not the slightest bit sticky and the chandeleir cleaned and polished to twinkly gorgeousness - so make sure you walk down the front to buy an icecream or a bottle of water from the vendors in the auditorium so you can stand in line and look up the the building - it really is fabulous.

Now the performance. I would like to trash it as "...soft porn for women..." as the Sunday Times already has, but I think that is short-changing it. Sure it is largely a platform for Josef Brown's rippling V-shaped torso to be paraded atop his thrusting, black-denim-clad groin; sure the singing is of the quality you usually expect from dancers; sure the storyline is a fine gossamer thread tenuously linking opportunities to dance, sing or see Josef Brown's rippling V-shaped torso paraded atop his thrusting, black-denim-clad groin; and sure the audience is 70% daughters of the eighties and their mothers, who become one gagging, gibbering mess by the end of it. But there is enough to keep gentlemen entertained too: first you will be surprised that the story consists of more than boy-meets-girl, they dance, they kiss, they dance, end of holiday; second you get see Georgina Rich writhing around in all her curvy, girl-next-door, innocent-yet-dirty,-teenage-sexbomb, dancing, singing glory; third, if Georgina is too subtle for you, Nadine Coote spends a good part of the performance wearing something black and sprayed on; and if that isn't enough, she dances with Georgina Rich enough for you to delude yourself that it's girl-on-girl action.

So, in sort, it's not soft porn for women. It's soft porn for everyone. It's about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on; it's a sure-thing on a first date and it's going to run for about as long as testosterone and estrogen come packaged in boys and girls.

Dirty Dancing
Aldwych Theatre, London, WC2B 4DF
Phone 020 7279 3367
Tickets £25-£55 from ticketmaster on 0870 400 0805

I would have helped if I understood all the questions

2006-10-26T11:36:00.000+01:00

Having been religiuosly confused for some time - I think of myself as spiritual, rather than pious - I thought I would have a look at Beliefnet's Belief-0-matic.

It's summary of my religious proclivities is:

1.	Neo-Pagan (100%)
2.	Mahayana Buddhism (84%)
3.	New Age (80%)
4.	Unitarian Universalism (76%)
5.	Reform Judaism (70%)
6.	Hinduism (69%)
7.	Sikhism (69%)
8.	Liberal Quakers (68%)
9.	New Thought (68%)
10.	Scientology (67%)
11.	Theravada Buddhism (65%)
12.	Orthodox Judaism (55%)
13.	Bah�'� Faith (52%)
14.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (52%)
15.	Jainism (52%)
16.	Taoism (52%)
17.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (52%)
18.	Secular Humanism (45%)
19.	Islam (41%)
20.	Orthodox Quaker (31%)
21.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (30%)
22.	Eastern Orthodox (30%)
23.	Roman Catholic (30%)
24.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (28%)
25.	Nontheist (28%)
26.	Jehovah's Witness (19%)
27.	Seventh Day Adventist (12%)

I suspect it would be much simpler if the Belief-o-matic had a setting for Lapsed Catholic.

Fetishes I don't understand

2006-10-24T16:28:00.000+01:00

I've always been a little puzzled by foot fetishes, largely because I am not a foot fetishist. Although I can somewhat see the point, because feet are rich in nerve endings and so could provide pleasing sensations of a sensual nature.

I am even metrosexual enough to have an inkling of an understanding of why girls like shoes so much, and I have certainly noticed that the right girl in the right pair of shoes can look damn good.

But this - www.wethighheels.com - puts me so far out of my depth I don't know where to begin.

Is it erotica for cobblers?

Finding a darker narnia

2006-10-06T12:43:00.000+01:00

I wasn't exactly complimentary about John Connolly's last book, The Black Angel, and I glanced into The Book of Lost Things before I recognised the author, read a paragraph and was hooked. This is so entirely different to his last book that it could have been written by a different person.

David is twelve, his mum has died and he's a little bit obsessive compulsive. He feels like is the only one grieving his mother's death, and racket from the books is irritating him. Yes, he hears books talk - hillariously at his psychiatrist's office, when they call out, "Charlatan, fraud!" or, "well done old man, good question," depending on his performance; and sadly when the obsolete reference books in his bedroom fight to be heard, knowing deep down that their autority and worth has been stripped from them.

And then it feels like someone has been in his room.

Ultimately David discoveres another world through a crack in the old sunken garden he can see from his window. This is no Narnia though - this is a world of horror, of wolves, worse-than-wolves, and other horrors. Of huntresses who cross children and animals to make better quarry; and of a dying king who is losing control of his kingdom. Every human that has entered the world has bought its fears with it, increasing the population of horrific creatures - some of which are Davids, and must be conquered before he can leave. The book is superb - I had a month to read it and finished it in four days.

When good people stay silent

2006-10-03T12:05:00.000+01:00

I forget who it was, but some wise person said that, "Bad things happen when good people stay silent."

Whistleblowers are the people of integrity who sacrifice their career, their bank balance, sometimes their life and often their marriage on the altar of thier own integrity. They are the good people who see something bad happening and stand up to stop it. You might remember them from school - they were the little person who stood up to the bully - and sometimes got their arse whipped. I know some of this because it happened to my dad. It ended-up being the best thing that ever happened to him - got him out of a dead-end job and into a high-flying executive career. And it destroyed his confidence for a long time, and it made his life difficult; but he avoided any fame and he got on with his life. His two whistleblower colleagues' careers were obliterated.

So I was interested when I found the author of this book in on Petite's comments page. I haven't read it yet - I'll write it up when I do.

Getting Sharp with Kingo

2006-09-28T13:01:00.000+01:00

I haven't seen this exhibition, but I can vouch for the artists - having spent a very pleasurable day building a large, ferry shaped sand-castle on Palm Beach with them. We won equal first prize!

Martin Sharp I have only met once - on the sandcastle day. He looks like a slightly more weatherbeaten Keith Richards. His early art is cartoonlike, vibrant, and colourful. He has matured into a smootly sophisticated modern artist.

Kingo is my friend. We met while trying to save Hegarty's Ferries, the old wooden ferries that used to ply the waters between Circular Quay and Luna Park, and I try to visit him whenever I am in Sydney. He paints wonderful sea-scapes and harbour-scapes - many from his window overlooking Lavender Bay, where he lives next door to the house of the late Brett Whitely - another great lover of the bay. Peter Kingston and Wendy Whitely still tend gardens in the public park in front of their houses, and Peter has lined the foreshore walk in Lavender bay with miniature bronze sculptures from The Magic Pudding and Blinky Bill.

His paintings are more epic than Martin's - although he does his share of cartoon style pictures too - and a very nice line in chess sets. His recent painting style is possibly more grown-up than Martin's, incorporating some abstract impressionism and elements of both Lloyd Rees - the great grandaddy of North Shore painters, and Brett Whitely. He paints water beautifully and he paints moods.

Peter, for all his enthusiasm and passion, has a slight air of sadness about him - he misses his dog, he misses his ferries and he struggles to preserve the vanishing bits of maritime herritage around Sydney Harbour. And you can feel the mood in his paintings. Especially Self-Portrait as a Rope Thrower - which unfortunatley is not in the exhibition. It depicts Peter as the ropeman, standing in the rain on The Emerald Star - the most lovely of Hegarty's old ferries - having just tied it up at the wharf. The painting is almost monochrome, with little bits of colour reflecting out of the puddles - you can see the bittersweet style at the exhibition in Shag Shed Resumes. The rain in the self-portrait is like the tears of loss, and Peter is there, like a ghost, on a ghostly boat. The painting is hauntingly beautiful, but also like a big cartoon - again Peter's mix sad and happy, all in one place, just like life. The painting should be in The Archibald Prize, because it would be a contender for victory - I have never seen a painting that captures the personality of its subject so perfectly. So if you don't ever meet Peter Kingston, find his Self-Portrait as a Rope Thrower and stand in front of it for a while. You'll have met him then.

Anti-terrorism strategies: two in the hold are worth one in the overhead compartment

2006-08-10T11:25:00.000+01:00

It's been all over the British media today that the Home Office has shifted the security alert to its highest level - a terrorist attack is imminent.

The nature of the attack is said to be a bomb carried onto an aeroplane in someone's hand luggage. There is no indication in the media that the proposed bomb is a dirty bomb, but just a bomb that goes bang and destroys things.

The recommended course of action is for airlines to ban hand luggage until further notice - meaning that people will not be allowed to carry any more than a lipstick and a piece of fruit on board, in a clear plastic bag, like a shopping bag - which seems like overkill given that they are also going to be swabbing passengers for explosive residues. Surely you could hand-search a handbag sized piece of luggage in the time it takes for the swab to be processed, and it would distract the passengers from thinking about how much they are being delayed.

Those questions aside. My big question is, why is a bomb unacceptable in the cabin, but acceptable in checked luggage?

And of course, if it's a dirty bomb, an aeroplane is about the best place for it. Everybody already has an oxygen mask, and you can remove the toxins in about a second by de-pressurising the cabin. If the dirty bomb is in the hold - which isn't usually pressurised - surely there will be bomb residue all over the luggage, which may end-up being tracked all through a foreign city by a bunch of travellers grumbling about all the dust on their luggage after being in the plane.

Film: It's a lot of shots in chronological order that ultimately say nothing at all

2006-08-08T15:48:00.000+01:00

Universal Wifey and I attended a screening of The Notorious Betty Page a couple of weeks ago. Sorry not to write it up earlier, but I have been trying to find something to say.

The film is not bad. You will not resent the ticket price. But you will leave the theatre feeling slightly conned.

The promotional literature talks about how Betty Page attracted the attention of the FBI and tries to paint her as some sort of Goodnight and Good Luck style mis-targeted threat to American morality. The film, on the other hand, portrays her as a simple country girl who just, sort of, fell into taking her clothes off for the camera. I am sure she was quite naive when she started, but surely she noticed that she was becoming famous. Surely she noticed that she had the money to flit-off to the beach when she wanted to. The film shows her moving from her, "And then my clothes just fell off!" innocence to S&M royalty, the whole time behaving as if she never realised what she was doing, "But we were laughing all the time when we took those pictures - they're not bad". The first indication that she is self-aware is when she heads home for thanksgiving one year, and has to check that her mother hasn't seen the nude pictures - only the nice ones. And the audience is there thinking, "Oh, so she did notice she was modelling nude."

We don't at any time discover whether the Notorious Betty Page was promiscuous or chaste, wealthy or poor, a real threat to the American establishment or just a girl who got naked a lot, happy or sad about her life, or how she ultimately ended-up. Not knowing much about Betty Page when I went into the screening, I would have liked to have known more about her after I left. But no. Nothing. it's like a dramatised sequence of moments in someone's life, placed in chronological order and completely failing to tell any kind of story.

Books: Essential reading

2006-08-02T12:26:00.000+01:00

I cannot claim complete objectivity with his book. If you read my profile you will see that I work in publishing. The company I work for publishes an industry journal for the structured credit and credit derivatives market, and a few times each year we publish a book about a hot part of the market.

This time we have gone educational.

About a year ago we started noticing our niche market going mainstream - our online jobs were getting masses of hits, especially for graduate positions; existing capital markets practitioners were trying to move across from other asset classes; and specialists in this asset class were better trying to understand the parts of the market that they interfaced with, but did not necessarily understand. At the same time, B&B Structured Finance was establishing itself as a leading trainer in this market, and experiencing rapid growth in demand for its training and consulting service. We got together and the book was born.

Biased as I am, I do not think that you will find a better value primer on structured credit and credit derivatives. It is cheaper than the competition by about Â£30, it is clearly written and easy to read, and you would struggle to find a better credentialled writing team than Mike Peterson, Terri Duhon and Anu Munshi.

And if you are trying to get a job in structured credit or credit derivatives, it really is essential reading before your interview.

Film: Well... Lex Luthor was great

2006-07-16T22:54:00.000+01:00

[Warning: contains spoilers, and I wouldn't want to make the film any more disappointing for you.]

Lois Lane was rose high in a an old-fashioned man's world by hiding - or protecting - something of her femininity. As a result she was in her thirties with everything going well for her, except on the man front. What man could possibly be man enough for Lois? Superman - the man of her dreams - her last chance. He made her fall in love, and he left.

Now he's back. It's five years later. Lois has a son - five years old - and a relationship with another man - for five years. Superman, Lois and the new man are all good looking with dark hair; so is the son Superman's, or the new man's?

Well, who gives a shit? Certainly not the two people who walked out before we found the answer. Nor the thirteen other people who left the cinema the instant the end was in sight - not AT the end, just when it was in sight.

The most ridiculous thing about the film is that the characters ages are all wrong. Lois looks like she is about 22, meaning, she was schtupping Superman - and the other guy - when she was seventeen; no, sixteen given the gestation period. Yet Superman's mum (well, stepmum) looks like she is about a hundred. Great face though - so expressive. In fact, the acting is all good, and the little boy does a great job. But the director should be shot for the too-youthful casting; the very recognisable and distracting bits of Sydney - including real-estate signs with buildings' real addresses on them - leaking into shot; the lack of pace; the lack of tension and the fact that Lex Luthor's boat is bigger on the inside than the outside.

Two notable mentions:

1. Kevin Spacey is brilliant as Lex Luthor. His chilling psychopathy steals the show. And you can see him having a great time acting the part. Every time he hits the screen he notches his villainy up another level.

2. Major overload of biblical imagery - "I sent you to earth, the only son of the father..."; an ark scene, where Lex's ship, carrying the future of superhumanity, is marooned on top of a mountain of crystal; and superman looking at his little boy saying, "The son is the father and the father is the son." Oh, and it just occurred to me that Superman, his son and Superdad's messages in the crystal create a neat trinity: The superfather, the superson and the super holy ghost. Jesus! It makes Narnia look Satanic!

My arse was numb after 10 minutes and stayed that way for the rest of the two-and-a-half hour long film.

Superman Returns, unfortunately
At a cinema near you. It only deserves two weekends, but given that sequels usually make 80% of the original's box office, it should last a bit longer.

Food: the quality of the food is in inverse relationship to the decor

2006-07-16T22:21:00.000+01:00

I always wondered why people made such a fuss about Sashimi until I ate it at the Sydney Fish Market, carved straight off the tuna and onto the plate. Fresh fish has some sort of reaction to the soy and wassabe to produce a fizzy tingling feeling on your tongue. Later I was fishing with some guys from work and we found a squid that another group had been using for bait. It was very recently dead, so we ate some - same fizzy tingling feeling. (It was also a bit crunchy, but that was sand.)

The tuna on our sashimi plate at Asakusa had the last remnants of that same tingly feeling, meaning that its tuna was about as fresh as it can be in London. One of our friends noticed that the rice in one of her rolls hadn't quite cooled completely - a sushi no no - but an indicator of unbeatable freshness. The tempura was light and crisp, the gyoza were soft, fluffy and flavoursome with a crunchy bit on each side where they had been cooked, the grilled barbecued steak was wonderfully rare, a little short on flavour, but also about as fresh as it could be in London. All up, the food was superb.

The decor is hideous, but you will ignore it as soon as the food arrives. And, honestly, if the decor turns you off there will be plenty more to take your place, because at 6.30pm on a superbly sunny Saturday evening, we could only get a table in the downstairs overflow section, and we had to be out by eight.

Asakuka
265 Eversholt Street NW1 1BA
(near Mornington Crescent tube)
020 7388 8533 (after 4pm)
Enough superb sushi, sashimi, sushi rolls, grilled beef, teriyaki chicken, tempura, bottled water and green tea for four people: Â£65

Books: Read it in summer, while daylight hours outnumber the dark

2006-07-12T08:37:00.000+01:00

I don't like scary movies. I was a bit too young the first time I saw Jaws, and for years afterwards I would lie underwater in the shallow end of Nana's pool, staring into the dark blue of the very deep deep end, frozen in fear as I imagined some tiny spot - probably something trivial like a leaf, or a funnel-web spider - coming closer and closer until it became a huge set of open toothy jaws about to crunch through my body. I have settled down a bit, but I still have a moment's pause for thought when I dive through a wave in the surf and see the endless green before me. And one night, marveling at the little fishies while twilight swimming at Balmoral Beach in Sydney, I started humming the song lyric, "Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water" and scared myself so much that I had to get out. So I'm not entirely cured. I am better with books, but I suppose we can conclude that when I suspend disbelief, I probably do it with more commitment than most.

Knowing my history, you will know why I was slightly nervous at the prospect of Shadow Man. But having just read Peter James's serial killer book, and having more than a passing fascination with psychopaths and serial murder, I scoffed at my reservations and ploughed in.

Whowee, this book scared me shitless! Smoky Barrett, an FBI agent scarred and bereft after a serial killer murdered her husband and daughter as she apprehended him, faces the prospect of a new killer targeting her and her team.

What makes the book so good, apart from being so thrillingly scary, is the humanity of her team. They are all real people in an unreal situation, and their coping strategies with the horror they deal with in their job gives them unique character quirks that are almost instantly endearing. It also makes it all the more scary when the killer goes after them. Although it follows the usual "agent must prove sanity to get back her gun and get on the case: but must get back gun and get on the case to prove sanity" formula, the well rounded supporting characters make this a far richer reading experience than the usual barely human hero and cardboard supporting characters.

Shadow Man, Cody McFadyen, Hodder, 2006

Books: literary ventriloquism (I wish I'd said it first)

2006-06-30T15:44:00.000+01:00

Another reviewer somewhere on the internet described this book as a feat of literary ventriloquism. I couldn't have said it better myself. So I won't. *

Matthew Keane has written a superb book about, well, the closest approximation of what it is about is to say that a three mismatched Englismen travel to colonial Tasmania to find the Garden of Eden, on a Manx smuggling ship that was chartered to them because the captain needed to pay off his debts to British customs. That's the closest approximation of the truth about 80% of the story. There is a parallel story of the Aboriginal Tasmanians who were all but wiped out in a few decades by British settlement, or invasion, of their homeland.

A lot hasn't been said about this period over the years. It is a dark stain on history, from which nobody emerges looking good: particularly the settlers. All over Australia the power of British armoury and the idea among some people that it wasn't a sin to kill Aboriginals brought out the worst in people. Aboriginals were hunted for sport, slaughtered because they were in the way of agriculture, or because they stole the occasional sheep. They were wiped out by disease and turned to alcoholism for entetainment and profit. By the mid eighteenth century, mainland Australia had matured beyond the worst attrocities - with Sydney and melbourne being quite large towns by then - and Aboriginal numbers so reduced, that this behaviour was becoming a rarity. In Tasmania, however, the horror was in full, bloody, swing.

Matthew Keane has written his story in the form of diary entries written by the key characters - including Peevay, a Tasmanian Aboriginal. The diaries are intercut with eachother, and skillfully written in markedly different voices, and with utterly different personalities. They are superb and utterly believable.

The diary of one character, Peevay, the Aboriginal, can be a bit irritating to read because his voice is not like a modern Aboriginal's. Matthew mentions in the foreword, quite correctly, that there is no way to know how a Tasmanian Aboriginal might have spoken or written English. (Comparing an 1830s Tasmanian Aboriginal's diary to the speech of a modern Western Desert aboriginal is like saying a 19th century Bedouin doesn't sound like Tony Blair - it's about the same distance in time, space and culture.)

All this is by-the-by, however. The true genius of this book is that Matthew Keane has managed to get inside the heads of people on both sides of a cultural chasm - both of whom think that they are doing the right thing, and not understanding why the other is so unccoperative. You see, the true tragedy of genocide of the Tasmanian Aboriginals and the colonisation of Australia is that - while some abhorent people did some abhorent things - most of the damage was done by Europeans who thought they were doing the right thing.

It is a superb book. I wholeheartedly recommend it, especially if you are trying to understand why Australians don't laugh at jokes about colonialism.

(The BBC Radio 4 Book Club has invited 24 other Australians and me to ask some questions of Matthew Keane tonight. So listen on September 4, or September 7, at 4pm to put a voice to the typing. I'll be the one named Damian.)

* If I could rememeber who it was, I'd offer a credit, but I don't, so I can't. Sorry if it was you.

Books: ratcheting up the criminal sophistication

2006-06-30T15:22:00.000+01:00

Crikey people, don't go to Brighton. Peter James has churned out another of his thrillers, making it the murder capital of Europe. I was barely finished reading the last one when we bumped into eachother in the foyer and he mentioned his book signing for this one. (And there is another one in the series due - probably next weekend at the rate he's writing.)

In much the same way as the writing must have done, this book starts about a week after the previous book finished. Superintendent Roy Grace is still fighting the flack from the last book's car chase when a body turns up, minus a head and plus a mysterious beetle.

The writing is a bit formulaic - as the genre tends to be - but Peter ratcheted up the sophistication of the villains in the twenty minutes betwen books. This story is a frightening adventure into international internet based reality porn rings, and their utterly ruthless perpetrators. The pace of the story rapidly accelerates until the final few chapters as Grace and his team race the clock to prevent the next murder victims facing their fate live on streaming video.

Living in the blogsphere: a secret meeting of minds

2006-06-20T22:08:00.000+01:00

Last Friday night in Paris a petite woman left her work in the hands of her mother and boarded a train for England.

Around lunchtime on Saturday a man in Norfolk left his builders, his newly acquired students, LTLP and Baby Servalan and boarded a train for London as his thoughts turned to sushi and culture. Twenty minutes later in Brighton a woman moored her Little Red Boat, put out her binvelope and boarded a train heading North. At around the same time: I was chasing sheep; there was trouble on Coffee Corner as Skippy McWonderfuck failed, and Christine quietly knitted; a finely featured, pale skinned woman looked for reasons to be happy, while wondering if she would belong; a Beautiful Revolutionary pondered garbage night; and a diva tuned her pixels.

Around mid-afternoon on Saturday the petite woman, Anna of the boat, Johnny B, the coffee man, Christine, the Cheerful Woman, the Diva and the Beautiful Revolutionary converged on a small pub, well hidden in a row of terraced houses and named after a royal appendage. I was rushing through a chat with my neighbour at our local bookshop, horribly conscious of my lateness, before riding like an overheated madman towards Westminster bridge.

Twenty minutes later, secret identities were shedding in the back of the hidden pub, and I was riding the back streets looking for it. Twenty minutes after that, Coffee Man grabbed a chair for me as Anna of the boat, the queen bee of bloggers, did the introductions.

Yes, dear readers, 'twas an informal blogmeet, such as I have heard of in the past, but never before witnessed. And alas, my time there was short, limited as I was by other commitments. But here I will divulge what I learned:

Anna - I am starting to think that if you don't know Anna then you're not a blogger, but maybe that's because I have found most of the best blogs I read through her comments page; she is gracious and unreasonably modest and the least shy of the bloggers - as anyone who has seen her impersonating a meerkat would agree

Petite Anglaise - is either less petite than she makes out, or was sitting on a high stool, for she was taller than everyone else; and I forgot to ask her about the gourmet fish-and-chips

Johnny B - is not as feckless as he appears, fortunately; and I forgot to ask if he salvaged the dining table

The Beautiful Revolutionary - is a delightful gentleman of quick wit and generous phrase, who appears to be nowhere near as suicidal as his work implies, also fortunately

Christine - is a warm voiced American with a penchant for Starbucks cookies and The Coffee Man

Coffee Corner - is not a corner where you drink coffee, but a hairy and well mannered American man with a thing for Christine

Pixel Diva - is an assertive Scottish woman named Ann, who knits, photographs and makes sites work for people who don't work as well as they might

The Cheerful Woman - doesn't seem to need to find a reason to be cheerful, for she is clever, witty and laughs easily - or perhaps blogging has done that to her

Universal Critic - well I'm not telling - I'm not that self-aware - you'll have to see if they say anything about me, though I'm sure they're much too polite

Unfortunately I could only stay for half-an-hour but in that time we discussed blog names - me asking everyone else theirs; the guilt you feel when you don't post often enough; and I dominated the conversation with my recent sheep experience, Johnny expressed surprise that we were in London discussing sheep when he expected conversation to be about Sushi recippes and the latest Loofa technology. Then I left, wanting more. Hopefully I will be invited to the next one with more than 24 hours notice.

Books: If God is in the details, then Hello God

2006-06-20T21:54:00.000+01:00

The strength of a character comes from the details, so I suppose the strength of a writer comes from the details. In The Great Gatsby, we don't meet Gatsby until we're well into the book - but we already know that he throws parties that he doesn't bother to attend. And we start to understand the emptiness of a man going through the motions when we see his wardrobe of unworn shirts.

The central character to Watch Me Disappear is an English marine biologist who lives in the United States, specialises in sea horses and has a daughter. The details of her life are superby written - how most of her time is spent simply watching her sea horses, how that's her safe place. How at sea she flashes back to memories of her lost friend. How she loses time occasionally - but not occasionally enough that her daughter isn't familiar with these little fits. So when details of her childhood seem to be missing, they stand out - and that's where the story comes in.

I'm not going to spoil the plot, but when Tina Humber returns to the flat Fenland of her youth, she returns to a life that, she begins to realise, she ran away from when she let her career drag her across the world. And when her adult eyes start to look at the disappearance of her friend, Mandy Baker, she starts to realise why.

The story is beautifully told, and the few confusing twists needed to get us to the end do not take away from the overall effort. Tina Humber is a superbly written character. The descriptions of her work are beautiful and the tie-in between the hypocampus sea horse and the human hypocampus mentioned towards the end of the book shows that Jill Dawson's commitment to details goes beyond what the story requires. Thus author will not let go until she has got it right.

Books: The I-Ching for generation Z

2006-06-20T21:26:00.000+01:00

I picked this book up on a whim. It caught my eye because the mirror writing on the cover says

Whatever you think think the opposite

and claims to be by

Paul Arden, author of the best selling book in the world

The cover was George Castanza enough to grab me, but contents is pure Kramer. Paul Arden has distilled pretty much all you really need to know about creative thinking and risk taking into 143 pages of bold print, wierd pictures, clever lines and a mirror. It's a kind of dip-in:dip-out self-help manual for the creatively disabled. You can read it cover to cover like a novel in an hour or so, if you're slow; or dip in page by page - I-Ching style - and meditate on one idea at a time.

I liked it because Paul Arden clearly thinks exactly the same way that I do. The difference is that he's had the courage to act on his ideas. That's why I had to buy his words in a shop, and you're reading mine for free.

If you think it sounds like crap, read the title again.

London life: London Architecture Bienalle

2006-06-19T19:07:00.000+01:00

Universal Wifey likes sheep. She prefers Baa-lambs, but sheep will do, so I organised for us to ride our bikes down to Southwark Cathedral on Saturday so that we could follow Farmer Smith exercise his right as a Freeman of the City of London to drive his sheep across the Thames Bridges and into the city of London. The event was tied-in with the Architecture Bienalle as a way of linking the Borough Market and Smithfield Market - the two great larders of London. It was also a tie-in with some sort of knitting promotion, and the St Bart's fair - the ultimate destination of the flock.

So we arrived at Southwark Cathedral, where the sheep were to be blessed by the Bishop of Southwark before they started their journey, and stood at the back to keep our bikes out of the way of the crowd. We saw a small pen of sheep - somewhat less than the proposed 66. We craned our necks as some sort of street theatre event began to unfold, until we realised that it was a bunch of rabid anti-meat protestors shouting murderer and hypocrite. As members of the public, the protesters were with us, behind the crowd control tape, but they had arrived early and had the spot closest to the sheep. So every time the protesters shouted murderer, or hypocrite, the sheep would hear their loud, violent braying, and move as far away as possible - which was not very far to the other side of their pen. Some children were also frightened, but on the whole, they were harmless. Because nothing else was happening, they got a lot of media attention.

We also saw a clergyman in purple robes who we took to be the bishop, a short man wearing a suit and a large gold chain who we took to be the mayor, or someone with a very expensive bondage fettish, some people in extremely vintage floppy pom-pom hats and black coats who we took to be alderpeople, or fellow freemen of the city, a man wearing a flat cap and carrying a shepherd's crook, who we took to be farmer Smith, and some younger men and boys wearing flat caps and carrying shepherd's crooks who we took to be shepherds.

And so the blessing blessed. The pen was opened, the shepherds began shepherding, two sheep escaped, farmer Smith shouted shut the gates and the crowd scrambled to untie the crowd control tape from the gates so and shut the heavy medieval gates with a shriek. The remaining sheep were shepherded through the end-gate, into the market and we followed intending to cut around the back past the Golden Hind in order to get ahead of the flock. Suddently there was a excitement behind us as a girl in jeans and a t-shirt dragged a sheep out of the bushes and off towards the pen.

We took a short cut to and waited on the Millenium Bridge hoping to see the sheep pass us on the bridge. In the distance we saw the people in black caps, we saw the shepherds, and we saw a gap in the crowd where we assumed the sheep were, and a Policeman moved us on so that the bridge would be clear for the sheep.

We passed a woman wearing lots of velvet who was defending her vegetarian Doc Martens to camera.

We stopped on the other side of the bridge oppisite Salvation Army headquarters where the band was to play The Lord is My Shepherd. The band didn't show. We stood on a fire escape and waited. We saw the people in black caps, we saw the shepherds, we saw a gap, and in the gap, we saw wool. We heard the violent braying and yelling of the anti-meat protesters. They were immediatley behind the sheep. The sheep at the front of the flock were walking normally - just a sheep out for a walk in the city, what are you looking at.

Now if you have spent anything more than a moment with a flock of sheep you will have learned that sheep don't like being startled. The are calm and placid creatures who like to find a nice grassy field and eat it. They are not political. They are not particularly assertive (although there is always one...) and they do not speak enough of any human language to tell the difference between one loud, murderous shout and another.

The protesters were following the sheep closely - very closely. They were, in fact, directly behind the sheep. And they were screaming and yelling with a frightening violence and vitriol. The sheep at the back of the flock were tightly bunched together, pushing their faces between the shoulders of the sheep in front, climbing the flock from the back. The protesters may have had all meat-kind on their minds, but the happiness of these sheep was sacrificed for the cause. The sheep - what we could see of them - were terrified.

Disgusted at riding so far to see very little, we left the sheep to walk across the western steps of St Pauls Cathedral (not the northern, not the southern, not up or down, but across the western steps) and rode through the back-streets to Smithfield, where we found the market not quite ready, filled-out a London Energy questionnaire, collected a bunch of architecture brochures and a free high-efficiency light bulb and set off, slightly disapointed, to see the knitted house and the solar powered kinetic sculpture on Clerkenwell Green.

Suddenly a Policeman strode towards us, "Stand aside please!" and we barely had time to pull our bikes onto the footpath when some people in black caps, some shepherds and a whole happy flock of sheep brushed past our legs heading towards the sheep's pen for the afternoon. The protesters were gone. The sheep were gamboling happily along the road, and after a twelve mile round trip we finally met the sheep as soon as we gave up.

So the moral of is... I don't know, perhaps that animal-rights protesters are just as willing to sacrifice individual animals for the common cause, and that sometimes you have to give up looking to find the thing you are looking for.

The internet: A disturbing turn of events

2006-06-15T07:57:00.000+01:00

There is a phenomenon described in the literature which details the disinhibiting nature of the internet. I experienced it yesterday, and thus it came about that I discussed underpants gussets with another man, in a public forum. The conversation continued by email where we discussed our own specific underpants gusset attributes, and in passing I discovered that he is a runner, and he discovered that I am a cyclist.

The entire event was perfectly innocent - hell, I'm a married man - but somehow I still feel slightly soiled.

Damn internet.

Politics: groupthink

2006-06-12T11:03:00.000+01:00

Just how deep into groupthink do you have to be to interpret suicide as a publicity stunt?

London life: the big wheel keeps on turning...

2006-06-08T15:54:00.000+01:00

...but they don't tell its direction.

Not every evening, but often enough to make it seem regular, a man rides past my window on a unicycle. He's not a clown, or a juggler, or any kind of entertainer. His unicycle isn't a ridiculously tall one. It's not painted a primary colour. It has no stripes. It's just a unicycle. Judging by the 20" wheel it's not a stunt unicycle, and judging by his backpack and cycling clothes he's not a stunt unicycle rider. He looks just like every cyclist commuter, except he's riding a unicycle.

You have to respect a unicycle commuter.

London life: Is there a doctor in the house?

2006-05-31T14:59:00.000+01:00

I originally posted this as a comment on Dr Jest's caseblog, then decided that it was so long I shoudl put it here. He was talking about the new NHS computer system, and his own computerised records in his office - saying that most surgeries used computers now...

Speak for yourself - our local GP in Notting Hill still uses little library card sized pieces of paper in envelopes. We tried to make an appointment once and I was told that Universal Wifey was not registered. I said she should be, because her registration appointment was straight after mine - I even held the door open for her. They came back on the phone and said that actually, she had emigrated. I said, "Why would she have done that, we've just emigrated here." Receptionist said that she'd told that doctor that and that it was written in the records. I said that sounds unlikely, given that we had never actually met the doctor - having only just registered. (They made her have a pap-smear before they would re-register her - some sort of punishment we assumed.)

Most recently she needed more Clexane (she gets DVTs) before a long haul flight. She sat down and asked for the prescription, in single dose syringes, and reminded the doctor of the dose. The doctor said, "You've only had glandular fever - you don't take Clexane for that." She agreed, and said she was recovered from the glandular and that the Clexane is for DVTs. He said that there is no record on her record. She said that there should be, because she had given it to them - about fifteen pages of letter, test results and medical history. He said she didn't, and he wasn't giving her the drug. She reminded him that Clexane is not exactly a party drug, and asked him how many people had casually requested it over the course of his career. He said none, and he couldn't just give it to her. She said he'd better, because she wasn't leaving until she did.

At that point, a stare down ensued. Now Universal Wifey is not your average Notting Hill yummy mummy. For starters, she's not a mummy. She is a hardcore investment banker, and you don't get there without being able to stare someone down. She sat across from the doctor, wearing her smart work suit, and stared. Slowly the rustling from the waiting room became louder and louder. She stared. The clock ticked towards hometime. She stared. His phone rang with and enquiry from the desk to see if everything was OK. She stared. He picked up his men and doodled on her card. She stared. She clicked his pen a few times. She stared. He may even have perspired a little. She stared.

He stood up and walked over to the cupboard. She turned her head so that she could keep staring. He grabbed a handful of samples. She stared. He said, "How much do you need?" She smiled, and told him.

She thanked him, placed the syringes into her handbag, zipped it shut and left. Honestly, it's easier to get the stuff through customs.

So I say bring on a system that doesn't rely on the ability of three dessicated, resentful, old biddies who prefer to gossip about the patients than manage the records. Bring on the professionals!

How do you hold a baby's coffin?

2006-05-19T18:37:00.000+01:00

I have always thought that Funerals are quite fun affairs - death and loss aside. Sure, the whole mourning thing is very upsetting, but it is also cleansing and cathartic, and leaves you feeling better afterwards. And there is also the celebration thing: celebrating a life lived, hopefully well. I have thought this since the first funeral I attended - my Grandfather's, or my Great Aunt's, not sure - which united cousins and friends who I had not seen for years. It was, ultimately, a reunion party that left us feeling more positive, like the worst was over.

I thought that I was alone in thinking this. Or perhaps that it was just my family, because we were having a laugh in the funeral car about some of the ridiculously funny things that my Grandfather used to do and say. Some of these had names - "The Toilet Seat Incident"; or was it Aunty Thelma's epic travels in her own train carriage, or when she thought her nurse was a gypsy because he had an earring. It doesn't matter, really. The point is that all the stories were infectious and pretty soon we were in the comedy car. At one point I apologised to the driver for our extremely bad taste. He didn't mind. He said that the biggest emotional struggle for a funeral car driver is keeping a straight face when the rest of the car is laughing. He said they are usually quite funny drives.

And funerals can be quite sexy: everyone wears their best clothes; the women look all flushed and vulnerable; the men look all stoic, while betraying an emotional range they usually conceal; and of course teenagers discover a whole new set of adult emotions to experiment with. This I also thought was my own idea until I found thirteen films that agree with me.

Having made these observations over the years, it took today to gel them into the single idea that ultimately a funeral is a positive experience. Because today was the exception that proves the rule.

This morning I held Universal Wifey's trembling hand at the back of a crematorium, tears rolling down our cheeks to the droning lullaby of a Hindu Priest. The casket was ridiculously small - like a dolls-house toy - and it occurred to me that with something so small the usual funerary pomp just doesn't work. You can't have many flowers, because the casket is smaller than the bouquet. The coffin is too small for pallbearers, so it has to be carried by one person, awkwardly. A hearse is a ridiculous conceit when the coffin fits on a lap. And without the formality the whole event becomes horribly personal and intimate. And when there is only fifteen minutes of life to celebrate, nothing can offset the gutting misery of lost hope and shattered dreams.

Again, I thought that this might have been my own observation, until we were waiting to pay our respects to the parents and I saw the undertaker crack. Have you ever seen an undertaker cry?

Also published on www.acouplepfounters.com.

London: Aaaaarrrsenallllll

2006-05-17T16:10:00.000+01:00

Just after I left school I worked with Digby, a guy who had returned to Australia from the UK an obsessive Arsenal fan. We were moving office furniture and files and it became our mission to write Arsenal FA in ridiculously inaccessible parts of the items we moved - a calling card, if you will. And so it was that, for about a decade, when the MCS Partners at Price Waterhouse, Sydney opened a desk drawer, opened a filing cabinet, reached into a cupboard, or drank from a suitably inscribed mug, they inadvertently exposed a small Arsenal FA to the light. Our challenge was not to write it, but to write it somewhere wierd - like the top of an office door.

To me this was but a merry jape, something stupid, invented by a couple of bright lads to occupy their minds while doing manual labour. Digby, on the other hand, saw it as a vocation. At the time, and until today, I thought that perhaps Digby's devotion to the great club involved a little more affection than that of the average punter.

That was until today.

You see, my office is above a popular London nightclub. And the popular London nightclub is on a popular London road. And today - right now, in fact, as the hometime traffic is thickening up - the popular London nightclub on the popular London road is hosting an event for Arsenal. There are people in Arsenal shirts queueing outside, and there are Arsenal flags on the front of the building.

Well, the commotion! You see, not only are Arsenal fans driving past and shouting brief messages of support to their fellow gunners, but fans of every other team are also driving past, and they are shouting messages of, well not support, to the same gunners. These messages, shouted as they are from moving vehicles, tend to sound alike, and the closest comparison would be the noise a donkey makes.

Meanwhile, beneath the window we have bouncers chatting to echother, gunners chatting to eachother, gunners and bouncers arguing, one man crowing like a crow. I can hear a lot of Anglo Saxon language, particularly from one man who seems to have a problem with his ticket.

It's a very passionate scene and I suggest that anyone who accuses the Brits of being dispassionate and aloof should first sit above the entrance to a popular London nightclub, on a popular London road when it is hosting a football function.

Uh oh! I hear sirens....

Art: Would't you be pissed off...

2006-05-12T16:45:00.000+01:00

...if, somewhere on your travels, you lost your luggage.

London: Is it ever too early for a Hummer?

2006-05-12T15:03:00.000+01:00

They say you shouldn't drink spirits before 11am. Or is that just undiluted spirits before 11am, because Bloody Marys are acceptable, and they're breakfast food.

They say you shouldn't drink spirits undiluted before 11am. But what is the ettiquite for Hummers. Is a Hummer a morning, afternoon, evening or purely night-time thing?

It's 3pm in London, and a huge Hummer, painted Caterpillar yellow, just drove past my window with teenagers packed so tightly through its apertures - bodies sticking out the sunroof, heads and shoulders out the windows - that they looked like they were stuck on, rather than sticking out. They were all boys, and they looked like they were wearing their father's shirts. And of course the music was deafening, and the excited screaming and yelling was out-doing the music. There must be a party in the 'don tonight.

And "Really," I thought, "three PM is a bit early for that sort of thing". Although, and I'll give them this, they weren't in formal dress.

Books: ...love and hate and the choices we make...

2006-05-08T14:23:00.000+01:00

I'm reading the first page of Shantaram tonight, at a writer's salon where we are talking about openings. Shantaram has one of the best openings I have ever read: it tells you that you are about to go on a journey that may change you forever. Here is a taste:

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility.

And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

And yes, the rest of the book lives up to the promise.

Books: He faced the witching hour and he prevailed

2006-05-07T18:52:00.000+01:00

I read a lot of books. It's easy to criticise books, but it's also true to say that most of the books I read are pretty good. They were good enough to get published, and that's a higher benchmark than you think.

I find that most books fall into three categories: terrible - which is usually more down to taste than quality; merely good - also dictated largely by taste; and outstanding - where you talk about them to your friends, want to read bits to people and would like to lend them to other people but won't because they may not come back.

There is another category. It's the category that DBC Pierre, David Mitchell and a few others occupy. It's the category of book - or perhaps of writing - that transcends most of what you have read before; that just comes in from left field with a story or a way of telling the story that blows you away. And no matter how you ultimately feel about the book - taste again - you have to stand back and give respect to the author.

Ludmilla's Broken English is DBC Pierre's first book after his booker prize. It's also his second book - it's like an author's double witching hour to have to write a book after all that adulation: will it be good enough; will it end my career if people don't like it; how can I possibly live up to my own standard; shit - I've peaked too early.

Well DBC Pierre's done it - it's a good book, the writing it outstanding and it's completely different to his last one. I didn't like the ending much - but that is just my taste and how I was feeling at 11.30pm last night. The book is superb.

Books: A big bad bushy whirlwind

2006-05-07T18:43:00.000+01:00

My cousin is the most fearless woman in the world. In fact, sometimes I think she's the most fearless person in the world. She seems to wade in where angels fear to tread, with nothing to protect her but her strong personality and spiky haircut. (She's not of course - when you know what to look for you can see when she's scared - she's just scared of different stuff to you and I.) But stand back sister, because you have competition.

Perial Aschenbrand is one of those people who has the courage to follow her own ideas and ambitions and it pays off. She's the brain behind, "The only Bush I trust is my own", and a bunch of other pithy slogan shirts which have become Body as Billboard. Like most New Yorkers she is the star of her own unmade movie, but unlike most New Yorkers, her's is probabl a movie that you'd want to see. And her mother is adorable. Well worth reading.

A testament to the story-producing qualities of beer goggles.

2006-05-07T18:30:00.000+01:00

Hip inner city girl - a commedian no less - spills the beans on her sex life and dating disasters for the general mirth and enjoyment of the reading public. The cover has pink writing, bed sheets, some sexy legs and a pair of undies falling off the corner. "Meet Chelsea, one girl behaving very, very badly."

Perhaps it was the name Chelsea, or just the mood I was in, but I was expecting some insightful, yet tittilating, life experience stuff like early Girl with a One Track Mind or Chelsea Girl.

At the start of the book I thought that it was a book about a girl who likes men - who REALLY likes men - particularly when she's had a bit of a drink. The more I read I started to think that actually, she doesn't like men. We don't pay her enough attention, we're unhygenic, our penises are too small, or too big and our attitudes are all wrong - particularly when she is sober. Ultimately it's a boring list of beer goggles mistakes assembled for a laugh, but resulting in a yawn.

London: All that is old is new again

2006-05-02T13:09:00.000+01:00

As ex-medieval cities like London become clogged with cars, some more traditional modes of transport are seeing a resurgance. We are seeing many more bicycles in particular, including big tricycles with tool boxes on the back creating a retro silhouette of the early 20th century. You also see builders on the tubes and trains, carrying their heavy toolboxes to work. You even, sometimes see joiners carrying the traditional timber carpenter's boxes they made as apprentices.

Today, looking down from my desk in the window that was once the arch into Turnmill's yard, I saw an elderly man, walking down the roadway of Clerkenwell Road. He wore a carpenter's dust cost, in denim I think, over a flanel shirt, and baggy blue trousers tucked into socks and boots. A scarf around his neck absorbed sweat, and would stop saw dust going down his collar. He was pushing a low, heavily built two wheeled barrow made of timber and iron, and it carried his toolkit, a tarpaulin and some pieces of wood. It was a timeless scene, that could have happened on any day in any European city or town for hundreds of years before the invention of the bicycle, or the white van.

And then a motorbike beeped him, and I turned back to my computer.

If life is what happens when you're making other plans...

2006-05-01T13:09:00.000+01:00

Malcolm Knox's first book, Summerland, was a brilliant debut. The story is told in real time as a man sits at his desk and writes about how his friend and his wife betrayed him - a lifetime of bitter experience between dusk and dawn.

A Private Man - I bought it in Australia, it's called Adult Book in the UK - is equally superb and an obvious development on Knox's skill - this book traverses days. Knox is a master of identifying those moments that make life important - those little things that happen while you are making other plans that change the course of a lifetime. The book is a brilliant and complex tale of life on Sydney's well mannered Upper North Shore, where being simply human is not necessarily an asset.

And now a caveat: like Summerland, it's written about the land of my childhood - not just Australia, I'm talking land so familiar to me that I recognise individual houses - so I am ultimately biased. But since it was shortlisted for the Tasmanian Pacific Fiction Prize in 2005, it can't be just me who thinks it's worth reading.

Profound, disturbing and ultimately pointless

2006-05-01T12:59:00.000+01:00

Look, there is a lot to say, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It's a well written, disturbing and ultimately unsatisfying story about a guy who feels guilty for shagging his best mate's girlfriend while his best mate is in a mental institution. It's been going on for years, and finally comes to a head when the mate tops himself, and still manages to manipulate the couple post-mortem. It just shows how mentally ill people can damage those around them - those who want to love and help them the most - and how ultimately selfish suicide is.

If the coffee were better, we wouldn't need our change to buy a coffee across the road...

2006-05-01T12:35:00.000+01:00

We've decided to leave Notting Hill for a secret part of almost-Islington where we have fallen in love with the tree lined streets and cute houses. And it's reassuring that, now we have decided to leave, nothing here seems as good as before.

Carluccios 0n Westbourne Grove: our favourite breakfast spot for its cheap breakfasts of intensely flavoured small portions. Yesterday the portions were smaller, and the flavours insipid - fewer porcinis in the mushrooms, a smaller portion of scrambled egg, and somehow less scrambled than before - with streaks of white through it - and less creamy flavoured.

The Electric: our favourite spot to take visiting friends for an international standard menu and soem celebrity spotting. This morning the blueberry pancakes that used to be as big as a plate and so full of blueberries that they barely held together are now smaller and less berried. The full-Electric (The Electric's upmarket full-English) is still OK, but when I order "no black pudding", the waiter shouldn't be plonking the dish down with the words, "full-Electric, no black pudding... oh, well just a little bit there in the middle". And finally, when you serve coffee that bad, and you are already charging 12% for service, I shouldn't have to ask for my change back. You see we need the change to buy a good coffee from The Coffee Plant, acrosst the road.

Carluccios
Westbourne Corner
108 Westbourne Grove
Bayswater, London W2 5RU
Phone: 020 7243 8164

The Electric Brasserie
191 Portobello Road, Notting Hill
Phone: 020 7908 9696

The Coffee Plant
180 Portobello Road
Notting Hill, London
Phone: 020 7221 8137

Books: Without fear or favour? Crap! Bloody terrified, more like...

2006-04-30T11:03:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago I remember hearing the shaky voice of Australian Journalist Eric Campbell, live from somewhere else, telling us that his cameraman had been blown up when a car-bomb pulled up beside them and detonated. The cameraman had a baby daughter, and had died between Eric and the bomb. You could tell Eric had cracked. You could tell that he wasn't heading back to a war zone for a while. This book explains why.

Journalists are the witnesses of the world - they are the people who stand up when all others are silent and say, "The injustice happened. I saw it." If bad things happen when good people stay silent, journalists like Eric Campbell are the good people. He is an old school journalist. He tells it like he sees it - sometimes as he sees it - without favour, though, at times, plenty of fear.

This is his story, from when he finally became a foreign correspondent, at 35, to now, ironically back in his first foreign post, Moscow, with his wife (who deserves a book in her own right, but I can't name for fear of spoiling some of the story) and a new baby daughter.

It is a testament to the quality of his journalism that I could remember flashes of his news reports from almost every incident in the book. If you saw his reports, now you can read the story behind them. If you didn't see his reports, the book will open your eyes about the nature of war and peace, human cruelty and compassion. You will be entertained, you will be inspired and you will close the book satisfied that the world is a better place for people like Eric Campbell.

crap advertising: can't say much about the house, but...

2006-04-28T08:21:00.000+01:00

of particular note is the glass brick structure enclosing the stairs that lead to the first floor

h I would note, if the ad included a photograph of it, or a floorplan that showed where it is. I'd even drive by for a look, except that there is no street number and no map link. So it's a bad ad, and I can't say much about the house because there is no information. In fact - and read this carefully if you're an estate agent - there is not enough information there for me to decide whether to look at the house or not, so I will not.

And it takes a bigger man to be cool about it - or Chris Eubank reads my BLOG

2006-04-27T17:07:00.000+01:00

Chris Eubank, or his people, must read my blog, and more importantly, have a sense of humour, because this afternoon, instead of yesterday's rage, I heard cheery toots from an enormous horn. (Well, as cheery as toots from an enormous horn can be - I actually had heart palpitations - it was like being pipped by Queen Mary, or a lighthouse.) I looked up just in time to see two chrome exhaust pipes pass my window, and rolled across in time to confirm the URL on the back of the cab.

It takes a big man to drive a small car

2006-04-26T11:57:00.000+01:00

I read somewhere that the only car that can out-Hummer a Hummer for sheer wank value is a truck - not, not a Chevvy Suburban or any other pretender, we're talking a real truck: prime mover; the front-end of a semi-trailer; the articulate end of an articulated lorry; Kenworth!

Judging by the language that was coming from the window of the very large and shiny, possibly even sexy, left-hand-drive Kenworth that just passed my window, Chris Eubank or his truck-minder finds driving such a large vehicle in London just a little stressful. (I don't think it was Chris, because the driver got out at one point, and he looked a little heavy, and a little grey to be Chris. Of course, driving in London can do that to you.

Nice truck though. And his heart is in the right place.

Did I laugh? Like a crazy man!

2006-04-24T12:42:00.000+01:00

Universal Wifey and I are, in a word, newlyweds - which is why my posts have been sporadic over the last few weeks, and from various different places in the world. (I was calling her Universal Wifey here before she actually was.) Our wedding was fantastic - but not traditional, by anyone's measure: there were stilt walkers and fire twirlers, significant involvement of public transport, the reception was a tiffin tea, the only flowers were actually dragon fruit, the bride didn't wear white and had feathers in her hair. Don't get me wrong, it was amazingly tasteful, but quite different to the norm.

Nevertheless, when we had the opportunity to attend a private screening of Confetti - a mocumentary about three couples competing to have the most original wedding - we felt duty bound to attend. I can't say much about the film because I'm probably already breaking an embargo, and judging by the 20th Century Fox security presence, they're pretty serious aboutit. But let me say that duty paid off.

Confetti is hillarious and I recommend it to you unreservedly. Debbi Isitt has managed the perfect balance of humour and sensitivity. It's gorgeous, and will, I suspect, be the big Brit film hit this year. The humour reminded me of Best In Show, it's funnier than Spinal Tap and all the better when you know that the entire thing was improvised by the actors, who did not see the other couples' performances, or ideas, until the final cut.

Confetti
Viewed at a private screening
Look for it at your local cinema - it deserves massive success. It's hillarious.

Not condescending at all.

2006-04-24T12:23:00.000+01:00

Charles Redbourne, minor English aristocrat, bachelor, not really one for the ladies (wears his checks a little loud, if you know what I mean), heads to New South Wales to make his mark as a naturalist.

I was ready to read Australia condescended to, once again, as a Brit tries to write about Australia as a little pocket of England floating in The Pacific. I always say that if you look hard enough for trouble you'll find it and I looked. I really did, behind page after page of transparent writing, looking for the condescention, searching, seeking; but not finding. Instead I found a kindred spirit in his host's wayward daughter, or perhaps actually in Redbourne himself - torn between his culture and his intellect, his knowledge and his curiosity. It's a great book: a very quick read - despite how thick it looks- and a total pleasure on every page.

When I say the writing is transparent, I mean that it's the kind of writing where you scan your eyes over the words and the images play in your imagination. The best kind of writing. And the cover is beautiful too: a picture of "Loris", as Lorikeets are known in Rifling Paradise, that used to fly in their screeching hundreds our old back garden in Pymble every evening. There is nothing like hearing that sound in the background of a phone call.

Rifling Paradise
Jem Poster
Sceptre 2006, £8.57, $14.74

Travel: your papers please sir...

2006-03-22T14:34:00.000Z

Given that the story seems to be doing its rounds without me, I should confirm the facts: I remembered to pack my suit, I remembered Mrs Universal's cake plate, I remembered all the different international plugs for my computer and at the last minute I grabbed my Skype phone.

I did not remember my passport.

In fact, it's not that I didn't remember it, because that would require me to have thought about it some point, then forgotten. And the sad truth is that it never even crossed my mind. Never again will I be able to those airport documentaries and laugh at the morons who arrive at an international flight without thier pasport. (Although, in my defence, I did not actually try to check in. I called Mrs Universal's sister, and she performed some heroics.)

But I have put it all behind me. I am sitting in The Plaza Travellers' Lounge, Hong Kong International Airport - a pay lounge for travellers without access to other lounges - one leg away from the warmth and light of Brisbane. And it is brilliant. There are hardly any people here, so it has the quiet ambience of a first class lounge. The food is better than I have eaten in any other lounge. In the five hours I have been here I have eated roast chicken stuffed with vegetables, bok choy with oyster sauce and mushrooms, some tempura vegetables and a couple of spring rolls. And a bread and butter pudding. The seats are comfortable, I have a little marble table to myself and wireless internet access. So I have been able to sit here, sending and recieving email, and chatting on my Skype phone like I am at my desk. At last, a truly mobile office - well, not quite an office, because I have also had a shower, changed my clothes and had a fifteen minute seated massage. Brilliant.

Actually, one criticism: the toilets are outside and around the corner, and let's face it, one of the best things about a plush lounge is a plush bathroom to go with it.

The Plaza Traveller's Lounge
Hong Kong International Airport
Hong Kong, HK$300 for the five hour package which includes a 15 min massage, or 2 hour nap

Film: The rest of us just think you're Americans

2006-03-19T01:12:00.000Z

Once I went to see some commedians who liked to say fuck a lot. Not as punctuation, like Billy Connolly does, in a very funny way, but as the joke itself. It probably says a lot about them that they were the kind of commedians who built their short career out of the material that Billy uses as punctuation, but I didn't know that on the way in. Fuck as the joke. It did get a laugh, the first couple of times. Then it just became punctuation for them too, except they still paused for the laughter, so it now just looked like they were working out what to say next. Then they'd say fuck again to fill the gap, but we were all fucked out. Then we just felt fucked, so we fucked off home.

See what I mean.

Fuck.

Crash is a superb film. The finely crafted performances of Don Cheadle and Karina Aroyave were a pleasure to watch - though it's not a fun film. The pace, cinematography, editing, dialogue, direction and costumes are excellent. It's excellent, except that it is like a one joke commedian. It is a film about race.

Now Americans, and it seems, people from LA particularly, are very finely tuned to their racial differences, quick to take offence about race, and judging by Crash, quick to give offence. So Americans probably think it's a great film. For the rest of us, the 4.5 billion people who do not live in America, it's just a film about Americans being rude to eachother.

Crash
Written and directed by Paul Haggis
Seen in a private screening at The Hospital
Don't take my word for it, buy it on DVD now: UK £12.99; USA: $9.96, or $11.86

Books: like a drunk and braying cross between Samuel Peyps and Forest Gump

2006-03-14T13:09:00.000Z

Remember when, as a teenager, your friends would tell stories about how they got soooo drunk.Oh, you don't remember... well read The Insider - it will remind you because Piers Morgan is driven to drink by almost every front page story; a problem when you edit a national daily. And a shame, in this case, because the drunken bravado de-values the delicate balance of sensitivity and savvy which makes Morgan so interesting, and his story so amazing.

If you can get beyond Piers, his insights into Princess Diana, the royal family, celebrity and government are stunning, and the last quarter of the book, dealing with the gulf war, is riveting. In posterity, Morgan's Forest Gump like ability to be on the periphery of every major event of his time will probably make him a Peyps of the turn of the 21st century, but for now, his personality speaks louder than the events he chronicles.

The Insider: the private diaries of a scandalous decade
Piers Morgan
Ebury Press, UK: £3.99 or £17.99; USA: $10.77

Shopping: Diane von Furstenberg, Notting Hill

2006-03-08T12:55:00.000Z

Selena, at Diane von Furstenberg, Notting Hill is the best shop assitant in London. A bold call, I know, but an obvious one after experiencing 18 months of inattentiveness accompanied by sneering arrogance, forelock tucking obsequiousness or sheer incompetence. I'll explain.

A fortnight ago, Universal Wifey (didn't like being Mrs Universal) needed two light dresses for meetings in Australia, loves her current DvF silk number and wanted more. Planed to schlep to Portobello Rd for a coffee first, were arrested by the coat in the DvF window so popped in to enquire. Several sales people standing chatting, Selena breaks away, crosses the floor and delivers a smiley good morning and an answer to our enquiry before my gloves were off. Sapped, yet impressed, Wifey said we'd return after coffee.

Back again, mintues behind caffeine fuelled Wifey, who had heen recognised, "Did you enjoy your coffee?" and whisked downstairs to the fitting rooms, while I paused at a window two doors down. I followed, hit the husband chair and pulled out The Week - essential Punter research. Selena appears, with a pair of low heels,
"Madam, I have left some heels here so you can see the fit properly," then turns, "hello sir, would you like a drink while you're waiting there?"
"Nothing, thanks," says I, "well, maybe a glass of water."
"Still or sparkling?"
And that set the tone for the entire transaction: she was quick and responsive, pre-empted our needs, made us comfortable and welcome at all times and had us out of there with the correct size ordered (and couriered to Wifey's work on Wednesday). And she smiled all the time as if she was genuinely happy to be there, with us, shopping. It was like shopping in New York!

Contrast this with Thomas Pink last Saturday. His stripey shirt fitted my neck, and not my body - not Pink's problem, exclusively. His fitted shirt fitted, but not available in patterns - now that is Pink's problem, but it felt like it was my fault. I could have asked about other options, but I am neither deaf, nor mentally retarded, and was tired of being talked to as if I were.

Selena: goddess of retail
Diane von Furstenberg
83 Ledbury Road
London W11 2AG
+44 20 7221 1120

Man who looks like Frank Spencer: bog standard London
Thomas Pink
18 Davies Street
London W1y 1LH
+44 20 7499 4580

Shopping: Winkworth Real Estate Agents

2006-02-27T13:46:00.000Z

So, which room is the third bedroom?
This one?
This room outside the kitchen, near the lounge room, with a dining table, six chairs and a sideboard in it?
Yes.
And a fireplace behind that blocked off bit of wall...
Yes.
And a wall of book shelves...
Yes.
Then which room is the dining room?
Also this one.
This is not really a three bedroom flat, is it.
Not when you put it that way....

Books: Dead Simple - Peter James

2006-02-25T18:10:00.000Z

It's a genre novel, so it'll be hard to convince you if you hate the detective-thriller-with-a-supernatural-edge genre, but Dead Simple is worth reading. It starts with a as a pleasant country drive, on a bucks night, when the groom is buried in the coffin with a porn mag, a torch, a bottle of whisky and a walkie-talkie, then his mates are killed in a car accident. The story accelerates when Detective Superintendent Roy Grace becomes involved and finishes with so many twists and turns it will make you car sick.

This is Peter James' first book in five years, and the first of a series of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace books. It is well worth reading, but don't take my word for it - read the first chapter and decide for yourself.

(Disclaimer: I must disclose that Peter James is my neighbour, and an excellent dinner companion. I would go as far as saying that he is the most polite man on earth, except that I think he smokes in our elevator late at night when he thinks nobody will notice.)

Dead Simple
Peter James
Pan
UK: £3.99, £6.60 or £12.92
USA: $16.50

14 March update: re-reading this, it looks like I am damning with faint praise. I'm not. It's a great read and I'm probably going to buy another of his books to read on the plane next week.

Food: Daddy Donkey, Leather Lane - crunchy, yet runny

2006-02-23T14:01:00.000Z

Daddy Donkey draws in the crowds using the age old ploy of cooking spicy beef up wind of hungry people. It's more effective in the rain, when the smells concentrate under the tarpaulin over the stall, drawing you in like a hand around your neck. The meat is warm and freshly cooked, the spicey sauces are well blended, with plenty of flavour and no surprises, the black beans give it body and the salad is fresh and crisp. All is good, if expensive at five pounds when you can get a curry up the lane for three. And 10 mintues later, struggling to eat my burro before it fell to pieces, quickly running out of serviettes as juice ran down my fingers and into the foil protecting my desk, I wondered, "How can one small sandwich like product contain so much liquid?"

Daddy Donkey
Pitch 102, Leather Lane Market, (parallel to Hatton Garden), Farringdon, London
Lunch for one: large beef burro, £5

Food: Raoul's Cafe, Maida Vale - chilly, but for the food

2006-02-23T13:21:00.000Z

The Universal Parents return to the antipodes today, so we showed Universal Stepfather Maida Vale by breakfasting at Raoul's Cafe. (Not Raoul's Deli across the road.)

The food was faultless, as you would expect from a cafe that imports its eggs from Italy. They were perfect, of course: softly poached, with golden runny yolks and a smooth full flavour. The fruit smoothies were also sweet and thick, though mine had a big lump of frozen berry in it, which I had to extract by skewering it with my straw. (Yes, for those that know, it was the most satisfying part of the drinking experience.)

I would like to say the fruit salad with nuts, greek youghurt and honey was as good as it should have been too - I wanted it as soon as I saw the fruit chilling in the display cabinet by the door - but the waiter forgot about it.

The restaurant was freezing when we arrived - so cold that my parents wore their coats through the meal - and the maitre'd was as frosty as his room. He spoke in short barks, seemed a little startled, and slightly resentful when we ordered food, and was more startled and resentful with every exchange. He roughly dropped the cuttlery in front of my mother because it was too far to reach across our small table, and looked like he might be sick when the parents decided on a cup of tea at the end.

Then Universal Stepfather tried to attract someone's attention to ask for the bill. Then I had a go. Finally we asked for the bill. Then Universal Stepfather tried to attract someone's attention to ask for the bill, again. Then I had a go, again. Then Universal Stepfather had success, and finally we asked for the bill, again. It all took so long that when the bill finally arrived, we rounded up and ran - pausing by the fruit salad as we opened the door. If the extra £2.50 was the fee for getting out fast, then it was cheap. Nice way to earn an extra 7% tip.

Raoul's Cafe
13 Clifton Road, Maida Vale, London W9 1SZ
+44 207 2897313
Breakfast for three: three full English, coffees, teas and two fruit smoothies. £37.46

Love Story: love means never having to say you’re sorry - Erich Segal

2006-02-19T12:13:00.000Z

It is hard to do simple things well, but Erich Segal has. It is a love story, pure and simple. Boy and girl meet, fall in love, suffer the typical family tensions; boy is stupidly proud; girl loves him, coins memorable phrase, dies. The entire story is done in 133 pages of simple, unsentimental, quality writing, and every word is placed with a jeweller’s precision.

Love Story: love means never having to say you’re sorry

Erich Segal

This is The Country - William Wall

2006-01-24T12:13:00.000Z

It’s a bit pedantic to criticise a book’s punctuation, but the dialogue in this book forces you back to read again, two or three times in different voices, to work out who’s saying what. For a book whose strength is its immediacy and slightly addled, dream-like narrative, stopping to re-read does mar the experience.

If we lived in this life, we would feel sorry for ourselves. But he hero has lived worse, so he knows his life is good, and on its way to better, despite the misery of it all. Most surprising is the smallness of the minds, and the tiny landscape – since when was 20 miles enough space between you and an assassin, and since when was England a safe haven from an Irish thug – why not Madagascar, if you want to get away. Small minds, small world, good story.

This is the Country

William Wall,

Sceptre, ₤10.99

The Little Lady Agency - Hester Browne

2005-12-22T12:11:00.000Z

While I liked this amusing story of a girl who starts an agency to help British men be less like Tom from Four Weddings and a Funeral, the litmus test was Mrs Universal, who read it three times while I struggled through A Few Kind Words. I was looking for the book last night, only to discover that she’s lent it to her best friend – thus proving that it has passed the true test of chick-lit comfort reading.

The Little Lady Agency

Hester Browne

Hodder & Stoughton paperbacks, ₤5.99

A few Kind Words and a Loaded gun - Razor Smith

2005-12-05T12:10:00.000Z

When the cover features the author with one hand around his baby, and the other around a gun, you are going to judge the book by it. What starts as a tale of redemption, with Razor feeling pangs of conscience during an armed robbery, quickly becomes a hard-man’s boast book, leaving you wondering just how reformed he really is. Along the not always pleasant journey, you gain some insights into crime, criminality and the appalling recent history of the British prison system. The book’s most valuable lesson is that learning to read and write broadened Razor’s horizons and improved his options for the future, even while he was locked in a cell.

A few Kind Words and a Loaded gun

Razor Smith

Penguin, ₤7.99

Strangeland -Tracey Emin

2005-11-21T12:10:00.000Z

I have always wondered how Tracey Emin can survive her life with so few apparent boundaries. She is like a raw and screaming nerve, with nothing to protect it from the world. Reading this I realised that is just part of the job. Art is about feeling and responding, and the fewer barriers to feeling and responding, the better the art. The book is beautifully written, with daubs of story – including some handwritten sections – assembling themselves into a revealing and powerful picture of the artist. The book is raw, unsentimental, unapologetic and strong, and will give you a respect for Tracey Emin that you may not have had before.

Strangeland

Tracey Emin

Sceptre, ₤14.99

Conversations in Bolzano - Sandor Marai, translated by George Szirtes

2005-11-07T12:09:00.000Z

When the cover says A tale of Casanova by the author of Embers, and shows three blokes, two dogs and a wench in a bustle heading for the countryside, how could you not expect rumpy-pumpy and a sword fight? Well, not if you had already read Conversations in Bolzano. There is nothing X rated here. Bolzano bedrooms are exclusively Y, Z and G rated. You hit Y at page 10: yawwwn.; and Z about 20 pages later: zzzzz, zzzzz, zzzzz. G is when a book about gardening distracts you, never to return (page 70). Someone who did go all the way said it gets more interesting, but not enough to justify the effort.

Conversations in Bolzano

Sandor Marai, translated by George Szirtes

Penguin, ₤7.99

Malicious Intent - Kathryn Fox

2005-10-24T12:08:00.000+01:00

You will love or hate this one based on the genre – forensic physician uncovers mystery, tries to solve it, nearly dies – like a Patricia Cornwell of the living. A well constructed story with layers of interest from the central character’s angst about her divorce and custody of her child, her work and play relationships, and of course, the central mystery. The story is well written, accurate to its Sydney locations and people; and in hindsight, hinted at the alleged Lebanese underworld, resentment of which, some say, engendered the Cronulla riots last year. It is scary, suspenseful and keeps you guessing all the way to the end.

Malicious Intent

Kathryn Fox

Hodder, ₤6.99

Author Author - David Lodge

2005-10-07T12:07:00.000+01:00

Late 20^th century London, Constance Fenimore Woolson’s gentle humour and George Du Maurier’s outrageous fortune provide welcome distractions from this turgid story which is, unfortunately, about Henry James.

Author Author

David Lodge

Penguin, ₤7.99

The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt

2005-09-27T12:06:00.000+01:00

The City of Falling Angels is a collection of beautifully written vignettes searching for a story – a book in search of a hook. Surprisingly little happened in Venice in seven years, but they made a fuss of it anyway. And though Venice is the setting, the story is as New York as Vanity Fair and pop tarts: about Americans fundraising for Save Venice and its spin offs, and Venetian aristocrats not appearing grateful enough. I want to visit Venice more than ever, but wonder if it is better to know what happens behind the closed doors, or just to stare at the facades and wonder.

The City of Falling Angels

John Berendt

Sceptre, ₤20.00 (Royal Hardback)

Transmission - Hari Kunziru

2005-09-12T12:04:00.000+01:00

An Indian computer hacker unwittingly destroys, and ultimately improves the lives of himself, a Bollywood film starlet, and a strange English couple, by unleashing a virus in order to make himself look more important at work.

The technical descriptions of the virus’s are almost poetic – Kunziru writes for Wired – and and the insights into Indian sweatshop code farms, and Silicon Valley’s exploitation of them, are eye-opening. Unfortunately, the end of the book seems implausible, and contrived, as if Kunziru was told to hurry up and finish when he was only halfway through.

Transmission
Hari Kunziru
Penguin

The Big Over Easy - Jasper Fforde

2005-08-23T00:56:00.000+01:00

Jasper Fforde is mad. Stark staring, barking, insane in the membrane, crazy in the coconut, sherbet in the synapses, cracks in the cortex, crosstalk in the circuitry, mad. It's the only explanation I can find for the mind that conceived the world where a murdered egg named Humperdinck (Humpty) van Dumpty emerges as a slightly shady, womanizing day trader; Jack Sprat is a detective inspector in the Nursery Crimes division of Reading Police - and yes his first wife did die from complications of her extremely high cholesterol; his prosecution of three little pigs for the murder of Mr Wolff was not successful; and his success will be measured in column inches in Amazing Crime Stories or Sleuth Illustrated. (Or rather not measured, because he doesn’t really rate, which is a problem for DS Mary Mary, his ambitious, but quite contrary new assistant.)

In case you are wondering, yes the book is a long, lame joke about the crossover of nursery rhyme characters into real life. And just like his earlier novels about literary detective Thursday Next, the weird fantasy world is conceived with elegance and grace. The literary and cultural jokes and puns on every page – from Marlowe to Monty Python – make it hilarious. The tight, mystery driven storyline pulls you through the story just like Raymond Chandler did in the old days. It’s a good book, with a great twist at the end, made richer by the bizarre and cluttered landscape of Fforde’s mind.

Who: Jasper Fforde
What: The Big Over Easy
When: August 2005
Where: London, Sardinia
Why: Read it for book club, would read it again for fun

2005-08-08T01:08:00.000+01:00

August - Penguin
Betrayal in Naples
Neil Griffiths – Penguin, £7.99
Thank God we enjoyed this book, because there is nothing worse than having to justify your disappointment to the author.
First, the book: a great adventure. An Englishman on holiday, attracted by Naples’ seedy reputation, meets an ex-girlfriend in the street. She offers to show him around town, but first, dinner with her much older husband, president of the court of murder in Naples, currently presiding over a high-profile Camorra murder trial. And so it begins…
Naples, the star of the story, is luscious, the food is too, and you will want to visit until page 331, when you will re-book somewhere less dangerous. Jim Wolf, the Englishman on holiday, is a superbly written everyman, a perfect foil for the supremely complicated – or maybe just silly - ex-girlfriend, Louisa.
Now, Neil Griffiths. He’s a member of The Hospital, so he popped in for a Q and A, which was fascinating – perhaps mostly because it showed up how much extra the reader brings to a story. In a deliberately Neapolitan way, Neil left parts of the story open to interpretation, we interpreted our hearts out – everybody having different opinion, and the book being richer as a result of our joining the dots ourselves. Definitely read it, and read the French version too, if you can, because it ends differently.

Who: Neil Griffiths
What: Betrayal in Naples
When: August 2005
Where: London, Sardinia
Why: The Hospital book club

The Constant Gardener - John Le Carre

2005-07-26T13:32:00.000+01:00

Every man wants to be a hero. That is why we are suckers for Swiss Army Knives and credit card tools that open bottles and cut cheese: it’s about being the man that saves the day.
Sandy Woodrow, Head of Chancery, British High Commission, Nairobi, hero on page one. He is the man who took the phone call. He is the man who confirmed the details. He is the man who squashed his own feelings to break the bad news to Justin. He is the man! He thinks he is a hero – and thus he is not.
Justin Quayle, “Good of you to tell me, Sandy. Can’t have been pleasant.” - old-school foreign service, never quite lived up to expectations - would have been his wife’s hero, except that she is dead. In le Carré’s Nairobi, foreign service wives have lunch, gossip molehills in to mountains and fawn over their husband’s widowed colleagues to compensate for not being allowed to work. Tessa Abbott, Justin’s wife – an aristocratic, idealistic lawyer who lost her baby and wanted to do more to make the world a better place than let her husband do it – campaigned against illegal medical experiments instead. She named names, she trusted the system, her system, she took on the big boys and she lost.
Losing his wife drove Justin Quayle to apply his skills of selflessness, honed over years of faithful service to queen and country, to becoming his dead wife’s hero. He is quiet, strong, resourceful and clever – he surprises himself, as well as Sandy Woodrow and us.
Le Carré mastered heroes in his day job, when he was a spy. Take away his various superb characters, black and white plots that end-up technicolour, exotic locations, politics and secrets and The Constant Gardener, like all Le Carré, is about truth. Not facts: people - those who are true against those who are weak, and thus dangerous. And Le Carré writes them as elegantly as Peter O’Toole rides a bicycle.
The English Summer can be the enemy of book club – distracting readers with Pimms, picnics and boats, and things. So too are long books, made longer by needing to perform fugacity calculations on your neighbours’ luggage at each tube stop, which is why only three of the six clubbers that turned up had finished the book. But book club’s greatest enemy is a book like this. Excellent books give us nothing to argue about, so we had three people wanting to agree, but not in too much detail in case it spoils it for the others.
A Constant Gardener is about to be released as a film, and one thing that you do not have to finish the book to understand is that it will be a great film. Ralph Feinnes and the flashback, jump cut narrative will work brilliantly on screen.
So: dull club, great book, looking forward to the film.

Who: John Le Carre - Coronet
What: The Constant Gardener
When: July 2005
Where: London
Why: It's superb
Why not: It might spoil the movie for you
How much: £6.99 (paperback)

The Closed Circle - Jonathan Coe

2005-07-11T13:35:00.000+01:00

When the Daily Telegraph says “Wonderful, hilarious” I just know it is referring to some sort of fox hunting, or power shower humour that, not being British, I am only going to half get, then disgrace myself by laughing when everybody else says “Very droll Bertie, very droll.” And so it was with The Tele’s endorsement of The Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe’s years-later Rotter’s Club sequel.
Just as British viewers notice a faint shadow as Kath & Kim’s Australian humour sails over their heads, the laughs in The Closed Circle shot past me without even a faint whistling sound. Fortunately the British clubbers chortled their way through the book, loving the carefully crafted characters and Jonathan Coe’s ability to draw every-day chuckles from every-day life.
The Closed Circle picks-up The Rotters’ Club characters 20 years on. If you missed it there is a synopsis if The Rotters’ Club at the back of The Closed Circle which, I think, is the funniest thing in the book. If you remember The Rotters’ Club: Benjamin is an accountant, has been writing a novel for 20 years, is married to Emily and dominated by Cicely, despite her 20 year absence; Paul is a new labour politician; Miriam is still missing; Claire still misses her, is no longer married to Philip chase, and they have a son named Patrick; Doug Anderton is a journalist with a wealthy wife, a family and a house in Chelsea. There is a German industrialist named Gunter, some white supremacists with a witty turn of phrase and a new character – Malvina, a confusing girl with a sexy brain, who keeps the story moving by causing confusion and being sexy.
The characters in The Closed Circle are lovely creations. They all look like typical English stereotypes, as the English do, then refuse to play true to their stereotypes as the English do even better.
While all the clubbers enjoyed The Closed Circle, none would say it rocked their worlds, but it is not that kind of book. If anything, it’s the opposite: the antidote - a book for reading on your summer holiday, or on the tube, or when you need to spend time with friends and there are none to hand.
The Closed Circle set a mellow tone for the debut outing of Book Club Too: the Penguin book club. Perhaps this was aided by London’s explosive return to interesting times on July 7 and the absence of many of the double clubbers – the most ferocious of the bookworms. Whatever the reason for the mellow vibe, I hope it carries into next month when Neil Griffiths, author of Betrayal in Naples will be on hand to defend his work. Will the most vocal clubbers stay true to form when staring into the eyes of one who puts his pen where his mouth is? Stay tuned…

Who: Jonathan Coe - Penguin
What: The Closed Circle
When: July 2005
Where: London
Why: It's the sequel to The Rotter's Club
Why not: It's the sequel to The Rotter's Club
How much: £7.99 (paperback)
(This review was first published in "H" the magazine of The Hospital)

Urban Grimshaw & The Shed Crew - Bernard Hare (long form)

2005-06-21T01:41:00.000+01:00

Literary fiction: imagine dinner at The Fat Duck with Geoffrey Robertson, Cate Blanchett, Phyllis Foundis, Peter James and the Clintons (Bill & Hillary). It’s going to be elegant, a bit of a challenge but worth the effort, undeniably interesting, impeccably worded, potentially amusing and nothing like what you expected when you walked through the door.

Urban Grimshaw and The Shed Crew: imagine an interracial foursome with an acrobat and a cross dressing giraffe on a stolen boat in Martinique. It’s rough, exhausting, slightly sickening, exhilarating, you will feel slightly soiled – until Urban loses his virginity, then you’ll just be envious – you may or may not want to go back for more, but you won’t regret it. Oh, and no imagining – this story happened.

Typical book club books – even the ones we hate – are well structured. In the most general terms they start with a problem that needs to be solved, fail to solve it in a variety of different ways for around 300 pages until, something works – happy ending – we look at the author’s picture on the back cover, turn out the light and go to sleep.

Urban Grimshaw starts with a problem all right – glue sniffing, drug-taking, car stealing, out-of-control children running riot through Leeds. Bernard discovers them and sets a few boundaries – not many mind you, just simple things like thou shalt not kill – he completely fails to solve the problem in a variety of ways for around 300 pages. No solution. No happy ending, even in the epilogue. Then Oriel tells us that all the children (now adults) attended the book launch in Leeds – happy ending – until she adds, “except Urban, because he’s in jail again”. No Hollywood ending here, not even a Leeds ending.

It’s an Eastie ending – the area of Leeds around East Street – were endings squirt from the tip of a needle, crash home in a stolen car, or get stolen by the kids next-door.
Some of us were disappointed that there was no Hollywood ending – which says more about us than the book. Then we asked the question of Bernard that the book does not answer. Why? He’s written a great book, but what made him do it? Why hitch onto the out of control train that these kids drive? Why not run when he had the chance?

Personally I think it’s because Bernard Hare is a good man – in a shoplifting and heroin kind of way – who saw children where everyone else saw trouble. And to me, his acceptance of these kids is a happy ending (or happy beginning?) in itself, while others disagree. (But he is not a nonce because Trudy tested him and he’s OK.)

The most powerful element of the book is the poetry at the start of every chapter. It’s written by the kids and even if the book only exists to help you understand the poetry, then it’s worth reading. And like the literary dinner party, this mad four-way will be nothing like you expected when you walk through the door.

Who: Bernard Hare - Sceptre
What: Urban Grimshaw & The Shed Crew
When: June 2005
Where: London
Why: It's gritty, grim, extreme and fascinating
Why not: Gritty, grim, extreme and fascinating is not always easy
How much: £14.99

Urban Grimshaw & The Shed Crew - Bernad Hare

2005-06-16T13:10:00.000+01:00

If literary fiction is a polite dinner party, with clever people – elegant, interesting, well worded, amusing and nothing like you expected when you arrived – then reading Urban Grimshaw and The Shed Crew is a foursome with two Estonian prostitutes and an anatomically correct giraffe puppet, on a stolen boat in Martinique: it is rough, exhausting, slightly sickening, exhilarating, you will feel soiled – until Urban loses his virginity, then you’ll just be envious – you may or may not want to go back for more, but you certainly won’t regret it.
Oh, and no imagining – this story happened!
We were polarised. Only I liked it unequivocally, and that is because I read it with an air of detachment – like watching a documentary as you would watch an Arnie movie. The others found it hard going, and some questioned Bernard Hare’s motivations for, first, being in the crew, then for writing about it.
We all wanted a Hollywood ending – but what we got was Brentwood: the kids (now adults) are no better off, and they all attended the book launch in Leeds, except Urban, because he is in jail again.
Personally, I loved Urban Grimshaw and The Shed Crew for its sheer escapist energy. And it has given me pause for thought, rather than retribution when Notting Hill’s Shed Crew keeps tried to steal both my motorbike and pushbike on the same night.

Who: Bernard Hare
What: Urban Grimshaw and The Shed Crew
Who by: Sceptre
When: June 2005
Where: London
Why: It will open your eyes
Why not: Sometimes it hurts when your eyes are forced open

The Black Angel - John Connolly

2005-05-15T13:13:00.000+01:00

The rebel angels fell, garlanded with fire.
And as they descended, tumbling through the void, they were cursed as the newly blind are cursed, for just as the darkness is more terrible for those who have known the light, so the absence of grace is felt more acutely by those who once dwelt in its warmth… began the book we were handed three hours after the Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to the Throne of St Peter. Spooky.
The only clubber that enjoyed this book read it on a beach, where she soaked in every detail. The rest of us picked the plot and characters to pieces, while our beach reader calmly re-assembled the missing details leaving us unsure whether the weakness was the book, or our reading of it.
Either way, it is a cleverly written page turner, with a chopped-up narrative, different points of view and a bunch of other crafty devices to keep us guessing. The supernatural element is new to the Charlie Parker detective novels, but not out of place, given the strange and clever things that go on in John Connolly’s mind.

Who: John Connolly
What: The Black Angel
Who by: Hodder & Stoughton
When: May 2005
Where: London
Why: It's a good, spooky, triller
Why not: It's genre, so you'll either like it or not

The Pact - Jodi Picoult

2005-04-19T13:17:00.000+01:00

Can you judge a cover by its book? We did. A close-up of a devoted teenage boyfriend, eyes closed, kissing the blue-eyed cheek of his, blond-haired picture-of-innocence girlfriend, who is looking at us like we have caught them. Is it a picture of innocence – a saccharine American dream of neighbouring families, weekly bi-family get-togethers at the local Chinese, a son, a daughter, high school sweethearts, prom night, college ahead, then marriage, babies – or is it more sinister?
Her eyes have the answer – if you can read them. Innocent? Duplicitous? Manipulative? Victim or aggressor? Does it worth discussing when she is dead by the second paragraph?
Yes. Her boyfriend is in the frame for her murder, but he says it was suicide. Was she a victim of pleasing everybody except herself, or was she a suicidal manipulator who wanted things her way at everybody’s cost? Does it matter when the real qualities of this book are Jodi Picoult’s ability to explore the dynamics between and inside the two families with excruciating intimacy?
This book has it all: a courtroom drama, family dynamics, shifting alliances, some difficult detective work and a lonely boy learning how to survive in prison. The cover? The book deserves better.

Who: Jodi Picoult
What: The Pact
Who by: Hodder & Stoughton
When: April 2005
Where: London
Why: It's surprising, energetic, scary and fascinating
Why not: It will tear at your heart strings and make you question your relationships
How much: £18.99 (hard cover)

The Optimists - Andrew Miller

2005-03-22T01:20:00.000Z

It was the best of books. It was the worst of books. If it was a film, there would be a three minute opening shot of a cup of coffee, in French. I will not say that reading it was like watching paint dry, but only because on pages four and five, Clem, the anti-hero of the story watches it for us.
Fortunately, there are sub-plots: Claire, Clem’s brilliant sister, with her strange psychological illness and stranger girlfriend, Finola; their widowed father, now a monk and forbidden from talking to Claire; their aunt Laura, mentally disabled cousin Kenneth, his sister Frankie, who is marrying Ray, who nobody seems to like, except Clem and us. I won’t even start on the African dictator.
Colin’s story wraps itself up and finishes the book, disappointingly, before all the sub-plots, leaving the elephant-in-the-living-room type questions unanswered. And that’s why it was the best of books: because you chew over the sub-plots for weeks afterwards – it’s a book that keeps on giving.

Who: Andrew Miller
What: The Optimists
Who by: Sceptre
When: March 2005
Where: London
Why: It keeps you thining long after you have finished reading
Why not: Slow and unsatisfying moments make you want to give up
How much: £16.99

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

2005-02-22T04:22:00.000Z

Normally the book group reads pre-release titles. This one snuck through by being pre-paperback-release. And thank God it did!
Numbers were a little low at this month’s group: many had work commitments, several had not finished the book (it’s a long one); about half lost the struggle with the inner conflict of a double booking with the rum tasting in the Forest room downstairs and left early. But what we lost in absentees, we made-up in new members – sowing the seeds for a robust discussion fertilised by new personalities arguing about the merits, or otherwise, of Cloud Atlas.
Except that everyone loved it.
In an early Simpsons episode, Homer invented a cocktail that took Springfield by storm. The Flaming Homer was an unlikely mix of relatively standard ingredients and tasted like a failed chemistry experiment until some fool – Bart probably – lit the mixture and, in Homer’s words, “…heat made it goooood!”
Cloud atlas is a Flaming Homer. David Mitchell has combined ordinary ingredients – the diary of an American on an English ship, returning from the colonies; the letters of a disgraced young composer who, sir, was a cad and a bounder; a nineteen seventies girl’s-own journalistic mystery; the pompous ranting of a geriatric London publisher; a sci-fi tale of genetically modified humans bred for the fast-food labour force in Seoul; and a post apocalyptic paradise of simple yet wise subsistence farmers in Hawaii – and mixed them with some sort of alchemist’s magic into a story that more than earned its 2004 Man Booker prize nomination.
So our potentially turbulent February book group became a dissent-free zone where we tried to find the alchemist’s tool that makes this book what it is. Our best theory was that there is a kind of trust between an author and reader. When we trust the author we let them manipulate us, lead us where we would not go ourselves, and deny us things that we want because we trust them to give us an adventure far better than anything we could come up with ourselves. And David Mitchell does play with us – he invents words, he moves the narrative around, he gets us involved in a story then chops it off and starts another one – and he is so good at what he does, and so completely unapologetic about it, that we trusted him and were rewarded for it.
If this sounds a bit religious – trust your God as he subjects you to the twists, turns and undercurrents of a turbulent life, because the grand plan will ultimately reward you – it is because David Mitchell is a some sort of God in the writing sense. If you trust him to guide you through the twists and turns in Cloud Atlas, you too will be rewarded.

Who: David Mitchell
What: Cloud Atlas
Who by: Sceptre
When: February 2005
Where: London
Why: It is one of the best books I have ever read
Why not: Oh for fuck's sake people, live a little - there is no not!
How much: £6.99 (paperback)

Good News Bad News - David Wolstonecroft

2005-01-18T21:30:00.000Z

You do not join a book group without being arrogant enough to think that you have what it takes to criticise a writer’s work, which usually leads false-modesties like, “I wasn’t impressed – I could have written it myself.” And while nobody said that, our comments suggested that we thought it. (Well, mine did.) But with a membership that includes publishers, PR people, critics, reviewers and producers, perhaps we were justified.
Of course, being our first month, everyone in the group was keen to impress, or at least avoid the embarrassment of being kicked out for not being insightful enough. They say the London Review of Books is a formidable reviewer because of its quiet academic thoroughness, but the London Review is nothing compared to a book group on its first book.
Good News Bad News opens with two thirty-something losers working in mini-lab under Oxford Circus. One of them might be a spy. Why does the other one care? Is he a spy too? If they are spies, why are they in a mini lab? Who is the beautiful woman with the boring photos – is she a spy too? I am sure you can see the mystery developing. We could. We also saw the plot twists as they approached, and didn’t quite see the point.
David Wolstonecroft’s TV screenwriting heritage – he wrote Spooks – is obvious in the hanging suspense at every turn: literally. Every time you turn the page there is something about to happen. This is an author who is used to competing for his audience’s attention and he has produced the kind of book that makes you miss your station on the tube – or in my case, look up with a jolt, and dive through the closing doors one station too early. But it all gets a bit tiring after a while – and we all complained about how unlikely the story became. Towards the end of the book we were predicting plot twists by guessing the most unlikely turn of events, turning the page and… well there you go – the parrot actually was pining for the fjords.
We had all smugly agreed that it was a bit of a silly book that we could have written ourselves until one book-groupie pointed out that the entire work is a game of good news, bad news between author and reader. And suddenly we needed to go back to the start and read it again.
But none of us did.
Good news: your book has clever structure, lots of action and other boy appeal; bad news: the book group is mostly girls who saw action at expense of character and we did not spot the structure until it was too late.
Good news: it is a good book; bad news: it was merely good – and that’s not good enough for a book group’s first book.

Who: David Wolstonecroft
What: Good News Bad News
Who by: Hodder & Stoughton
When: January 2005
Why: It's a good book
Why not: It's merely good
How much: £10