Sunday, 24 April 2016

From A to B (Arundel to Brighton)

We spent a night at Arundel, in a boutique hotel. We weren't quite the oldest people there. At our table for the evening meal an ice bucket and fizzy wine was awaiting us. I could get used to being middle aged.

I've been blasting away writing prose, following on from last year's burst of activity. I've been giving rein to my Kundera/Julian Barnes tendencies, trying to get the story/essay balance right, trying not let the past take over. Few new poems, but I've been sending old ones off - I've 30 things in the post, including over 70 pounds-worth of competition entries. I'm not counting my chickens, I'm making hay - in writing and more generally. That said, I'm burnt out writing-wise just at the moment, so the Arun break was timely.

On the way back we stopped at Brighton. Straight and tattooless I could have felt out of place there, even on a Sunday, but it's easy to enjoy the scene - like Camden? Like Berlin with a beach? Not really, but it's fun. I picked up the programmes of festivals and learnt a lot of jargon - ghetto funk, lo-fi, dubstep, riot grrrl. The tattoo convention has a new venue this year with natural lighting and beautiful views. At the Brighton Fringe there's

  • Naked Boys Reading (£9.50 for a 1hr show) - "Five naked men deliver readings on, by and about 'women'".
  • Naked Girls Reading (£10 for a 1hr 30m show) - "an intimate show where beautiful women read naked. It's a witty, pretty, grown-up bedtime story for lovers of fine words and fine women".

I hadn't realised that the Royal Pavilion had been a hospital for Indian soldiers. It's a strange story of image management. In Brighton, names and image matter. Shop names include "Barber Blacksheep", "Wooden It Be Nice", "Abra Kebabra" etc. My favourite is "Brighton Wok". Beware - "Singles Bar" sells records.

Monday, 18 April 2016

Snapshots in "The Forge"

I have a story in "The Forge" today - Snapshots - and an old story that I've always liked will be in "Jellyfish review" in a few months.

Tuesday, 5 April 2016

Mobile phones

They're a pain. In "I just called to say I loved you", Jonathan Franzen wrote "The technological development that has done lasting harm of real significance - the development that, despite the continuing harm it does, you risk ridicule if you publicly complain about today - is the cell phone". They've made several of my stories into period pieces. People no longer get lost in cities or fail to meet people at the right time, unless their mobile goes flat, or they've lost it. Many of the stories I write nowadays begin with characters losing (or forgetting to recharge) their phone.

In the Guardian's Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines? article, JM Coetzee's quoted - "The telephone is about as far as I will go in a book, and then reluctantly. If people ("characters") are continually going to be speaking to one another at a distance, then a whole gamut of interpersonal signs and signals, verbal and non-verbal, voluntary and involuntary, has to be given up. Dialogue ... just isn't possible."

That said, they make some new plots possible. See

While videoing with his phone in the snow, my son dropped the phone, which became buried, lens up. It continued recording my son's panic until he uncovers it. See the two minute video

There are Cell phone novels, though I'm not convinced.