The lost museum

Back from a fun but exhausting weekend in Nottingham where I made many new friends. "Made" as in met, rather than sculpting from plasticine and animating into life. That's messy.

Talked shop, traded gossip, spent a lot of money on beer and books, neglected little things like sleep. Got to talk to Dave McKean and caught up with a whole bunch of old friends. Hooray!

The train home didn't have plug sockets (!) so I did my writing by hand, filling pages and pages of notebook with stuff I'm now not sure I'm going to use. There is a lot to be done in the next week so posting here will be a bit scanty. But I notice my writing this summer has a bit of a leonine theme.

H. and J. have returned returned from the States with a present for me. Jeff Hoke's The Museum of Lost Wonder is a fancy hardback crammed with makes and madness. It's really horribly distracting from this work I have to do. And will make quite a few clever, dexterous friends of mine puce with envy. Hooray!

Time out with the wife

The Dr's book is due out next month and the media circus has already begun. She's interviewed in this week's Time Out - the second time she's been in that magazine (the last time she was talking about, ahem, Roman marital aids).

The old girl will also be harping on about suggestive bits of cloth at the National Gallery on 14 May.

Yesterday, we celebrated my finishing a first draft of something as yet unannounced by stopping for a pint in the new-look Bridge House Tavern. It's spangly and trendily grey, and all a bit yummy mummy.

I'd just found a table in the much extended pub garden, and was wondering if this was the first time this year that's allowed drinking outside. And the heavens suddenly opened. So we skulked indoors, I suggested the title for her next book and then we went for medicinal curry.

I do my moves, I do my moves

Drat and double drat. Having cut shapes in the temple of dance Friday night for the benefit of some very special ladies, I now discover my trademark styles are on the internet for everyone to scouse. Or, alternatively, laugh at.

No thanks at all to Will for spotting these.

This and that and whatever

I seem, touch wood, to have avoided the Dr's icky cold and yet am beset by an infection of my own. She pointed out last week that I keep saying the phrase "this and that and whatever". And since I'm not doing it consciously, I don't know how to stop.

I'm not even sure why this particular phrase has such appeal or even where it comes from - assuming it's been picked up from somewhere. But this blog has been a good place to exorcise the bits of nonsense that rattle round my brain.

Today I have been working on two revised outlines for things as yet unnannounced (I've signed a contract for one of them, the other might not even happen). I've also done a bit of proofing of the Dr's book and been to the gym. Got home before the heavens opened and the cat was freaked by hail.

Lunched with Scott Andrews yesterday who I'd not seen since last year due to our adjacent jettings off around the world. We got to swap notes on what unannounced and uncommissioned projects we both have at the mo and a chance remark - that he was thinking of doing something anyway - gave me the twist I was looking for in one of my outlines today. So hooray for Scott.

Last night, the Dr called me out to Brixton to join her and G. in The Prince. We talked of many things I didn't quite understand (museums and theory and, er, I forget) but my role was to advise G. on what is good in Doctor Who. To my great delight, the Dr was herself able to advise on what might be the Good Stuff. She even listened to Son of the Dragon yesterday, all on her own.

I think I have turned her. Bwah ha ha, etc.

Sydney rocks!

We are now in Sydney, and have had a nice time wandering about and looking at things. The Botanical Gardens (the green bit to the left of the bridge and opera house in the pics) is chock full of all kinds of different and exotic trees. And they are chock full of bats!

You'll have to wait till the Dr gets her film developed for pics as they were too far away for my mobile. But cor it was like the trees were ripe with fat, black and burnt fruits. And then they'd yawn and stretch their bin-bag-like wings. And they look all russet and hairy and would probably be nice to cuddle...

Then on to the Domain (the green bit behind the Botanical Gardens) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The building itself is a lot like the Art Gallery in Edinburgh, and housed some fun archaeologically-correct stuff by Alma-Tadema and his mates as well as some fun contemporary and aborginal artworks.

I was especially impressed with this fella in the entrance lobby, and asked special permission of one of the staff to take his picture. As te staff fella said, it was almost as if he'd been sculpted to have his picture taken on a mobile. And them whiskers are sure something to aspire to.

We meandered into Hyde Park, enjoyed the buses and signs to Lewisham, Sydenham, Croydon, Dulwich and Chiswick, and I suggested that a fountain-sculpture of Theseus presenting his meat and two-veg while about to stab the minotaur was all a bit Torchwood, being all blatant sex and monsters. The Dr days there's quite a lot of that in antiquity, and I now have visions of spin-off show Torchwood 2000 BC.

Down Market Street and along George Street, we stopped off to take a pic of the Dr in front of Challis House. Apparently this long-bearded bigwig bequethed lots of cash to local educational somethings. The Dr was rather pleased.

Like Melbourne, there's the same two-tier feel to the place; heavy, blocky Victorian and later building in the shadow of brand spanking new skyscrapers. The Dr kept thinking it looked like Manchester, and the colonies also look like Britain's trading posts in Bristol and Edinburgh and what of London wasn't bombed. You have to remember that it's not that Oz was built in the image of Britain, but that all these colonial towns and cities were influencing each other. Bristol and Edinburgh, London and Manchester are all a brick-and-mortar dialogue with the rest of the world.

Or maybe I have sunstruck myself.

Thence to the Museum of Contemporary Arts, just a stone's throw from our hotel. Lots of aboriginal bark paintings and some depressing documentaries about just how well the native population has been shafted by us Westerners in the last 200 years.

Yesterday we did a wine tour which was entirely splendid; with just me, the Dr, A. and J. being driven round by the helpful Neil, who chatted and advised and bent the whole day around our unhelpfully faffy whims. Started at the Chandon estate and drank fizz. I'd assumed that any French-owned wineries in the Yarra Valley would date from the nineteenth century, with refugees from the phylloxera epidemic that ate up European grapes. Turns out this place only opened in 1985, part of a general expansion into the southern hemisphere (Brazil etc.) and all related to demand.

Drove round a few places and tried all kids of lovely stuff. Many growers have been able to see the affects of climate change on what they're producing; atypical weather in recent years that's unheard of in a century of records. Last year's harvest was badly damaged by completely unexpected hale! It also means that some vineyards are having to rethink what grapes they grow.

The oldest vineyard in the Yarra Valley is a nineteenth century escapee of ignoble rot. Yaring had lots of nice stuff, but by that point we were rather well oiled and instead tried some Boules outside in the sun. I even managed to win one of the three games I played, no doubt due to the genetic heritage.


Oh, and one last pic. This is typical of the full-body horrors to be found on the packs of cigarettes over here. None of your big-type Helvetica, just screaming bloody nightmares.

You may need something nice to look at after that. And Brilliant-Looking by Candlelight has an all-squeeing post about The Pirate Loop, with fun pictures and joy and everything. Which is nice.

There's also exciting news from T. and I. back in Blighty. But I do't think we're meant to mention it yet until Everyone Has Been Told. So we have raised a glass of fizz to them but kept our lips firmly sealed...

Dr Gonzo

Accidentally fell into the pub last night, and met many wondrous new people. At least two of these were already my writing bee-atches, but I'd only ordered them about online. Now I know what they look like, they can truly be afraid.

Home to find an exciting parcel awaiting the Dr. A while back, I bought her a Gonzo toy because she's always had a bit of a thing for him. (Yes, she has strange tastes in fellows, thank heavens.)

Thing is, the Gonzo toy is dressed kind of dorkily when he should be all KAZAMM! and glitter. How much better if he'd been done up in his Darth Vader gear from the legendary Stars of Star Wars episode of The Muppet Show?

Hooray for the purple-haired sequin queen who has done just that. Hooray hooray!

(The Dr is the one on the left.)

Swiss Army flip flops

I had rather woefully underestimated how much work might be involved in the Benny Inside Story bibliography. Thought it would take me a morning and it's taken all weekend (and there's still a couple of details to check).

Still, that and sourcing pull-quotes and quotations to start each chapter means I've read the book over for the first time in just more than a month. And I'm pretty happy with it. Just as well, as it's well into lay-out and there's no time to change too much.

As reward for all that endeavour yestereve, I gadded across Stockwell to R. and C.'s housecooling. Stood out on their roof terrance drinking much Pimms and generally learning cool stuff. R's colleague Jo showed off some particularly good flip-flops, which have a bottle-opener embedded in the sole. Truly, we live in the future.

Taxi home at some point late, where me and the Dr bickered - to the great amusement of the driver. Despite eating bellinis and wild boar sausages on sticks all night, was rather in need of food. So did bacon and cheese and mushroom crumpets.

Harry Potter’s magic wand

Went to see Equus last night at the Gielgud, made famous by Daniel Radcliffe flapping his old chap about at the end.

We had “stage seats” – a bold new venture for me. There’s no legroom in the high horseshoe looking down on the performance, and if you even look like you might have food on your person, a stern-looking bloke comes over. So no popcorn.

It’s an odd place to sit, because you can scrutinise the audience as much as the play. Spotted Howard Jacobson in the posher seats, and possibly Julian Fellowes, too. They didn’t wave.

Richard Griffiths, leading and narrating, was good enough to glance over his shoulder from time to time, to include us in events. His was an engaging, gentle performance, playing against the frustrated, ranty man as written.

Griffiths is Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, whose latest patient is 17 year-old Alan Strang (Radcliffe), who just blinded some horses with a hoof pick. Dysart’s patience and ploys unravel the reasons behind such an abhorrent act. But the more Dysart “cures” the nightmares plaguing the boy, the more he’s envious of his passion, too, and the more he starts to question “normalcy”.

Radcliffe was excellent, and a world from Harry Potter. The girls were pleased to see he’d been working out, too. Well, if you are going to lark about in the all together for the entertainment of a full house of punters, you want to be looking your best.

All the performances were good, and it was expertly staged. Kudos to the chaps playing horses, cantering about in precarious high heels.

Yet the writing is heavy and overly worthy, and very much of its time. Alan’s parents are by turns a self-taught socialist and blinkeredly religious, and it’s difficult to believe they’d stay together. I found the stuff about telly as the opiate of the plebs very dated, too. The women are very underwritten; able and capable and all very lovely, but objects for the men to respond to. Jenny Agutter was all very good, but really had nothing to do.

I think my real beef was that it reminded me of too many other things, most notably Robert Lindner’s excellent The Fifty-Minute Hour (and ooh! Alan C Elms’ brilliant New York Review of Science Fiction article, Behind the Jet-Propelled Couch: Cordwainer Smith & Kirk Allen is now online).

M’colleague B., sat next to me, was more bothered by the idea of psychiatry as only an intellectual process, the cure coming from deductive reasoning alone. And one lady outside the theatre was very annoyed that, “Just because we know why he did it, doesn’t make it okay.”

I spent a little over two hours waiting to be examined myself, today, having finally got around to registering with a doctor. I am a stone overweight, not diabetic and should cut down a bit on my drinking.

Births, marriages, deaths

Met the Dr in the spangly Young Vic bar Wednesday night, where we shared some giraffes of wine. She also bought me a leatherless present, London: City of Words.

Have already learnt that Caxton’s first English printing press was inherited by the splendidly named Wynken de Worde. In about 1500, de Worde moved it from Westminster to Fleet Street, which remained the heart of English pressing for just shy of 500 years. Good fact!

• More on early English printing

We then ambled onwards to Tas for some Turkish comestibles. It was packed, but the service was exemplary and we had some very good food. Also got through quite a lot of fizz.

Yesterday was somewhat different, and we grabbed a lift from my cousin in Richmond down to my grandfather’s funeral. He was 93 and had been declining some time, but his death (on 31 March) was still a bit of a shock. Lots of family I’d not seen in years, and some wonderful stories too. Most of them entirely unrepeatable.

I’d been tasked last week with ringing round the cousins to gather stories to use in the eulogy. Most featured boozing and swearing. One family friend referred to the latter as “bicycling”, after “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!”

The elder brother – who delivered the short version of all this – had also worked through Grandpa’s own incredible memoir. He remembered Conan-Doyle as “tubby”, went tiger-hunting aged seven, and married my Granny having seen her only six times in daylight. The wedding guests had to take cover in the street from an attacking Meschersmitt.

But for the man who’d been born in Shanghai and lived his life all over the world, the last goodbye was in Basingstoke. We filed out to the thumping Radetzky March, and on to a pub flying the Union boldly.

Then back to the Smoke, and we took our chauffeur out for drinks and pizza in Richmond. More revelries and revelations, and some cheesecake for pudding.

With exquisite timing, my friends P. and A. produced a baby the same day that Grandpa died. Very glad to hear all is well with them. Found myself humming while on the way into work not Radetzky but that one from the Lion King.

Not now, Bernard

“‘ People like to read about someone who is deeper in the shit than they are,’ [Bernard] said. In fact the real reason for his popularity was much less cynical and cruel: people like to read about someone who broke all the rules, who drank and smoked far too much, who was rude about feminists, homosexuals and ethnic minorities, who was politically utterly incorrect, who behaved outrageously, and yet who somehow survived and even managed to surround himself with an ever-increasing harem of beautiful women.”

Graham Lord, Just the One – the wives and times of Jeffrey Bernard, pp. 229-230.

I was first made aware of Jeffrey Bernard by reading a newspaper obituary. In the photo, a glut of uncommon celebrities jostled one another at the wake. And in the background, ignoring the camera, Tom Baker propped up the bar.

Tom was one of many contributors to Graham Lord’s 1992 biography. Jeff had just turned 60 when the book first came out (the link above is to a posthumous reissue), and it’s telling with what surprise his acquaintances saw him to lesser decades. He really did himself no favours.

The book is a catalogue of stupid and greatly pissed behaviour – Jeff being sick on the Queen Mother and shagging the wives of his mates. I struggled with a tale about a Christmas tree that got taken on a pub crawl because I kept expecting it to be some sort of euphemism. No, they really did mix a tree’s drinks.

Rude, snobbish and just as much lazy as pissed, Jeff spent years stumbling between jobs that would pay for his drinking before finding a role as a writer. He stuck broadly to just the two topics for all his subsequent career: racing and the “low life” of being out on the lash. Lord argues that really it was all just one topic: Bernard on loss as a loser.

One editor, Alexander Chancellor, says of him in the book,

“‘I can’t think of anybody else in journalism who writes only, only about themselves. It’s a considerable achievement, I think, to (a) do nothing at all except drink, and (b) be able to write about it ever single week and still be interesting.’”

Ibid., p. 230.

Most boozers just couldn’t do that. That you got something – a joke or a smile or an article – explains how Jeff persevered. He’d scrounge hand-outs and floorspace off anyone, and sex off girls who could surely do better.

For all he’s a monster and alienated his friends, Jeff knew how to turn on the charm. Irma Kurtz said he had a smile like

“‘a little devil caught out in an act of charity.’”

Ibid., p. 255.

Tom who, flush as the fourth Droo, bought him a couple of suits, says that Jeff at least sang for his supper. Bernard, not the drinking, was witty and exciting. He was an exception to the borish, dull alkie – a bit apart from the other self-destructing regulars. His writing can be keenly observant and hilarious, and even Jeff is often bored by his lifestyle. He is less a role model as a warning.

Yes, there’s something salaciously thrilling about someone who breaks all the rules. But I also think there’s an appeal in the distance – he’s funny so long as he’s happening to other people. Jeff could make those near him miserable, and was not very fond of himself.

It’s also affirmative and good for finger wagging to see the depths that beckon a man who won’t bother with bills and a mortgage.

(As well as talking to Tom himself, the book also makes mention of Jon Pertwee (p. 126) and David Tennant (p. 79).)