December 2007 - Posts
I hope my reader had a good Christmas and has a happy and healthy 2008.
Due to an onshore powerboat drive on the M25 to Henley in the rain, I missed the Queen's speech. No problem I thought, I can watch it and Prince Harry's top ten tips for shooting hen harriers on YouTube. So I typed in Queen and got Freddie Mercury and a link to a gay chatline.
I did watch a DVD of good old North by Northwest, one of my favourite films. The slow build up of the desert/crop spraying aircraft scene is Hitchcock at his best. Sadly the wonderful sub Frank Lloyd Wright house featured at the end was a stage set. It is remarkable that three set designers produced something that any architect would be proud of. I am surprised that nobody has ever copied it, as it would not be too difficult, but not in the UK as it would take up valuable land earmarked for affordable housing.
I have just entered my first competition for about nine months. Normally I just use them to make me write a short story, which I can flog to a magazine if the competition result is less than satisfactory. This one is for a first line, so I reckoned that although carefully crafted it was a lot easier than a 2000 word story with a beginning a middle and an end. I told the organisers that it was from a work in progress novel called The Blue, Blue Sea. Now let me make it absolutely clear (as politicians say when they are about to lie through their teeth) this is indeed a work in progress. It is just that so far I have only written the title and the first line.The tricky bit may be if it wins and the organisers ask to see the rest.
I am still working my way through the American University Master of Fine Arts reading list. Sadly I don't know which University it is as I have lost the website address. It is really useful, but I do detect rather a large number of what they call Afro-American writers.Some are brilliant but some seem to be there just to make up the numbers. I am amused by one pretty average novel which has, in my edition 117 pages of novel and 126 pages of background and analysis. It was tempting, given the quality of the novel, only to read the background and analysis.
My latest story has just come out in Dimdima Magazine. Love a Duck is a moving tale of betrayal and redemption set in the whacky world of Muscovy Ducks.
Two news items of interest this week. The British Library (may its shadow never decrease, although it is a good site for affordable housing) has bought the Sir Harold Pinter archive for £1.1 million. This consists of 150 boxes of material, plus photos and much more. The National Heritage Memorial Fund contributed £216,000. The Government is preening itself having doubled the yearly grant to the NHMF. In actuality this is from £5 million to £10 million a year. The NHMF is the fund of last resort when a work of art needs saving or is about to leave the country. It can also buy property. Maybe it has escaped the Government that £10 million would buy one reasonable painting or a gatehouse in a country estate thus leaving nothing for the rest of the year. Anyway we must rejoice that the archive of our greatest living playwright and Nobel Prize winner is available for study in the UK rather than in an American University.
The other item is that the panel to decide the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (a title that trips off the tongue) has been decided. It consists of a broadcaster for chairman, two journalists one of whom is an agony aunt, one writer and a pop singer who has never been recorded reading anything. The good old Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is for woman writers only; the judges are all women. I ask why we need a separate prize for woman writers anyway. It is not like tennis, where a woman might have difficulty returning a 120 mph serve. It is indeed noticeable that women writers are doing rather well these days when they compete with men. The Man Booker Prize is a case in point. Consider what would happen if a literary prize limited to men was proposed. The screams from readers of the Guardian would be heard in France.
For those of an adventurous disposition I would recommend a book for Christmas called Banksy Locations and Tours . It gives routes in London where you can see the work of famed graffiti artist Banksy. Or rather routes where most of his work has been vandalised by over- zealous Council graffiti busting teams. Anyway what is left is well worth a look; the routes take you to the wilder shores of London, but then everybody gets mugged once in a lifetime so why not get it over with in cultural surroundings.
If you have not seen the great man's work look at his website www.banksy.co.uk. I nominate Banksy for the 2008 Turner Prize.
Telephone is carrying on. In the last couple of weeks it has progressed from a one paragraph synopsis to a four page synopsis plus character descriptions. It keeps changing, but the bones are there. At present I am struggling to avoid it turning into The 39 Steps.
When next on your way to the British Library for a coffee and sandwich do call in on the recently opened St Pancras International railway station (why, oh why, have railway stations become 'train stations' in the media?). It is quite stunning. In the middle is a splendid statue of John Betjeman who, in the 1960s and nearly single handed, saved the station and its fine neo Gothic hotel from demolition. One of the few cases of the pen defeating the JCB. As well as the Betjeman staue is a massive bronze of a couple embracing. We don't know if they are saying 'Hello' or 'Goodbye' but what a lovely idea to have the statue as a meeting place for travellors. My only criticism is that it is far too big and in the wrong place, but applause for whoever thought of having it in the first place.
When I was there the station was full of open mouthed visitors taking photos. Move over Grand Central and what an awakening for the French, arriving on Eurostar from the shambles of their Paris terminal. For once we Brits have done something right.