April 2009 - Posts
The Cambridge Wordfest came up trumps with Michael Morpugos's talk, given to a sell out audience of children. He is a great showman, as well as a great writer, and had the children spellbound. For me he is the best young person's writer around at present, as he deals with real issues and has a comprehensive world view. He writes with skill and sensitivity, educating as well as entertaining. So unlike the other 80% of children's writers who seem to be only interested in fantasy or parochial issues of growing up.
I have finished volume six of A Dance to the Music of Time. Now there will be a hiatus while I save up to buy the next three volumes on Amazon. Another spin-off of massive Local Authority incompetence regarding Cambridge Library is that it's costing me money in books. In the meantime Oxfam came to the rescue, as ever. I am reading. Being Geniuses Together, alternate chapters by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle about the amazing literary period in 1920 Paris. Living working and drinking in Paris at the time were, Joyce, Stein, Pound, Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, George Antheil, Sylvia Beach and Isadora and Raymond Duncan. They all knew each other and were a sort of self help group. McAlmon helped publish their work and several people kept Joyce going while he wrote Ulysses, a book that makes A Dance to the Music of Time read like a Sunday tabloid.
I don't like to say, 'I told you so,' (not very much anyway), but the long awaited Cambridge City Library will not be up and running in May. The Council has sacked the builder. The library was due for completion in March 2008, most recently May 2009. The estimated completion date is now September 2009. It makes the Ministry of Defence look like sharp operators. The fact that we have an estimated completion date at all is because another builder has been appointed. Now the original estimated cost of the library was £7.5 million . The new builder will be charging more per square metre than the original builder, even though he does probably need the work. Prices have gone up and he must pay his suppliers. The Council has a reputable builder on board at last, who will do his best to complete on time, but he is still a builder who has just seen all his Christmases come at once. There will be extras, a lot of extras and we will have the, 'Terrible workmanship, Guv, got to take that lot out and start again' syndrome. and probably quite right too. So we can kiss goodbye to that £7.5 million estimated cost. The Council says they have activated the penalty clause in the contract. I do hope they can show consequential loss of income from the delays, because if not the original builder's lawyers will think all their Christmases have come at once as well. In the end we must ask how it all happened. The Council is saying it is a failure on the part of the builder. I would say it was a failure of Project Management on behalf of the Council. We will see. My latest forecast is £10 million, inclusive of legal fees. It will all be over by Christmas. Probably.
I have finished Bonfire of the Vanities, brilliant, although rather rushed at the end. Anyway the last paragraph made me laugh a lot. Do read it. I have also very nearly finished Volume Six of A Dance to the Music of Time. The Second World War has just begun. The dinner parties are temporarily over. Phew!
It is not unusual for the Man Booker Prize panel to take leave of its senses, but this is the most bizarre yet. The judges from the 2008 Man Booker Prize are to plant 13 native oak trees to replace the paper used in the 112 novels they read to come to their slightly dodgy conclusion. This, of course, is an opportunity for our spin mad Government to show its green credentials. Every book from now on will be sold with an acorn. The Acorn Police, (with powers of entry, arrest and pushing people over) will be ever present to ensure that acorns are planted. This could extend to newspapers. The Sun will be sold with something quick growing and annoying (Russian Vine), the Daily Mail with roses representing the Houses of Lancaster and York, the Daily Telegraph with an oak and the Guardian with a small fir tree, rescued from a dangerous flood by a person in a woolly hat.
I am nearly at the end of volume six of A Dance to the End of Time. In volume five the hitherto chronological story suddenly goes back to the childhood of the narrator. Methinks I see the hand of an editor spotting that there was no back-story whatsoever to the narrator and it was badly needed. All is now well again and dinner parties are in full swing.
I am also reading Bonfire of the Vanities. Brilliant; read it. There's a man who can write.