parkbench

Still around, just busy.

2009-02-20T23:32:00.004Z

Just to let you know.

Also, spare a thought for my godmother, whose anniversary occurs on Sunday.

Smells like Grandma's fridge

2008-09-14T11:58:00.003+01:00

Hello lovelies!

It's been a while, and I've been ... busy. This is good. I've arranged large international money transfers to pay for the upcoming degree, turned down invitations to weddings in Beirut, Waterford and Denver, planned for one in Engerland, booked a trip to Germany where I haven't been in 15 years, and introduced myself to a Croat, some Italians, an Argentine and a good many more. Pictures are courtesy of a different Dublin weekend, but a weekend that did its job admirably.

Last night, we had an epic Sri Lankan feast, a labour of love by the Bearded One. There was spicy sweet chicken, creamy baby brinjalinis, aromatic mounds of rice, and sambols a-go-go.

'Falling apart,' he said with a kitchen-sweaty smile as he lifted hunks of chicken out of the pot. It was a good thing. Miniature aubergines held their shape and colour and sat fatly in pink onions. He worked for five hours. Grandma would have been proud. I planted things in the garden and redid the gd devoured windowboxes. Let's just say that the nasturtiums were a far cry from this when I ripped them out in disgust and started again with primroses.

Bastard blackfly.

At the end, I pitched in for the terrifying vadai-frying experience, lentilly doughnuts bobbing happily in the Boiling Oil of Death, and stripped balls of curd from cheesecloth sieves for the treacley dessert.

We're sending the extra curry leaves to Cork, as you do.

Sure, the stairs'd kill 'im.

2008-08-03T23:30:00.004+01:00

Last night, I resolved to get up with the horses. Websites told me that the Smithfield horse market started just after dawn, so there I was, primed and ready at 6.20 a.m.

Primed, ready ... and all alone.

Nothing. Not a sausage. No horses, no riders. Just me, and a very small English girl with her granny, out so as not to rouse the parents in the hotel.

And then, two kids sauntered into the square, the John Waynes of Dublin 7.

– 'How're ye, lads?' shouted an oul fella.

– 'I'm after comin' in from fuckin' Finglas with no fuckin' breakfast, that's how,' shouted back an eleven-year-old with a dirty jacket and a grin. En route to a bacon sandwich astride his pony, I had a feeling that he had the right idea.

But Finglas? Bareback? With a rope? At five in the morning? The mind boggles. Meanwhile, I went for a wander, and witnessed the loveliness of an empty and freshly-scrubbed Dublin. I worried about last night's drunks, but met with this morning's workers.

Two trips back to the house for coffee and several hours later, we were in action. One Dublin institution underway, and one very happy parkbench with her camera.

A few more clopped in, some horseboxes, trailers and sulkies, ponies, foals and dreyhorses. I was not a little intimidated, being very afraid of horses and all, but it was a calm lot in the early morning as things slowly got underway.

Not so later when I returned with the Maternal One – it was a kind of equine chaos controlled by good faith and some handling, with enormous great whacking horses with big fat lads in tracksuits galloping full-tilt down the square, terrifying racket, small ones rearing up in little horse scuffles, and new ones pouring in from around the city, streaming in from all corners of life, across the river and down from the mountains. You could hear them – and smell them – all day, long into the afternoon, when I blinked out of my hot nap at a sharp 'heeeeyAHHH' and the clatter of chariot wheels past my caterpillar-crawly windows.

Bloddie would not be pleased.

2008-07-31T15:44:00.004+01:00

So. You may have noticed that I like the natural world, and that I'm particularly fond of nasturtiums. The first thing I did in our nice new house was to plant nasturtium seeds in window boxes and set them out in the sun. We also planted squash, and were left no option but to grow them on the inside – in our bedroom. They're doing nicely, thanks.

But I digress. The Editor was over recently, and much to my surprise, stuck his head out the window approvingly and said, 'Hey. Nasturtiums!'

He may have gained a point for that.

The other day, the Bearded One and I were coming home in the sunshine and spotted a great, fat pigeon flapping in the windowboxes. I'd seen a magpie at the same game that morning. 'They'd better not be eating my flowers,' thinks me. 'There'll be slaps.'

No, stupid. They were eating these:

They have now been summarily re-housed across from the grounds of a local mental asylum. Bill Oddie would not approve. Ignorance followed by brute relocation of small creatures for my own human gains. Bwahaha.

There's one for every cannonball

2008-07-29T21:57:00.007+01:00

Sometimes, it's all Nu Dublin; Chinese howeyehs having a laugh on the Luas in from Tallaght, Nigerian fellas arguing about the quality of their rows outside the barber shop, picking up some Polish ricotta with your Irish Times of a Saturday morning.

Other times, it's just Dublin, where you spot a hooker from your neighbourhood as she walks along the quays. This evening, she stopped outside the Franciscan church, blessed herself, took a miraculous medal on a piece of string out of her pocket and slipped it over her head. As she went in, a short, tubby man with a rope around his waist turned and smiled.

She walked into the pews and the berobed lot went about their business.

I headed home and saw a pair of swans with seven signets land in the Liffey.

Get out your yardsticks – or is that metresticks?

2008-07-20T20:33:00.006+01:00

I've been back for two months now, and already I've enjoyed two rounds of a baffling local sport. It's best played loudly and in all-Irish company. The rules of the game are unknown by all and stand to change at any time depending on the players and mood of the group.

It's called 'How Irish Are You?'

I already know that I am never to be the victor in a match of HIAY, and I accept that in good grace. My nationality is not a relative value: I have two, and I don't define either of them in terms of the opinions of my fellow citizens. Legally, culturally and in blood, I am American and I am Irish. Irish and American. Or, more specifically, if we must, Irish and Irish-American. I don't have a lot of trouble understanding this, but the Irish of no other nationality often do.

I describe myself as Irish or as American as it suits me. I can vote in two countries and work in twenty-eight. I always stand in the short queue at the airport, I travel on a neutral passport past smiling border guards and can be repatriated by a hated superpower should their city burn down tomorrow.

But these are rarely the factors at play in a match of HIAY; the scores are older, less relevant and more divisive. HIAY offers a glimpse at how the Irish view themselves, earning points as they go. Catholic or Protestant? Irish-speaker or just an cúpla focal? UCD or TCD? Northsider? Southsider? Dubliner? Down the country? The Rebel County? The West? Hurling or rugby? Farmer or banker? Traveller?

As a lifelong participant in HIAY and now permanent resident, I might suggest that we update the criteria to reflect the new players. White? Black? Asian? Mixed race? English-speaker? European? Born here? Born again? Buddhist? Asylum seeker? Refugee status?

I'll lose all the same – to the four-year-old Chinese girl toddling into Scoil Lorcáin. I hear they have quite the waiting list.

A four-year-old Irish girl, so – no?

It's rather important to get out of the house.

2008-07-13T20:17:00.006+01:00

Yes, I know you knew that already, but you may not know that it's really, really important if you've just started working from home and the paaardner works around the corner. It can all get a bit homey, and not in the fresh laundry on the line, feet up on the sofa, here'syourmartinidear, hilloveIboughtyouaMagnum sort of way, but in the killmeit'sChristmasandIhaven'tseenanyoneI'mnotrelatedtoinfivedays way.

So, now that I'm down a daily six-mile return cycle and the camaraderie of Curly and my fellow workers, I've been cycling everywhere that needs going to, taking meetings for work and meeting friends for pints and cake after hours. But lunches have been spent power-walking around the neighb wearing some spectacularly ugly shoes. I can't run, because I have a kneecap that doesn't like where God chose to put it in His infinite wisdom, and so takes every opportunity to go visiting around the inside of my shin. So power-walking it is.

More to the point, as this is all achingly bougy, the neighbourhood is fantastic. Ours is a beautiful street covered in flowerboxes and a nice mix of Dubs, Nice Young Couples, immigrants and foreign students. Somehow, you know you're in a good part of town when there are lots of French women around. They have standards, you know? We're also near the mental asylum, so there are a good few middle-aged transvestite drug users, edgy-looking young men and the odd young woman chatting to herself who come and go as day patients. Helps to keep you on your toes.

There's all sorts of good things to do and see, arthouse cinema, foodie shops, nice little restaurants and the biggest park in Europe right up the road. All this a few blocks from the river and with views of the mountains to boot. The mountains are a new thing for me, as Dublin was always all about the sea for me.

We may not have seals, but we do have a great fish joint, and cheap!

All in all, I'll take it, this neighbourhood.

London . . . Ontario?

2008-07-02T19:21:00.002+01:00

So, all is well. I'm busy, working, enjoying the new house, beginning to potter and shoot in the neighbourhood. It's all coming together.

And then I got accepted to my degree.

Good news? Yes. And yet . . . I then learned that I'd been denied EU fee-paying status through some dastardly clerical error. I made a couple of phonecalls, and got a prized email address.

There then followed a silence of five days. I emailed again on day seven. Two days later, I got this:

On checking your documents on PAC can you confirm the following –

Where you state that you worked in London during 04 through to 08, was this in the UK?

I await your reply

Withr egards

Exactly like that, too.

What? London, in the UK? No. Surely not! I meant Ohio. Or was it Ontario?! Is that why the payslips that accompanied my applications read HM Revenue and Customs? Is that why they bore London addresses with big ole Brit postcodes on them? Is that why they were paid in pounds sterling?

KILL ME.

So, the deposit payment is due tomorrow, and I still don't know whether my fee-paying status has changed - so I can't pay them. This evening, I got a snappy email in response to my two-day old plea of 30 June, saying that this issue had already been addressed.

Is this actually proof that university administration doesn't read emails? Or is it proof of something more sinister?!? Comments please.

Return to the Mothership

2008-06-22T00:03:00.007+01:00

Greetings, Earthlings.

I, for one, feel like I’ve been on Planet Xendor for the last month. I think the best way to go through things is sequentially, so, starting from the top:

I had my last day in London. I was on my own, bar lunch with a certain Go-getter, and I took a bit of a wander. I started at our house in Dartmouth Park, and I toodled down into the fabulous Kentish Town, stopped short of Camden and swung through Somers Town. It was a glorious day until I reached Russell Square and a pizza lunch with the Go-getter, where as the storm clouds gathered, I heard of his myriad impressive plans all stacking up on eachother with their deadlines and possibilities. Take that, pathetic fallacy. I told him of my plans, the agency set-up, the footloose and fancy-free feeling of having no more possessions in my life bar the roller bag and the duffel I was taking home from Gatwick.

I went on up to Islington, which is a great place to go when you’ve nowhere else to be. Full of life-affirming baked goods, expensive furniture, killer jewellery and antiques, it says ‘Waste time here – you know you want to.’ And I did.

It poured, but I took slow buses and thought about not very much and said goodbye. It felt like a great release.

And then I came home.

Irritating, the Maternal One refused to come to the airport, but I made it back home through throngs of Celine Dion fans. More or less immediately thereafter, I went back up to Dublin to meet the cousin. For some reason, I was vaguely dreading it – something to do with a combination of exhaustion and trepidation about entertaining a travelling newbie for a week.

My fears were unfounded and all was well. We toddled around Dublino, saw a couple of near and dear, did some sights, had some pints, went to the beach in the blazing sun, had cocktails, and that was a week. We talked about our shared family, nothing at all, Ireland and college life in Greenville, North Carolina. It was nice to get to know someone else in the family as if they were a real person, rather than a Christmas ornament. I spent my first and only stinky, hot summer in Washington with a different cousin once to the same effect, and I hope to work my way through all of them by the time I hit thirty.

When she left, I slept for sixteen hours. Then, I started to work.

I haven’t worked with such concentration and enjoyed my work or learned so much since I left college. This says to me that I’ve made the right move.

Not wanting to completely cut myself off in the seaside calm, I was up in Dublin for Writers Week, and got to see the wonderful Mr. Jones in conversation with John Boyne and Claire Kilroy, whose work I like very much. It was a slightly nervous set-up, hung on the tenuous connection of the South Seas – but it was a gorgeous introduction to the two baldy gents’ writing. A few days later, I had an infinitely less inspiring evening watching Hugo Hamilton ask poor David Grossman a slew of facile literary questions topped off with the breathtaking rhetorical on the Middle East, ‘I mean, how can you guys find it so hard? We showed you how to do it with Northern Ireland!’ Um, eight hundred years? So myself and the Editor headed for much-needed light-up pitchers of cheap beer and plates of very tasty sushi. Mine, the Eel Dragon roll, snaked across the plate under its crispy skin and looked at me with wasabi-paste eyes.

I’ve been going steadily on a project that came in three days before I launched the business, which is good, but I haven’t yet established any kind of schedule whereby I can do the task at hand while still setting up the bigger picture. I think that I should be able to do that once I’ve settled in our new house and am cookin’ with gas. It is, however, the uncomfortable, rigid, eyes-on-the-screen, slightly panicked kind of work that you do in your first days in a new job, which I guess I am.

To make my teeth unclench and reconnect with the outside world, I started taking huge walks and much shorter runs – and taking a lot of pictures. The river here is tidal, and goes so low that you can see the trouts’ fins as they roil just below the surface. We now have a pair of snowy egrets up from Africa, who seem to be having a tense relationship with the nesting herons. The ’round Ireland yacht race starts tomorrow, visible from the living room, and the lovely bronzed boaty types are attracting a good bit of, erm, harbour totty, I think Curly would call them.

I miss the Bearded One, but he’s been having much the same intense experience in a different context up in the city, so it’s good this way – but better together.

I feel like myself, and ‘glad to be home’ doesn’t even come close.

Unusual Transactions

2008-06-15T09:49:00.007+01:00

As expected in recent months, Clinton didn't win the nomination. She did, thank God, deliver the best speech of her entire campaign - would that she could have pulled it out of the hat a little sooner, but it was gracious.
But, nothing daunted, like a good little Democrat, I toddled over to the Obama website and put down my $25 as my first donation. I joined the LinkedIn group, the Facebook group, and then sat down and had a little sigh.

This morning, I had more than a little sigh when I got a text message at 8.30, immediately after my alarm went off. My bank had texted me to alert me to some 'unusual transactions' on my credit card. *Gasp.* So, I called to check that this was a legit service, which it is, and then, oddly, I get re-routed to the UK. Gemma from the midlands then repeats the same message, adding,

'Let's see here - Obama for America? Would you have sent in €16 to Obama for America? We had it flagged as an unusual transaction.'

Clearly, my bank knows me rather well.

This does, however, mark a positive departure from the Clinton website, where I found that I could not donate on a foreign credit card at all. More fool them. The Obama site does have a hiccup for the Washingtonian voter, however - under 'State Shirts' in their store, there is no 'Washington, D.C. for Obama' shirt. Yes, yes, not a state, and don't I know it. Taxation without representation, I believe it's called. But Puerto Rico got their own shirt. Gimme a break.

Besides, 'Washington, D.C. for Obama' sends a nice message, no?

I've got the movers in

2008-05-28T12:52:00.015+01:00

It's true. After a whirlwind couple of weeks, the Bearded One has begun his new job Liffeyside today, the movers left this afternoon, the website goes live tomorrow, the ad goes into the trade rag on Friday and the business launches sooner than expected. All is - dare I say it - going to be ok. Leaving my job went well, in that people were really lovely, full of great suggestions and absurdly generous with the gifts, oi oi oi. I will be the best-outfitted impoverished translator in town. Enough to make you snivel into your cupcake, so I won't dwell - though I've learned an enormous amount, made great friends and had a good enough introduction to publishing to know what I want to do, careerwise, some, erm, obstacles notwithstanding.

Because that wasn't enough to do and because you really want a mini-break in the middle of your move, (gift donkeys, I know) I went to Marrakesh with the Production Diva.

And this was no ordinary trip to Morocco, no no - we travel in style around here, dontcha know. All expenses paid, five-star with beauty treatments style, Cointreau and tonic (try it) by the pool style. In all seriousness, this trip is the most generous gift I've ever received, with the exception of my education (€11,000 per annum for a four-year degree is nothing to sneeze at, and all thanks to being a Yank).

So, despite a 3am start and EasyJet *shudder*, we landed in Marrakesh in a spookily empty and spotless new airport and were whisked away to the Kasbah Agafay. Alarmingly, there are no suburbs in Marrakesh; you go straight from pristine-if-parched avenues with roses and posters of their fearless leader to the most grinding poverty with none of the typical frightening urban set-up of southern Europe; no HLMs, no estates - just rubble. Rubble and nothingness as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the odd cactus, goatherd or robed gent or lady carrying a small child - from where? To where? It's like an extreme and depressing version of the West of Ireland; you pass a farmhouse in the middle of the fields and see no other signs of life for twenty miles, until you spot an octagenarian on a bicycle. Hrm.

From there, we swerve off the road past a huddle of intinerant day labourers and into an olive grove, where we come upon enormous dantean gates and into the most spectacular gardens around a big red fort, all overlooking the foothills of the Atlas.

What followed was a completely surreal two days and two nights eating off of starched linens in olive groves, lounging by the pool, and enjoying watching a bunch of English people squirm at the thought of getting their kit off for the hammam ladies to scrub them with clay - as one of the ladies said to me in broken French, 'Don't they like to be clean in England?'

It was a good group, all of us quite up for the gorgeous food, lounging by the pool, and buffing and fluffing on offer, understandably enough, and that's exactly what we did. Pleasingly, there were Very Important Bods in the world of audiobooks (errrr?), consultants, people with 'people' and some mere publishing plebs like myself with saucer-eyed partners or friends in tow. There were also some minor celebrities, including a TV survivalist (although as his people were eager to explain, that's not really the image they're going for) and one of the actors from The Archers, whose Venn diagram of life does not overlap mine in the slightest, needless to say. The former was more fun than the latter, mainly because I knew something about him and his schtick - and, that in a laconic anitpodean kind of way, was up for a laugh.

'Hey', says the Survivalist's partner, grabbing a leaf from the beautiful hotel herb gardens, 'can I eat this?' 'Yep,' says he in a murmur that suggests there's more to it than that. 'Jesus, Ray, that was really vile', says she.

Having managed to shake off the shady and irritating guide laid on by the hotel, the Production Diva and I demanded that a taxi pick us up later, and headed off into the souk. Amazing how much more welcoming people are when you're not in a quivering group of foreigners whose collective presence emits a 'We're White and Frightened that You'll Rob Us' vibe, innit.

We met a baboush seller and his ancient father, heard midday prayers, were made temporary perches for tiny tortoises and a chameleon and bargained like it was 1999. In short, a successful trip, and further proof that I don't quite have what it takes to live the sanitised life of five-star luxury. I would quite like a chameleon, though.

I got back on Monday, sorted out the remaining pre-move chaos and today managed to nab 12 metres' worth of parking by 10.30 am. The movers, two lovely fellas from NornIrn, have the situation entirely under control and left this afternoon with promises to appear in Dublin in under one week. The Bearded One just checked in to say that he has a Blackberry. *sigh* I will well and truly get outta here in one piece. TFFT.

Looking forward to a quiet last day visiting some places I really like in London.

Feeding wolves with rubber stamps

2008-05-01T15:36:00.004+01:00

So, ever the worrier, am damn near apoplectic with concerns over the Very Boring Details of moving countries - again. Bank accounts, movers, college administration, luggage, living at home for a month in between . . . it's a lot to think about, or rather, worry blindly about.

And then there's the business. The new business will launch 16 June, before which date I'll need to talk to the business naming people, the tax man, the bank, and oh-so-many more people with rubber stamps before I can get cracking. (On the plus side, I now have my very own rubber stamp of my very lovely logo, thanks in part to My Friend George - see right.) More overwhelming is whether all this effort will succeed in earning me the required crust, though well-meaning friends and colleagues assure me that this is not an issue.

By way of keeping fingers in pies and the wolf from the door, I've started noodging for more reviewing work - which will be good *kill me* networking, too. A Dublin-based magazine might have some, but - as in Real Journalism - the freelancer must pitch the idea. They have some useful and amusingly-written guidelines for pitching. Most are fairly par for the course, but some are very useful points spelled out in plain English.

27/27

2008-04-29T21:57:00.009+01:00

So, I'm getting old. Don't laugh. I am now distinctly closer to thirty than twenty, and it doesn't feel good. It feels a bit like staring into the gaping void of a new business and a new degree. It also feels like it's time to go home and set up shop properly.

The friends, they really pulled it together on this one. The party was fancy dress, the theme was London. There were pop stars, hated politicians, a daft prince, one great fire, some ghoulish pie-bakers, and a small lost bear. There was a gallant Arab gent, some hard rockers, a gay bespectacled candle in the wind, the actor who baked pies himself, and a good old-fashioned hooker. The winners in my mind were the Squares, Lester and Russell - a charming couple, if a little well-starched.

Possibly the most daring was fellow Norf Londoner, your favourite extremist cleric and mine, you guessed it . . .

The evening also brought a new shiny stack of reading to my groaning, tiny bedside table: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, The Twilight of Atheism by Alister McGrath, and, oh yes, How to be a Domestic Goddess by Unmentionably Dreadful and Yet So Very Tasty in the Cakes Department (not to mention the production values, oooerrrr).

Not a bad haul! Also, I got a star - what should I name my star? I've added a poll next door >>>>>>

Never content, I am still hankering after more, possibly foreseeing my new book-buying future once I leave the hallowed halls of publishing in-house. I give links to sites, reviews and some surprise book shops just for anorak fun.
For All We Know by Ciaran Carson (Gallery), Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey (Picador), the original text of A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi (spotted in Engrish in the New Yorker) China Returns to Africa, Eds. Christopher Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo de Oliveira (Hurst or through The Times) and the new Dermot Bolger in a whopping great NYT review and Sebastian Barry, mentioned in an odd piece in The Economist and this in the Indo
with the only unflattering photograph I've ever seen of the author, who is quite the handsome devil.

It will all be rather a lot to pack, but that, as the relocation-allowance-bequeathed among us say, is for the movers to deal with.

Nothing daunted, and heading into my last month of work in London!

Prophesize with your pen

2008-04-17T20:57:00.003+01:00

Today was a big day. After two and a half years at a very lovely London publisher, I handed in my notice.

It's an odd thing, quitting; many in the office acted as if they'd all written down their own predictable reactions, pitched them into a hat and passed it around the office. One, usually peculiarly perceptive to changes of mood in the office was shocked. Another, usually too quietly overwhelmed by doing three jobs at once to muster much enthusiasm burst into the biggest honest display of sadness, elation and genuine interest I've seen in an English workplace (sorry). Finally, the one who said 'YOU B*TCH!' when I left my last job in the company gave really helpful advice on the website demo. The big wigs were supportive, but likely thought my plans a small enterprise.

The enterprise, you ask? Yes, you did.

I'm going back to Dublin, back to college and back to languages. Then, I'll be setting up an agency of freelancers: editorial for English-language publishers and translators for foreign-language publishers/agents. I'll be writing about that elsewhere and this here blog will remain fairly personal and fairly anonymous.

Meanwhile, will be finding good respectable freelance staff and lining up some, urm, work.

G'day Nice Lady, Aaaaaright . . .

2008-04-09T21:56:00.015+01:00

A few years ago, working in a central location too awkward for Dublin's pathetic public transport network to handle, I took up cycling in a serious way. I was inspired by my time in Florence, where cycling was the norm and a carefree, easy sort of thing - much like life there. I'm an unlikely candidate for city cycling - by which I mean physical activity after insufficient coffee, followed by a daily commute awash in sweat and mild danger; it's not really my bag. But, against the odds, I came to love it, and a good thing too, because it has become one of my favourite aspects of our life in London.

Drink and cycling, however, don't mix; you only have to hit the cobbles in Piazza Santissima Annunziata once to drive it well and truly home. So, on the days I have hot plans after work, I bus or tube it.

The only part of taking the tube that is any good at all is the walk down, during which I think about the day ahead and nothing at all. By the time I get to the station, I'm in a world of my own. ‘Aaaaarrrrriiiightnaaayssssladyaaaarrrrriiiight’, twinkles my favourite Big Issue seller. Everyday, the same routine. He never misses me, or any of the other nice ladies, even when I think he's busy making change or lighting a cigarette in the wind. I can be on the other side of the turnstile by the time I hear it, ‘Aaaaarrrrriiiight . . .’.

Sometimes, I try to sneak through without him seeing me, just to test him.

The great thing was that he moved during the day, selling at the supermarket where I often grab lunch-makings, so the pleasure was twice mine. 'I gets lonely, you know . . . missing all dose naaaysladeeeees'. Who can argue with that?

The thing is, he was beaten up and hospitalised the other week. It took me a while to check up that this was true, but it was. He told me himself when he got out, nothing daunted:

'They waited until I was at the end of my day, you know. They wait for the money. And then they come. But it's aaaaright, you know. They didn't get nuffing from me.'

Beating up Big Issues sellers. A new low for London, I have to say it, but let's hear it for the man in question. He's back on form, charming the ladies and selling the zines - but now I only see him at lunch. I miss my morning greeting.

parkbenchlondon.blogspot.com

2008-03-24T23:22:00.001Z

So, few faithful readers, I have changed my URL from

parkbenchlondon.blogspot.com

to this here

viewfromaparkbench.blogspot.com

Hope you find me! Sorry for any confusion, tears in beers, etc. If any of you clever clogs know of a better way to do this, please comment . . .

Vacanze!

2008-03-22T14:33:00.015Z

The time had come for a proper holiday. Of course we're blessed to be able to take weekend breaks all over the shop and have friends to stay with into the deal, but really, a full week in Italy is where it's at.

We started in Milan, late and hungry, hurtling down the motorway in a tiny car with a huge man at the wheel. Four sunny days in Milan followed, with home base in a flat along the canal and an Irish/English couple to visit. We wandered the city, not a great beauty spot as we knew, but a great visit nonetheless thanks to the touristing efforts of our lovely hosts. We ate ice cream and befriended well-dressed babies in Pavia, and avoided guided tours in the Certosa to the monks' crotchety annoyance. Sandwiches ordered from kiosks bore politicians' names (Fascist and Communist, thank you) and the aperitivi were epic.

We had Saint Patrick's Day with silly hats and bad pints, furrin' style, in a pub that thought it was Irish, but could have been anything, and ate tricolor risotto. Life was good, and we hopped the Eurostar to Rome where we'd rented a massive flat in Trastevere. It was a great way to do it, as we soon felt at home, getting to know the neighbourhood as a neighbourhood, complete with sunny morning market, playground and family bars for espresso and sticky cornetti.

Rome is a lot like Paris in early spring, and we pooked along through the Jewish Quarter, along the river, round and round the Pantheon and beyond. It was beautiful, winding and full of extremely tasty food of the fried Roman variety. We went back to Da Enzo for carciofi and fiori di zucca, and discovered Le Mani in Pasta for cacio e pepe. And when the Vatican became too big, we found the smallest hole-in-the-wall for fabulous sandwiches, a place where the wine came decanted into empty Scotch bottles. Odd little bars popped up at every turn, one with an indefatigable Joe Pesci double at the helm, pork-pie hatted and ready for a good time.

The last of the woods laid low

2008-03-07T21:32:00.014Z

So where to begin. A quarter hour before my departure from the office in the chaotic and completely unmanaged handover of my boss on maternity leave, I learned that my godmother had lost out to the cancer that was diagnosed five years ago. She would have been sixty-nine next month. It felt like being crushed, slowly.

So when I hit Dublin, I went, with a kind and patient friend, to meet for a sleepy jar at the Gresham - Smithwicks, in honour of the lady herself. It was her pint of choice, to be had laughing loudly on the creaky plastic benches on the balcony of the Dalkey Island Hotel. There, I would drink Club Orange (in a bottle with a straw, please) and Scampi Fries, and bury 10p pieces in the garden for our next visit and another round of Pacman in the lobby. We'd look out at the island and pile on more jumpers, pretending it was really summer.

travelblog.com

Behind the scenes parkbenching in Dublin was productive, and met with old friends for pints, dinners, tea and cakes, and theatre, and new friends for chats about books and language. Shared a restaurant with Mr. Black while we ranted and rolled our tired eyes through more Trebbiano and outstayed our welcome with dessert we couldn't afford. Saw Mangan, Poe and Mahony onstage in Daniel Reardon's latest, Bleeding Poets at Dublin's New Theatre, a great space hosted by kind people, filling the gaping voide left by the closing of Andrew's Lane. Sublime, ridiculous and the beginning of a very long couple of weeks.

I was back in London for eighteen hours before taking my first flight to Norway. When I woke up the next morning in the cozy wooden house with the potbellied stove, I saw that in Trondheim, children ski to school.

When we filed out of the cathedral, the snow began to fall.

Pictorial post while I parkbench it behind the scenes

2008-02-16T11:04:00.002Z

Recent days have seen, in no particular order: family out-of-law, Chinese New Year, frustrations at work, the London Art Fair and lots and lots of food. There's plenty going on in terms of planning for the new venture, reading and reviewing, but for now . . .

Christmas Catch-up...

2008-01-07T17:46:00.000Z

Another year another... nyeh, who knows.

It's been ages, but December was a blur, and the pre-Christmas slow-down was a sneaking, snivelling foul little misnomer. It was heinous, our Managing Ed was ill, those who have failed to pull their weight all along excelled themselves, everybody else tried their best. It was all hands on deck, and it was ugly. Ugly, but nice to know that we got through it and the books were made.

Christmas in Old Country was lovely - enough time with our own families, each other's and friends to tick all the boxes and generally have a good time of it. I think the key is not spending too awfully long in any one place and mixing it up as best you can. Otherwise, cabin fever kicks in and people get crabby.

The Lads, headed up by My Friend George (see right), took a notion that I should see Cork, so I went down on the train and toodled - it's lovely, with winding laneways and the convivial quiet of a small Irish city - with the added bonus of a Cillian Murphy sighting in a gorgeous little pub called the Mutton Lane Inn. He seems nice. The four parents were stars, putting on additional roast dinners on their child-out-of-law's arrival, and being generally fantastic. Came home with a very old and very beautiful astrakhan coat, which I now have to endeavour to get cleaned... I don't think I'm upper-class enough for this one.

Stephen's Day was at the Master's house with the great and better than us. Fierce lit'rary, as previous, and just a warm and boozy day with a beautiful view. Sketched out the barest sketchings of The Plan to those who might be interested, and my God, what a reception it had. Apparently, The Plan is brilliant. Hmmph. That may be, but brilliancy doesn't necessarily buy groceries. Very encouraged nonetheless! On the 25th itself, I began the slow process of the legal mumbo-jumbo, interspersed with swan visits.

New Year's was a blast with a weird group comprised of the Bearded One's brothers, best friends and hangers on, the Ex and two of his friends I hadn't seen in, em, two and a half years. 'How have you been, J?', says I. 'Well, I've changed careers, A and I are due to get engaged... oh, and I was in a coma for five days.' No joke. A coma.

We stayed at the Mont Clare, in a lovely little corner room overlooking Greene's as was, Oscar Wilde's house and Merrion Square. In true Irish fashion, appearances weren't quite what they seemed, as a bockety blind clattered open and a heavy mirrored door swung gracefully awry. Pretty dreamy nonetheless, and topped off by a sleepy night in on the first - somehow junk food and bad movies takes on a whole new appeal in a hotel room. Wholesome, I know...

Travelling is great! Work is . . .

2007-12-10T21:41:00.000Z

. . . a bit fierce. That said, my lovely jubbly UK working set-up allows me a whopping 25 days' holidays, and I've always been one for taking them. Just as well, because I did something extremely stupid this evening at 8.40 as I planted my ass - none the shaplier, mind you, for having given up the bike in the bucketing rain - on a northbound tube. I worked out my hourly take-home wage. For a forty-hour week, we're looking at around £7.40 per hour. A fifty-hour week drops me to a truly uninspiring £5.90 per hour. Usually, it's somewhere in between. Yes, the books are great and the people are lovely and I'm very lucky, tra la. It's true.

Back to the positives. My pre-Christmas trips -hah! plural!- were to Brittany to see the Babbo do his Swiftian thing, and later, to Brussels. Originally, for the former, the idea was that we'd toodle over to Brest and enjoy the hospitality of the conference at a four-course seafood dinner. Not yer tradish Thanksgiving, but I'm a very forgiving person when it comes to epic quantities of shellfish. Instead, we got stranded in Paris thanks to the strikes, and also because life is hard. Imagine our horror when at midday the man behind the guichet said, 'Baaaaah, ouais. Le prochain c'est à . . . bon, c'est à 19h05.' Ooookay then.
'It could be worse!' piped up the Bearded One with a toothy grin. So we checked the bags and hit the streets.The weather was sunny, the pastries were plentiful, and Paris was Paris. Ok, so Thanksgiving dinner was a greasy turkey galette off my knees in the Gare Montparnasse, and I had to evil-eye a pigeon to keep my meal on its sagging paper plate, but somehow that was alright in light of having just marvelled at the most breathtaking chocolate shop in Paris. I won't mention it by name, as it may well be magic. On a road that cuts the length of the Île Saint Louis, it's a dusty, arty, exotic little cushioned wonder. Run by a quiet, skeptical-seeming chubby French granny and her younger similarly-shaped South Asian counterpart, all glitters and winks. They serve myriad herbal teas with tiny flowers in squat iron pots, tea towels made from sarees and a selection of flat, ganache-drenched tarts. How many could you have? So many. Oh, and, ahem, tartes au citron. They would be my personal favourite.

We sat in quiet awe with a coterie of equally hushed and bemused tea-house regulars. Grown men's eyes sparkled, and one leaned over to confide with no small glee 'C'est magnifique!'. Another chuckled at the disturbingly realistic chocolate dog turds and bought praline tortoises instead.

We got to Brest and an ebullient papa at midnight. The hotel was cuteness and did the job and Brest is French and, well, ugly. True to form, the Allies bombed the shite out of the place at the end of the war. But France is France, and, forgive me, it survives ugliness better than some other places I might mention. Not only that, but these Frogs are Celts, and you can't tell me that doesn't help matters. The people are friendly, the food is astonishing and the Nouveau Beaujolais was in. Life, in short, was good.

Life was equally good in Brussels, for many of the same reasons, with added beauty. Poor wee Brux gets a bad rap for hideous architecture, but dammit, I think it's charming, particularly at Christmas. My hosts, also charming, were somewhat the worse for wear with a shared fierce bout of the winter vomiting bug, but were valiant and successful in their efforts to entertain yours truly. Lots of shopping when we should have listened to the weather and museumed. It was most unnecessary and extremely kind, and we likes kindness here at parkbench. We also likes penne with pesce spada just in from central Sicilian Luxemburg and big bowls of carbonnade and the little squishy hands of friends we miss. Said squishy hands at Advent-time tend to hold squishy bonhommes for Saint Nicolas, and the local ones, the hand-owner told me with authority, were simply not up to the challenge.

Predictably, immigrants were soon on the scene, doing the job better.

Hampstead Heath

2007-11-05T22:52:00.000Z

I never understood the glory of the Heath until this weekend, but autumn really does it.

Bwahahaha

2007-10-31T20:23:00.000Z

So it's that time again, the point at which my inner Yank escapes and hoardes sweets, carves pumpkins and giggles with shy little ones on the door.This evening, we got yer typical ghouls, witches, devils, but we also got a vampire ballerina princess, a father and son phantom of the opera, a baby gangster, and a sparkly blue glitterbat. You have got to love it. Sadly, many here don't, because it's a Yank Import, and thus, just not good enough. Our Fearless Leader excused my enthusiasm because I'm a Yank. Erm, thanks. I tried to explain that trick-or-treating was part of a wider tradition of Mummers, Wren Boys and the like, one born in the British Isles, but don't think I made an impression. Another of my colleagues came out with his hatred of Hallowe'en, declaring it 'just not British enough'. We'll leave that speak for itself, shall we?

Pitcher's Mound

2007-10-27T13:25:00.000+01:00

You work in publishing, you think you're immune to The Man. 'I work in the Arts!' you cry. MMMMMHmm. You work for The Man. In some cases, you are The Man. You work for a business, likely a big one, and you are a tiny cog in a big machine. Ultimately, I work for a company that makes machines, of a sort. I work for a company that makes missiles. Byron would not have approved.

Publishing is a business, so you end up trying to sell everything. You have a sales pitch for everything you lay hands on that inspires you. A submission comes in, someone reads the pitch letter. Either myself or the editor reads it, likes it, and pitches it the other. The editor pitches it to her colleagues. The colleagues read some of it, they like it, everyone pitches it to Our Fearless Leader. Everybody likes it. The editor pitches back to the author and agent. They like the pitch, the offer, they go for it. Long before the book is ready to go, editorial pitches it to the art department. Sales pitches it in-house to the sales team, and out-of-house to sell it in. Editorial writes copy to sell the book to the sales team, to the bookshops, to the punters. All the while, editorial pitches the whole package back to the author and agent as the best possible package for the item in question.

It gets under your skin. Then, all of a sudden, like an out-of-body experience, you find yourself pitching in your private life.

Friday night, I headed out for pizza with a little crew of sleepy friends. We went to Lorelei, a cheapie pizzeria in Soho. Laid-back, friendly and quiet, you get a tasty 7-inch for about £6, and it's BYO. You can stay for ages and chat, and no one gives you the noodge. The loos are spotless outhouses, which makes you feel like a little kid at camp. So, we're having some vino, and Christine says, 'Huh. There he is.'

She goes on to explain that there's a tall, wavy-haired studenty type in the corner, a man whom she sees all the time. She sees him about once per week, and now, she's not even surprised when he turns up. She smiles an enigmatic Scandinavian smile, and shrugs goodhumouredly.

I gawped.

'You should blog it! What a great idea! You could blog -not the guy, now, because that would be stalkeresque- the places where you see him, with reviews,' I leaned in. 'You know, of restaurants, cafés, bookshops, films. Do you get it? It wouldn't matter about the guy. The guy, you know, he's immaterial. A conduit. Wherever you see him, you feature the place, in a sort of arbitrary guide to London. It would have to have pictures, and maybe ratings . . . '

I had a vision. I had a pitch.

My dinnermates thought I was nuts.

Nyuh.

Cooking with Booze

2007-10-27T10:51:00.000+01:00

So, as mentioned, the fine folks at Snow Books have a clever scheme. You want a book to review? You want, sneaky sneaky, a book to review and then, GASP, you want to stick a bow on it and give it to someone for Christmas? Then you just go and have a look at the new books from Snow Books, and they pop the one you'd like in the post.

Why do some small presses always get it right?

I had a look, and sure, there was good fiction, fun fiction, scaaaary fiction, but I thought, 'Cooking with Booze? Yes, please.'

So, before anyone of my vast readership gets on their high, sober horse, this book is clearly not a serious exercise in gastronomic brilliance. It's, em, fun. That said, it is a cookbook, and yes, you can cook real, live boozy recipes and produce a tasty meal.

A gorgeous little gift hardback, it sells for a tenner and says 'give me to your friend, the lager lout, the wine connoisseur, the fresher, the cook who ruins a beautiful dinner by walking through the nineteen-hour process it took to make that beluga caviar filo parcel' in a little mischevious voice. Copious amounts of wine-stains adorn the cover and appear throughout the text, and although I might have been tempted to have fewer of the round ring-marks, the message of this package is 'nothing succeeds like excess'. Red-wine ends on nice paper, too - why do so few books sport lovely ends? Yeahyeah, unit cost. Aaaanyway. The author is George Harvey Bone, the alter-ego of a traveller, foodie and all-round up-for-it type who seems to be one of those arch, silly British types, hugely endearing and a bit over-the-top who do it all with tongue in cheek, a nudge and a wink, and a pint in their hand. Reminds me of our own authors, The Bart & the Bounder. (Actually, there might be two people behind GHB, it's hard to tell.)

Recipes are divided not by course or main ingredient, but, of course, by booze: wine, fortified wines, beer, cider, vodka, whisky, rum, brandy, tequila and other spirits and liquers. Now, no one I know has a liquor cabinet (or a drinks cupboard as I've learned it's called here) because they can't afford it. A wide variety of in-house alcohol is, you'd think, the domain of essentially tee-total relatives and city bankers. So no, you won't be able to make everything here, but, in the spirit of things (ha HAH), let the booze lead you to the food. You'd be surprised how much booze you own, or at least I hope you would be. A quick peek in my own kitchen revealed wine, half a bottle of ruby port, a gift bottle of limoncello, gin, a finger or two of pastis, a baby bottle of champers and a novelty shot's worth of absinthe. Plenty to get started with.

Many are even easy enough to whip up when you get home from the pub.

My favourites include Huîtres au Champagne, Baked Mackerel in Calvados and Hungarian Brandy Beef Goulash, which bears the note, 'don't be afraid to add plenty of paprika for that "I fancy another crack at the Ottomans" feeling'. There are some doozies, most of which, sorry, were born in the mid-west or the southern United States, including Beer Butt Chicken, Tipsy Sweet Potatoes (with marshmallows, Clinton-style), and Beer Brats, which would be tasty, but just make me think about foam cheese hats at football games.

Extreme dorkiness reigns in places, as well it should, cf. Mushrooms à le Carré, so named 'because they make me all Smiley'. I would love to share with Our Fearless Leader, who is both the good author's editor and a foodie, but I don't think I could bear to speak the words.

Some of the recipies make you wonder what the drink was for in the first place. A fine example is Advocaat. Have you ever, EVER seen ANYONE drink a glass of this yellow, egg-related Dutch abomination? Does one even drink it in a glass? Who knows. Bone gives us Advocaat Ice Cream. I see cream, sugar, alcohol and eggs. Sounds like a great dessert. Another would be the Harvey Wallbanger Cake and similar sentiments about Galliano, though why anyone allowed a cake mix to enter these pages I don't know. Make a sponge cake, people, it's not rocket science.

I see Mojito Cupcakes in my future.

Have a look at the Cooking with Booze blog here. Hey, Snowies, how about Cooking for a Hangover edition next? Think of the promos! The Amazon hook-ups! But you're probably way ahead of me . . .

Cooking with Wine. George Harvey Bone.
Snow Books. 978-1-905005-65-9. £9.99.

Getting work experience in publishingor'It's just not fair'

2007-10-24T11:38:00.000+01:00

The time has come for a small rant about work experience. I am not choosing to rant now because of a particular candidate, but rather because I have a couple of years’ experience either being the intern or hiring them, and now seems like as good a time as any.

Work experience in publishing can be great. You can learn an enormous amount, make contacts and conceivably even get a job out of it. Regardless, you should only need to do this a few times before someone will look at all those lovely lines on your CV and give you a real job.

Until then, try to enjoy it. Remember, you're getting an insider's view of a very competitive industry, and that's quite something. It is, as they say, what you make it, so make the best of it. That's what this post is about.

I preface my rant with the following:

It is grossly unfair that publishing is underpaid. It is also unfair that the only way that you are likely to get a full-time job in publishing is to spend months working for free or damn near it. It is even more unfair that the whole structure of many publishers depends on a constant stream of free labour to get through the week.

Worse still, this is a system that favours mother-tongue English-speaking university students or graduates with parents living within the London commuter belt who can afford to not earn money for several months.

If you do not fall into this group, as I do not, you are likely to have a very hard time of it until you land your first paid job.

Unless you intend to single-handedly buck the system, I’d recommend getting over it.

So, assuming that you have resigned yourself to getting a work experience placement, bear with me while I make some recommendations, most of which apply to getting your first job, too. I do actually know what I’m talking about.

For your application:

- send it to the correct address
- spell the addressee’s name correctly, and, if unsure of the addressee’s gender, address your application with their full name, i.e., ‘Dear Sam Smith,’.
- proof-read your entire application, and get a literate friend to do the same for you
- send in your application as soon as you can; do not wait for the deadline.
- do not send in your application late.
- follow instructions: send in what you’re told to send in, no more, no less. If you have further materials that you would like to include beyond what is required, allude to them in your cover letter only, i.e., ‘writing samples available upon request’ or ‘my full design portfolio can be viewed at www….’ or ‘my books blog, www.booksblog.com...’.
- a one-page cover letter should be sufficient – keep it punchy and relevant.
- a two-page CV should do it, three if you’ve done amazing things in your 25-ish years. I would advise that you include any incidental work during college to prove that you did indeed work through college, even if it was just a bar job. Others may disagree.

On receiving the offer:

- ask about any remuneration or reimbursements, the timing of payment, and what receipts, banking details, etc. you may have to provide. If what is offered is impossible (and I do mean impossible) for you to accept, you can decline the offer – no one should hold it against you.

- ask about dates and times, hours of work, etc.

- ask about the dress code in the office and anything that you should bring with you. Believe what they tell you, and do what they suggest.

- try to familiarise yourself with their list. If there’s time, ask that someone send you a catalogue or let you know where to find it online. If they’ve had a big hit, try to read it before you go.

For your first day:

- wear something in line with the dress code that is clean, ironed and conservative. Brush your hair. Women, do not overdo the makeup or the hair, and do not – I cannot stress this enough – do not wear anything too revealing. Need clarification? This means no cleavage, no short skirts, nothing too clingy and no shirts that expose your midriff, not even a little. Men, shave.

- wear comfortable shoes.

- wear layers. Offices can be boiling or freezing, and are rarely temperate.

- bring a packed lunch and money to eat out, and be prepared to forget about plan A if someone asks you out to lunch. Ideally, someone will, but sometimes people are too busy to take a lunch themselves, let alone give you the head space of a proper lunch out.

- aim to arrive five minutes early. If you’re earlier than that, kill time elsewhere – much like arriving early for a dinner party, it’s just stressful for your new employers to have to drop what they’re doing because you showed up half an hour before they asked you to.

- SMILE. Smile, and continue to smile for the rest of your time at the company.

- Introduce yourself. Ideally, someone will introduce you to the relevant people in the company, but if not, or if you come across someone whom you haven’t met, introduce yourself.

For the duration of your time at the company:

Smile. The best way to ensure that you are giving the right impression, namely, that you’re happy to be there and to be doing the work that you’re doing, is to smile.

Say ‘yes’. When someone asks you to do something, smile and say ‘yes’. If you have been giving multiple tasks simultaneously, smile and say ‘yes’ to whatever work you have been given to do, and ask which task should take priority. It is not your job on work experience to know how to prioritise your work, because your work is not your own.

Do not use your mobile or iPod. Don’t use your iPod ever, unless someone specifically says ‘while you are doing this endless heap of filing, feel free to listen to your iPod’. Even if you hear this, I wouldn’t recommend it. Someone who doesn’t know that this has been arranged will see you and assume that you are a disaffected teenage git.

There is one exception to the no-personal-technology rule: if you warn the person who hired you that you are expecting a call (from an employment agent or a HR department), and they say it’s ok, which they should, that’s fine. Turn off the sound, or put it on an inoffensive ring-tone.

Do not complain. Ever. If you are at the company for a longer period of time (one month or more) you may be able to speak to someone about the kind of tasks you’d be particularly enthusiastic to do, but you are not in a position to request a certain kind of work. You can but make it known that you’d be Very Interested to Read Submissions, or that you would Really Love to Work on a Publicity Campaign.

Volunteer. Another facet of saying ‘yes’ to everything, volunteering is a proactive way of saying ‘yes’. As you do not under any circumstances want to be seen sitting around with nothing to do, you're going to have to occasionally ask for work, or indeed, leap right in when you see something going on. Remember that if by volunteering you do someone a favour, they are more likely to pay attention when you express your Very Passionate Interest in X. If there is a launch coming up, ask if they need help selling books or passing canapés. If there’s a big mailing to do, an author coming in to sign books, or a sales conference on, tell the person organising it that if they need an extra pair of hands on deck, that you are happy to help. Be prepared for staff to tell you that you cannot help, because the task at hand is not one they can or will delegate. This is no comment on you. Stuck for something to do? Have you noticed that everyone seems to hate going to the postroom / making the tea / loading the printer / doing ring-rounds to lit eds / chasing couriers? Offer to do it.

Take an interest / ask questions. Don’t understand why you’re doing something or how your task fits in to the bigger picture? Ask. Try not to interrupt, sure, but when there’s a quiet moment, and there will be, ask. Concerned you’re bothering someone with your questions? Share the love and ask someone else. Doing so will help you to get to know more of the staff, and will get you noticed and remembered.

Ask for a reference. On your last day, ask if the company usually provides references, and if you might receive one. Alternately, if you have formed a particular working relationship with a certain staff member, ask if they would mind your listing them as a referee. If they agree, it is particularly important to ask what contact information you have permission to list.

Seem a bit prescriptive? You bet. Thing is, not only is all of this grossly unfair, it's also hugely competitive. You think that you're too good for photocopying and filing now that you have your Oxbridge first? That very well may be, but know that there are hundreds of others just as great as you on paper, and they don't think they're too good for work experience. Should you be able to walk straight into an editorial assistant / publicity assistant job straight out of college? Yes, you should. But realistically, that's very unlikely to happen.

Sorry, folks.

The week after

2007-10-23T13:08:00.000+01:00

So, we didn't win, kuñardocz. I say we, and really I mean the esteemed author, you know, the one with the talent. The rest of us are but remoras, but we were, and are, remoras with vision. We have his backlist, so there's a happiness in that, and he's a nice, nice man, which is a relief, if I'm being honest.

The party, you ask? The party, to use a cute Britism, was ace. I don't need to tell you about it because this upbeat Kiwi reporter has done it in their national press - have a look. Most of us nursed the Booker of all hangovers, with fresher-like side effects and inefficiency to beat the band all the next day.

But we have moved on! Both Chinatown and Foolish Mortals pieces finally came out, though not in my preferred form, the mice made a disappearance, and some fun was had with friends and visitors, some of which involved takoyaki. Stellou of the East, well versed in these things, swore blind that these were octopus balls, and yes, it was normal that they still be moving. She swears that this has something to do with bonito flakes dancing in the heat, but she's clearly not to be trusted. Me, I think it was tentacles, but hey, I ate them anyway.

Aside from such minor concerns, I've been plotting for the future. I'm thinking of setting up an international, multilingual publishing services agency in the relatively near future, for which I'm seeking advice, requests for types of services needed, freelancers looking for work, that sort of thing. I've received some good feedback so far, and I'm planning to have a bit of a planning sesh soon. If you're interested and I haven't been in touch with you already, please do comment here and we can chat.

That said, I must stress that this plan is not going to be put into effect now; we're talking a year or two from now. Meanwhile, I have reason to believe that my working life will change rather dramatically, so I won't do anything but put the wheels in motion for the agency plan quite yet.

There's this book, see...

2007-10-16T12:40:00.000+01:00

...and my office is a little bit excited. I have done little over the past weeks but put through ever more editions of this gorgeous item, but it will all pay off tonight, by damn, or so we hope. Please cross your bloggy fingers for Mister Pip!

It’s a hard knocks life: the longest short piece ever published

2007-10-12T13:28:00.000+01:00

Me, I’ll write just about anything, on any schedule for anyone willing to pay me and print it, preferably with a by-line, but shit, let’s be honest… I don’t even care about that.

So far, this tactic has served me well.

The problem with this, and with being junior in these things in general, is that it is extremely difficult to know when exactly to say ‘no’, and when to say ‘wait, wait. You want that when??’. Or alternately, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about Futurist German fiction / physics / the state of Vanuatu today’.

This was my situation when given Foolish Mortals by Jennifer Johnston. You see, I’ve only read one of her other sixteen novels, and that was insufficient for the task at hand. So I did some research, read some lit crit, read past reviews (bad form, I know, but I wanted the critic’s perspective), I hit up the family expert on these things for information, the lot. As you would. As you would, particularly when stuck for time. I then squeezed it into the original 800-word limit – big mistake. This is not the kind of review I usually write (it’s relatively more important than my standard tiny thing that no-one reads), so why I thought that this was going to work, I don’t know.

It didn’t.

Rewrite number one: with the suggestions of Bogglingly Kind Editor, worked in all manner of detail on characters, places, specifics, and as full a critique as I could manage of how this novel sits within her oeuvre to date. Can I do this? Can I, Hell. I can’t remember the last time I wrote 1,000 words on anything, except here of course, but that hardly has to be coherent. It was an ungodly mess.

Rewrite number two: also probably a mistake. Sent Rewrite 1 off to the family expert, presently situated on the east coast of the U.S. That, folks, means a time difference, and resulting lateness to submit on my end. I have never, ever, ever been late to submit any written work to anyone. It also entailed her having to edit extremely quickly, which is unfair, which created a contagious panic. What’s more, the family expert is (obviously) much more able for this than I am, and could do this standing on her head.

Submitted, now at 1,200 words…

…aaaaannd returned.

Rewrite number three: now cut back down to close on the original 800 words. Picture added, Herself in the glasses, no doubt, though just a grey rectangle in my pdf at the moment. Also, text is now ‘lopsided’ as the Bogglingly Kind Editor kindly put it, from the cut. I’ll be rewriting it this weekend, which is not what I wanted to do atall, though I am now more terrified than ever to get it wrong.

More to the point, despite kindness, I am quite sure that the BKE will now never give me anything of this length / placement ever again, which is extremely depressing.

Bespectacled Chinaphile, are you reading? Brace yourself for your début!

Bad writing, good writing, big decisions

2007-10-06T00:30:00.000+01:00

Please, please stop what you're doing and read what is now likely to reign as the worst poem ever written in the English language, as reported here in the Guardian. It was unclear from the article who exactly decides the prize-winner or how, but clearly, they're not wrong.

I'd say read it over your coffee break, but it's so laugh-out-loud bad that it might be inadvisable.

Better still is the good-humoured rant devoted to it in the Guardian blog, in which readers wrote in their least favourites and duked it out amongst themselves.

A propos, the Bespectacled Chinaphile was ranting last night about the Poetry Society Café hitting him up for a £1.50 membership fee with his latte; seems to me he should pay up and see if he can't best them at their own game if these are the results of their labours. Not only is the BC not a poet, he's also not a spook, so really I'm a bit disillusioned. That said, we're now going to be freelancing for the same paper, which is quite exciting, though this is but one of a list of absurdly impressive credentials for this all-singing, all-dancing son of a publisher.

Next day, back in my favourite Brity daily, and charming Andrew Motion, (one of whose poems appeared in the aforementioned blog, *eek*) wrote the warmest piece I've seen in 'Writers' Rooms'; he seems to have actually cared about its writing, given it some time and made it count. Others, like Famous Seamus in the same column, have catalogued their bits and bobs, though I love that the boards of his desk were 'polished by the soft shiftings of a century of student schoolmistresses' - yeah, because that would help you focus. You can hear the gabardined bums scoot.

Mum, on her annual pilgrimage of the faithful to the Dublin Theatre festival, reported back that all is not well, that much of it was uninspiring and stale, and that the focus on the working class and immigrants is worthy, though a few pieces that examined something a little closer to home for the audience might be just the ticket - New Ireland needs a kick up the arse, and this was not the Festival to do it. That said, Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street was a success. I saw it here in Kilburn at the Tricycle and thought it extremely moving, though weak in places, and so ran most of the reviews. Karl Sheils is a powerful one; I realised that I'd seen him in Beauty in a Broken Place (Abbey), This Lime Tree Bower (Project) and indeed in Intermission - but will someone tell me, is he Brush's son? Also - Radio Macbeth was reported as being thought-provoking on language and expression, so I'm sorry to be missing it.Meanwhile, back at our lovely flat, the kitchen has been ripped up to dry out a leak from next door... long story short, we're looking at rubble, loud, hot machines and eventually, builders, a process that will last until the end of February. This is a major drag, and seriously unfortunate time-wise as it covers the winter months, the ones during which you'd most like to be comfortable at home. No one's fault, and the wonderful landlady has continued to be helpful, supportive, and hand back large chunks of the rent.

This is all well and good, but it's hard in that, sorry, it's another thing that just hasn't turned out as I'd hoped. Granted, I don't need a lot of encouragement in this arena, but really, we have to decide what's going to happen next before I lose me marbles entirely. No need to skip town just yet; I'll give it a year and a bit, as planned. I need a good location, hence photos on this post from our August trip to Brussels. Brussels is a definite contender, a city where they do, at least, have a sense of humour: I do need something to look forward to and plan for, and we're going to work on where we're going next and for how long. Initially, I thought it enough to be somewhere lovely and potter along in our next phase, but maybe that's just not true. I should probably plan to be doing something engaging, and that needs forethought, particularly if you're looking to do it all in a second or third language. Really, I think it's time for me to go home, but I'm up for fantastic master plans, too.

Answers on a postcard to parkbench.

2007-10-05T21:22:00.000+01:00

Reviewing Dublin

2007-09-30T10:50:00.000+01:00

So last week, I packed up and rocked out all happy-like for a few days at home. Flying at lunchtime on a Wednesday, let me tell you... why have one seat when you can have six?

Arrived to an office with a view across the Green and on to the Dublin Mountains (I can't even know where to start on that one) a humus wrap and a smiley Brendan, friend and fearless editor of the Dublin Review and the resulting Dublin Review Reader. The launch of the Reader was my excuse to come over, but God knows I don't need one. I can't imagine how pleased he must have been, and how mortified to be lauded by the likes of Colm Tóibín. Mortifying, but deserved. All the great and the good were there, but better still, it was a pleasingly young crowd to boot. Finally met Claire Kilroy, who's as lovely as billed by our own good selves here, and naturally by many more important people. Met a girl whose family house we once rented, which was extremely surreal. The whole thing got a nice write-up and photo in the paper (shout if you need help with the link).

After staying up until five (fine choice), I then met the Ex, who thought my state hilarious because it's usually his. Later, in the same coffee shop, I met the only editorial staff member of New Island press. Sorry, did you follow? The ONLY editor or editorial anything for a list spanning history, memoir, travel, lit crit, women's studies and fiction, thirty strong per year. Thirty. Now, as she modestly said herself, some are in series, many are rather straightforward... but I know a few people on this more monied side of the publishing waters who might learn something.

She explained that, of course, they don't have plans to expand, but I would have fallen off my chair had she said otherwise. She did suggest that I freelance on copy-editing and the like - I can't imagine that one could make a living like that, but what, as I ask myself daily, do I know. I think a better plan might be to convince an existing house to give me reign to do a fiction list, and dammit, Janet, I still want to do the MPhil in Literary Translation at Trinity (TCD, not Trinity, Dublin... we are not an Oxbridge outpost, dahlink). I can't get enough of their webpage and how it bears the practical, approachable, multiple-hat wearing mark of my favourite professor, Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, who fosters the kind of interdisciplinary view of academic study seen in American degrees with none of the accompanying bullshit. But clearly, he's an interdisciplinary kinda guy.

I then toddled down to Wicklow and thought too much. Dangerous, female and generally ill-advised, thinking too much, particularly about the unknowable, vaguely near future is completely exhausting. The whole mid-week weekend left me shaken and wanting to relocate home to Dublin for good, now, and I don't know what to do. It's hard to have a night of the kind of working life you want with a combination of people you've known and loved for years and people you'd love to get to know, and then get back on the plane, alone - I do wish that the Bearded One had been with me. As people like to remind me, I have an interesting job with great potential on a good and growing fiction list in an old, famous publishing house, I've landed some great reviewing gigs, I live in a bustling city with lots to do that's also close to home, I'm coming on for four years with one of the best men on the planet who is kind, intelligent, adoring and adored. After one of the worst years on record, we have made a happy heap in a cheap, beautiful flat in a leafy bit of the city, 20 minutes from work, rented to us by a wonderfully warm publishing grande dame. Friends from all over regularly fill the house. To welcome me home were white peaches and pomegranates in the fruit basket, and a pastel de nata from the Portuguese deli.

PDG, right? Right.

Still, bring on November '08 and the decisions that it will bring.

Moonwalking in Chinatown

2007-09-24T00:01:00.000+01:00

So, funny as, yours truly has reviewed two whole plays for a paper. Oh, yes, P. Bench, theatre reviewer extraordinaire. I've been going long enough, and I know what I like... and I know a bad play when I see one, but does this qualify me? Probably not.

At any rate, the more recent of the two was Moonwalking in Chinatown put on by the Soho Theatre on Dean St.

Basically, it's textbook (oh, yes, I read one) promenade theatre, toodling as it does through the real, live streets of Chinatown with no less than four separate audiences, mobile crew and rotating actors in an hour-long show. The beginning needs work! HOT, people, it was hot. The wait was long. We stood on a landing looking at goldfish-like officeworkers who had no choice in the matter. There was no water, or air, and there were old people... ugh. And there's a bar, a NICE bar downstairs. Sort it out. Otherwise, on with the show, make a long story short, we were handed colour-coded tiles and led out under coordinating lanterns.

We were one with the actors, confused them for us, for passersby, for lunatics, whatever. The stage was shopwindows, supermarkets, smelly back alleys and beatific courtyards (yes, they can be) in the middle of high-priced real estate. It was a silly story, really, but they did a slam-bang job of it and we all learned a bit about things Moon Festival and Chinese.

But I'll tell you what we didn't come away with: a MOON CAKE, people. Come on. Is stellou the only one to provide?? Or am I going to have to haul my white, ill-informed beeehind down to Chinatown to sort the lotus seed paste from the cured ham? Because I can tell you, it won't be pretty. And how will I avoid the damn duck eggs? Where is that clever, bespectacled chinaphile? You know who you are. And I bet you know the real word for a chinaphile. So I went cakeless. Really, it would have been the perfect end to a fun night, but hey.

I commend the fine folks at Soho Theatre for putting it all together, t'ain'tabeen easy. Likewise, I'm impressed by the web gear for this show: a ‘moonblog’ which is cute, but could be a little rougher around the edges, along with mp3s of interviews, and some of the cast even announced their availability on facebook for chats after the show (soho bananaboy and duriangirl among others). This is exactly the sort of thing that theatres should be taking on: make it different, make it lively, and for Chrissake stop flogging half-dead donkeys up and down the West End.

MacNeice 100 today

2007-09-12T22:24:00.001+01:00

It's been another long, not-so-great day, so let's have a bit of this.

Dublin

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades -
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler's trick
You poise the toppling hour -
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.

-- Louis MacNeice

Dorma Pavarotti

2007-09-06T19:00:00.000+01:00

Today, Luciano Pavarotti died. Every paper bore his name, and every radio station woke us up to his voice.

But here in London, the Italians got it right, as Italians are want to do. I was flying on my bike, thinking about Florence, and I heard it.

Today was the day that ice cream trucks blared Nessun norma as they did their rounds.

Shortie of the Week

2007-09-01T13:30:00.000+01:00

It's been a while, but in the interim, American author Grace Paley passed away. I must admit that I never read loads of her work, but then, what I don't know would fill a room... for although A.M. Homes is not my favourite, Dan Schneider seems a bit harsh on the Laura Hird site. Homes did at least a twofer on Paley, here in 1998 and in the Guardian yesterday.

But we're democratic here at Parkbench, so go on and look her up yourself for your short fiction reading this week. Her greatest hits include 'Goodbye and Good Luck' (a popular title for her obit in lots of papers) and ‘A Conversation With My Father’. Really, she seems to have been a sweet, introspective, thoughtful type of woman, as suggested by this charming interview - somewhere in there the suggestion that we should have known more of her and her writing, though I suspect that at 26 I may be exactly the wrong age to have been introduced to her work in American highschool.

But most wonderfully, do please go and listen in to the writer herself through the links to past interviews and discussions on NPR in the States - nothing does it like audio.

Alternately, read the single most astonishing collection of short fiction of recent years - Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan. I was thrilled to have met her last Christmas, and she gives off those eerie waves of genius. That's all there is to it. I hope someone lets me review it, and I will do so here soon.

Brief escape

2007-08-25T23:05:00.000+01:00

So, I forgot to tell you - we went to Scotland. Glasgow, then Edinburgh, just at the end of the Festival. There were trains, plates of butterfish, mussels, opera singers, mimes, shops, friendly people, and one tiny, warm, blue hotel room. There was a very intriguing traditional pastry - a rhubarb pastry, to be exact - with plain, thin pastry, filled with stewed rhubarb.

There was also a concert- the Smashing Pumpkins, to be precise, and the Bearded One went to a higher place. Markets in the sunshine selling pretty dice, smelly soaps. Amnesty campaigners dozing in the breeze. Understandable, cause or no cause.
And vaguely amused old ladies watching a Canadian street performer exhaust himself for money.

Such an amazing wee hollyday.

And, I got to catch up with an old friend, an opera singer, as ever... and sometime pool shark, as ever.

Irish Publishers, learning to compete?

2007-08-19T13:07:00.001+01:00

As part of an ongoing debate about Irish publishers' birthright to the Irish market, hackles were raised a while back by CLÉ president, Tony Farmar, with this article in the Irish Times. Should you not have a log-in for the IT, I'll quote the salient points in italics.

-The average European country publishes four times as many titles per head as we do. In terms of titles per million of population, Ireland is actually the weakest performer in the whole expanded EU.

- Unprotected either by language or distance from Britain, fewer than one in five literary and general books sold here are Irish-published. As far as books are concerned, Ireland is still part of the British Empire.

-There are four historical and structural reasons for this situation:
the powerful British publishing industry
Irish authors find British publishers difficult to resist
the radical shift of the terms of trade in favour of retailers
the Irish are reluctant book readers

Reading between the lines, from this I understand that Irish publishers don't know how to compete. Here, the President of CLÉ, compliments the Brits on their "honed marketing skills and deep pockets". Having seen a couple of truly unremarkable marketing and publicity campaigns by small Irish houses, and heard the moans of the smaller-circulation Irish press on their difficulties securing review copies, I wonder why CLÉ is not lambasting some of its own members for failing to make the most of what resources they have, or indeed, as an educating body, why they themselves don't endeavour to teach small presses how to hone their own marketing skills with an aim to, you know, making money, which they could then invest in future titles.

As for the Irish not buying books, 10% of books sold on the two islands are sold in the Republic of Ireland. Try that one on for size, population-wise. Ever see the clever Irish-themed tables at (UK) bookshop chains like Waterstone's and Hodgy Figg? UK booksellers, and increasingly Irish ones in city-centre Dublin like Eason's, Hughes & Hughes, Books Upstairs and the like, have come to realise that summer sales skyrocket thanks to... you guessed it, the Yanks buying books on holiday.

And every so often, we get a window into a displeasingly familiar way of thinking, with left-fielders like, "There is, of course, no knowing what unconscious Anglicisations are necessary to make Irish writings attractive to English tastes". Impossible to know where to begin with that one, so I'll leave it be.

In response to his own question, 'So what can be done?' Farmar comments,
The ideal structure of a viable publishing house is one that synergises the skills, interests and risks of different types of publishing. The hectic life of a Christmas best-seller sustains the long-term risk of "high art" literary publishing. Irish publishers are keen to develop more literary publishing, but this has to be done in the context of a healthily balanced set of activities.

Although the stories we tell ourselves in high literature are important, they are by no means the only way in which people's understandings and social capital are fostered. Not everyone has the mental stamina for John Banville or Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Less refined, more mediated books spread culture in its widest sense to a bigger audience. Books on such topics as local history, political issues such as "Boston versus Berlin", having a baby here, Celtic prayer, GAA, folk music, and our experience of cancer, are the "long thoughts" of a nation, for which locally published books are the uniquely appropriate medium.

Indeed. As someone who routinely scans Irish publishers' webpages for jobs, I can tell you that local history, health, the GAA and local and political histories are the mainstay of more than half of CLÉ's members, so that appears to be nothing more than back-patting - absurd, to my thinking, because this is Real World Business 101. I wish that I could comment on the sales of such titles, but I do know that they have absolutely no appeal for foreign rights sales. I would love to talk to someone in the know about rights sales in Ireland, as I know that they bring in a decent amount of income for publishers everywhere else in the world. I beleive that the expression is 'money for old rope', but maybe our situation is unique.

The promotion of a vigorous service by local publishers to local writers would seem to be an obvious responsibility of the Arts Council. However, the Arts Council's remit is to "literature", and it is unlikely that any possible widening of that term could include publications on looking after an elderly parent or proportional representation, however culturally useful they may be. We therefore need - as has been evolved in Canada, for instance - an approach to supporting publishing because of its wider contribution. Recently, Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist and poet ... has acknowledged the "dedicated nurturing" that Canadian publishers, supported by their Book Publishing Industry Development Program against a similarly "over-mighty neighbour", were able to give him and authors such as Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, Carol Shields and Rohinton Mistry.

This is simply nonsensical. He says that he wants a widening of the terms of 'literature' as decreed by the Arts Council, and that we should look to the Canadians for an example. But what about that list does not say 'literature' to you? OK, Yann Martel is YA, but literary YA, and Carol Sheilds might be forced into 'women's fiction', but commercial they ain't. Literature IS art, that's why the Arts Council happily supports it. Commercial writing, as he outlines above, is the kind that makes publishing houses money and affords them the luxury of publishing literature. Looks like the Canadians have this one figured out just fine - why don't we?

He then goes on to compose a laundry-list of demands for the Arts Council, suggesting among other more sensible ideas,
privileging Irish-published books in public libraries and other institutions. The EU rightly sees books as the backbone of national cultural identity, and is prepared to allow otherwise iron rules, for instance in competition law, to be waived in their favour. In terms of literature, but particularly funding new literary talent and initiatives, I couldn't agree more, but folks, publishing is a BUSINESS. The people who run publishing houses must heed Farmar's advice and learn to balance what sells with what's art, and publish accordingly.

And as ever-on-the-ball Eoin Purcell points out, it's only going to get worse in terms of the British Invasion, but the subject was closed for the moment as far as the Irish Times were concerned - my letter to the editor, below, wasn't published.

"As a recent (and hopefully short-term) Irish expat working in the British publishing industry, I share Tony Farmar's frustration with the state of Irish publishing in his article of June 20, 'Is Irish publishing on the edge?'.

I would, however, like to point out the exodus of home-grown authors to Britain is not the only drain of Irish publishing talent. In addition to the 'obvious advantages to being published in England', it is short wonder that Irish authors are so sought after by well-established UK presses when the ranks of these same institutions are increasingly filled with young, talented Irish staff.

When in 2005, armed with an honours degree and considerable relevant experience, I found myself unable to find paid employment of any kind within Irish publishing, I relocated reluctantly to London for a graduate trainee scheme. There I joined the Society of Young Publishers, where I was surprised to be greeted by their large Irish membership as part of an ever-growing circle.

Apparently, I was not alone, and most had left when confronted by the financially strapped, closed world of Irish publishing.

I am proud and indeed relieved to have since secured a full-time editorial position in one of those prestigious publishing companies to which Mr. Farmar refers. I enjoy my work and benefit from working on a challenging and diverse fiction list in a highly respected publishing house, but I look forward tothe day when I can return to apply my skills to the works of Irish authors. I hope that publishing houses in Ireland heed Farmar's advice, but that they also attack the task of developing their lists to balance literature, commercial fiction and domestic non-fiction with titles of international interest, which might help to generate profit through improved sales of foreign rights. Furthermore, the industry must address its continuing failure to publicise, market and distribute their books effectively abroad.

Then, rather than bemoaning the success of their British counterparts, Irish publishing might welcome home experienced Irish staff and create suitable publishing houses for our great Irish literary talent."

Periodic Plump for Independent Everything

2007-08-19T12:10:00.000+01:00

It's that time again, time to rant and rave about the neglected glories of small, independent presses. I am, of course, not alone in my ranting - when am I ever? tschaah, never - as witnessed by the fine folks at Branching Out, a resource for reader development. What peaked my interest is their Independent Press of the Month page, in which they present a well-informed page on whatever press has taken their fancy. This month, it's Peepal Press, which specialises in Caribbean and Black British writing.

Admirably, particularly because the independent presses needn't be integral to their programme, Branching Out also makes a point to highlight the functionality of the press' website, which is extremely important; the LEAST a small press can do is set up a decent, functional and hey, attractive website. It's a small investment, and one that small Irish publishers would do well to make. Some, like Maverick Press with their myspace page, have led the way, along with Liberties Press, but so many others have fourth-rate websites or none at all.

Likewise, while we're cleaning house on all findings indie, I've finally found an independent Irish bookseller online, which I intend to use for all gifts etc. going home. It's the web branch of Dame Street's Books Upstairs in Dublin.

With the sad closure of Greene's Bookshop's city centre shop in Dublin a while back (not dead and gone, though, they've moved to *gack* Sandyford, have a look at their websitehere), something should also be done for those who prefer to purchase in the flesh (paper?), there's this website listing of Irish independent bookshops Books Upstairs in Dublin.

Will keep up a list of interesting independent publishers and sellers in the lists to the right, starting with the amazing Snow Books/and their lovely staff blog. They're doing something very clever, bringing the bloggers directly to them rather than having to go out and find them. At any rate, hopefully I'll doing a better job on the indie list than I have of the short fiction posts, *blog guilt blog guilt*...

Fishies

2007-08-08T12:06:00.000+01:00

Like most mere mortals with bad salaries and high rents, I live in Paperback Land. This means that I read all books (other than those I work on) a year after they come out, when they're cheaper, more colourful and more plentiful. If you have somehow, like myself until recently, managed to miss Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, you should know that it is indeed a book to be judged by its cover – and title. OK, so that's not the Yemen, but throw a girl a bone. Anyway, the book really does do what it says on the tin… of salmon. Schnar. A serious-minded fisheries scientist thinks that he might have to walk away from his career rather than get involved with a daft government-backed scheme to beat them all: taking Atlantic salmon to the wadis of the Yemen to please a rich Caledoniaphile (oh, yes) Sheik and provide a good photo-op in the Middle East for the PM. There’s a nice narrative sideline regards the bigger political machinations of the scheme involving a send-up of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell that’s more Yes, Minister than West Wing, though it does get a bit bogged-down halfway through. Eventually, the good scientist, trapped in a loveless marriage he never realised was miserable, finds that his life lacks meaning and adventure. Soon, he is flying around the world to learn about holding tanks, cooling systems and how to trick fish into adapting to desert life, while dodging his increasingly enraged wife, a sycophant spin-doctor and a backstabbing boss. It’s charming and funny and really just a straightforward middle-aged picaresque. Highly recommended for some fun, easy reading. And of course you already knew all that, but Hell, no one reads this anyway!

Finally, we found a new joint

2007-07-14T10:55:00.001+01:00

Much though we love our tiny piece of Kentish Town, we are moving up the road to leafier pastures. In an unusual but hopefully fabulous arrangement, we'll be enjoying our own floor of a little Victorian house on a hill, complete with private garden. Living room and bedroom, each with big sash windows, big and bockety kichen/diner, tiny bathroom with bath, and best of all, bricked patio garden with raised beds which runs the length of kitchen and bath and around the bathroom with a little pergola. The landlady, one-time publishing grande dame and now involved in human rights (!) lives upstairs. She travels a lot, as do we, so there will be relatively few weekends in which we're all there together. The catch is that there's no division between our space and hers, other than the stairs, but it's all very private, really, and others before us have done it for years at a stretch so it can't be bad. Here, look what I drew! And the best part of all this? We're still on all the same bus routes, all but one overland, and we're still even on the Northern Line. Oh, yes. And, it's £200 per week including all bills except for phone.

Shortie of the Week

2007-06-16T11:26:00.000+01:00

I've been on me hols, hence the radio silence and the lateness of this post! So really it's ok...

After an epic tour of the American South, beginning with an unplanned but lovely overnight in Virginia, Hilton Head, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia and finishing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, I'm back and exhausted.

In honour of the highlight of my trip, this week's short fiction is Savannah native Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' (1955).

Shortie of the Week

2007-05-27T14:51:00.000+01:00

The inaugural Shortie is short fiction from the New Yorker earlier this month: 'One Minus One', by Colm Tóibín.

Read Short Fiction, Dammit

2007-05-27T14:28:00.001+01:00

I work in a publishing house on the fiction list, so I know, live and breathe the truth that short stories don't sell. It is true. It is indisputable. And I'll tell you something else: it's absurd. I cannot understand why, in our saw-it-on-my-RSS-feed, soundbite-luvvin' world that people cannot and will not get their heads around the short story. It is the ultimate in potted brilliance. It is the thirty-minute lunchtime workout, the Coffee Break Spanish, the breakfast-in-a-shake of literature. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. A double espresso with no time to stir the sugar, down the hatch, crumple the paper cup and move on, gets your heart racing and out into the world. How can it NOT appeal to commuters, new mothers, travelling salesmen, teenagers and those who love to read but haven't the time? It never ceases to baffle me.

So, in the hope of inspiring a little appreciation for the gorgeous morsel, the tiny square of sticky baklava, the perfectly round pork-pie that is a fine piece of short fiction, I'm going to go out there and find one every week and post it, right here. And just to keep up the visuals, I'll include a parkbench original to complement the broader theme of the work.

Watch! Next post coming up... now!

Want some dorky, book-related fun?

2007-05-18T10:55:00.000+01:00

We all do. So, I read about it somewhere or other, and had completely forgotten about it until I started thinking about the Clutter Monster living on the lower floor of zee tiny abode. At home, you know, in a country where people appreciate books, second-hand shops in big cities thrive, and are run by pleasant people. Here, however, my charming, once-read review copies get sneers from snotty booksellers near Leicester Square who flog Italian first editions of Godot and spell Beckett's name wrong on the shocking price tag. I saw it. So, in lieu of lugging them back to Dún Laoghaire as I often do in exchange for dinner-money (bag of books = €10-15), I thought I'd set them free.

Book Crossing is an extremely sweet and seemingly very popular idea. I'm linking to it along the right-hand side here forever more. Basically, you sign up (no big deal), register your books (add the ISBN and they do the rest), and then leave 'Release Notes' describing how you set your book free. You could leave it on a café table or throw it onto a passing barge.

All you have to do is tell eager bookcrossers where you put it. Did you leave it in a tree in Primrose Hill? On the 46A bus to UCD? Or did you pass it off to a friend? Dedicated souls are signed up to email alerts for areas they're likely to be near, so that they can even go hunting to see if they can beat random passersby to the book. Though you can pass off books to people you know, it is SO MUCH more fun to hide them in the wild! Ziploc bags are recommended, as are post-its on the cover declaring that 'This book is NOT lost! It's free! For you!' or some such enthuse... Then the curious passerby picks it up, and hopefully reads it, and logs back in to the website that bookcrossing.com has associated with that very book to say: 'Found your book! Love it / hate it / gave it to my sister / passed it on at the newstand of 4th and Delaware in Cheboygan, Michigan / on a vaporetto heading to St. Mark's in Venice'. So, ok, my books, though picked up, have not been reported back on, but I live in hope. And anyway, it's fun, and if you leave your books hidden in public, you feel like you're nine and on a treasure hunt, which is no bad thing.

Give your old books new life and send them on adventures. :)

Turkish Delights

2007-05-05T11:11:00.000+01:00

A month on, much has happened. Job happiness has been further secured, I've turned twenty-six, made a small name for myself with a great London literary agent, and most importantly, been to a new city, a new country and a new continent.

Not sure what to start with, so I'll go with Istanbul and the, er, aforementioned Turkish delights. The Bearded One has nine months of Turkish under his belt, and neither of us had the least notion how popular this would make us. Everywhere we went, we met the sweetest, most enthusiastic people I have ever come across- certainly as a tourist. I was concerned about dressing modestly and the whole routine, and found that though I was wise to watch my Ps and Qs, we were welcome everywhere we wanted to go, and met and saw a whole swathe of Turkish society. The hotel, Hotel Turkuaz , was located in southern Sultanahmet, near Kumkapi and the Marmara coast in a neighbourhood that did not look like a likely tourist spot to say the least. Alive with the sounds (and smells) of stray cats like the rest of the city, and home to a politically but not religiously right-wing community, it was extremely poor, with most of the houses subsiding into the ground at distinctly non-right angles. It was a shame to see, because the hotel (which is indeed turquoise and not pink as it appears on the website- other photos are bang on) is a gorgeous example of Ottoman architecture, and there were a few others standing proud.It looks a little bit like Louisiana to me- tall and creaky, wooden, though tongue-and-groove, not clapboard, and full of curliques. It was run by the charming Maria, a cat- and turtle-loving Romanian. Nothing was too much trouble, though at times her advice regarding boring bits like ferry schedules warranted double-checking. The resident turtles, Fatima (pictured below) and Osman (camera-shy), oversaw epic and non-varying breakfsts in the chilly courtyard: eggs any way you like 'em, gorgeous, wet feta-like cheese, dried olives in oil, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, brioche, bread, butter, more cheese and jam. And as one astute elderly frenchwoman muttered on our last morning, 'Mais ecoute: il faut manger les crudités le matin, parce qu'on n'aura pas des autres durant la journée. Eh? EHH?' I got her, alright, with her little-old-lady subtlety. She was a legend: intrepid and nothing daunted, she was eating her crudités le matin AND learning Turkish at the age of seventy-five. But I digress: seeing the sights requires all the energy provided by our brekkies, so we took plenty of pit-stops along the way.
Beyoğlu is the place to be in the evenings, and check out the little boreens at the right-hand side at the base of İstiklal Caddesi, where the old tram terminates. We found a tiny, slightly dodgy-looking cafe, where the owner happily skipped up a death-defying ladder to settle us down in a tiny, cushion-filled erzatz loft for beers and 'cigar-shaped' cheese borek. No taps, no oven- just bottled Efes and gorgeous home-made food made, I suspect, that morning by the owner's mother and heated up when orders came in. Tasty, friendly and cheap. Live music started below, and a vacated table for two opened up, so were helped back down to reality to join the 12-strong crowd. Plates appeared out of the tiny kitchen, and that one amazing night happened, the one you always have in a holiday, the one that could never be reconstructed in the cafe that could never be found again. I'll leave the sights to speak for themselves, I guess, and recommend a great website on Turkey: pretty it ain't, but yer man's info is unparalleled for its accuracy and breadth, and we can thank the Turkey Travel Planner for a lot of our planning beforehand. We'll have to go back, as we could spend a whole 'nother week on boats seeing the islands.

New Irish books magazine!

2007-03-20T23:01:00.000Z

Exciting news, exciting news- what looks like a legit, interesting online books quarterly. I do hope they keep up what they started, and who knows, I might do a little parkbenching in there, too. Wouldn't that be nice. They probably don't pay, but neither do some other very reliable books sites. Have a look at the sharp-looking Dublin Review of Books. Good work, folks. You have the Irish blogging community paying attention, anyway, which is certainly a great start. But where, I ask myself, is 36, College Green? Are these trinnerskids? And if not, how'd they get such a jammy office? Hmmm...

At any rate, serious-minded criticism in an accessible format, highly recommended by yours truly.

Obviously, another winner, for similar reasons and bearing a similar title, is the more tangible Dublin Review. A lot of care goes into it, and it shows- it's respected and enjoyed by people who know their stuff, but interests the youngins like myself. Going strong for some years now, it contains all sorts of literary gorgeousness, criticism, short fiction, long essays, autobiographical stories, dabblings of new travel writers and esteemed authors. Worth its weight in gold, and well produced. Simple words, with a *gasp* design concept? Well laid out, simple, consistently entertaining reading, and one of those things you're proud to say you read. Your challenge for the week? Use the words munken cream at the next possible opportunity.

Barack Hits Scotland

2007-03-13T22:45:00.000Z

Big news: UK rights for the Barack Obama book were snapped up by the achingly savvy Canongate. Not their usual tack, but quite the coup nonetheless.

The Scotsman adores Jamie Byng and, well, understandably so. The man is practically single-handedly responsible for revitalising Scottish publishing. Check out their take on the new buy.

To give the appropriate disclaimer, I should probably admit here that was once paid a startling compliment by said publisher. What was even better was that the praise was passed through the newspaper editor who took a chance on giving me decent reviewing slots. One of them was Canongate's stunning jacketed paperback publication of the complex, dense and gorgeous My Father's Notebook by Kader Abdollah. So, I'm biased, but they really are a great house... Have a look, although their site needs a little formatting help.

I'm excited about Obama and everything, but really, folks, it's Clinton. More on that later.

P.S.- just saw that Eoin Purcell beat me to it :) Must get that handy dandy Bookseller bulletin set up.

A pleasant day in Camden

2007-03-11T12:16:00.000Z

There's a first time for everything. Welcome to a pictoral record of my first truly lovely wander through Camden Town. Astonishingly, I was not pushed, offered hash, asked if I had some smack, or called a stupid whore by dodgy passers by. I'll let the pictures do the talking, and later, I'll chat about Shanghai Nights by Juan Marsé, recently published in paper by the ever-gorgeous Harvill Secker. Meanwhile... Go to see this astonishing coffee, um, roastery, where one quiet man of indeterminate origins roasts a short dozen different coffees in a sooty olfactory paradise.

And in keeping with this sensual overload, we have the audio...

and the gastronomical,
with some beautiful Moroccan stews in the nice bit of the Camden Lock Market.

Oh, dear. It's the fruit of my labours.

2007-03-02T20:28:00.000Z

So you read. You read a lot. Forty, a hundred pages, three manuscripts per editor per week, two editors. You review, write reports, synopses, opinions, comparisons researched on the internet, in catalogues, the papers. You chat with colleagues, fight your corner, humour your editor, or not. You find foreign language readers, second readers, second opinions and insider insights. Africans, Irish, amateur botanists, historians, Middle East specialists, social workers. Whatever. The winners make it to the editorial meeting, where they might well still get shot down by dubious sales (UK or export), other editors, the MD...

For the rest, someone on the editorial side drafts the rejection letter, trying to be honest, constructive, fair, specific and yet vague enough to cover up the fact that most submissions aren't read past the first forty pages - if that. They try to maintain carefully-wrought relationships with agents, keeping them sweet but outlining an editor's likes, dislikes, likely buys and no-hope-in-Hell case scenarios yet still appearing to be open to the agents' every whim for fear they pass up the next Harry Potter or The Day of the Jackal. You tried, you all tried, and then? Then you see a website like this, and you hope that you or your office haven't been responsible for any of the worst rejection letters ever.

Now, whether Mr Hallamshire is a writer of note is of absolutely no import. I don't know of his work, nor, like the fine folks at A.P. Watt, is science fiction my thing, but I would never, ever write or be permitted to send anything so laid back, so dismissive, so... bad. What is disturbing here is the total lack of writing ability on the part of the editorial staff. Sure, time is a problem, as is the volume coming in from agents is astonishing, and on the agenting end, well, God only knows. If we get three or four fiction submissions per editor per day, I can but imagine what the agents get. But oi. If this is legit, try harder.

Close Quarters

2007-02-24T12:17:00.000Z

So, one of the reasons that London smells, you will agree, is that quarters are close. Flats are small, offices cramped and tubes stuffed. It's not so much a problem as a fact of life, like living in one of those fold-down apartments in Tokyo.

Having decided against moving, myself and The Bearded One resolved to love our flat more, which is easy enough, considering that at £210 per week with no council tax to pay, it's a steal for a teeny one-bed on two floors with the aforementioned weenie patio in its fantabulous location convenient to work and friends. So, friends should come round more, and did last night, which was nice. Seems we could manage twice as many as we had in the end, so watch this space, party central.

Downside? At the moment, however, I'm huddled on the less pleasant of the two floors, because my Scary Neighbour is upstairs with The Bearded One. The Bearded One, like most boys, has a long fuse for people, unlike myself. Scary Neighbour is a large, strong, loud man in his thirties who, we can tell from being on the patio, likes to scream abuse at his wife. OK, so sometimes she screams back, but very rarely. Scary Neighbour, an equal oppurtunities screamer, also shouts filth when he's alone. He is, I believe, unaware that we know either of these facts. As sorry as I feel for the wife, what confirms his craziness in my mind is that he plays out entire fictional arguments at the top of his voice out the kitchen window while he does the dishes alone in his apartment.

I object to being forced to know these sorts of things about people.

Thought to beat for the coming week

2007-02-17T12:46:00.000Z

Courtesy of George Simkin.

Editors 'R' Us... now with added cash!

2007-02-11T14:17:00.000Z

So, the real belated news, told smugly while munching Portugal's greatest export of a sunny Sunday morning? The real news is a change of job and a complete and utter change of life for yours truly. Shortly before I travelled back to the US for Thanksgiving, I was given the heads up by the Editorial Assistant for Fiction that she was changing careers and going travelling in between the scenes, leaving her position gloriously vacant. Attempting a cross-departmental move in a fourteen-person company is something to be considered, as it does have the potential to backfire horribly, but not so here! And thank Christ for that, as I just don't think I could take it if this job went wrong. I've invested too much in being here to have to pack up now.

Organising the move was extremely stressful, most of it masterminded while sitting on the floor outside the VIP Lounge at Detroit Airport, stealing their Wi-Fi. (A lovely Japanese man and his wife invited me to come in just as I was finished, because they were allowed to have a guest, which was sweet.) But come January, I was back in the same lovely publishing house, full-time and fully engaged as Editorial Assistant for Fiction. Publicity, particularly part-time, is simply not me – not here, anyway. I have difficulty getting into the national press here, although it will come with time. More of a Guardian and books press girl, myself, but of course publicity requires so much more. The other thing about publicity at its lower levels is that it’s simply not brain work: strategy, planning, organisation, yes, but hard analysis, working with texts? Notsomuch.

So now, I actually read and write for most of the week- submissions, nothing finished. I now understand why editors have never read the backlist. Fantastic experience, and it really feels like a great match between academic thought and knowing the market. It’s extremely exciting. I just can’t believe that it took me a year and four months to get back to Plan A, and how long and awful that time was.

But now, now, my friends, I’m enjoying something of a revival. I’m back in the world, going to the theatre, concerts, (that's Willie Nelson, you heathen) buying nice food with the yummy mummies in Primrose Hill… smiling. Extraordinary stuff. Kind of like real life, but without the Irish people and the sea. Will keep me going in the meantime, anyway.

Will report, albeit somewhat cryptically, on what I’m reading as I go along. Meanwhile, enjoy the pics of my new, improved life and times in London. Congratulations in order to the team behind a well-thought out exhibition in a spooky locale, Art and Pigeon Pie.

See, I told you I was doing stuff.

Having no money doesn't make you less able to attend great free events, just less willing, so I really have no excuse for not having done more of this kind of thing before, except that I was using every spare minute to freelance myself into another £60 or looking for a new job. Before I had quality time with a laptop, and now... I have art and life and food. It's turning into a good year, I say in a small voice.

And so this is Christmas...

2007-02-07T21:28:00.000Z

A quickie on the personal blog backlog before I cover the rest.

Christmas with The Bearded One took us to the South Bank for a frosty stomp, then an old-school sushi-chase and tickets to a truly kinked-up Cabaret. (Good work, Captain J.)

Christmas was spent quietly in Old Country, fresh air, sea, duck, wine.

Went to a litterati party, no less, up a boreen in Blackwater on Stephen's Day. Gorgeous and surreal. One prizewinner, one serious contender, a poetry editor, half a small, dysfunctional press' board, some artsy bigwigs and the prizewinner's family including a funny dentist who hated her job, and her brother, who fell three stories from a Barcelona balcony and was put back together with metal.

Then... New Year's with fabulous friends in Dublin. Amazingly, of the twenty people in the room, say, 17 of them Irish, all had been living in, were living in, or were moving to London.

Et me voila.

Back in business

2007-02-04T22:14:00.000Z

So… here we are. February.

It’s been a busy few months, and I return with my tail between my legs. I think I’ll do a few separate entries, rather than one big behemoth job.

I last wrote in November, when I faced harsh truths about working part-time:
1. You can’t live on a part-time publishing salary in London, no matter how much freelance reviewing you manage to land.

2. If you do work part-time, and your company has use-it-or-lose-it holidays, you have plenty of time, no money, and holidays you must, well, use or lose.

3. Holiday days carry more weight when you’re part-time. If you work a three-day week, nine days of holiday means three weeks off.

I could have just handed them over to The Man, but I was having a lousy time and determined to sit around in my bathrobe and eat discount bonbons in Norf London if it came to it. A girl’s gotta do…

But that would have been grim- my own sugar-laden company can only amuse for so long. Instead, I spent a week toddling around London, seeing the sights, meeting the mates, reading through the stack.

Then, I thought about where else I could go. I had to have accommodation supplied, under the circumstances, so I considered the options, and found myself back in the town of my birth. Very odd to be back, and odder still as I it was the first Thanksgiving in eight years I had in the States.

My cut-price where’s-the-catch? trip took me from Gatwick to Detroit to National Airport. Not Reagan. National. Got it?

At any rate, I spent most of it inhaling a copy of I Served the King of England by Brohumil Hrabal (Vintage, 2005). A slim volume with a decadent, mouldy brown cover sporting a dusty 1920s scene in a plush hotel, waiters, flappers and wealthy gentleman sunk into velvet banquettes, hiding in snugs and dark wood panelling. Hrabal’s was not a name I knew, but Milan Kundera called him the greatest writer in their country. If it’s good enough for Kundera, it’s enough to knock the rest of us sideways. It is essentially a picaresque, but not of the sunny, blond-haired, rosy-cheeked, dirty fingernails variety. The book opens with a young, poor man helping his resourceful grandmother with her rather unusual work: she profits from the profits of others, as visiting salesmen up on their luck toss their old, worn shirts, socks and jocks out the window into a stream. There sit the young man and his grandmother, who wait, heron-like, ready to lift them out, wash, mend and resell them down the ladder of working men. Soon, the boy seeks to come up in the world, and gains employment as a waiter in one of Prague’s old hotels in a day when waitering was a career, and only the observant, the skilled and the discreet could get ahead.

From this unremarkable start opens the most charming, exquisitely-written tale I have read in years. Though it never leaves Prague and surrounds, the boy has an education beyond his wildest dreams, as lush, exotic and glittering as the most colourful travel lit. Hrabal writes sensually, not sexually, about the boy’s first encounters with the garish women who frequent the hotels, as he ‘covers their laps with flowers’. He captures awe surrounding the prime minister’s misleading dinner for three, as the staff twigging with varying speeds to the non-existence of third diner as man and mistress tumble, sweetly into a pergola in the gardens.

There is an air of magic to this book, and though I know that the term ‘magic realism’ can turn people clean off, there is nothing here as blatant as Garcìa Marquez or Angela Carter. It is as if the magic has just left the stage, leaving just a twinkle in its wake. Here, the King of Ethiopa arrives with his full entourage, and a banquet is created the likes of which Bohemia has never seen. The near-orgiastic scene that erupts as the camel stuffed with x, stuffed with y and flavoured with all the spices of the Orient is cut and consumed is loud, sparkling, funny and mesmerising. There are more such scenes, but I won’t spoil it for you. (If you’re interested, another blogger, waggish, has run through it comprehensively)
What’s more, I was so astonished by it, that I threw my copy across the living room in Washington at my father, and left it there, demanding that he read it. Oi, you people who don’t read modern and contemporary fiction – get to it.

As to my time in Washington, it was lovely, filling and all those good things. Met up with the Best Friend, and thinking of happy nights in Addis in King's Cross, introduced her to some first-rate Ethiopian in Addams Morgan, and sampled some fabulous but pricey mojitos. She is muchly missed, but there we are. Also, did some wandering in the Old Country of the outback of North West DC and relearned my driving skills all over again. Relaxing. Not London. Good.

Going the Wicklow Way

2006-11-05T11:24:00.000Z

Having left at the crack of dawn (why am I always, always leaving at the crack of dawn despite my best efforts?!?!),

I'm back again after a gloriously lazy weekend in Wicklow with a houseful of friends, food, wine and sea views.

Fierce therapeutic, of course, and nice to make the place feel like home. Pleasing to be with other people who appreciate the small pleasures, and cracked up to see international types endearing themselves/bewildering locals to take pictures of gingerbread men and the like. Barely resisted the urge to avail of the five-finger discount in one of the town's amazing boutiques, well beyond my price range, of course. Lots of stomping, all the cobwebs blown out and returned clearheaded and sure as ever that London is not the place for me, but I think that's just going to be the way it is.

Did almost no reading while I was there, having just finished the fantastic The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa, a truly daft Dante-as-detective effort, and *gak* Mother Missing by Joyce Carol bloody Oates. Why I'm constantly subjected to Women's Writing (as opposed to writing by women) simply because I'm young and female is beyond me: as if you would feed a black freelancer almost exclusively Black Writing, mais bon. Silliness and entirely not my cup of tea, with women characters so objectionable, so catty, manipulative and stereotypically female that it was hard to drag myself past the opening scene. The Dante effort was fine but not worth discussing further, but the Agualusa! Fantastic. Absolutely gorgeous, gentle writing, unusual characters well developed, and several openly discussed and well-integrated themes. Based in Angola, it oozes light and heat, and has a lovely, rounded story about a 'seller of pasts' and how he falls in love. Absolutely superlative in its simplicity, and really rekindling an interest in contemporary African writing for me.

Now have a week off (use it or lose it holidays) and not enough to read! I might have to (gasp) read for pleasure! Shockin'.

London Days

2006-10-17T20:49:00.000+01:00

So aside from the obvious reading, writing and whathaveyou, I spend more time in London outside than I have in any city in the world. I've lived long-term in four, so I think that this is pretty revolutionary. Most of it is to do with biking, which I discovered partially through necessity in Dublin. Whenever I reveal that I cycle through London most days, I'm met with astonishment- so dangerous, so nasty in bad weather, etc. I've found the eponymous small pleasures of this blog hard to come by in London, but cycling in London is something to smile about. Sure, Florence wasn't half bad either, for sheer beauty... but cobbles, ach. Although the tube goes practically everywhere, the buses are fantastic and the overground connects you to everything, public transportation here is hideously expensive and relatively time-consuming. I mean, Hell, I'm in work in less than fifteen minutes, and much more importantly, I could be home by 5.45.

The same was true in my last job, which had the (only) added benefit of a daily roundtrip down Regent's Canal.

It was all coots, geese and ducklings.

Good stuff, and sure beat Hampstead Road at rush hour, but you can't complain.

But the real benefit of cycling is being outside. You get to know your way around, you see things from a different perspective and after a few months, you've soaked up enough vitamin D to keep the SADs away at least through the other side of Christmas. It also gives you great, low impact exercise, which is, as we all know, the only kind of exercise.

The Bearded One has turned to cycling, but also to sport. This surprises me, as he was not a sporting type before, which suited yours truly grand. But, like myself, he finds that London gets to him, that our semi-subterranean flat lacks light and air in the wintertime, and so cricket, football, basketball and now baseball... all are to be played, watched and enjoyed. Nyeh, what the Hell.

My other new-found hobby since moving here, related to quality has been gardening. (See photo...) "You can afford to rent a place with a garden?! On a publishing salary?!?!?" Um, no. We have a slender slice of air and sky, sunk in the middle of North London between the converted flat at the back of a shop and the whitewashed brick wall of the picturesque row houses perpendicular to us.
It's fantastic. We love it- flowers, pots, palm tree, candles, tiny table and chairs, and a laundry line.

And, meet the real cause of this rant: my renewed appreciation for the natural world has spurred on a complete obsession with Bill Oddie's nature shows. Ok, ok, so many of you will tune out right about... now. Mais bon. It's true! He's lovely. And a conservationist, and genuinely enthusiastic about not just nature, but British nature. I find this encouraging. And now, oh, yes... Mini Oddie on your desktop, ALL THE TIME. I have no words. You need it. You want it. Doitdoit.

Independent Booksellers - query!

2006-10-13T12:30:00.000+01:00

Hey there blogland. Two items here, and a shout out for help! I know I'm hardly coming down in visitors here, but if anyone can hear me...

I recently read a feature in one of the UK national papers about a group of independent bookshops who banded together to start a collective website. The idea was that punters order a book online, decide which of their local independent bookshops they wanted it to be delivered to, got an email when it arrived, and then walked in and bought it. The idea, of course, is to redirect some A*$zon users back into the physical bookshop, while offering the convenience of 24-hour internet searching.

Any thoughts, lads? I can't remember the name of this scheme, and I'd love to start sending you their way by way of click-thrus.

Meanwhile, Irish readers, get moving! The Guardian is taking nominations for good independent bookellers in Ireland for their database. I say the Exchange Bookshop in Dalkey and Readers in Dun Laoghaire- both south County Dublin, narf narf. Natch.

2006-10-13T10:48:00.000+01:00

Autumn

2006-10-12T10:54:00.001+01:00

A disgraceful amount of time has passed since my last post. I never thought I'd be quite this bad this early on, but there we be.

Succeeded in seeing only one preview for the Dublin Theatre Festival, Festen at the Gate. Odd to see a play which began life as a film, and one that has made the seamless move from a Danish to an Irish setting, but it was a very fine play. Not all of the actors were up to the task, or alternately, their direction clashed when they were pitted against eachother, but all in all a success. The physical 'choreography' of it on stage was very fine indeed, with at one point three or four scenes playing simultaneously on stage- physically overlapping without seeing eachother, juxtaposing the various relationships to great effect.

The scene is set as a family joins together in a large country house in Denmark/Ireland for a banquet in honour of the father's 60th. Having just celebrated my father's 60th in an old Dublin pub, I wondered whether we'd done him justice... until the banquet scene all went sour with the promised nasty revelation of a dark family secret. Dark is an understatement, mais bon.

It was also extremely funny: it was, as I've tried to highlight, a very well-staged affair, so there was often a physical comedy element to its presentation, be it slapstick or mock-balletic. This not to mention some very funny lines...

The new RTÉ arts show, cast out to the 11pm weekly slot (RTÉ supporting the arts, ha!) came into its own when covering the Theatre Festival soon after my return. I was glad of this, considering that their debut airing was a focus on public sculpture. You do the math: sculpture, radio, sculpture, radio... I mean, ok, maybe once you have a listenership, but your debut show?? Come on.

But I digress. One of the critics mentioned that he saw one woman walk out of Festen, and to be honest, I'm surprised it didn't happen at every show. I'm trying, here, not to reveal the revelation, but let's just say it's a bit topical to Ireland's current confessional culture.

I wasn't the only one who liked it, though I suspect my companion for the evening did not- the Guardian gave it 4/5 stars.

Dublin Theatre Festival

2006-09-25T21:18:00.000+01:00

So, being third in a three-woman team, I didn't draw the lucky straw to Edinburgh this year. That said, if I were to go, with, say, The Bearded One, I'd rather it not be during the festival so that we might enjoy the city, or alternately, that I not be at the festival for work. Demanding, I know, but that's what publicity gals are like - or so I'm told.

Besides, it's the Dublin Theatre Festival that really gets me going, as it always somehow manages to up the ante. Dublin is an amazing city for theatre, it's true, but things tend to get a bit pallsy and nepotistic, with the same pairings of actors/directors or actors/playwrights cropping up again and again. Either that, or as happened to me in my last two years of university, absolutely everything I saw was laughably bad. Every single one. It was thespian death out there, folks, but since, the pendulum has swung back to the kind of theatre we're all comfortably used to, and some we're not. The festival is a bit of fresh air, and the rest of the year seems to draw a lot of energy from it.

So, Thursday will see me at an Irish adaptation of Festen, reviewed there for the West End production. No doubt the ever-present theme of abuse will hit the reviews, which like the constant insistence on all things Catholic gets trying, particularly when you're living in England, but I'm intrigued as to how the Dublin production will rework a Danish country kitchen drama.

And, if I can get the blasted website to accept my plastic, I'll fly solo to a matinee -a parkbench first- to see the topical production of The Exonerated. Always one for a gimmick, I'm only dying to see who shows up as a guest. Unsurprisingly, given the topic, Susan Sarandon was strutting her stuff in the New York show. On the downside, it's in (though it pains me to link to anything so hideous) here we go, it's Liberty Hall.

Reviews to follow.

Freelance aspirations

2006-09-19T11:30:00.000+01:00

So in a recent e-ponder at my understandably none-too-impressed mother, I wondered exactly how much freelance reviewing and writing one would have to get before giving up the day job. This is, of course, a very naive train of thought, but Hell, that's what blogs are for.

I have found that freelancers spend so much time having to promote themselves and their abilities that they become unreliable narrators of how they spend their time, or alternately, they've been doing it for so long that they started in a time when things were very different. I would love to know more about the harsh realities of freelance features journalism and how one makes the leap. If you've already got a national broadsheet and a few major literary outlets under your belt, what's next? How do you up the ante from £40 or £60 pieces without ending up making coffee in a newsroom somewhere? Need it necessarily be a one-way ticket to the poorhouse and 60-hour weeks alone on your laptop? Will you always be faced with people asking if you never wanted a 'real career'? Will you cease to care? Ponder ponder.

Submitting to Peer Pressure

2006-09-17T19:50:00.000+01:00

So, despite a groaning piles of Books I Should Be Reading Because I'm Paid to Do So, I went into the singularly unfriendly Camden Waterstone's to remind myself why indies are best and to buy Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons. *will master accents and italics shortly, joy* Have a look at the master's own website, a bit cutesy but impressive nonetheless.

It's just breathtaking. The book that is, not his website. The short story is, as they say, your only man.

Much to my immense annoyance, I missed the William Trevor reading at the short story festival this weekend through a truly lame combination of fatigue, lack of funds and the lure of the Brick Lane Beigel Shop. That, and fear of meeting work folk I don't know well enough yet, but should.

So on a completely unrelated note, I'm compiling a Christmas list, one which includes precious few books (see above) but rather a list of passwords to the likes of the LRB, the New Yorker and a few other tools of the trade I would really rather like but, unsurprisingly, find that I cannot afford. I should probably do something bright like do alternate weeks of different mags with a £5 budget. That's a thought.

The Fish is Ill

2006-09-15T18:58:00.000+01:00

I failed to point out earlier that my fish is ill. Fish are by no means equal to cats in terms of company, but one gets attached... am displeased.
(o} }} ><|

Greetings, Blogland

2006-09-15T17:46:00.000+01:00

Being a thoroughly 21st-century gal these days, I thought that the time had come to start a blog. It will be, and hopefully remain, a fairly anonymous effort. My aim is to meet and greet some of the likeminded books bloggers, writers and critics whose work I've come across in the last year.

I make no promises to be regular in my posts, sociable in my nature, nor positive in my outlook, but I will try to keep it interesting and topical and include some photos of mine and others I like. Stealing images and words isn't nice, so try to avoid it, and I'll plan to do the same.