4 am hurts. A black, dizzying punch that still aches 30 minutes later yomping along the towpath. I am king of an empty world all the way to St. Pancras.
The only demarcation between the dark tunnels of London and the backside of pre-dawn Essex is the scattering of distant sodium fireflies. Thanks to the recent Chunnel fire we crawl below the sea. With its usual sense of appropriateness, iPod shuffle offers up 6 Underground.
The French morning on the other side deliver a dull, metallic grey sky. The landscape a muted palette of shabby brown fields and failing green. Rolling through Belgium, the incremental benefits of more light are offset by pollution poxed concrete and graffiti contagion.
Gare du Nord’s usual aroma of urine seems significantly restrained this morning. I manage to descend and catch the metro with a single gag reflex. By the time I reach Arts Loi/Kunst-Wet I have even adjusted to the carriage’s stereo mix of Flemish in one ear and French in the other. Maybe I am becoming immune to Brussels.
After eight hours of discussion on climate change, I begin the drift from Cathédrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule back to Zuidstation. Achieving my temporary duration grail of a Belgian edition of Paris Match with 14 pages on Jaques Brel, I am in a state of grace. The cold rain coming down does not want to fall on me. The city’s population of pissant pickpockets disregard me as a mark. I am reacquainted with the fact that the Metro PA plays music by a serenade of snatched Bowie every time my train hits a stop. Sunny-faced children wave at me. For a few minutes I feel as if even Mafya bullets would miss me.
I shop for gifts that could also double as a suicidal diet, filling my bag with Leonidas chocolates, cheese, Ardennes butter, biscuits and beer. Nabbing a French graphic novel called Ghostmoney, I spend the wait for the 18:59 back to London trying to improve my French. ‘La marche s’était arrētée et un entrange silence était tombé … un cri a retenti de láutre cōté de la rue.'
Looking out at the unrelenting black beyond the window, the only sign of crossing the French border is the twitching as my Blackberry shifts from BASE to Orange F. The Eurozone becomes one flesh in the dark. Nationhood reduced to data virtuality, the microwave whispers of sovereignty.
We enter the Chunnel. The soundtrack of Blade Runner folds into me. With nothing to look at but my own reflection in the dark glass, I close my eyes.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Lost Entries
Between the fissure of intention and action, 208 entries of English Dreaming, English Rain can now officially be declared lost. Two Moleskines’ worth of words intended for remain unpublished. The sheer scale of missing dispatches makes me realise the vast difference between writing something and actually posting it.
Once externalised, some passages are too personal for publication. Others crumble under the urge to polish. Some stay in black on white scratching because there are times when I cannot forget the motto ‘know, will, dare and be silent’. Most often, they fail to make the jump because I leave too long between writing the review of an event in the little black book and typing it up. Whether Blade Runner live at the South Bank or pheasant curry at Rules, if they words are not posted within a couple of days, the failure of momentum makes me doubt their value.
Of all the lost entries, the ones I missed putting up most are ‘Changing the World One West Ham Fan at a Time’, ‘Pacific Highway’ and ‘Duke Vin and the Birth of Ska’. Maybe these tales of terrorist T-shirts, romance on the road to Port Macquarie and shaking hands with ska legends will have to emerge in some other form.
Once externalised, some passages are too personal for publication. Others crumble under the urge to polish. Some stay in black on white scratching because there are times when I cannot forget the motto ‘know, will, dare and be silent’. Most often, they fail to make the jump because I leave too long between writing the review of an event in the little black book and typing it up. Whether Blade Runner live at the South Bank or pheasant curry at Rules, if they words are not posted within a couple of days, the failure of momentum makes me doubt their value.
Of all the lost entries, the ones I missed putting up most are ‘Changing the World One West Ham Fan at a Time’, ‘Pacific Highway’ and ‘Duke Vin and the Birth of Ska’. Maybe these tales of terrorist T-shirts, romance on the road to Port Macquarie and shaking hands with ska legends will have to emerge in some other form.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
A Journalist Wanting Words
In my career I have interviewed Oscar winners and 15-minute pop stars, political heavyweights and hip comedians. Down the wire and in smoke-choked bars, I have filled notebooks with scratchy field recordings. From heroes like Bill Hicks to Serbian warlord villains, I have asked questions, stolen quotes.
More than 20 years of interrogating have given me good technique. I research. I charm. Give me 30 minutes and a couple of drinks and I will always get more than the usual tired procession of recycled anecdotes.
However, I am not used to being the interviewee. Hundreds of hours of professional questioning make it feel uncomfortable when it is time for role reversal. Being grilled on the BBC One O’ Clock News holds none of the terror of meeting an unknown journalist for beers and a personal probing.
Beyond contractual obligations, I do not turn down today’s interview because all that experience means there is too much empathy for a journalist wanting words. Given our career trajectories, Matt and I run deep with respect for regional media, the hard slog of provincial press. Having been there and dealt with too many no-listers with egos the size of planets makes you want to be better.
Come lunch, I stop work. Take a break from writing tomorrow’s speech, walk along the canal to my primary local. Buy a strawberry beer, sit in the pub’s library corner and wait on the journo. The strangeness of speaking to inland Oz via a meeting a hundred yards from my home is not lost on me.
The editor of You Magazine is funny and clever, good at what she does. Almost instantly she has me talking about curries with Matt, the black humour of newsrooms and invocating the Cosmic Joker. Both of us ruminate on God’s penchant for fatal punchlines. She offers up the comforting thought that by writing 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die, instead of dying in some absurd accident, I have probably guaranteed a death 50 years in the future: “Grandchildren around the hospice bed.”
Bonding over Underbelly leads to questions on canalside life and the Lady Love. They do not get dodged. I bore on the spatial shock and casual splendour of Australia. Drift from stories of my lifelong llama curse to views on religious hubris and the evil of hippos. We discuss the interconnectedness of all action, the loneliness of solo authoring and what Matt and I might write next. The paranoiac bible gets a big thumbs up. I just hope when it gets written up, she uses my words on mayfly days and eating the extra chocolate biscuit.
One of the marks of a good interview is it feels like this one – conversation, not interrogation. At the end of it, I come out respecting and liking my questioner. I am even sufficiently charmed to agree to being photographed on the blue bridge. With my narrowboat neighbours behind me, I look into the massive lens and surprise myself with a smile.
More than 20 years of interrogating have given me good technique. I research. I charm. Give me 30 minutes and a couple of drinks and I will always get more than the usual tired procession of recycled anecdotes.
However, I am not used to being the interviewee. Hundreds of hours of professional questioning make it feel uncomfortable when it is time for role reversal. Being grilled on the BBC One O’ Clock News holds none of the terror of meeting an unknown journalist for beers and a personal probing.
Beyond contractual obligations, I do not turn down today’s interview because all that experience means there is too much empathy for a journalist wanting words. Given our career trajectories, Matt and I run deep with respect for regional media, the hard slog of provincial press. Having been there and dealt with too many no-listers with egos the size of planets makes you want to be better.
Come lunch, I stop work. Take a break from writing tomorrow’s speech, walk along the canal to my primary local. Buy a strawberry beer, sit in the pub’s library corner and wait on the journo. The strangeness of speaking to inland Oz via a meeting a hundred yards from my home is not lost on me.
The editor of You Magazine is funny and clever, good at what she does. Almost instantly she has me talking about curries with Matt, the black humour of newsrooms and invocating the Cosmic Joker. Both of us ruminate on God’s penchant for fatal punchlines. She offers up the comforting thought that by writing 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die, instead of dying in some absurd accident, I have probably guaranteed a death 50 years in the future: “Grandchildren around the hospice bed.”
Bonding over Underbelly leads to questions on canalside life and the Lady Love. They do not get dodged. I bore on the spatial shock and casual splendour of Australia. Drift from stories of my lifelong llama curse to views on religious hubris and the evil of hippos. We discuss the interconnectedness of all action, the loneliness of solo authoring and what Matt and I might write next. The paranoiac bible gets a big thumbs up. I just hope when it gets written up, she uses my words on mayfly days and eating the extra chocolate biscuit.
One of the marks of a good interview is it feels like this one – conversation, not interrogation. At the end of it, I come out respecting and liking my questioner. I am even sufficiently charmed to agree to being photographed on the blue bridge. With my narrowboat neighbours behind me, I look into the massive lens and surprise myself with a smile.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
The Centre of my Universe
The gravity of the Three Bridge Kingdom is impacting on my blood. Separating the settler from the gallowglass. One pools in my feet, the other runs only in my brain. The knowledge that there will come a day when I leave already projects a rupture in my heart.
As the attraction of place becomes stronger, it seems as if it is also warping the trajectories of others I love. Capturing them, creating orbits around the centre of my universe. Coalescing friends into an accessible solar system, ordered by the musica universalis of squabbling geese and boats gently rolling on the water.
The fact that my co-author’s partner lives canalside means the weekends he visits, my home feels like the terrace abode of The Beatles from Help. This week Tim Dedopulos moved from sleeping on my sofa to being a near neighbour with his own resident card. The gravitation even pulls in visitors from Verwood and Hadleigh who have been distanced for years. I can almost believe that one Sunday morning I will walk out for the papers and encounter my errant Canadian brother on the towpath.
These are harsh times and I need my mojo back. The echo of it at Worth Matravers made me realise just what I was missing. If I am to find it, maybe I should look closer to home. The sustaining magic of life is in the small wonder of friends and the soul-kissed love of my little patch of London.
As the attraction of place becomes stronger, it seems as if it is also warping the trajectories of others I love. Capturing them, creating orbits around the centre of my universe. Coalescing friends into an accessible solar system, ordered by the musica universalis of squabbling geese and boats gently rolling on the water.
The fact that my co-author’s partner lives canalside means the weekends he visits, my home feels like the terrace abode of The Beatles from Help. This week Tim Dedopulos moved from sleeping on my sofa to being a near neighbour with his own resident card. The gravitation even pulls in visitors from Verwood and Hadleigh who have been distanced for years. I can almost believe that one Sunday morning I will walk out for the papers and encounter my errant Canadian brother on the towpath.
These are harsh times and I need my mojo back. The echo of it at Worth Matravers made me realise just what I was missing. If I am to find it, maybe I should look closer to home. The sustaining magic of life is in the small wonder of friends and the soul-kissed love of my little patch of London.
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