elegantly dressed pigs

"Give me back my leek!"

Tomorrow is St David's Day, when Welshmen (and women) everywhere will be wearing all manner of leeks, daffodils etc in their buttonholes in honour of the Patron Saint of Wales - no, not Dylan Thomas - not the guy from the Manic Street Preachers who went missing - not them. St David, or Dewi Sant, Archbishop of Wales and grandson of Ceredig, King of Ceredigion.

Rather than wear an almost-onion or an out-of-season, carbon-footprint daff, I have decided to celebrate with a Pig Special for this Elegantly Dressed Wednesday. Observe the innate elegance of the pig above. Everything about him is beautiful and speaks of high breeding, including the cushion he stands on and even the supplicating (and clearly Welsh) girl. He is a Porcine Oracle.

This connection isn't as far-fetched as it might seem to those whose only contact with pigs was, say, in the prepared meats aisle. Pigs are not only important historically and symbolically to all mankind, for all sorts of reasons - they are also an ancient emblem of Welshness,* and were revered for their wisdom and kindness in the olden days. They figure importantly in the Mabinogion, which is the repository of ancient Welsh myth, with stories of shapeshifting common to say the least. This little white piglet is obviously a demigod of some kind.

Now, St David - or Dewi Sant - lived in the sixth century, and was very active in converting the Welsh to Christianity. It is probable that even if he did not believe in the sanctity of pigs, his parishioners probably harboured secret feelings about them, and possibly even consulted them in times of stress. And anyway, St David's Day has grown to encompass far more than the beliefs of the Archbishop himself: after all, we know very little about him. He may even have disliked leeks (silly man). So the pig connection, I say, stands.

You can read more about it in this lecture, which was delivered five years ago to the Saint David's Society of Greater St Louis. Ms B was unfortunately unable to be present at the event, but you can, with her, read and see what you missed.

If all this gets you in the mood for pigs, check out the site I got the picture from: Porcopolis, a single-minded bestiary, "a repository of the eternal verities and varieties of swinedom". In fact, go there anyway.

And Happy St David's Day!

*in fact, there are larger Celtic significances as well, which is nice to remember as la famille Baroque prepares for its trip to Cornwall.

auden again - the centenary's only just started

Sorry: more Auden. He's everywhere. Ian Sansom says, in the Telegraph: "...it can be truly shocking, the work of a great artist, in its magnitude and in scope."

Of course he's stolen his syntax there from the old master.

And isn't it true! How often have you felt shocked, reading something, that someone could be so fruitful, so abundant - know so much, have so many ideas, be so big. I'm so glad he put it like this.

It's a wonderful vivid article. Beginning with a disarming story about how Sansom left his job at Foyles (where Ms B never bought a book from him, alas: I never shopped there, so put off was I by a) the fact that Christina Foyle wouldn't let the shop be unionised - my horror outlasted Christina Foyle & indeed persists to this day as a prejudice - and b) the queues) to start a PhD on Auden, it finishes like this:

"He is everywhere, if you look, in early Philip Larkin, in James Fenton, John Ashbery, Derek Walcott, Paul Muldoon, and particularly memorably in Gavin Ewart's ribald "The Short Blake-Style Gnomic Epigram", which reads simply, "A voice was heard from a bottle of hock, saying:/ I am the ghost of W H Auden's cock!" Isn't the character Hilary in Alan Bennett's play The Old Country a little bit like Auden? And that's him, for certain, as the detective Nigel Strangeways in Day-Lewis's novel A Question of Proof . I've slipped him into my own books, too, in quotation and disguised as minor characters. Like God, or a first love, he's gone, but not forgotten."

battle of the blogs

Okay, there is this thing - the Battle of the Blogs - which is being run by a lovely person in Brooklyn called Leesa. Ms B has been nominated* for it, which means Ms B now wants you to go and vote for her. I know, there's been a lot of this stuff lately. At least nobody had to go and vote over at Norm's blog.

I'm up against one other blog, it's like a knockout. Of course if you get there and like the other blog better, I'm duty-bound to tell you to vote for that one! Oh yes! There's to be no funny stuff.

Anyway the round that I'm in can be found here.

Go and see what you think.

* thank you, Periodic Englishman!

holding up a mirren to the rest of us

This evening I had a long conversation with a friend whose father died at the weekend; I've been hearing the whole story for weeks, through the kids, so I knew how hard life had been round their place. We talked for quite a while, as I say, going over the whole thing: the details of his final days, how her mother is, doctors, social services, who's to speak at the funeral, support from neighbours, how she's feeling, how the kids are, what her mother will do next, etc.

Then she suddenly broke in and said: "On another note - isn't it wonderful about Helen Mirren's Oscar?"

"Oh," I said - "that dress! She looked ten times better than the rest of them!" (I wasn't mentioning Nicole Kidman but I will now: what the hell was that she was wearing? She looked like the beanstalk, draped in a red carpet! Not gereat.) (Of course, I have to say that. Thinness has never been the Baroque strong point. It would undermine the entire thesis, after all.)

My friend bursts in here with a rapturous expostulation: that silver lace, that neckline, that wrapped fabric around the waist ("she's 61!"), swirling skirts and all the rest of it."Oh my God," she concludes. "She deserves an Oscar just for the dress!"

I could only agree. It's an inspiration to the rest of us. Hopefully by the time I'm 61 I'll look as good as that.

By the way, I saw The Queen last week. Dazzling. I found it hard to watch. It's essentially a movie about pain, and very moving. But at the same time it's also a satisfying satire of the early days of the Blair government. Its depictions of Cherie and of Alistair Campbell are star turns not to be missed. And the characterisation of Blair is brilliant: he starts the film almost literally as a clown, and deepens into his position as the week progresses (and while Campbell simultaneously subsides), until in a coda at the end we are suddenly presented with the seeds of NOW. (Though the film can't possibly present us with the seeds of how awful NOW is. It occurs to me that NOW is even worse than the week after Diana died, which is going some.) It is chilling, and brilliant.

Now, while this is happening we are witness to the struggle of a woman, Helen Mirren, the Queen, to come to grips with a situation she has absolutely no means for understanding. That is, the situation around her is bizarre and she has only the protocol for vaguely normal scenarios. It's a public struggle but it is also a very private struggle. The pivotal scene - in many ways, and to me at least - is the scene where the Queen comes face to face with this amazing stag that the Duke and princes are (of course) trying to hunt down as a distraction from their grief. (Brilliant.) To me this encounter, between Queen and stag, has a deep symbolic meaning whcih goes almost beyond the film. I mean I loved it. And it is where public, private and mythical - that is, the symbolic meanings of things, and what is the monacrhy built on nif not symbol - all merge to give the film its true meaning.

The stag is later responsible for the one, sole, false note of the movie. I won't go into that here.

Mirren's performance is absolutely riveting. People have gone on about the hairstyle, whcih is indeed frightening, and the clothes. But even more than that, in this role she is the Queen, and she's never off-screen for more than a minute.

I was struck by the daring of the film's premise: taking this of all weeks, the week after Diana died, and putting it under a spotlight - because that week is something we all remember, it's part of each of us, we each have to own our share of it - it shows us ourselves and simply invites us to look at it again in light of what we know now. Scary in its audacity.

To be honest, Ms B was in tears of some sort or another throughout much of the film. But then I can cry at a good camera angle.

Seriously. Go see this film.

cup of tea anyone?

Yesterday's Guardian had an article about the "dulling down" of the workplace. Apparently the news is that even people with jobs "that shouldn't be boring" - jobs like lawyer, teacher, marketing officer - are bored. A study from the University of Central Lancashire says this affects as many as a third of people even in "enviable" jobs.

Well, I think that's interesting. I think it's like disappointed love.

And here is a story on the theme by the masterly Bobby Farouk, who can be found most days over at MRBFK. I think he captures the spirit of the Guardian piece, plus a touch of The Office maybe, plus something even bleaker than that.

(By the way , Ms B is a bit delicate: I could never bear to watch The Office...)

as I was going to St Ives...

Okay, so the baroque niece is not coming to stay in April: it seems the trip was made subject to conditions, which as a sulky teenager she was duty-bound not to abide by, and so now - as her parents (who positively pride themselves on how firm and consistent they can be) are equally duty-bound to do what they threatened and never deviate one inch, even for the sake of making people happy! No! Especially for that purpose - she is not coming.

Well, at least he finally answered my emails, that is, he responded once Mama Baroque started hassling him too - so it's still early enough to fix something up for my holiday, seeing as how I've engineered two solid weeks off work. I'll have to change the dates now, slightly, but I think I can.

Ms B needs a break so badly she can taste it. Ms B has not been out of London in months, and has had several different kinds of ill health* since starting her very hard (and also un-fun - is there something I'm just not getting?) new job - in fact, is writing this under a blanket on the sofa, once again, a woman with enough strength only to type and to dream of better things - and basically has been spending lots of time (rather like her niece but without resorting to the purple hair dye) sitting around all by herself feeling that there must be more to life.

Well - higgledy piggledy pop! There is!

Once I'd had the idea of going somewhere, it didn't take long to hit on a destination. Somewhere far from London in miles and in spirit. Somewhere with space. Space with something in it besides shops and rubbish. Somewhere with coffee, and possibly even internet access. Somewhere with a Tate Gallery in it - somewhere the kids might want to go, and bring their mates along with them. That's right - St Ives! Sort of like Woodstock-on-Sea.

Furthermore, a primary-school-mate of the Urban Warrior - the girl called Felix, whose mother was the granddaughter of one of the big St Ives artists, I forget which one - moved away there in Year 7. So she might pop up. If she does it'll be trouble, though. She looked 16 when she was 12.

Ms B is very excited. The house is lovely - we can stand to be in it for a week - and big enough for (floor-sleeping) extra kids. It's 40 metres from the beach - I think this picture was taken not far from it. We'll smell the sea and hear the gulls at all times. And the sea is right in the town.

Maybe I'll meet a nice artist with salty blue eyes and a strong stomach for adolescents!

Then again, probably I won't.

* note from future: it was the gall stones...

my good side

Please, dear readers, calm yourselves: if you've been wishing you could find out what kind of animal I'd secretly like to be, or whether I'd be able to share an airing cupboard with Max Hastings, now you can: my normblog profile is up. As we all know, normblog is the bee's knees!

Oddly, reading it now, I feel I might fill it in differently today than I did on the day I did it. But that's the fun of profiles! Head over there now for all the secrets you never knew about Ms B.

a sari tale

I first knew I wasn't very well when I got on the bus yesterday morning to go to my Dreamweaver course. Day Two. Just me and the instructor, but that's not how it sounds. I suddenly realised that: a) I had a sore throat and just ached all over; b) I had somehow left the house without a scarf (this rarely happens, even in summer); and c) I was not going to get through even the morning without something wrapped around me: look at my profile thumbnail up there. I wear scarves. Love 'em.

Fortunately, though, the training was in Whitechapel! All was not lost. I had already promised myself a blue-&-green beaded pashmina that was hanging up outside Ranees sari shop, collecting fumes from the road like a lovely souvenir from home for when I go back to Victoria. But Ranees was not open yet so I drifted vacantly and achily through the market all the way back to Whitechapel station (having got off by the Mosque) before finding one. And dear God what a pashmina I have found! It's wool (not viscose, though don't get me wrong - viscose is one of my fave fibres). The colours are . A dark, calm grey, a dove grey, and red, woven into the usual paisley border (Ms B loves paisleys), with amazing sheer panels in the centre - and, in between the sheer panels and the border, these incredible embroidered orange flowers - so vibrant and glowing that you can hardly feel sick while they're around you. It's also longer than my others, so that when you wrap it around your shoulders it stays wrapped.

I said to the man at the stall, how much is this one? "Fifteen," he says. "One five." I'm looking at it, fingering it. "One five?" I say. "Okay," he says. "One three."

I spent the whole day in my training session wrapped up in it like an old woman, feeling dizzy and strange. And then I slept in it too. Sari to say. And spent today at home, wrapped up in it. Wonderful.

On the way home last night I bought the green and blue one. It's viscose. It was £3.99. Boy do I miss that part of town.

toying with my art

So, Ms Baroque finally got round to renewing her Tate membership only to find that the big splash (not "The Splash"; that would have made her happy) of the season is this enormous Gilbert & George exhibition.

And since when did being a scatalogical, anal-rententive fusspot ever entitle you to a gigantic Tate exhibition? (Ms B makes no apologies for the occasional tetchy prejudicial opinion.) I know they're London fixtures. I used to walk past their house(s) regularly. I do think it takes an extraordinary amount of courage to be yourself, and to make a construct of yourself is clearly a step beyond - though who knows. Maybe a construct is like a mask.

Anyway, I just don't get it. It all seems the same to me, their stuff, it all seems to happen at the same pitch: a pitch that, frankly, gets numbing pretty quickly. A colleague said the other day, and he may have hit the nail on the head: "well, maybe back in the day..." meaning they looked, somehow, fresher then. You know, for epateeing les bourgeois. Except that the exhibition is now. This is the day. The bourgeoisie has grown unshockable - or, better yet, in a nifty counterpoint has shown that shock wears off.

Such were my thoughts, in general, until I got an email from the Tate advertising their newly-set-up Gilbert & George Shop. And suddenly it all made a kind of sense.

Bourgeoise that I am I expect I shall go to the show (after all, I paid). Maybe, primed with my toy, I'll have a Damascene conversion.

elegantly dressed Auden

WH Auden was born 100 years ago this very day. I think I need say nothing about his elegance: just look at the picture.

February 21, 2007: Based on Lines from Auden
(a very fresh and rough draft, unfortunately)

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after:
no one, not even Cambridge was to blame.
He knew human folly like the back of his hand
and forgave us our folly in his own name.

Therefore we love him because his judgements are so
apposite to the dilemma in which we find ourselves;
he who from these lands of terrifying mottoes
emerged into the blinking light of 52nd St's little hells,

where he saw and dispensed to us a homeopathic faith
in his marvellous long letters but kept none, not one word:
but no. He kept his own faith, that's correct.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd.

All will be judged. Master of nuance and scruple,
what was it your shadow unwittingly said?
From life to Art, it's a painstaking adaption.
Pray for me and all writers, living or dead.


As James Fenton said: Happy birthday, Uncle Wiz!

photograph: Jane Bown

Edmund White and Henry James

Can this be deliberate? Or are they perhaps related?

photographs: Edmund White property of Bookslut; Henry James, by John Singer Sargent, property of HM the Queen

all donut, no holes

Okay, now I'm recovering a bit I just want to flag up the excellent couple of new pamphlets from the equally excellent - in fact, more excellent because they are that without which, etc - Donut Press, which were launched on Friday night.

Colette Bryce's The Observations of Aleksandr Svetlov is made up of a series of poems around a character who apparently came to her, and hung around - "I have a new respect for people who write novels, and what it's like for them, putting up with all these people who just show up," she said - until she had written these poems. And Roddy Lumsden's super try again is made up of what he calls overlays, or homeopathic versions - poems whose sources lie in lines found elsewhere. And, in an overlay of its own, the invite poster above takes its line "This is no weekday bubble up!" from one of Roddy's poems.

(Ms B did something like this a few years ago, writing poems based on other people's words. I patched together, rewrote and edited a series of emails from one person, and a long anecdote another friend told me in the pub. Trouble was, when the friend saw the poem - which had taken me months of work to get right - he assumed he was the author!)

Hats off here to Andy Ching, a bloke who started a tiny press making pamphlets in his spare time - and got it totally right from the word go - and whose books, with matt laminate covers, lovely typography and endpapers (you don't even get those at Faber anymore) are more beautiful than most of the poshest poetry books around, with none of that deadly small-press gentility, either.

It is my considered opinion that we are at the beginning of a renaissance of smaller presses in Britain, and Donut - whose first two full-length collections (by the estimable Tim Wells and the far taller Tim Turnbull) were both shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best first collection last year - is near the front of the charge.

I think he's also, by stealth, rediscovering a form: the best of these pamphlets, like John Stammers' Buffalo Bills, are things that would never have worked as full collections, and might have sat awkwardly as part or half of one. They are legitimising smaller books, giving poets more flexibility of format. Usually you just hear of pamphlets or "chapbooks" (why do I hae that word so much? It seems so affected!) as something people have because they don't have a full collection yet, whereas in the old days - I mean not so long ago - poets would publish their littler things in between main collections... So I really like these.

The pamphlets are £5 and are just the right size to fit in your pocket, should you fancy (but please don't) a Shelley moment...

And it was a great party. I always hate it when people blog up great parties, you're like "oo-oh, bully for you!" but this time it really was a great party.

good bye, blah blah, and shut the door as you go

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the travails of Ms B and the ex-Mr B in dragging their kids through the educational system. You will also recall that I said I would take my middle kid, the Tall Blond Rock God, who is in what we very much hope will turn out to be his GCSE year, out for a pizza to see if anything could be done.

We went last night. He asked if he could being a friend. I like his friend, so I said yes, and I engaged them both on the subject of their plans, their courses, their aspirations.

The friend, whose parents moved away to Bristol last summer, comes down to London every chance he gets. In his rucksack he carries an old cigar box full of his writings. He has been known to study the Baroque poetry bookshelves with a casual intensity not lost on me, though clearly it wouldn't do to be seen liking someone's mother's books. He's in his A levels. Here's what he's studying: English Language, Philosophy, and Classical Civilisations.

English Language is a bitter disappointment. In answer to my excited questions, he told me they have not learned anything about how English developed through the Viking and then Norman invasions, losing its case declensions and developing the most powerful vocabulary in the world. They haven't examined the different kinds of words available in the language - say, the difference between Latinate and Anglo-Saxon words, etymologies, and how you can coin new words and control your tone through diction. There's no grammar. No linguistics of any kind that he can discern. Instead they've had modules on text messages, computer chat, etc. He says: "And I don't know why, but they refuse to look at any poetry."

Philosophy is very interesting. He's reading the books and enjoying it. Last time he was up he was reading Kant. He's a Boy Philosopher.

When I asked him about Classical Civilisations his face lit up: it's his favourite. I ask what they're teaching, and he says, "Right now we're reading Cicero." (In English, of course. It goes without saying that no one in state education, however bright or interested, learns any Latin. No class divisions, though, eh. A meritocracy.)

Now the Tall Blond Rock God springs to life, impatiently saying, "But what about Ancient Egypt? It's so connected - it's so connected - what about Ancient Egypt??" like that. Philosopher Boy looks at him. "It's just Greece and Rome," he said.

" 'Classical' means Greece and Rome, honey," I say, but he insists: "It's just so - connected - "

The Rock God was obsessed with Ancient Egypt all through primary school. In Year 3 it was the big class topic, and he had to draw in his book a picture of an Egyptian god. At parent's evening the teacher was showing us the book and said, pointing to an elephanty-looking thing: "he's made up his own god here, it's so sweet, I know it's not the same but I let him do it," or words to that effect, whereupon the (then infant) Rock God burst in: "I didn't make it up! It's the goddess Taweret!" The who? We discussed our shared ignorance of any such goddess, and the teacher tried to correct him a couple of times, saying elephants weren't in Egyptian mythology, but he was adamant. Taweret was the goddess of pregnant women and was a hippo goddess. And it is true. She was.

The Rock God wanted to be an archaeologist all through his childhood. He is currently in his history GCSE and hates it - even though it's about the Russian Revolution, which he admits is fascinating. He spoke very cogently last night about how all they want to do is cram facts down you for the exam. If you ask a question about something because you're interested - let's say you love it, and want to learn more - they'll say, "That isn't in the exam." He doesn't want to study any more history in case they ruin it for him.

Speaking of which, the Boy Philosopher, questioned about Homer, confirms that they have only looked at the Odyssey. Not the Iliad?? "The Iliad's the one you'll need," I say, thinking of his poetic proclivities.

"I know," he says. "But they do the Odyssey because they don't think most of the kids could cope with the Iliad."

I tell the Boy Philosopher about Roddy Lumsden's poetry workshops at City University, along with anecdotes about very young people I have known who have gone that kind of route - even Oxford students - so he might think of it as a real option. He says, "Well, I'd have to find something in Bristol."

As to the Rock God, he can't bear the thought of A levels next year. He wants a year out. We discussed the options - he wants to try to get an internship at a recording studio.

He also told me that he had gone on the internet and done the most authoritative-looking IQ test he could find, and that his IQ was 139.

Funny, that. This morning I found a pertinent little snippet on Jenny Diski's blog, from February 7th:

...here is a quote from Mark Steel in today's Independent.

In his book, Robin Cook recalled a conversation in which Tony Blair justified sending his son to a selective school, saying he didn't want his kids to end up like those of Harold Wilson. It was pointed out that Wilson's sons went to a comprehensive school, and one became a headmaster, the other a professor. To which Blair said: "Well, I certainly hope my children do better than that."

look where you're going

"Ow! Ohohohohoh..."

"What? What did I do now?"

"Who said it was you! I just banged my toe." She bent down and nearly wept with it.

"Oh for God's sake," he said. "We're late, you know what my dad's like, it won't be worth it. Come on, LArdy." His affectionate nickname for her. It was better than "Wide Load." His mother was nice.

"Do you mind! I can't even walk, and all because of your stupid hideous ugly chair," and she whacked the chair as hard as she could.

"What, you couldn't look where you were going?"

"I did look! DUH! I just didn't SEE it!" She sounded lame and she knew it. She was lame. He left the room.

Tears lept in all directions. She gave the chair another whack and sat down on it, holding her foot. It was an ugly chair, made of some almost orange wood, and its covers were some kind of scratchy material with strange hairy bits sticking out of it. It was the colour of his mother's tights.

Its feet - which supported a little mechanism that made it like a rocker - stuck out an inch or so past where you might think, but nothing could be done. It had to stay where it was so he cold sit in it and watch the football, the cricket, the rugby, the snooker. She covered her face and bawled. She wasn't fat, and her toes had been cold all morning with the heating off and no more change for the meter, and she always looked where she was going, and his dad would have thought this was all very funny. He was always one for a joke.

"Oh, La-ardy," Gus sang in the other room, "the trouble I've seen... Oh, Lardy, the trouble I've seen!" He came in, then stopped. "Oh, Lardy," he said, and stooped down. He cupped her toe in his thin, cold hand and held it still.

***

The station was an echoey hubbub. In a cavern, in a canyon, and her shoes were number nine. Her toe throbbed in its boot and her eyes had that puddy, just-cried feeling. She knew they'd feel like it all through his father's birthday lunch.

She held Gus' hand as he pulled her towards the platform, feeling panicky and fragile. Foreign students milled around at the top of the concrete stairs. Far overheard the ancient glass ceiling arched like an idea.

"Don't trip," Gus said, and started down.

He was eight inches taller and his legs were long. She had to struggle to stay with him - a human train with a sore toe and no track. She pulled a face but he didn't see it.

At the bottom they raced past a girl and a boy, standing still as a freeze frame on the second step up. They looked like foreign students too and were clearly in the middle of something. Mascara ran down the girl's face and the boy was talking earnestly and fast in some language that could have been Spanish.

Gus tugged her hand, the train was coming, and she was straining backwards to watch them. The girl stamped her goot and spoke, loud and clear: "Mario, you are full of shit!"

Gus, pulling her, burst out laughing then. The train came. And years later, even after they had split up, they sometimes talked about the Spanish girl and Mario.

short, sweet and to-the-point

...however, once I read the other entries - and like other entrants who have said as much - I realised how far from world-shattering my own effort was! To be fair, I knew that before I entered, and I also knew why I knew it. It was a structural problem.

I knew it would be a challenge to fit a set-up, a plot of sorts & a denouement into 500 words - TV commercial writers do it, of course, developing scenarios with plots inside one minute - but they don't have to waste precious words on description. (One minute of spoken dialogue equals 125 words, if anyone's interested.)

It seems to me that a short story of this length almost has more in common with commercial-writing or stand-up comedy than with traditional fiction technique, in that you have no time or space for the niceties. I think it's a modern phenomenon - 100 years ago no one would have seen the point of a 500-word story, what wouldf it be for?

I found that many of the stories submitted to the competition shared this issue with mine. They built up beautifully, establishing the basis and then climbing up the plot (as it were) until the last twenty words or so, which were like a precipice - off which one sentence threw the whole thing down. In other words, they had throwaway resolutions. There was no flow down to the sea, only that cliff.

I remember this phenomenon from the days when I was reading a lot of books to my kids. There's a certain class of kids' books, usually older and maybe relying more on pictures or on its central premise, marked by a certain kind of laziness in the writing - presumably because at the time it was thought that you dind't have to be so careful as you were only entertaining the little ones, afert all. Children's writing is never like this any more; it has other problems, to be sure, but that woudl be for another post. The kind of book I'm talking about is where you find a final page with the words: "But it was all a dream."

"But it was all a dream" even became a catchphrase in our house for a kind of crap laziness of thought. In the end result it is like laziness because it's a not-following-through, and the reader feels cheated of the rationale for the story.

And, much as it pains me to say it, some of these stories - including mine - suffered from precisely this syndrome, though in our case it was caused, not by lack of imagination or an ungenerous spirit, but by having to make the whole thing with under 500 words. I even voted for one which I thought was badly marred by it, because I liked the writing and the set-up so much.

I knew it would be hard. (As the famous quote from GB Shaw goes: "Dear (so & so), Please forgive the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one.") And I didn't have enough time to write my story in, only one evening. Once I'd done it I knew the story would need editing upwards to get it to make enough sense. And I couldn't find anything to cut.

So the whole thing was all very interesting, including looking at what was and wasn't working in the other stories. Well done to Maht for running this competition - AND with prizes! Ungenerosity is clearly not an issue for this guy. Rounds of applause all round.

Suddenly she woke up and saw the sun shining through her curtains. It had all been a dream.

great, big, awesome and short - it can only be one thing

The Moon Topples Great Big Awesome (short) Fiction Contest (click link to read the stories) is over, and Maht has announced the winners over on his site.

I'd like to state here and now that there was no funny business, and I still - for example - don't even know which story was by That's So Pants. It was so above-board that my story never even got an honourable mention.

and it should come as no surprise

Sitting at my desk at work, I suddenly realise that last night I dreamed I was going to Cuba.

Ulysses, I think not

Oh yes, another week and a half all packed into about four days. A week in which one starts out with a list of things to do (all very important and self-affirming in the efficiency of their being a list) and gradually sheds it, until not even the memory of these kinds of activities remains. For instance: returning the proofs for the magazine. Typing up the interview. Writing some draft poems based on notes already taken, or stored in memory (what's that? ed.).

Here's a sample day: get up, Mlle B not feeling well, Rock God won't get up. I cajole, persuade, shout at Rock God; he is still in bed. Mlle mopes wanly on the little pink couch; I must fold up big couch which is also the Baroque bed, because I can't stand coming home to it in the evening. Do some dishes. Make Rock God's lunch so if he ever does get up he will have it to take with him - preventing worst excesses of soulful cheekbones, and saving him time should he decide he wants something. Make ham roll on frozen roll: it will thaw by lunchtime. Clean kitchen a bit. Do dishes. Gather laundry from bathroom etc because can't stand coming home to that either. Fold up couch; check Mlle B over, get her some Nurofen, discuss symptoms. Keep trying to rouse Rock God. Get threatening.

Get laptop from his room, where he has at least left it on charger, put in shoulder bag to take with me in case I get some time to work at lunchtime. All week this does not happen. Develop shoulder-ache. Probably need physio in old age, if I ever get that far. Get book to read, in case it's possible on the tube; this will most likely be my only reading time of the day. Today, for example, it was Paul Muldoon's lectures. Still; I'm on the fourth lecture and jolly interesting it is too. I can easily end up with four books in my bag as I choose a new one, and forget to take old ones out, especially if I have a couple of projects on the go. (My bag also fills up uncontrollably with Very Important Letters that must be dealt with the minute I arrive at my desk: the services that open at 8am, the erroneous bills, letter from Hackney, etc. Needless to say these can stay in the bag for weeks too. The more important they are the more likely they will be in my bag when I leave it on the bus.)

Mlle B either leaves, or doesn't; I try to remember what I'm forgetting, and leave too, hurling imprecations over my shoulder at my beloved second child, who remains supine, shouting at me, "I said piss off! Just leave me alone!"

"And PLEASE don't forget to double-lock the door, sweetie!" I plead as I shut the door. All my kids think I am a neurotic fusspot. "Oh Mummy," they say. "Nothing's going to happen." They think we won't get burgled, but I have been burgled four times. I have lost possession of three computers in two years. I want the door double-locked.

(Once, I accidentally forgot, and double-locked it myself as I left. On that occasion he slept till 1.30pm, blamed me for it in a rather bitter phone conversation, and only discovered at 4.30, when he was trying to go out, that I had locked him in. By that time, luckily, Mlle B was already on her way home from choir. But it was a bit hairy for about 20 minutes there.)

So then we have the mad dash to Seven Sisters station. I put my make up on on the bus to the station: I know I'm low. I've got it timed so that I'm snapping my lovely Nina Ricci compact shut just as the bus pulls up at Seven Sisters, & I can dash out and down the stairs in a flash.

Then the long walk down the platform, the crowded seat, the people's bags brushing your head, the earphones (I once snapped, and called out to a guy halfway down the carriage: "You might as well have speakers!" He leered at me and made some abusive mimicking remark.) The light is really yellow down there. Read book.

Arrive. Get coffee. The moment when I get my coffee is in some ways my favourite moment of the day, even though a medium cappuccino at Costa is £2.20. This seems a small price to pay for your favourite moment of the day. There's always a queue, too, which means other people must also be paying it. Then there's a nice little patch of a green park right after I cross the main road, which I love cutting across, on the days when they've opened the gate. Old-fashioned flower beds in the manner of the 1950s - right now it's purple primroses among foot-high topiary. You'd think the primroses would still find it too cold, but they may be cryogenically preserved from the fifties.

Work. Do I have to ring the school? Are they going to ring me? On Monday the combination of Rock God's dropsy and Mlle B's vapours meant I got in at 9.30 for a 9.30 meeting, throughout which my manager pointedly ignored me, directing long monologues about my own work area to the person I manage instead of me - and even offering to show everyone how to do the project templates for the new financial year - except me! It wasn't till late on Tuesday, when I mentioned how odd I thought this was, that the person I manage said it was because I had been "late". My official start time is 9.30. Shame: I've always wanted to see Siberia, and I'd have loved to know that's where I was.

Anyway, so on Tues, Weds & Thurs I managed to get in about 9.15.

Forget all things on to-do list, bills go up in flames, because once in the building it is hard to get a minute's peace to reflect on anything. I might make the calls or I might not. Remember I forgot to bring lunch (except on days when I didn't forget).

Tuesday, three hours of meetings. Wednesday, two and a half hours of meetings. Yesterday, a four-hour meeting following a one-hour meeting, which in turn had been delayed an hour because of sudden demands for this & that to be done. In between, large amounts of extremely pressured work.

My whole lunch break yesterday consisted of a twenty-minute round trip to get a coffee prior to the four-hour eeting. I gravitated optimistically towards Books Etc, thinking I needed something. I was standing there guiltily with a copy of Simon Armitage's new translation of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight in my hands - isn't the cover just lovely - when my phone rang and it was the Rock God's science teacher. Put book back on shelf, go out, talk to science teacher all way back to work, including the stop off for coffee.

Leave work between 5.30 and 6pm, I hope. Well, these weeks when the kids are at my house I must. Other days it can easily be 6.30. Last night I rang the Rock God from the station on the way home, having had the two phone calls plus an email all in one day from the school (another call during the four-hour meeting: I was so desperate to get the phone to stop that I lurched out the nearest door, forgetting it led straight to the office of Deputy Chief Exec! Door crashes shut. Deputy Chief Exec looks up from desk mildly quizzical. I hurriedly give Year 11 Mentor my email address in a hushed voice and return to meeting), and read him the riot act. It comes to something when you have to do that over the phone! But I think it worked. I'm going to take him out for a meal this weekend and try to sort something, anything, no matter how small, out. He slept at his dad's last night, but - frankly - by this morning I was so tired it didn't even do me any good!

So on my typical day, I'll either stop at the supermarket or not, and get home about 7ish with the bags of shopping. Kids on computer, possibly several girls watching America's Next bloody Top Model on the thankfully-folded-up sofa, Rock God at his dad's- he'll appear when there's food. (On Wednesday there was a mystery: it seemed that the Urban Warrior had been there: I know the signs. And then there was the mystery of the very last M&S Rocky Road bar, which had disappeared - along with its packaging, a classic Urban Warrior tactic - from in front of the bread bin. Later it did transpire that he had indeed come to do something on the computer on his way to college, and had in this way "made" his brother "late". Still, I crowed, so proud was I of my ability to read my landscape, taking control of my surroundings like a mother lion.)

Open bottle of wine - or pour a glass - and make dinner, washing up and cleaning kitchen as I go. This week, the delightfully named Chat en Oeuf, on special from Morrisons. It has been described by Anthony Rose as displaying "juicy cherry fruit sweetness with a fresh astringent twist of acidity" - rather like Ms B herself, if I do say so.

This phase can take an hour, of course, what with the surfaces, the pots from the night before etc. Music if I remember. Throw some laundry in if I remember. If not I will be washing Mlle B's school shirt by hand in the morning. Read letters from utility providers etc while food cooks. We might eat about 8pm (sausage-&-carrot pasta, chicken breasts and mushrooms, last night eggs and peppers). By then I'm too tired to do any more cleaning so I leave the worst of it - a vicious cycle if ever there was one. One reason I loved being off work so much is that I had the energy even to do the floor in the evenings! Take the rubbish out. Mlle B doing homework or malingering. Rock God doesn't do dishes. But we do sit down and all eat together and that is something the lack of which leads to deprivation statistics. So I can't be doing that badly!

Then I get my hour or so of peace with a cup of tea, unless we have a nit-combing occasion, or a row about school attendance, or some other crisis. "Life on Mars" started again this week and that was a celebration in Baroque Mansions! Rock God and I watched the first two episodes back-to-back and remembered why we'd loved it so much to begin with. It is fabulous.

Last night, not so much. And I missed EastEnders.

Aim to get Mlle B into bed around ten. Tell Rock God if present to get off my laptop or the little TV by 11ish so he can at least stand a chance of getting up in the morning; and to give him credit he will sometimes go to bed earlier. Like me, he appreciates his sleep and always has. This can be a good thing, though less so at 8am on a Tuesday!

Unfold sofabed. Rock God brings my bedding in from the top bunk, where it resides in the daytime, and you can imagine the feeling then. I have three enormous pillows, and pink-&-green paisleys all over my duvet. I usually at least pretend to read, but often wake up ages later with the light on, which I hate. It's even worse when it's the laptop because it shines in your eyes, and it's hot.

But it's like: literature? Who do I think I'm kidding?

call out the cavalry

Well - not the cavalry, exactly. American Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan has met with 24's producers to talk about their ever-escalating torture content.

We have pretty much stopped watching 24 in Baroque Mansions, and if les petites watch now it is with a running commentary from me - because the truth is that exposure does de-sensitise. DUH.

James Donaghy in the Guardian reports:

As Finnegan said: "The disturbing thing is that, although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do."

We shouldn't be surprised by this - after all, protagonist Jack Bauer decapitated a paedophile and presented his head in a holdall as a goodwill gesture to terrorists he was infiltrating. Nonetheless, what was once a rollercoaster ride of cliffhangers is increasingly becoming a video-nasty gore-fest. Torture used to be a last resort on the series where all else failed, but by season four, innocent civilians were being tortured when they weren't actually hiding anything. It could be snapping fingers, assaults with sanding machines and defibrillators, or mysterious nerve-frying injections - 24 has been turning into A Clockwork Orange, to the point where, in a recent episode, Jack tortured his own brother by suffocating him with a plastic bag.

Partly, this is because the stakes have increased with each series - chemical warfare, bio-terrorism and nukes have hit Los Angeles in quick succession. A bigger threat demands a bigger response and, if you can save 20,000 lives by breaking a metatarsal here and there, then history will likely forgive you. But given the show's popularity with the American military rank and file, the normalisation of torture is not something to be taken lightly.


Stop press: Normblog has published a post on the same subject. Read and see if it resonates!

elegantly dressed Byron

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

To celebrate the occasion Baroque in Hackney brings you Mister Lurve himself, the elegantly dressed libertine to end all libertines, Lord Byron.

Regular readers will know how Ms Baroque delights in pictures of writers at their desks. Edith Wharton looked coiffed, luxurious and proper; Anne Sexton looked dashing and slim; and Byron, well, look at that dressing gown. Look at that pin! (I think it's a pin; on me it would be poppers but I know it isn't, on Byron.)

Of Byron's relations with women we will say little, except to say that, although he clearly met his match in Lady Caroline Lamb, little good did it do her. Likewise I won't dwell on the sad story of his daughter by Claire Clairmont, little Allegra, who died in a convent, aged five, after Byron had taken her there away from her mother, and forbidden her mother ever to come near. (Claire Clairmont is one of those fascinating studies, the stepsister of Mary Shelley, and a template doormat - however, she eventually turned into a mad old lady, and one can only applaud that, especially cnsidering what happened to Byron and her other great lover, Shelley. And Shelley's wife Harriet.)

Anyway, for your delectation, and to get into the mood for True Love, here are some verses from the ever-delightful Don Juan, Canto XI. And here is a link to the rest of it.

XIV

Now here we should distinguish; for howe'er

Kisses, sweet words, embraces, and all that,

May look like what is -- neither here nor there,

They are put on as easily as a hat,

Or rather bonnet, which the fair sex wear,

Trimm'd either heads or hearts to decorate,

Which form an ornament, but no more part

Of heads, than their caresses of the heart.

XV

A slight blush, a soft tremor, a calm kind

Of gentle feminine delight, and shown

More in the eyelids than the eyes, resign'd

Rather to hide what pleases most unknown,

Are the best tokens (to a modest mind)

Of love, when seated on his loveliest throne,

A sincere woman's breast, -- for over-warm

Or over-cold annihilates the charm.

XVI

For over-warmth, if false, is worse than truth;

If true, 't is no great lease of its own fire;

For no one, save in very early youth,

Would like (I think) to trust all to desire,

Which is but a precarious bond, in sooth,

And apt to be transferr'd to the first buyer

At a sad discount: while your over chilly

Women, on t' other hand, seem somewhat silly.

XVII

That is, we cannot pardon their bad taste,

For so it seems to lovers swift or slow,

Who fain would have a mutual flame confess'd,

And see a sentimental passion glow,

Even were St. Francis' paramour their guest,

In his monastic concubine of snow; -- [*]

In short, the maxim for the amorous tribe is

Horatian, "Medio tu tutissimus ibis."

XVIII

The "tu"'s too much, -- but let it stand, -- the verse

Requires it, that's to say, the English rhyme,

And not the pink of old hexameters;

But, after all, there's neither tune nor time

In the last line, which cannot well be worse,

And was thrust in to close the octave's chime:

I own no prosody can ever rate it

As a rule, but Truth may, if you translate it.

XIX

If fair Gulbeyaz overdid her part,

I know not -- it succeeded, and success

Is much in most things, not less in the heart

Than other articles of female dress.

Self-love in man, too, beats all female art;

They lie, we lie, all lie, but love no less;

And no one virtue yet, except starvation,

Could stop that worst of vices -- propagation.

picture courtesy of the compendious Noel Collection.

a trained reader will know when the book is upside-down

Wandering around 0ver at Connaissances this morning, Ms B happened on a discussion of the similarities between literature and geology. This is in itself not a delightful connection to me, owing to my woeful ignorance about science - but that fact that the discussion has been sparked by a remark in an essay by Randall Jarrell, about William Carlos Williams' epoch-making (you see how we slip into it?) poem Paterson, naturally got my attention.

Jarrell's estimation of the importance of Paterson as a "geological event" may be open to dispute; indeed, if anyone reading this would like to dispute it, please feel free to do so - especially as the import of Jarrell's remark was that WCW's geological eventfulness had eclipsed (okay, mixed metaphor, except as planets are rocks) the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. (She, to this reader, anyway, stands up much better nowadays - though that may just be because WCW's work is done, his lessons learnt, his legacy secure.)

Anyway, Jonathan Wonham instead unpicks the meanings behind the analogy, and presents us with a delightful list of the ways in which literature is comparable to geology. He begins:

Randall Jarrell's description of the long poem 'Paterson' as a 'geological event' (see previous post) suggests that Paterson:

(1) was a major happening
(2) occured quite suddenly (in geological terms, 'event' almost implies catastrophe)
(3) was something that didn't happen too often
(4) was something that changed the landscape of literature
(5) would enter into the 'geological record'

If we accept Jarrell's statement on behalf of Paterson, we must also accept that there is a close metaphorical relationship between literature and language on the one hand and geology and earth processes on the other.

My comment on Jonathan's post goes as follows (but do go read his post!):

Very, very interesting. Of course this all goes to show how great Jarrell was. He is the lodestone. (Another thing he said which I have always loved was that ee cummings was sitting outside the doorway of the Muse, cutting out paper snowflakes.)

I guess I have several responses to this, one of which is that literature, unlike geology I imagine, is subject to fashion and thus has a changeable landscape. That is, I don't know ery many people who talk all that much about WCW these days, whereas Bishop's star has risen. Maybe "Pateron" did make possible new things, but there seems to be a corresponding "absorption" thing in writing, where the news, the message, is absorbed and we turn to other things. Or is it "once a seismic cataclysm, always a seismic cataclysm"? Must get out my Jarrell.

Secondly, Jarrell himself was an event. That this remark can start such a train of thought and lead you to buy "Paterson" and write this big post and generally start thinking in new ways testifies to his originality and perspicuity - not WCW's, in fact.

Thirdly, it was interesting to note that geology and literature, in your parallel, are both decidedly manmade constructs, not natural phenomena. That is, language and minerals are both natural, but literature (and to be honest I think this little analogy applies more to lit crit) and geology are both models for observation, made by us to impose order through systems and labels and to understand how the processes (as well as the products) worked.

touched for the very last time

So, ntl:Telewest, or whatever it was called - Blueyonder, to you and me, at one time - has now been bought by "Virgin Media". Is that supposed to make it better? They still bounced my direct debit and didn't write to me about it for four weeks, by which time they had bounced a second payment because when one bounces they automatically cancel the whole set-up - though the second month's bill wasn't included in the letter they finally sent, oh no, I found out about that when I rang them up. The call centre girl, Rebecca, told me the total without being able to tell me the constituent parts of it; every time I asked her a question she told me a number without being able to say what it was, and three times had to go and "speak to her supervisor".

The upshot is that, even though I only heard there was a problem two days ago, and even then I only heard about half the problem, today they cut off my TV. Hence the phone call, the increasingly bizarre inability to get a straight answer to a simple question, the two months' money paid in one go, the direct debit set up yet again - because for some reason this sort of thing seems to happen all the time with them no matter what they're called.

But that's okay, because now it's Virgin! Everybody knows they're great! And they've sent out about £10-worth of glossy little PR booklets, written in a faux-folksy style - well, more like a fake-geezer style - to prove to me what a fantastic and sexy little service I've now got.

Look at the picture: this girl clearly wants to sleep with me! She thinks I'm a 32-year-old bloke with a pointy bit of hair on top, held up with lots of gel, and with a boring little navy blue jumper on, who plays lots of Wii and buys extra sports channels. I see these guys in the tube, all looking bland and the same and probably lusting after girls who look just like this one.

In Baroque Mansions these booklets are anti-PR. And that's okay, because I am clearly not the revved-up metroboy customer my new providers really hanker after. They must want me to go back to BT. And, now that I've finally got my direct debit set up again and my £136 paid and my TV back on, that's just what I'm going to do.

intimations of life

a leaf-covered boulder by Andy Goldsworthy

It's nearly five o'clock of a mostly dull February day. The light's beginning to fade a little, and the house is empty. Lord knows where the Rock God and the Urban Warrior have got to, and Mlle B is at the cinema in the Angel with all her friends, watching that thing with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore in it. The food is in, because when I went out to get the cash for the movie I forced myself into Morrisons where I bought - among other things - a beautiful chicken, mushrooms, two lemons and a Savoy cabbage. I'll cook it all up in some form or another with some garlic and white wine, I think. And cream.

I'm sitting here on the couch with the laptop, because the iMac has a strange cord going into it, with a digital dictaphone at the other end - it has identical earphone plugs at both ends. I didn't even know you could get these! Up till the other day I had no idea you could even get a tapeless dictaphone. Durrr. But it has no instructions or anything for transferring data, and the sheet even said if you wanted to back it up, you had to record it onto another external device! What, like another tape player??? Lord no. The Urban Warrior says, get one of these cables. And he's downloaded me some freeware audio recording kit that works off the sound card, so it can read whatever the strange data type is that my recording is. I feel very high-tech.*

But not that high-tech! I'm so paranoid about backing this up that I've been carrying the dictaphone around with me since Thursday as if it were an egg.

I'm turning my fabulous interview with Ruth Fainlight into a sound file, back-up-able, before seriously buckling down to the job of transcribing it. (It took me about 35 minutes yesterday to type out 12 minutes of conversation. I have about two and a half hours of recorded conversation.) All I can say is, dear readers, watch this space! In several months (probably; I am turning into molasses in January) I will have written up a sparkling, funny, affecting, erudite, affectionate and witty account of our conversation, which ranged over a whole landscape of poetic and general-interest topics.

I can't give you any previews yet, of course, because it all exists in my head and (I hope, shortly) in my other computer. And who knows how it'll all play out when it's edited. So fun!

And the fun doesn't end there. On Monday morning before work I finally got my act together to send some poems out to a magazine for the first time since May. I emailed them to the Poetry Salzburg Review, which takes email submissions - hurrah! (They all should.) It wasn't too scary because they had published a poem of mine before. I sent eight files and forgot about it because it always takes months. So, imagine my joy this morning when the post came and in plopped a letter containing proofs - yes, proofs, after five days! - of three poems, to go in their Spring issue!

I'm very happy because these are poems I love. One of them (Imitating Life) is about looking at a book about the installation artist Andy Goldsworthy. The other two (The Brass Doorknob and A Crack in the Feeling) were written for my friend Michael in the months after he died in 2004. A Crack in the Feeling is one of my favourite poems I think I've ever written. It's all about eggs, and I didn't realise for ages that it was about Michael. I hadn't even realised that eggs were a metaphor for grief. But it is - and it seems they are. The poem even has a rubber chicken in it. Michael would've loved that.

Anyway, this is great news. It's a great little magazine, and it's only £10 a year to subscribe. It's clearly time for me to wake up and stop hibernating. And go check the other computer and see how that monster file's going. And see about the dinner...


* edited in months later: it never worked. Low-tech after all.

if you don't vote, does the moon topple?

Yes. It does.

Ms Baroque has done something she thought she might never do again. She has written a short work of fiction. The operative word here, I must warn you, is short: it is 500 words long.

The short story, which by the way still needs editing (but can't have it for now) was really fun to write - it basically felt kind of like roller skating - and is now entered in the MoonTopples Great Big Awesome (Short) Fiction Contest. Once voting finishes I will give it an edit and post it up here in Baroque Mansions.

Here is your task. Click on the link. the picture is also a link, if you think that would be more fun to click on. Go to the MoonTopples site, read the short stories, decide which one you think is by me, and vote for it. It won't take you too long, they're all only 500 words long.

This tape will self-destruct in sixty seconds.

the battle continues

Continuing the campaign against ruining Stoke Newington, I'm interested to see that Diamond Geezer has made a very useful Starbucks Map of London, by postcode.

When I looked on the Find Your Starbucks Density site I found it a bit scary, you know, being within five miles of 120 outlets of Starbucks. But looking at this map I'm very cheered to see the section I live in - that big one up at the top with far fewer Starbuckses in it - looking so nice and empty. That's because my part of town has other, independent, coffee shops in it. They make better coffee. And they're prettier. And you can chat to the owners. And they have real food.

But expect it to change. This map is likely to look different by next month, and then the month after that, and the month after that and the month after that and and and

If you, reading, this, live near Stoke Newington, please go sign the petition in the old Vortex in Church Street.

elegantly dressed work

Ms B's new favourite picture by Hogarth

I have been not unproductive the past week or so, in an odd way. Tired all the time, just wiped out.* I haven't done anything big, concentrated, sustained; but, in a useful first step, I have actually got some stuff done. Yay!

The scene in this picture was probably an ideal even for Hogarth,** & I can tell you conditions are nothing like this for Ms Baroque. I know: it looks spartan. It looks drab. I know some of you will say that. Of course the painting is very beautiful, but it is hard to see how the artist had enough light... But what I see here is a man engrossed in his work, interested in it, lit up from inside with how much he loves his work. He's excited about his project. The room is stripped of distractions. His clothes are comfortable. There's nothing there but him and his work.

Once you get down to it, that really is what it's like.


* note from future: it was the gall stones...

** Shamefully, I've never even noticed the simple thing Maredith points out below: he does seem to have forgotten a stocking. Is that right? Maybe it's a different kind of elegance, a higher elegance. And note, he has no paint on his clothes. That's good going.

a beautiful story

Thanks to the always-rivetting Normblog for this tip:

An article in today's Independent describes a Jewish primary school in Birmingham where half the pupils are Muslim, and everyone gets along happily. Jewish and Muslim kids start lifelong friendships at this school, and Muslim kids happily wear Jewish caps and say Jewish prayers; a parent says, "They learn enough about Islam at Islamic school."

Although the article describes the school's approach as "multicultural," I think the striking thing is that the school adheres to its standards and practices - Jewish prayers, kosher food - and, while it does provide a room for Muslim prayers and Muslim teachers in Ramadan, it is not dissipating its messages by bending over backwards trying to make everything different for everybody. Critically, the Muslim prayer rooms are on top - not instead - of Jewish prayers. The school, along with the parents interviewed in the article, emphasises similarities and common ground rather than differences.

very like a whale

No, not me! Well, yes, it is me. I've answered ten questions for Nic Sebastian over at Very Like a Whale, which is a very entertaining poetry blog. I'm the tenth person to answer the ten questions, which to be honest does feel rather satisfying, like decasyllabics. I've also gone on about the same length as the other nine put together, which should surprise no one.

It starts like this:

"I think you can demonstrate that the poet has always played a part in human affairs, and I don’t see why this century should be any different from all the others. But the part played by poetry isn’t centre-stage, front-page stuff. And I think the phrase “unacknowledged legislator” is more interesting than it looks at first glance: legislators are, etymologically, ‘proposers of law’, and I can barely think of a civilisation which has not become civilised precisely through its systems of ordering language. Oral histories laid the basis for codes of behaviour long before they were ‘codified’ into books. It’s certainly possible to be a proposer of laws without being acknowledged; and even if a certain version of events, or a certain moral truth (let’s say) is absorbed into the main stream (think of Shakespeare), it doesn’t mean people acknowledge its source."

If you think you can take more of that, go and have a look.

...meanwhile, back in January...

George Szirtes has the reputation of a lovely man. I said hi to him at the TS Eliot reading in January, which was packed like a tube train, but only because he was rapturously greeting my friend Roger, who has studied with him. I can tell Szirtes is nicer than me, because he has been far more circumspect in his description of the reading itself, which I discovered today while catching up with his blog. Ms Gossipfest here finds it almost cruel as Tantalus, though. Who? Who?

He writes:

"The T S Eliot readings are like a round-up gathering of everyone I have ever met in the field of poetry. So the foyer and the bar of the Bloomsbury Theatre is packed with poets I haven't seen for a while, with publishers (including my own), editors, students past and present, people from Arvon Courses. This is quite a pleasant jostle. In the seats, every third seat seems to be a familiar face...

"I remember my own reading at the Eliot two years ago. You have precisely eight minutes and you feel a little obliged to respond to the person you follow. You decide whether to talk - engagingly with a bit of luck - about the poems or just read them. Or somewhere between the two. Do you 'perform' the poems or say them? What sort of impression do you think you are making? I was following a poet who had decided to fling his reading at the audience in a kind of gesture. (A very good poet, of course, as they all are), so I read as straight as I could, minimal introductions, minimal 'performing'. That was fine. I don't think it makes any real difference to the discussions as to who wins the next day - it didn't when I was chair of the judges, since the winning book was clearly the best - but it is very exposing.

"This time? All the readings were different. There was one that irritated me intensely, one that entertained and put all its eggs into the performance basket, one that hit a certain rhetorical pitch, one that eased its way in as if entering a conversation in a pub, one that was a little like a sermon in an enlightened monastery etc etc. (No, I am not going to identify them, nor is the reading any reflection on the poetry, most of which was engrossing.) Paul Muldoon read a marvellous poem at the very end that both moved and amused, was bitter yet resigned and delightfully filled with his own characteristic music and tonal variations."

Why can't I be like that??

what a mess

Apparently there was a demonstration in Leytonstone yesterday, protesting against the proposed closure of Whipps Cross hospital. This will all be only one part of Blair's petulant plan to break the country and leave it in pieces for the next guy - like, "If I can't have it I don't want you to have it either." Oh, sorry, I mean his proposed revamp of the NHS.

Ellis Sharp of The Sharp Side was there - and quotes a compelling set of figures comparing the cost of war to the cost of hospital beds.

I know which I'd rather pay for.

Meanwhile the occupation of the old Vortex building continues in Stoke Newington. There is a big petition against the opening of a Starbucks - rumours are flying thick and fast, but I haven't seen anything about any actual applications, etc. Let me tell you, Starbucks is not, NOT, N-O-T, what we want around here. They'll just come into the area, gobble up the things that make it home - our Blue Legume, Il Bacio Express, & Belle Epoque and Acoustic in Newington Green, Bodrun & the other Turkish places in the High Street. Isn't that what they do? They just want to eat England for the next decade, at the rate of a bite every two weeks. All they want to do is chew Stoke Newington up and spit it out.

Meanwhile, true to the real character of our neighbourhood, les enfants Baroque keep coming home with stuff they got in the 'free shop' in the occupied building. With just about everybody in the UK actually paying more than the advertised rate of inflation - and we haven't even seen the council tax increases yet - I think free shops must be the wave of the future.

And by the way, Ms B went to renew her Baroque Oyster card the other day: it was £105 for a month. Three zones. Now, will someone help me out here? I swear that at the New Year they said Oyster card fares weren't going to go up - only non-Oyster ones - in a bid to reward people for using the preferred, electronic, trackable, fne-able, touch-in-touch-out-or-be-prosecuted, system. Big Conductor is Watching You. So how comes I'm suddenly paying £7 more? (Note: inflation is currently running at, what is it, 4%? Not 7%.)

Also in current news, the Olympic site in east London apparently had nuclear waste dumped on it in the fifties.

According to the Standard:

"A report on the Clays Lane site in Stratford, carried out by engineers WS Atkins in 1993, stated: 'During a search of archive information from the London boroughs of Hackney and Waltham Forest, records indicated that a quantity of radioactive material was deposited in the late Fifties in a disused cesspool.' "

Projected costs are now running at around £5bn, or double the original estimate.

Maybe we should take Tony and Ken on an official visit to a few disused cesspools.

one girl and her favourite poet

"Sometime in the late 1970s, as an impressionable teenager in love with Pound and Eliot, I came across an interview with Joseph Brodsky in which he said he had learned English by translating William Shakespeare and John Donne. At the time this impressed me almost literally as a command to spend a summer at my Russian uncle’s dining room table in upstate New York, surrounded by bilingual editions—Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Anna Akhmatova—and a huge red-and-white dictionary, learning rudimentary poetic Russian while my cousins were all at the pool listening to the Grateful Dead. At the time I learned the structure of a new language, and my own ways of parsing meaning. In the years that followed, when I had myself (admittedly through a kind of choice) left my country of birth and started to assemble an intellectual identity, I learned a lot more from this poet who lived out his exile so near my home..."

Read the rest in the Contemporary Poetry Review.

Of course, now it's out I can only see the things I didn't say, and the things I should have thought through better! But for better or worse there it is.

parents' evening part 2: a literary hotbed

So there we are, being dragged through the ritual humiliation that is parents' evening when your son is one of the "cool kids". The boy not only cannot even complete his English mock GCSE (that is a pretend exam, to practice for the real exam, of which they use the pretend scores to predict your real scores. Right now the Tall Blond Rock God's predicted scores are hovering around G, but it is a technicality: on the real day he will shine, you wait and see!), not only can he not do that, but he also thinks "the whole system is really fake."

Entering the science room (where we will be told about the Incident of the Coat) we find the rock-chick Maya and her parents waiting to see a teacher. They are lovely people. There is a confusing and slightly hilarious conversation of greeting between them and the ex-Mr Baroque, as it seems that when they picked up their youngest daughter from his house the other night - where she'd been playing with Little Mlle B - there was some sort of confusing contretemps about Seamus Heaney...

Ex-Mr B was sitting there with a bottle of wine, reading the paper or something and thinking about how much he hates Seamus Heaney, the TS Eliot Prize, TS Eliot, snedders, and everything else to do with Seamus Heaney, when in bursts the friend, all full of some article by Andrew Motion* which "finally explained" to her what is really going on in District & Circle! Ex-Mr B will have expostulated, perhaps roughly, that there cannot possibly be said to be anything at all happening in District & Circle, as it will be merely a tweedy reworking of all the tired old themes that Heaney had exhausted by 1980 or somesuch, and he will then go on - well, and the lovely friend will have thought that she sould possibly say to him something like, "oh, you should really read this article in the Guardian!" or something like that. But no. It's a full-blown prejudice. It's one of the great animosities ex-Mr B is so good at nurturing and carrying for decades, shining them up nightly to keep them bright (don't even mention Griff Rhys Jones in that house). They are the reason he gets so many parking tickets rescinded. I'd forgotten the Seamus Heaney one. I can't help sort of wishing I'd been there.

As parental interludes go, this was a charming one, and I felt much bolstered for our grilling by the maths teacher, who eventually began gibbering about his brother, who had been hanging around with all the wrong sorts and eventually ended up in hospital having his stomach pumped or something, and it all started with not taking his GCSE's seriously enough (and probably playing bass).

It should be said that I have several friends who feel this exact same way about Seamus Heaney, some of whom are well-known poets; and then there's the other camp, the Heaney-adorers. I've given up having conversations about him at all.

*The article is to be found here.

look ma, no shadow!

"Okay campers, rise & shine - and don't forget your booties because it's co-o-old out there today!"

Just for the record: Punxsatawnie Phil did not see his shadow today. It was the 15th time since something like 1886 that he didn't see his shadow.*

Good news! (It'll be the global warming.) (shut up. ed.)

*Lucky little groundhogs. Someone's just reminded me that they hibernate.

parents' evening: a special Groundhog Day report

Once again we tread the familiar corridors. It's the same every time, only slightly different. One day we'll get it right.

The ex-Mr Baroque, the tall blonde rock god and I are milling around among the milling, sweating hordes of other parents (and their bizarre offspring who actually do coursework, get haircuts, sleep at home at the weekend and go to school before 10am) to sit before teacher after teacher and be told the incontrovertible truth. It starts at reception when a kid (reception is staffed by eager year 9s) hands me a sealed brown envelope containing the rock god's attendance record. I can't help looking, as I've never seen the truant record of a deity before, and indeed it is an impressive sight.

Handing it to the boy, credit where credit's due. He sits there while teacher after teacher tells us he hasn't been in class that day (that very day! Is he stupid??); he's missed 14 out of 33 maths classes; there was an incident when he put his enormous black overcoat on in science, for the second time running (it's against the rules; apparently Mr Emerson, the Blairite head, is more than happy to put a kid in the 'inclusion room' - their Stalinist euphemism for 'exclusion room' - for not taking their coat off, although the school won't do anything to make it inconvenient for him to routinely stroll in at breaktime, miss a third of his classes in a core subject and often just not bother to come back for the one lesson that's held after lunch). It all got ugly apparently, and in the best rock-god tradition he "abused the teacher," which must mean he swore; which is a shame. She seems nice. So "there will be repercussions." For that - but not for not having done his coursework!

The English teacher seemed to calm down once she saw that we were behind her (and compos mentis). The three of us cross-examined the recalcitrant rock god, trying to understand why he simply hadn't done his English mock. "But Nat," we expostulated, "why couldn't you even just write something little? You've read the books..." (I mean, ex-Mr B and I have both sat with him, read with him, watched the assigned videos with him - he has an assigment to compare the opening sequences of The Matrix and Blade Runner, of all things; "you don't even have to watch the whole movies!" the teacher tells him - and we've both rented these movies more than once for the stony-faced one to watch...)

Eventually he shuffles in his seat. "I dunno," he mumbles. "It's not like there's even a right answer. I mean you don't know what to put. It's like..." We look at him. Encouragingly. I mean the other two look encouraging; I think I look a bit stricken. He continues: "I mean with those English questions, they're so vague... I did read them but it's like there's no point, some of them you can't even tell what they mean."

This is a bright boy. This is a boy who, once he's put in his ten hours of slog, can turn out a rather elegantly simple little 300-word essay (yes, they accept that). He gets the gist of things. He was a level 7 in maths in year 9 (that is really good). He wanted to be an archaeologist until he discovered dad-rock. He taught himself to read all on his own, playing Indiana Jones Desktop Adventures and digging in the garden with a stick. I know he wears the coat as a sort of security blanket, he does it at home too sometimes. I really do think on some level the lad is not so much lazy as confused.

The next day at lunch some colleagues and I were talking about kids. I forget the context. I mentioned a thing or two and one of them said to me, enviously: "your kids sound really cool... are they cool?" Of course! That's it. I couldn't help laughing. But I don't know why she's so flipping envious.

"Cool?" I said. "They're the coolest."

elegantly writing in bed

Edith Wharton used to write in bed. She had a writing board, and her breakfast would be brought in while she wrote. She would prop the writing board on her knees and write till about noon, whereupon she wold arise and resume the life of an international - and fearsomely rich - socialite.

Although I can see her writing in bed as vividly as if I had seen a picture of it, I cannot find one anywhere; I think I must have manufactured the picture years ago in my head, if not in my bed. Either that or I am in fact the reincarnation of Edith Wharton, and am having previous-life memories of this delicious activity, which must, surenly, have been her favourite. Either that or it's a sort of race memory, where I am susceptible to the previous experiences of my kind. But that would be a bit unkind.

Today is Wednesday, as far as I'm concerned. It's easy to say this, because I am, as I write, delirious with the kind of fatigue that makes you feel physically ill.* What Ms B wouldn't give to be fearsomely rich, and write in bed! I'd love to write anywhere, for that matter, and that is something you have to make room for in your head. Or sweep all the papers from your desk. Or not get your work done. Indeed I'd simply love to be in bed. I nearly called in sick today, so horrendous was it, but in the end made do with being half an hour late for work.

I think that in this urgent desire for my pillows (& Baroque Mansions is bursting with them) I am as one with Noosa Lee over at That's So Pants; she is having quite the similar moment, a synchronicity which could be a little scary if it weren't that we're both like this most of the time anyway.

Bed! Bed! Glorious bed!
Nothing quite like it for clearing the head:
so follow me, follow,
make a snug hollow,
and then snuggle down in your glo-o-orious BED!

Not sure why I'm so infernally tired this week, but I'm definitely not sleeping right. Baroque Mansions is not giving off a soporific vibe. Night before last I lay in Mlle B's bed, trying to get to sleep, for 45 minutes while the entire bed - floor - possibly building - vibrated unceasingly, in a nervy way, as if the whole world was too agitated to get to sleep. (Mlle B was at her dad's; I wasn't trying to sleep on top of her. If I had been the whole episode would have made a lot more sense.) It may have been the flat downstairs' washing machine or it may have been me.

Not having the proverbial Room of One's Own doesn't help, especially at times like this when one simply can't be arsed with all the faffing with the sofabed. And the weather: if you have the heating on it's too hot, no matter how low you turn that dial, and if you turn it off you wake up cold in the night. In the mornings it's dark; you can't tell if it's daytime yet. So the nights are a tossed-up dreamtrudge, wakeful & uncomfortable, full of people from work, conversations I could have had but didn't, nightmares. (The Baroque nightmare: not a good thing. Gave way almost instantaneously to the gothic revival & the worst excesses of German romanticism.) I wake up all sweaty with a terrible sinking feeling, and go: "Huh?"

It was hard to find a good picture of Edith Wharton, in the absence of the writing-in-bed one that's in my mind. There aren't that many around, and none of them was as sumptuous, either, as my mental image, which I think must be a composite of all the various furs, silks, velvets and pearls, in one. But this one is nice!

Incidentally, for those who yearn to know more about the Indomitable Ms W (or the Angel of Devastation, as Henry James referred to her), here is a very amusing review of Hermione Lee's Wharton biography, by Ferdinand Mount, in the Spectator. I must start reading that magazine again.

* Hmm - turns out I was ill. Gall stones.