Coastalblog

(further to the last piece, it may be worthwhile pointing out that not EVERYTHING I read was ancient*) I managed a single new poem at last week’s reading, or rather twenty odd very short new poems plucked from one longer work which is currently being tinkered with. In the finest traditions of my magpie poetics, the idea was “inspired by” (read: ripped off wholesale from) the sainted and discussed elsewhere in these pages Georges Perec. Reading his collected short pieces Species of Spaces (take the exhortation to buy and read as read) I was struck by a piece called Two Hundred and Forty three postcards in Real Colour (dedicated to his friend and other hero of mine, Italo Calvino). Simply put the text is the standard matter of postcards, weather, food, scenery, but the overall effect is hypnotic in its banality (and in the knowledge that, this being Perec, there’s something else entirely whirring away in the background). This evolved into 99 Postcards for Georges Perec. Me being me...

Performance (The dust has settled and back I slink like a penitent drunk, birthdays and tasting nights having kept me away. Also a reading, the main inspiration behind this piece). Last Wednesday I stood up in front of a roomful of people and read poems that I’d written for twenty minutes or so. Not in itself an unusual occurrence for me, though far enough out of the ordinary to cause me a couple of nights of broken sleep wondering what on earth I was going to do. I felt a fraud, to be honest. My writing habits are slow, and over twenty years I’ve managed to amass a grand total of two chapbooks. The upshot of this being that, when reading from my “latest” book, I may be reading a piece that’s up to sixteen years old. Fair enough, the audience may not have heard it before, but it still feels slightly like one of those sad eighties revivals tours, with multiple acts coming on, doing the hit, and fucking off. It reminds me of how little I have actually got done, thus far. But, with s...

Sometimes it is the simplest thing that causes everything to swim into focus. Life has been a confusing welter for the last couple of weeks, as work commitments have spiralled to an unprecedented degree, and everything else has withered in the face of them. It’s hard to think when there’s a lot to think about, the brain cries out for breathing space. At its worst, the sensation causes a disproportionate sense of angst. Replying to an email becomes a Herculean task, doing laundry or washing up delivers a sense of guilt and resentment, surely there’s other stuff I need to be getting on with. The paperwork, the writing, the inbox, these essays, the running; all sit and glare at me as I get up later than intended, don’t find time, watch in horror as the half hour I set aside disappears in two or three chunks of something other than what I intended. Mentally, it’s not an ideal space to be in. Particularly when I’ve a sizeable poetry reading in Manchester this evening, and until a few sc...

It’s true I missed a couple of days, but I’m keeping the self-imposition going in other ways. Yesterday I posted the first of what will be a series of rewrites of old short stories over on Medium , and it got me thinking about editing, rewriting, and how we change over time. The story’s not a million miles from the original. The plot (such as it is) stays the same, the characters, large parts of the text. It must be a good ten years old though, and reading it I could tell. It was an accurate reflection of my character at the time, the newer version, clearly, is closer to the current version of me, and the older me is more restrained, which is only to be expected. The question is, which is the better? Is it truer to leave well alone? Well, no, clearly. The whole thing reads better now, it’s tighter, makes a little more sense, and has trimmed away a couple of the twentysomething approaches which now read as gauche. “Kill your darlings” as Stephen King said, and he was right, I reme...

To general astonishment, Hamilton Academical ended a winless run of 76 years versus Celtic this very afternoon. Noteworthy in itself, but I mention this mostly because of their magnificent name. As a long-suffering fan of Tottenham Hotspur, I’ve always had a soft spot for teams with slightly unusual names. In the westcountry of my childhood, I’d keep an eye on Plymouth Argyle’s results. I was always intrigued by Sheffield Wednesday (originally a cricket club who played all their games on that day). In these days of ever more rampant corporate branding, and proud and ancient stadiums being renamed after retailers of cheap trainers or ethically dubious airlines, the slightly odder names are a reminder of football’s more ramshackle past. Hamilton are named Academical, for example, because they were originally a school football team. Aston Villa derive their name from the Church team they once were. My own beloved Spurs (also originally a cricket club) are named after Sir Henry Perc...

You know the concept. In Marcel Proust’s Du cote de chez Swann the narrator dips a madeleine into a cup of tea. This simple act unlocks a host of memories of childhood, he hasn’t done this in years, it takes him right back. I’m not going to pretend I’ve read the book. I will confess I tried, but wandered off after a while to play computer games instead. This is because I’m an intellectual pygmy with the attention span of a stunned duckling. But the point, largely, is that Proust has managed to sneak a phrase into the popular consciousness which is apposite and precise; we all know what a Madeleine moment is, and a crisp fiver here states that we’ve all had one. One occurred this morning (hence the post, there’s not a great deal of forethought with these things on my part). For years beyond remembering I have been accustomed to opening he fridge to see milk in plastic one or two litre containers, it’s not something I’ve ever given a great deal of consideration to. Why would you? Y...

In heaven it is always Autumn – John Donne I wrote some time ago of the pleasure of running without any of the technological encumbrances with which some runners habitually festoon themselves, of the way the brain begins to tick over under its own steam, and of the way in which the unencumbered runner notices more of the world around them. And now it’s autumn, and this week marked the first of my morning runs conducted entirely in darkness. It’s been trailed over the preceding weeks, with sunrise arriving later and further into the run and now the months of running in complete darkness lie ahead. With nothing to look at, the mind closes in further, it really is just you, the road and your thoughts. During the back end of summer there’s always a part of me with one eye on the arrival of autumn, Camus’ “second spring”. The thought of the light receding is what bothers me, the encroaching dark mornings, the loss of the evening light as if it’s easier to mourn something whilst you...

At the Conservative Party conference a policy is announced. It is duly parroted by media outlets. An important question is left unasked. But first, the policy: tax relief on inherited pensions, previously tacked at 55% and now to move into line with income tax. It’s an inoffensive enough policy, as Conservative policies go, not one of the more odious ones specifically designed to help out rich people ones (though, be under no illusions, it most definitely will help out a bunch of rich people), a few will benefit. It also has the handy characteristic of being easily labelled by tabloids as “Death Tax” as in “Osborne scraps Death Tax”. Which is point two, the due parroting: tabloids say Death Tax, BBC report tabloids saying Death Tax, people think whew, glad we’ve got rid of that Death Tax, good times all round. It’s a more of a mouthful to say “Osborne unpins fixed rate of 55% on inherited pensions to normalise them with income tax”. No, Death tax it is. And now we come to the una...

The Prime Minister must be thanking his lucky stars that IS exist. So, for that matter, will the Cleggster and possibly even Milibot (though maybe to a lesser extent). All quietly breathing sighs of relief and raising a glass to those wacky murderers Islamic State. You will recall that, not so long ago, there was a referendum for independence in Scotland, which was pulled out of the bag for the status quo by a little bit of last minute panicking and bandying of promises. I, too, have been known to make promises I can’t keep for the sake of keeping the peace, so I know whereof I speak. They’ll have woken up the morning after and thought “I said I’d do WHAT?” Predictably, depressingly, with a crushing ineivitability, bickering ensued. The whole wearying roundelay of jockeying for position and clambering for advantage creaked along and nobody but nobody said anything concrete about how they were going to y’know, do the things they’d said they’d do. It was looking a touch awkward. There...

My mouse retired last week. For years it had faithfully tracked, pointed and clicked its way around various monitors without a squeak of complaint. Then, silently, it just started to slip away. Intermittently the left click began to fail, before packing in entirely. I was left with half a mouse, prodding lumpenly at the screen like early man. That right click still worked was a minor torture of sorts, I could do half a job, but couldn’t satisfyingly seal the deal with a left click. I pottered along with keyboard shortcuts and Mouse Keys for a bit, but it wasn’t the same. The computer seemed suddenly alien to me, with a vague feeling of unease I left it alone until such time as I could get a new mouse (which, clearly, has happened, and very nice it is too, a zippier, smaller, younger model, I eye the old mouse, wrapped in its cord and tucked away on the desk, like a penitent adulterer). Strange to have a part of your life excised by something as simple as a left click button. No c...

I note from social media that it’s quite the thing to complain bitterly about the U2/Apple publicity stunt of foisting their new album upon iTunes subscribers. People didn’t want it, they didn’t ask for it, they are only dimly aware of the concept of “deleting” things. It’s easy to mock, so I shall. But this kerfuffle has worrying implications. This is the mediated internet writ large. It’s only a short conceptual leap from this to Apple deciding everything you listen to. Now, it is easy to argue that this is what music labels have always done. Some bands have had careers sat on, been ignored, had albums shelved, the corporations have decided what will be released, what you’ll hear, and against all this the indie (as in independent, not purely as in jangly guitars) subculture has railed. When the internet became a thing, a fact of everyone’s lives, it looked as though the playing field had been levelled. Fans and artists could interact directly, artists could showcase their music ...

Due to the pressing constraints of history, this is of necessity the last referendum related essay. Only tangentially but hey, I’m at a computer, I’ve promised myself I’m bloody well going to write something and I’m receiving tetchy signals about how soon I need to get done and go and be sociable, so: The Scottish independence referendum has highlighted the unimportance of polls, by simultaneously highlighting their importance. Bear with me. You know how no-one south of the border was overly engaged until one poll, one single poll out of (at current count 1200) put the Yes campaign ahead by a single percentage point. And then they all went nuts. Uh-huh, we all recall the nuts-going, and a deeply unedifying spectacle it was. So, the importance of polls is this, they supply numerical totals by which people can keep score, they are an easy way to keep track. Once a Yes win became a microbial possibility everyone in Westminster lost, as they say in Scotland, the heid. And now the un...

One of the more fraught aspects of doing a spot of writing is occasionally you will be called upon to provide a potted biography. Maybe some writers approach this joyously, for me it’s a horrible chance to look like a prize knob. Who wants to read author blurbs? Nobody, that’s who. Or rather, people will glance over other publications, maybe take note of a website address. The rest comes off as so much self aggrandising nonsense. Who cares what else I do? Yet the terrible urge is to try to write something different from the norm, something witty, something interesting. Which is, of course, ludicrous. Clearly people are already interested, otherwise they wouldn’t be reading your blurb, because who wants to read author blurbs (refrain, repeat to fade) In his wonderful book “Invisible Forms”. Kevin Jackson takes a chapter to have a look at this strange extrusion on the body of writing, and skewers its various incarnations. The depressing truth is that the laconic, jokey, offhand bl...

You know Godwin’s law, the most famous of internet axioms: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." It’s one of those eye-rolling tactical gambits. The Nazis? Really? You want to bring them into it? It’s tacitly understood that, once you invoke the Third Reich in an attempt to prove your point, you’ve lost. This is borne out by frothing right-wing commentators and their talk of “Feminazis” and “The Fascist left”. Those incapable of framing a rational argument resort to Hitler, and the sane chuckle indulgently and go and talk to a grown up instead, because there’s just no dealing with them. So it’s disappointing beyond belief that when, in an interview about the Scottish referendum, Gordon Brown clumsily compared the hypothetical condition of the Scottish economy to that of the Weimar Republic, the BBC reporter followed this by saying “which led to the rise of Hitler”. That’s right, a BBC reporter drew ...

There’s a twitter account you can follow called “Don’t read the comments”. Every once in a while a different tweet will appear in your feed saying simply that, in a variety of ways. It’s salient advice. It’s been said many times, by many people that the impersonality of the internet brings out the worst in people, allowing them to vent spleen and prejudice in a way unthinkable in the normal course of human interaction, to this oft-repeated opinion I would add: particularly in comments threads. I attempt not to, really I do, but occasionally I get sucked back in. The big problem is the urge to answer back, it’s human nature, you see a massively wrongheaded opinion and the urge to correct them, or to call them out on whatever blind prejudice they’re displaying is almost overwhelming. It occurred to me the other day, I was reading a review of Owen Jones’ new book, but said review was on a fairly liberal website, so, in the interests of balance, I wandered over to a right-wing one, just...

One of the things about parenthood is how it yields its secrets on a drip, you find yourself doing things you didn’t anticipate, which looking back seem blindingly obvious. It is, of course, now perfectly clear to me that I was ALWAYS going to wind up reading the Narnia books I adored so much as a child to my eldest though it hadn’t occurred to me until he asked about them. So we’ve been reading them (currently up to Voyage of the Dawn Treader), and he’s been loving it. I’ll confess to less enthusiasm. You’re familiar with Hartley’s line about the past being a foreign country. Well revisiting Narnia has suggested that the past is a fantasy. Read as a child, unencumbered by societal preconceptions, they’re wonderful. Read as an adult and the sensation that you’re being preached at is inescapable, character traits which once seemed absolute and just now leave you feeling the subject has been shabbily treated by the author (poor Eustace, for example, is clearly unhappy, and don’t get m...

Recently I took a step which for many runners would be baffling, for some revolutionary, for more, downright heretical. For me it was the logical next step in falling back in love with the simple act of putting one foot in front of another I ditched the mp3 player. After years of skipping impatiently through random play, or sitting at the computer compiling running playlists, it’s gone. And I couldn’t be happier. It occurred to me that having music on was simply a way of trying to kid yourself that you weren’t out running, a way of trying to do something else. That music (or that horrible multitasking phenomenon “catching up on podcasts”) was getting in the way. What I love about running is its simplicity. Open the door and go. So I simplified it further. It’s better just being out in the world, after the initial horrible quarter of a mile (which music would get you through easily) the limbs remember what they’re supposed to be doing, you get into rhythm and after a while the brai...

I’ve recently been re-reading Georges Perec’s Life: a user’s manual. Not surprising news in and of itself. But it does offer some clues to the turn Coastalblog’s taken of late. Perec’s masterpiece is a snapshot in time of a Paris apartment block, his stroke of genius being to examine the lives of everyone contained therein, rather than a handful of protagonists. There is a plot of sorts, but due to the novel’s systematic progress (imagine a cross-section as a chessboard, the novel follows a knight’s passage around the board, an alinear approach which disrupts conventional narrative) the book becomes more about the individual stories (which is, in essence its point, explained by the title). It’s a humane work, allocating chapters to everyone in the building, interested in everything. I’ll not go into detail (do read it, though), as it’s not the book itself that’s the point of this piece, more Perec’s working method, and how it has come to pass that I’m daily writing these small ess...

As polls tentatively suggest that Scotland might vote Yes at the referendum, an outcome seemingly unthinkable only a few weeks ago, a bout of panic and bluster begins at Westminster. Which made me think, possibly this is why it’s happening. Months ago the No campaign was strongly ahead. There’s not enough space in this piece to discuss the pros and cons of Scottish independence, but what I would point out is that it was all going pretty well if you’re pro-union roughly until David Cameron opened his gob, and it’s been getting worse for them ever since. His tone has been condescending, a groovy teacher telling the kids what they need to do, yeah. And in his wake patronising posh bloke after patronising posh bloke has been queuing up to tell the bally Jocks to stop all this nonsense and simmer down. There have been threats about currency union, threats about Europe, copious hot air and finger-jabbing, ill thought out remarks about border guards, the Union (by which we can reasonably...

This little series of short essays was started with a simple intention. To force myself to sit at a computer and write. My reasoning being: the daily discipline would reconnect me with the idea of writing regularly as part of my life, one which has slipped a little in the last few years. The other, more nebulous idea was that the regularity would force me to write about a variety of subjects, broadening my outlook and giving my brain a bit of a workout, it’s always a good idea to move out of your comfort zone, I figured. The brevity of the pieces would be a necessary constraint, promoting succinctness (and also meaning it wasn’t too daunting a task). I was aware that it was unlikely I’d manage one every day, but if you aim high and fall a bit short, then you’ve still got more done than usual. All of which is a long winded way of saying, so far in its short existence I’m happy with what this sequence has achieved. This is the seventh, a weeks worth, which is more than I’d managed in...