Overheard

Image Wikimedia Author Sergiodarkblue


"I met Pink once at a party. I couldn't miss the chance, so I asked her if she wanted to go upstairs and make out.

She looked me up and down and said 'You wouldn't last five minutes!'

'That's all it takes, love,' I told her, 'that's all it takes'."

Belonging: author's notes

My poem "Belonging" has been found by a string of students undertaking an assignment on, I guess, poetry and belonging, and I thought it might be helpful to them to expalin a bit about why and how I wrote it and what it means (or what I want it to mean, which may not be the same thing). If you are writing an assignment, before reading any further, check your instructions: you may find that you are forbidden from looking at any contextual information, in which case: stop now, you're on your own.

Still here? Ok. Although I had thought a bit about the nature of belonging, it was only when it was set as a subject for a competition that it crystallised into a poem. The competition was part of an eisteddfod (an annual literary and musical competition held in Wales); one of the best things about Welsh culture is its acceptance that poetry is a normal activity for normal people, devoid of the class warfare and exclusivity common in England, where I grew up. I predicted, pretty accurately, that such a topic would inspire a good deal of maundering about hwyl a hiraeth (joy and longing), on being at home or being away. But I was in a different situation. The whole question of Welshness has become politicised and polarised, with careful distinction between those Welsh by descent (Welsh parents, born in Wales or elsewhere), Welsh by birth (born in Wales, with non-Welsh parents), and Welsh by choice (incomers who considered themselves Welsh). I fall into the latter category: I had never been able to summon much enthusiasm for the land and folk of my birth. I remained interested, or perhaps fascinated, by those for whom nationality and loyalty had required no choice or thought. I explain this at some length to suggest where my sympathies may lie in the poem; the text is understated in the weight it places on each group.

The form of the poem is driven by two constraints: the abab rhyming pattern for each stanza, and the self-imposed rule that the word order should be natural and stresses should fall naturally at the end of lines. The technical skill involved is trying to seem as if the words were those that would be chosen in any case, but just happened to rhyme. There is one weak line which I dislike: the last line of the first stanza, where 'recedes' isn't quite the right action.

In the third stanza, the last line's 'shout' was suggested by the rhyme, but I'm happy enough with the opposition of love's seductive whisper and fame's more overt and aggressive shout.

The final stanza is intended to suggest the feeling of peace and calm that greets a restless traveller once they have found what they are looking for. There remains some ambivalence in the poem about the power and positive and negative effects of the feeling of belonging, a sense in that it is viewed from the outside, for better or worse.

Some people are born where they belong,
Their home and family supply all needs:
The glow of hearthlight waxes strong
The call of the wider world recedes.

And some search long but never find
A spot where they can set up base
At last they must become resigned
To moving on from place to place

And some again, the lucky few
Are urged to leave, and to seek out
An individual rendezvous
With love's whisper or fame's shout

Belonging is a state of mind
Tranquility its foremost fruit
Sought by all, but many find
It cannot grow without a root

Belonging is published in the collection Carefully Chosen Words published by Carreg Ffylfan Press.

How to beat writer's block

There are two different types of writer's block:

• when you know what you should be writing but cannot settle down to it;


• and when you don't know what to do at all.

The second type is hard to address: where do ideas come from, after all? The best solution is avoidance: write down any ideas you might have as you go along. I've got a couple of things that have been on my to-do list for over a year now (Martin Amis book reviews); that's ok, they are there, not going anywhere, and I can move on to them if I finish or get fed up with the more active projects.

But the first type is the main one people mean. It seems so much more attractive to do anything but what you need to. I'm sure that one of the reasons that novelists these days go overboard on research, as if they were writing a text book rather than a work of fiction, is that it's a good way of putting off the fateful moment of having to put it down. From my experience, I think, much as stage fright for actors (which is perhaps a closely comparable phenomenon), writer's block is an expected, perhaps mandatory, element of the writing process; it is therefore not an admission of failure when it occurs. But it is a practical problem, and here are some tips that might help:

write the stuff you want to

I had planned out The Time Zone Rule for a long time but somehow couldn't face the task of scene setting, introducing the characters, and giving them their back-stories: the interesting bit of the story to me was the development of the central relationship from a sexual to a fraternal one. So I decided to start writing there and deal with the introductories later; as it turned out, I left the story in the order written, rather than in chronological order.

If what you're writing doesn't interest you, I don't think it will work for anyone else. One point I realised was that you can use the narrative freedom to describe what you want to: you could describe someone making a cup of tea, if you wanted to, or you could jump straight to the next incident.


switch projects
If you are inspired to work on something, go for it. I've had several ideas that have jumped the queue because I was ready to advance them. nThat's good, not bad.


plan
If you don't want to apply yourself to the grind of writing a scene or chapter, why not spend some time planning out the plot instead? Although I don't think you have to plan, it provides a great safety net for inspiration and allows you to start building in ironies and hints.

organise
There's a lot of tedious record-keeping, filing, proofreading etc hwich needs to be done; do that instead.

re-write
Go through the complete draft elements and see whether they can be improved: they probably can.

go for walk
Define your specific problem: is it a sentence? a character? a plot element?
Then go and do something else and come back with the best solution you have come up with.


Or, of course, you can write something else, like a blog post, rather than get the radio script written (it's a long story, but not yet long enough).

What music companies don't get about the web

A lot of people writing on the web criticise music companies for their antiquated approach to managing digital rights, ie by trying to control them. 'Why can't it be free?' they ask, apparently unconcerned with the impact of such a change on the artists they profess to admire. Experiments in giving away material for free have had an uneven history: Prince is presumably happy to have sold out his O2 concerts on the back of handing out his CD, but Radiohead are less sure. But as long as music companies exist and artists hope to make a living from their creative content, making stuff free can only be a tactical gimmick rather than standard policy. So, perhaps against the conventional wisdom, I would say that music companies are right to be worried about copyright evasion on the internet, right to attempt to prevent it, and right to take action against those who facilitate it.

Which is not to say that I think they 'get' the web. They don't. Over the last year I have been looking at the online presence of a range of artists, from Kate Bush, superstar, Sandi Thom, contemporary minor chart artist, Nick Lowe, cult artist, to Roy Harper, forgotten cult artist. What they have in common is that in terms of the web they are spread all over the place: a My Space page, artist home page, record label page, wikipedia entry, YouTube videos, and fan sites, and they are represented inconsistently in each. For example, when Sandi Thom was promoting her last single on her website and MySpace page, the record label website didn't even mention it. Nick Lowe's latest release, At My Age, didn't have a wikipedia page until I created one. The only good examples of use of the web as a promotional and information tool were for Neil Young and Graham Parker.

But why is it so bad? Partly because looking after the web takes time: somebody has to sit down and update the pages, respond to queries, etc; it isn't clear whether this responsibility should fall on the artist, management, or label, and so in many cases it is done by nobody.

Underlying this is the more basic problem: music companies are used to a B2B (business-to-business) model, where they produced the physical product and handled promotion, but supplied the product to shops to sell to the consumer. Their 'audience' was therefore made up of retailers on the one hand and media on the other. They are completely unequipped for the activity of selling things direct to consumers: this is reflected in the reluctance of record companies to get involvced with selling digital downloads of their songs from their sites: usually, potential buyers are sent to itunes to buy it, letting them take a share of the revenue. Similarly, physical product is sold via Amazon.

Another result is a total focus on the new and exciting. In most businesses, it is much harder to reach new customers than to keep existing ones. The music business is obsessed with selling new artists to teenagers, generally through the singles chart. But that is only part of the market. Why not exploit the older consumer, with more time and money, who might be persuaded, fairly easily, to buy back-catalogue CDs, DVDs and books from an artist they like, or liked?; this is a market which has outgrown the need for things to be free: even a full-price CD is cheap cmpared to other expenses. A sensible music company would make damned sure that its artist profiles covered past as well as present and had links to sell things.

In the past the media, particularly radio, were the best way of reaching out to potential purchasers, but the web provides others. This should, eventaully, change the practices of the industry: it may become economically viable for some artists to sell very small numbers of tracks, as long as they don't cost much to produce and promote. The danger (from the companies' point of view) is that they may have little role, since the artists may be quite capable of handling it themselves.

But it is strange when audiences for broadcast media are declining and fragmenting, that there is a new audience on the web eager for information and opportunities to buy, and they are being ignored or left to the mercies of established players like itunes.

UPDATE
Holly A Hughes suggests, correctly, that artists should see this as an essential part of their brand. I'm not sure I agree about the fan forum, though: I've seen a lot of tumbleweed forums which make you feel that you are distrubing the dead (Sandi Thom's, for one, but even Kate Bush's has gone very quiet in last last year).

File under fiction: available now from Lulu.com

This debut collection of short stories by Martin Locock ranges from the misadventures of an archivist dealing with a landed family to a solicitor's obsession with a perfect family seen through a window.

The stories are fast-paced, sexy and funny.

Published by Carreg Ffylfan Press.

Contents:


Change and Decay

An archivist meets a gentry family amid a decaying estate and reveals some family history they had wanted to conceal.

"The train muttered and grunted to a halt, and the doors hissed open. I stepped out onto the deserted platform- none of my fellow-passengers were inspired to alight. I walked through an archway, leaning to even out the weight of the laptop case and suitcase, past spare mail trolleys queued for an unexpected pre-Christmas rush. A bus timetable yellowed behind a cracked glass display, ready to be sold to some transport museum as a bygone."

Read it online.


Exchange Mechanism

Developing a telepathy machine presents an opportunity for misuse and manipulation.

"I had got used to the prevarications of a series of boyfriends who would drag out our vidchats interminably on the offchance of catching a glimpse of my roommate Kristin walking around in the background. Although I'd tell them at the earliest opportunity that they were wasting their time (Kristin was 100% lezz), that didn't stop them looking."

Read it online.


Candles on the Table

What looked like the perfect family hides a dark secret.

"Stephen looked to the far side of the road, and saw a small neat cottage; one of the downstairs rooms was lit, and he could make out, with intrusive clarity, a woman setting cutlery on the table. Two candles were already burning in elegant simple candlesticks. On the wall behind the table there were small framed pictures and blue-and-white plates. He was enchanted, as much by the room as the figure; he had once thought that he would occupy such a house, everything just so."

Read it online.


The Time Zone Rule

Two colleagues are sent at short notice to Morocco; they succumb to the romance of the situation but then have to deal with the consequences.

"Sue's people carrier circled the staff car park while she became increasingly frustrated. Her criteria for what constituted an adequate space dropped ever lower. Designated personal parking spaces had been abolished the year before in a fit of executive egalitarianism, on the advice of a touchy-feely consultancy brought in to make the company 'a happier place to work'. It wasn’t working for her today, she thought grimly, gritting her teeth."

Not available online.


A night like this

A music reviewer picks up a girl at a Dylan gig in 1974.

Read it online.


The Grand Tour

A tourist in Italy spends the perfect afternoon sitting in a station cafe watching the world go by.

The waitress brought the drinks over to our table. Mine was a cappucino; this was back in the 1980s, before real coffee became universally available, and it was therefore something of an exotic treat. My friends had chosen lemonade in deference to the shimmering heat of August.
Philip unzipped a side pocket of his backpack and brought out a notebook.
'We've got three hours here to wait until the express comes through to take us to Florence.'
He looked around the station café, finding little prospect of amusement.
'I could do with changing some more travellers' cheques,' he continued, 'we'd have to catch the bus up to the main town to find a bank.'
'I'd like to go too,' said Malcolm,' there's a church with a 15th-century pieta I'd like to see.' He paused and turned to me. 'What about you?'
'I think I'll stay here,' I said.

Not available online.


A place of learning

Newbury University's Religious Studies department is rife with internal politics, complacency and frustration, while outside the comfortable Anglican certainties crumble.

Morning. Penelope Zbigniev tilted her head back, wiped her eyes, and yawned. She refocused on the computer screen and continued typing.

'Definitions of prayer vary across the world. For this study, the phenomenological approach has been taken, hence covering all individual spiritual activity which includes both ritual and contemplative components.'

She paused. She knew that a PhD thesis wasn't supposed to be interesting, but she took it as a bad sign that hers bored even the author. She stretched again, the old wooden chair creaking as she shifted her negligible weight on it. The small room was packed with stuff: books, ornaments, cover throws. Her housemates slept; undergraduates kept later hours. She looked out into the yard below her window. An ugly tomcat stalked along the wall, peering suspiciously at the foliage in the overgrown garden. He did this every day. Penelope wondered whether there was a contemplative component to his spiritual activity.

Not available online.


The Austen correspondence

An undiscovered letter from Jane to Cassandra.

Read it online.


Boswell continued

Further adventures of Johnson and Boswell.

"Being an addition by Another Gentleman to James Boswell's celebrated Life of Johnson, in which is described a visit to Lichfield, with instances of the Doctor's wit and sagacity which arose in the course thereof."

Read it online.


Fidelity

'I've left him.'
Sheila opened the front door wider to allow the distraught figure of her sister to enter. In no time, Linda was sat at the kitchen table, alternatively sobbing, sniffing, and taking a tissue.
'Max [sniff] is [sob] having [blow] an affair.'
'Are you sure?' asked Sheila, doubtfully.
'Yes,' said Linda, nodding wordlessly, 'it's a bit out of character, I know, doing something imaginative. You're right about him being dull.'
'I don't think I ever said . . .'
'You didn't have to. But there you go, he is having an affair. Well, good luck to him.'

Not available online.


The seducer's tale

The Fresher's Ball ends unexpectedly.

Read it online.


The price of everything

A beggar recounts an eventful day.

Read it online.


Street science

An unlikely friendship grows from a chance meeting at the hospital.

Read it online.


Sinners, all

A quite night in a bar, an argument, a wager.

Read it online.

Author's Notes

"Change and decay owes its title only indirectly to the hymn 'Abide with me'. I first encountered the phrase when reading Scoop at an impressionable age in my teens: it seemed to me at the time to be most perfect novel ever written, an opinion I have had little reason to alter. Re-reading it recently I became aware of how much of the atmosphere of country house living I had imbibed, reflected in Change and decay."

Not available online

About the Author

"I was born in Barrow-in-Furness, a grim grey shipbuilding town on the north end
of Morecambe Bay, drenched in the drizzle of the Irish Sea. Terraces huddled
beneath the silhouettes of cranes; as the hooter sounded the streets would fill
with tired but boisterous riveters and boilermakers heading for pub, chip shop,
or home, as preference and finance dictated.I cannot claim, however, that I
absorbed much of this atmosphere into my personality. By the age of 6
months I had left forever."

Not available online

188pp, 6" x 9"

It can be ordered from Lulu.com as a book or digital download.

My first day as an atheist meme

I saw this at Kafir Girl and thought it was in interesting set of questions, even if nobody has tagged me (sniff).

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

I was at university and had a long debate with a Philosphy student friend in which I attempted to defend my belief at the time in a theist view that there was a prime mover god-type figure somewhere, albeit one which took no interest in what happened on Earth or anywhere else, or offered anybody eternal life. He asked the astute question why I believed this, since I had renounced any form of written or personal revelation on which to base it. By the next morning I had recognised that the belief was based on emotion not reason and I abandoned it; when I told him, I remember that he was surprised and impressed that I should actually alter my beliefs as a result of such a process.


Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

Strangely enough, it was my confirmation (age 14). I had been going to church with my family for years without feeling that it applied to me; the course of confirmation classes had raised a series of moral conundrums without satisfactorily solving them (chief among them the purpose of pain and who goes to Heaven or Hell). But I was holding out in the expectation that once confirmed I would experience what otehr believers obviously did: some sense that there was something there that listened, and spoke to them. And after a grand service officiated at by a bishop I had thought, well, here goes. Nope, still nothing. It seemed obvious to me then that the whole structure was created by people, without any necessary input from God.


How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

Never, not even at the level of wishing.


Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

Not at the time, although I find attempts to justify the Massacre of the Innocents make me cross now.


Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

Yes. I took the view that at least ghosts have a long and varied tradition of people seeing them and writing about them, and I was at that time open-minded about the limits of consciousness, so I was happy to entertain the possibility of telepathy. The critical point from my point of view was that ghosts made no claim to scriptural authority: if they existed, they existed. It was some time later that I shifted to the view that people believe they see ghosts rather than people see ghosts.


Do you want to be wrong?

No. We ought to live this life as if it is all there is, doing the best we can. There is no framework for another life which can accommodate the principles of mercy, justice and partial revelation to the living which redounds any credit to God.

Sandi Thom: a last farewell

I have been an accidental archivist of the Sandi Thom saga for four years now, fighting a guerilla war over her Wikipedia pages to correct the more extravagant and lazy claims of her PR company. In the course of doing so, I have learned a little of how conventional publicity works: the sudden stream of 'lifestyle' features that precede any new record release, the positive gloss on any events in which the start is involved, the attempt to promote controversy by being banned from YouTube or criticising Lily Allen, and , underlying it all, a deliberate vagueness about tour dates, audiences and record sales.

What is funny is that not long ago this could have gone on largely unnoticed: if the media picked up on it, it was true, if not, it was forgotten, consigned to wastepaper baskets overnight. But thanks to the Internet, nothing ever really goes away. This means that everything is potentially 'on the record', and potentially therefore a future embarassment.

Just in the last few weeks, Sandi has said that she is:

* writing songs for films
* moving to Brighton
* moving to New York
* planning to marry and have a baby
* concentrating on becoming established in America
* touring Europe
* releasing another single off the last album
* recording a new album
* undertaking a tour of small venues in Scotland

Well, that will keep her busy!

But I won't be watching. If I am going to spend some of my time in monitoring Internet activity relating to an artist, I think I'd rather it was someone whose work I admired. So long Sandi - it's been, well, you know.

The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: boredom

We are certainly living through interesting times.

It's a shame they're not more interesting interesting times, though.

Kate Bush: underrated genius?

I must admit that Kate Bush is one of those artists that I have always quite liked but never got as far as buying any of their records. Partly I think that this was a reaction to the distrust of my motives: did I just like her because she was beautiful?

Having spent some time looking at YouTube clips and their comments, I see that I was unusual in worrying about this. No wonder she distanced herself from her fans: I would. Not that she really was a recluse. It's funny how easy it is these days to become a recluse: stop going to film premieres, refuse to appear on quiz shows, move outside the M25, and suddenly you'e Simeon Stylites living up a pole in the desert.

But as I say I mostly liked her work. Looking back now, you can see that the unusual side to it is not its variation in quality, but in its ambition. She avoids straightforward autobiographical narrative. You can argue whether she does manage to evoke Joyce's Ulysses in The Sensual World, but how many other artists would you even think of asking the question?

Which is not to say that great rock needs to have literary pretensions: but it does need to have some form of intellectual complexity if it aspires to be more than good time rock and roll. I like Oasis, me, but would be the first to admit that their lyrics are basically:

some stuff here
some stuff here
hoo-oo-oo-ook

In interviews she is eloquent and polite; this is enough of a rarity to make her sound like a genius in the context of music programmes. She might be a genius; but more to the point she is thoughtful. You can see how she reponds to questions: she thinks it over, then tries to get from a mundane fact 'You learned the violin, didn't you?' to something worth saying, like how this taught her music theory and discipline.

Listening to something like Aerial requires a degree of attention unusual these days, both in terms of the music and in the lyrics which are diffuse and referential; but it is precisely this complexity that provides the intrigue.


Perhaps it is a sign of genius that you are cleverer than your fans: certainly Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen are.

So are Metallica, but that's not quite the same thing.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre: book review

I have been following Goldacre's column in the Guardian and latterly his blog for a couple of years now, since it is usually the best source of sensible information on any news story that touches on science, technology or medicine. I was fearful that the book might have shared the blogs slightly smug and inward-looking style ('we're clever people and we know everything'), but in fact it is well-written, coherent, and engaging, written in a light and chatty style.

There are extended accounts of the bizarre history of some recent media panics (MRSA, MMR, Dore, and fish oil), but more importantly, the science and 'science' of these stories is examined forensically, so that the reader learns to interpret news stories critically: what does "50% reduction" mean in this situation, what's the sample size. This is worthy and important and should (in time) change the way that news media present their accounts (I have already noticed a survey fatigue, where all involved seem happy to accept their spurious basis).

Perhaps the two most interesting chapters, though, are those on the placebo effect and on our perception of risk. I hadn't known, for example, that painkillers work better if they are packaged better and have been advertised, but it is true. The moral and practical implications of trying to deliver Evidence Based Medicine when this sort of placebo effect can dictate success or failure are a challenge. The chapetr on risk demonstrates at length how bad people are at distinguishing between chance events and patterns, between causation, correlation and coincidence, and how unreliable their accounts of their experiences can be, thanks to selection bias. This important factor explains why people sincerely believe things in the absence, or the face, of objective evidence, whether it is the Bridgend suicide 'cluster', electromagnetic sensitivity, or the Loch Ness Monster.

It should be noted that Goldacre does not adopt a hectoring tone: he argues that these are universal, human, traits; he just wishes us to be aware of them so that we can monitor our belief formation. He notes, for example, the tendency of people to use the limited evidence that moderate drinking is better for your health than teetotalism as a justification for their immoderate drinking. This is why factoids like 'red wine is good for you' are so powerful: there is so much contradictory advice out there that, as Paul Simon said, 'a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest' (an observation, incidentally, that is so perceptive and well-expressed that on its own should preserve his reputation for millenia).


The most contentious part of the book deals with the media and how they report science stories; Goldacre tries to explain why nonsense science so often trumps proper science in media coverage. He suggests that the fault lies with humanities background of most journalists, who find the science impenetrable and feel free to choose the wildest and most exciting of the opinions they are offered. Here he may be wrong, insofar as he assumes that science suffers alone. The sad truth is that the media deals badly with all areas of specialist endeavour. An archaeologist told me recently about press coverage of a Neolithic find; it was dated to 3000 BC, 5000 years ago; in print it became 3000 years old. I wasn't surprised: to the non specialist, it was simply 'very old'. There is an interesting question about how far journalists are to blame in not understanding or whether they undertsand adequately but dumb stories down because their readers won't need or want accurate details. This pervades serious newspapers: strange health advice is dished out in the supplements while in the main paper things are more rational. But perhaps we get the news coverage we deserve: if you want to depress yourself, look at the 'most read stories' list on the BBC News pages.

Goldacre believes that all media, and especially serious newspapers, are engaged in a project to educate and inform their readers; but they aren't. They are there to entertain, mainly: hence the celebritisation of news, with the daily updates of Pete Docherty's battle with drugs, and battles with photographers. But even in the old days, there was a strong vein of cynicism and philistinism in journalism: the attitude that the contents didn't need to be true, just true enough.

Nevertheless, the book is enjoyable and inspiring: the way he benourages the reader to engage with the primary sources should be enough to balance the increasing inaccuracy of the media as reliable informants.

Work in progress

I'm working on a long short story, The Time Zone Rule, which will be included in a collection of my fiction to be called File Under Fiction.

The Time Zone Rule is subtitled 'a modern romance' and is a obverse version of a romantic comedy: it starts with a one-night-stand between two colleagues who end up far away from home, and then explores how they ended up there and what the consequences are.

Fact and fiction

[part of a series about the mechanics of writing fiction]

Will Self recently railed aghainst the classification of the roman a clef as fiction: he said that it should be treated as disguised memoir. I don't really see the point of writing about real people and events and lightly amending names. The drearily literal 'novel' in which everything is researched is a blight of modern times, of course. Don't the writers see that their job is to make stuff up?

Readers of course do like to try to search a text for patches where the writer is simply recounting their own experience unaltered (hence the problem with writing about sex); taken to an extreme this means that it becomes impossible for a writer to describe extreme opinions or actions without being suspected.

My view is that the real world is too dreary to merit inclusion in fiction. As Martin Amis said of his father's books, people spend too much time drinking tea. As a result, there isn't a superfluous adjective applied in my stories: the one thing the reader can be certain of is that a closely-described physical setting or person is completely fictional; the telling details are there to convince.

Having said that, there is a residual validity to the point that questions that interest writers imply something about their thoughts. I may or may not have a negative view of the role of the modern landed gentry in society (on balance yes, but mildly, would be my answer), but I'm intrigued enough by the issue to deal with at at some length in Change and Decay. But having such an interest is not the same thing as having a manifesto or a coherent body of thought around a topic.

Exchange mechanism

[A science fiction story]

I

My office pod was in darkness, lit only by the vidscreen on the wall. I was arguing dejectedly with my boyfriend.

"I'm sorry, Cal: I won't be able to meet up tonight."

He frowned. "Oh come on, Lori, you can't work all the time, and I won't be planetside again for a week."

I explained that I had a research paper to finish, to be sent to Earth in the next transmission window. Eventually he gave in, sulkily blanking the screen.

I had got used to the prevarications of a a series of boyfriends who would drag out our vidchats interminably on the offchance of catching a glimpse of my roommate Kristin walking around in the background. Although I'd tell them at the earliest opportunity that they were wasting their time (Kristin was 100% lezz), that didn't stop them looking. And although I'm not lezz at all, I can see that she ticks all the right boxes for them. Unlike me. So it made me mad, having to compete for attention with someone who wasn't even interested.

I closed down the vidscreen and brought up my text on the viewplate. I was stuck. "The economics of choice" was my topic. I was trying to develop a macroeconomic model of rational consumer choice which allowed for the fact that individuals in the population made decisions on exchange value and price based on partial information about the overall market. If I could resolve it, it would be a major advance in the field, but the mathematics was proving intractable.

Kristin walked in a few minutes later; too late for Cal! I wondered sometimes if she did it on purpose, to cause trouble in my relationships, but why would she do that?

"How's it going?" she asked, "Still stuck?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid so."

"You know who could help? Professor Sandra Bloch - she's a genius. I've seen her at parties; she's even hit on me a few times. No chance; she's too old and ugly for me."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Tolerance wasn't Kristin's strongpoint.

"But whatever she looks like, her mind's a whiz- the most-published author in the whole uni, maybe the whole planet. She's co-written papers on everything from architecture to zoology; her main subject's psychology and neurology, though."


II

A little later, I had successfully navigated the virtual directory to locate Bloch's contact details. When she appeared on the vidscreen she seemed unsurprised but unenthusiastic at being called up by a mere research student; she looked me up and down before lapsing into disinterest. Only the mention of Kristin's name stayed her hand as she reached for the off button.

"How can I help?" she demanded.

I breathlessly explained the basics of my research and the difficulty I had encountered. She considered briefly, then nodded.

"You've probably not heard of my work with thought transfer? I have developed a sort of hypnosis which opens the subject's mind, and allows me to telepathically explore it. Often I can see solutions that the subject already has stored, deep in their subconcious, to which they have no access. I can raise them into the rational realm in a form ready to be communicated to the world. You see, great ideas are, in general, simple: most complexity is sheer noise. So you see, I can try this with you now, if you wish- engender the trance state and resolve the problem."

I had no wish to be hurried into volunteering, and stalled. "Are there any side effects?"

She waved her hand. "None at all, nothing. A temporary period of amnesia following the trance."

I nodded my consent, and followed her instructions, sitting in front of the vidscreen; my breathing slowed as I fell into a trance and then complete unconciousness.


III

I awoke with lifted spirits; I lay in bed, opening my eyes to see the pod ceiling. A rush of nested formulae ran through my mind, their interlinking creating the solution I had sought. The text of the paper arranged itself neatly in my head. Of course, I'd credit Sandra as joint author. It seemed the least I could do.

I licked my lips; they seemed puffy and slightly bruised. I felt a weight on my shoulder shift. I looked across to see Kristin's body next to mine, skin to skin. She yawned contentedly, then stretched to bring her face close to my ear.

"Wow," she whispered.


I lay completely still, working things out.

Sandra must have ...
Kristin must have ...
I must have ...

So everyone had got what they wanted.

Allowed lists (comedy script)

I was talking to my wife* yesterday about allowed lists. You know- the lists of celebrities you're allowed to sleep with, should the chance occur, without any question. For a lot men, it's easy: their Allowed List is a Girls Aloud list. I'm a bit more sophisticated than that. I haven't really given it much thought, but my list would be: Kate Bush, then maybe Katherine Heigl, in fact any of the women off Grey's Anatomy, or better, all of the women off Grey's Anatomy ... sorry, just drifted off there. Anyway, the point is, it doesn't matter who's on my list, because it's not going to happen. It's not worth even thinking about. No, it isn't.



But all people, it seems, have these lists. And celebrities are people too, in a way. You can imagine Guy Ritchie asking Madonna one day who's on her list, and she says "Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Chris Martin". Next awards ceremony she goes to, she has the night of her life.



* My pretend wife, that is. My real wife has ticked the 'no publicity' box.

The Modern Dictionary

Good writing and bad sex

It has become a habit of lazy book reviewers to throw in a statement that some of the writing in the work under discussion would be a candidate for the Literary Review's Bad Sex In Literature award. What they often mean is that it is badly written from start to finish, including the sex bit, which isn't the same thing. But I'm not sure whether the criticism is entirely justified: there are good reasons why writing about is hard [hur hur hur] - difficult; unintentional humour is one of them.

More generally, though, there is the question of credibility. Novelists can tell me any sort of nonsense about the workings of the Moscow underground system or the administrative records of a police investigation and I will believe them as long as it sound as if they know hwat they are talking about. I've been told that Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a completely unreliable guide to motorcycle maintenance. But if someone is writing about an area of which I have experience, I can check whether they are not just plausible but authentic. So a different level of scrutiny is applied.

There is a problem here for the writer writing for the naive reader: it will be assumed that any experience described realistically must be real. Kingsley Amis admits to abandoning a novel with a first-person gay narrator because he didn't want his readers to speculate about the extent to which it was true. This seems a bit bizarre: one assumes that Thomas Harris is not suspected of being, or even wanting to be, a cannibal.

Then there is the question of language. Preferred terminology for body parts depends on the writer's (and reader's) age, gender, nationality, class, sexual orientation etc; use of what seems natural for the writer may have an adverse impact on some of his or her readers. For example, Martin Amis' reputation a a misogynist writer incapable of creating a convincing female character may be partly derived for his preference for terminology which is typically male (it is also partly derived from his inability to create convincing female characters: it is notable that the two most fully realised, Nicola Six in London Fields and Mike Hoolihan in Night Train, are cop-outs because Amis explicitly says that they are 'male' psychologically).

And there is the wider question of the extent to which one wishes to be seen to be writing pornography. Somewhat bizarrely, 40 years after the Chatterley trial, using Lawrence's terms in literature would be seen as rude if no longer shocking. To retreat into medical terminology runs the risk of making the act of love sound as exciting as a computer program. Since sex is 90% imagination and 10% friction [source unknown], most of the time writing is about the quality of the activity as it is experienced, and is as much about emotion and attitude as it is about mechanics. This is I think why so much writing about sex is flagged as being bad, in the sense of pretentious or over-ambitious. Even clever writers like Nick Hornby these days steer clear of anything hinting at high style: simple words in simple order are the norm. Purple prose is something of an endangered species in modern literature (with good reason, of course).

There is a danger, though, that being overcritical of the attempts to address the subject will lead to the easily-swayed from avoiding it altogether, leaving us with a mechanical prudishness at the core of fiction. Sex is important as a way of revealing character and a way of communicating mood, and on the whole writers should be encouraged to attempt its description, even if some are bound to fail.

The Modern Dictionary

End of the road for Sandi Thom

"Did you know that Sandi Thom is working at Abbey Road with Will Young, Michelle McManus and David Sneddon?"

"Are they recording?"

"No, they're the night shift at St John's Wood MacDonalds."



I have been following the story of Sandi Thom with, perhaps, more interest than it deserves, especially since I have no strong views on her music. It happened to be one of those news stories, like the WMD dodgy dossier, where it was obvious at the time that the media had been fed a line. At the time, those unfamiliar with the Web might believe that electronic word of mouth might increase nightly webcast audiences from zero to 40,000 in three weeks, but nobody else did. In the rush of skepticism that followed, many were left believing that the whole webcast thing was a stunt and that she had been signed to RCA/Sony beforehand, which isn't true (or at least is specifically denied by those who would be in a position to know).

It seems that the sands of time are running out on her career. The follow-up album charted for a single week, the single for two, despite media and personal appearances, interviews and advertising on YouTube. Any day now, RCA will surely pull the plug. It remains baffling that of the 300,000 people who were happy to buy the first album, only 1% wanted to buy the second (whatever its merits): she just seems to be one of those people who can sell large numbers of records without inspiring loyalty or affection from the purchasers. It looks as if "Punk rocker" will suffer the same fate as the Diana version of "Candle in the wind" as a record people are reluctant to admit having bought.

Tory boy

David Cameron's policy on addressing the rise in the number of obese people is to tell them to help themselves. No David, that's not going to work: they're doing that already.

The Times Online have, alas, retitled their version of the story after spotting the potential for misunderstanding.

The commodification of exercise

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Of course, it is possible that the gym is being a responsible business and catering for its users who want to work out but cannot cope easily with climbing stairs (people needing physio, for example). But it doesn't look as if the people on the way in are in that category. One of the triumphs of modern culture is the packaging of exercise as a consumer activity that involves clothes, a venue, and money: you are offered the chance to effectively buy, or, perhaps, more accurately, rent, fitness at a rate of so much per hour. It is a triumph, because it works. I can remember thiking how handy it was that the gym is so close to work. It took a while to spot the flaw in the thinking. In how many lifts in how many office blocks around the world is someone saying at this moment as they step in "I won't get a chance to work out today".

Three stories about shoes

As part of a leadership course I took part in a narrative leadership / corporate storytelling session where we were asked to tell a series of three stories about our shoes. (It made sense at the time).

The first story was factual, and mine was mundane, restricted to the explanation that I was wearing trainers rather than shoes because I was expecting to walk a fair distance, and then that the trainers were a cheap and generic brand because unlike my children I didn't care which make they are.

The second story was supposed to include a fictional element; mine turned out to be wholly fictional: although my trainers looked like a pair, I said, they were in fact the remaining halves of two pairs. My speciality in sports was doing marathons the hard way, that is, by hopping, and so I was always wearing out one shoe faster than the other. In order to ensure that my muscle development was kept symmetrical, I always alternated which leg I used for each marathon, so the next one would be my left leg.

The third story was supposed to be fantastic; mine was just a bit strange. Once upon a time I was getting ready for a job interview, when I realised that my shoes were too tatty, and I rushed into the shoe shop on the way to the office. I looked at the black shoes and the brown shoes but none of them looked smart enough to impress. I had resigned myself to wearing my old shoes when I noticed the rack of trainers, and decided I might as well buy some. When I got to the interview, the panel was composed of three men wearing suits and ties. I was surprised to see that they were all wearing trainers. I got the job.


I think what's interesting about this exercise (talking for a minute with no preparation) is that is demonstrates how commonplace and instinctive storymaking is: you often hear self-described creative types going on about the search for inspiration and the dullness of normal life, but the truth is that ideas are plentiful: it is time to document them that is short.

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The Modern Dictionary

Overheard

"You know my philosophy- If life gives you lemons, make lemonade - it's just, sometimes, I get sick of lemonade."

Overheard

"We aren't allowed to use negative words like 'problem' or 'failure', so I said we were up Issue Creek challenged by having no paddle."

Variation on a theme

Why did Jim Morrison cross the road?

I don't know, why did Jim Morrison cross the road?

To break on through to the other side.

Government IT not fit for purpose?

Joe Harley says only one third of government IT projects succeed.

"A DWP spokeswoman later played down Harley's comments. She said he was quoting from an independent report in which success was narrowly defined as the project being on time, to cost and meeting the specification exactly."

Perhaps the ones which weren't on time, budget and spec should have been called 'differently successful'.

An infinite progression

For a while there was just confused.com if you wanted to compare insurance deals. But these days there are loads of different websites. If only there were a website called Confused about comparison sites.com.

Overheard

Two men in a pub

Man 1: I don't think much of those new dating websites.

Man 2: Tried them , have you?

Man 1: Yes, last night. I put in my preferences: big tits, big bum, likes to party ...

Man 2: What did it say?

Man 1: Apparently my ideal partner is Johnny Vegas.