June 3rd - June 9th 2002
Sunday Daudet
Saturday Walking
Friday Saves me
Thursday Spiderman
Wednesday -
Tuesday Diva updates
Monday Poor me
Sunday 9th June 2002
When Alphonse Daudet visited London in 1896, the year before he died, his fellow writers did him proud.. At the end of the visit they saw him off in style from Victoria Station, where Meredith found his gouty fingers stuck fast in Daudet's crippled hand. As the train pulled away from the platform, there was nothing either man could do to let the other go until someone grabbed Meredith round the middle and tore him free.
- extracted from a Telegraph review of Julian Barnes' new translation of Daudet's 'In the Land of Pain'.
(A moment's reflection reveals that it would have been much worse if it had been Meredith on the train, given that Daudet was in a wheelchair at the time...)
Saturday 8th June 2002
Hamish Fulton, whose exhibition has just closed at the Tate, is an artist who makes art by walking. Here's an extract from a review by Peter Campbell in a recent issue of The London Review of Books:
Walking is a kind of sport and some of Fulton's gallery art is to his walking art what any sports report is to the event.
Walking can also be a personal exploration, even the kind of walk that is merely a pacing up and down, and some of Fulton's output is mantra-like.
Separating the walk from the advertisement does not relieve him of aesthetic problems.
One which is endemic in reports by those who value the experience of walking on their own or with a few companions - exposed to the weather, sometimes in danger or exhausted, intensely aware of the landscape, separated from the engrossing distractions of human society - is finding a way of referring to experience that doesn't sound boastful, or seem to present moments of private revelation in a way that appears to call for applause..
Walkers have to let people know how the walk went, and no matter how modestly they phrase their stories, can find themselves in the awkward position of saying 'this was a wonderful, very private thing, so I am going to tell you all about it.'
Friday 7th June 2002
Sarah writes about the Jubilee parade - and saves me having to do so.
Vaughan writes about the Jubilee celebrations - and saves me having to do so.
Jonathan writes about Grace Jones and Yoko Ono at Purple in the Park - and saves me having to do so.
Thursday 6th June 2002
Spider-Man, as a dashiki-wearing instructor at a Brooklyn day-care centre once explained to me and a group of other (multi-hued) children, wasn't actually invented by white people at all, but derived from an African legend of a spider-demon of the jungle, a trickster figure.
It may have been nonsense, or only coincidence, but the fact that it needed to be claimed is significant. It is also perhaps instructive in understanding why, for such an apparently simple and popular character, Spider-Man ('the original wall-crawling, web-slinging white nigger', Jeff Winbush proclaimed in The Comics Journal in 1995) took so long to be given a flattened and universalised Hollywood rendering.
Or why, now that he has been given that treatment, so many forty or thirtysomething men of a certain type (I mean, like myself) are bearing down with such emotional intensity on the results.
Spider-Man was a wunderkind-outcast identification available to anyone who'd mixed teenage grandiosity with even the mildest persecution complex, let alone real persecution.
Matt Groening once proposed a magazine called 'Sullen Teen'. Long before the trench-coat mafia, The Amazing Spider-Man was that magazine.
- extracted from an excellent, lengthy, insightful review of the movie in this week's London Review of Books.
Tuesday 4th June 2002
Diva updates:
Elaine Stritch won her first Tony award last night. And promptly over-ran the two-minute slot for her acceptance speech. And was cut off in mid-sentence by the orchestra and the commercials. And threw a major hissy-fit. As you would.
Madonna is pregnant again. Or not. Pretend you don't care. (And pretend you haven't noticed that the Telegraph now offers online fact-files about burning issues of the day that include the Middle East, Kashmir and.. yup.)
Shirley Bassey did her bit for the Queen at the nauseating Buck House Botox-fest. As did Lenny Henry. Have you noticed? You never see both of them in the same room.
The Queen Mother was described as "the most dangerous woman in Europe." By Hitler (who should know). Hello magazine says it, so it must be true.
Yoko Ono screamed and mumbled at one party in the park and then, 48 hours later, sat down quietly at another. Less queens at the second event, which probably explains the difference.
Monday 3rd June 2002
FRIDAY: Having finally geared my reluctant ass up for a long-delayed session of brown-envelope opening, I find that, despite my having filled in my tax-form by the very finallest due date, the bastards are charging me, not only £100 penalty but a further £100 interest. (Moral: it is not enough to fill in forms, one must post them too.)
Adventures in economics continue with the discovery that the money sitting in my business account, the money which is supposed to be approximately a grand more than the final tranche of tax due in just a few weeks is - ahem - actually approximately a grand less.
Gloom.
SATURDAY: Despite being determined to go to Purple in the Park, I haven't quite got round to getting myself a ticket, so it's now going to cost me £20 rather than £15. Unless a friend rings and offers me one of his complementary work-related tickets. Which he does. Yess!
The party in the park passes very pleasantly, assisted by copious amounts of over-priced beer and the simple joys of chatting to about two dozen people I know and ogling a further couple of dozen that I don't. (And Yoko Ono is unbelievable.)
You see: procrastination can pay.
SUNDAY: Another warm day, and another chance to sit in the South London sun with a big bunch of poofs, on the grassy knoll outside the Vauxhall Tavern - which hostelry has lately taken to restricting the number of people it tries to cram into its cramped confines. (We'd like to think it's because of the constant complaining here, but word is they've had a visit from the fire brigade.)
Bank holidays are always super-busy at Vauxhall, so I get there about five, and walk straight into David and Marcus, who've just spent ages queuing, only to be issued with a blue wristband rather than a black one - meaning they'll be allowed in once the show is over but not before.
We sit outside and whinge and drink beer bought from the off-license, surrounded by a twittering colony of happy homosexuals. (I keep expecting David Attenborough to appear, picking his way through the sprawling throng as he delivers a hushed piece to camera.)
I decide that, sod it, I don't feel like queuing for an age to pay a fiver just to be able to buy yet more expensive beer and dance a bit once the show is over; I'll sit out here until the others go in, then take myself off to...somewhere else, probably Dukes.
We hear Dame Edna finish in the distance, consoling ourselves with the thought that bank holiday shows are always a bit bridge-and-tunnel. Somone comes out and says it was the best show he'd ever seen - but he's not a regular, so what does he know?
John decides he's not staying and (small miracle) manages to remove his wristband without breaking it. And (further small miracle) it clips onto my wrist. And (even further small miracle) we find another discarded wristband for Jonathan - so he can treat me, generous soul that he is, to a couple of overpriced beers before I take myself off to...somewhere else, probably Dukes.
If the kindness of friends continues in this vein, I reckon I could be in profit by the time the tax money falls due.
Or, failing that, at least drunk.
......previous entries