News from Nowhere

Most of the entertainment that enters the house at present, and pretty much all the interaction with other people, passes through a screen. Different platforms, on different screens: because we can (more or less).

Last Thursday we accepted the invitation of a client, a small press, to attend the launch via Zoom of their latest book, a narrative poem. It's always possible that I'll be blown away by the writing at one of these events, but the odds are against it: I'm hard to please. But I was glad of the opportunity to make contact with a client, and I admit that I was curious to find out how this particular publisher, a notorious luddite, would handle a Zoom meeting. It was fine: obviously, he had a volunteer to handle the technical end of it, and less obviously he carried off his own part in it with aplomb. It was good to see some friendly faces, even at postage stamp size and without the chance to say 'hello' (and I still don't know whether some of the oddities of that display resulted from choices I had made, settings chosen by the host, or a combination of the two). The poetry didn't outstay its welcome, and I was glad I had tuned in.

On Friday, the BBC marked what would have been John Lennon's 80th birthday by showing A Hard Day's Night. We've watched it before, and it was a pleasure to watch it again. The novelty on this occasion was that durham_rambler had a supplementary screen, the smartphone from which he is never entirely disconnected, alongside the television, and was able to answer all those wait, don't I know that face? moments. Victor Spinetti's assistant? Yes, that's Robin Ray (oh, of course!). And that tall man at the disco looks familiar? Jeremy Lloyd (uncredited, but thank you, IMDB). The music grows more wonderful with the passage of time: what was just pop music - good pop music, but just pop music - now seems to me perfect pop music (still just pop music, but perfection is perfection). Even the humour survives better than you might expect (will the BBC ever show Help! with its Eastern religion of human sacrifice?).

On Saturday we attended our first event in the Durham Book Festival's online programme: Richard Osman talking about his crime novel, The Thursday Murder Club. This was relayed over Crowdcast, which is a new system for us: durham_rambler rigged it up to play through our television (with mixed success; it was fine until it cut out, and he wasn't able to repeat that success with a later event). It was recorded - no surprise, as I knew another guest had recorded her session - but he had travelled up to Durham, and was interviewed (by a professor from, I think, Northumbria) in what I think I recognised as the Town Hall. It was evidently filmed a little while ago, and although they had actually asked fans to submit questions (the only event I've watched to do so), they hadn't asked people who had registered for the event (not actually sulking, as I wouldn't have had a question, not ahead of the event). It didn't feel like a live event, but it was agreeable television. I haven't rushed to buy the book, but if a copy turned up - if I ever go to the market bookshop again - I'd be interested to read it.

It goes on. On Sunday we were back at the Hove Pavillion (that is, watching Robb Johnson live through Facebook) for a concert of covers. Yesterday's two Book Festival events were long-distance interviews, two - oh, well, as it happens two men, side by side on the screen. Comics artist Adrian Tomine was interviewed by his editor at Faber: I hadn't persuaded durham_rambler to join me for this one, and although I enjoyed it, I couldn't have told him he'd missed anything. Ian Rankin interviewed by fellow crime-writer A A Dhand (which the television declined to pick up, and we watched together on a bonus computer monitor) was much more fun, a natural feeling but serious interview which - well, if you want to know you can watch it yourself. It still feels more like watching television than like attending a festival event, but there isn't enough of this kind oof thing on television,so why not?

We went to two more Book Festival events over the weekend. On Friday evening we heard Gillian Allnutt and Peter Bennet reading in St. Chad's College chapel: two fine and contrasting poets, Peter all dream-like almost-narrative flow, Gillian pared-down precision (the right word, the right pause), and a venue that was new to me, a sort of ecclesiastical garden shed from the outside, a richly decorated chapel within. On Saturday there was Crime in the Afternoon, a conversation between Ann Cleeves (a friend of some standing) and Linwood Barclay (who I had never heard of, wasn't attracted to the promotional material, but warmed to in person and was intrigued by his pitch for his latest book), kept in order by Peter Guttridge, with great good humour. So that was fun.

Yesterday we went to the Sage to hear Stefan Grossman playing country blues guitar: about which I know only that it's the stuff that Stefan Grossman plays when he's playing that stuff, the stuff he learned from Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt when he was in his teens. And lovely stuff it is, too, played with power, dexterity and great warmth of tone. But I was thinking, too, about some of the other styles I've heard him play, over the years, remembering the first time I saw him, at the folk club in Old Harlow. He was remembering those days too, talking about his first trip to England, some time in the 60s, when he stayed with Tom Gilfellon's parents in Stanley. He must have played Harlow quite soon after that, because he was still struggling to process Mrs Gilfellon's offer to knock him up in the morning. Some of what I heard him play that first time he played again on Sunday (Candy Man, Creole Bell), but what I particularly remember from back then is that Stefan Grossman is the first person I ever heard play ragtime, and that's what I've been looking for on YouTube. So here's a young Stefan Grossman playing Dallas Rag, here's The Entertainer - and for a little variety, here's Elizabeth Cotton playing Vestapol.

Programming at the Gala cinema tends to be very mainstream, and they don't often show anything I want to see. You wait months for a movie you fancy, and then two come along together. So we've been to the pictures twice this week, on two successive days - I can't remember the last time that happened.

Tuesday lunchtime was Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. I've seen too many Dylan albums greeted as 'a return to form' to get my hopes up when Blue Jasmine was reviewed in those terms - but it is an interesting and entertaining movie. Jasmine's a monster, of course, and I was appalled and fascinated by her without entirely believing in her - and then began to think about how she got to be that way, the adoptive parents who had treated two daughters so differently, the absence of psychiatric support for someone who walks the streets talking to herself... The parental guidance notes on the film certificate, incidentally, warns of veiled references to sex and suicide, but doesn't remark on the constant self-medication with xanax ans Stolichnaya.

Yesterday's film was Sunshine on Leith, a feelgood musical which does for the Proclaimers what Mamma Mia did for Abba: takes their back catalogue and hangs a plot of sorts onto the songs. I like the Proclaimers, so that was fine by me. And the Edinburgh tourist board must have been delighted: lots of footage of the city looking gorgeous (Leith barely gets a look in: a quick pan over at the beginning, but once we reach Edinburgh we stay there. Who wouldn't?).

Another sign of autumn: it's Book Festival season - in Durham and elsewhere. We'll be going to a few of the Durham Book Festival events, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and the first of these was last night: two debut crime novelists at the city library. I hadn't entirely registered that both authors are published by Moth Publishing, a new venture, one of the partners in which is New Writing North, the agency who - among other things - programme the Book Festival. Which is maybe a little too cosy for comfort.

Nonetheless, a chance to taste something new. Of the two books, Helen Cadbury's To Catch a Rabbit intrigued me more. I liked her voice, and that her central character was a PCSO (Police Community Support Officer, and therefore not a 'real' police officer, a civilian in uniform: the police reps who come to our residents' meetings are PCSOs). I wasn't moved to buy a copy, though.

There wasn't much time for questions, but one of the few questioners asked: "You've both written your books in third person; did you consider using first person?" Neither had, though one (I don't now remember which) had written partly in first. The moderator commented that it would surely be difficult to write a murder mystery in first person, and could anyone think of a crime book in the first person - and immediately durham_rambler whispered to me: "Shelter" which is true, and a fine book and a good illustration of how it's done. I whispered back to him that surely one of the best known voices in crime fiction is that of Chandler's Philip Marlowe...

Which is why, when the session was breaking up, and the questioner was working his way round the audience, handing out cards about his book -

What? Yes, of course he'd written a book. I'd thought, as soon as he'd asked the question, that this was not just a writer's question but actually an aspiring writer's question, the result of a creative writing class approach to the nuts and bolts of writing. Possibly my prejudices are showing here. Anyway, he had written a book, and self published it, and was working his way round the audience, promoting it.

When he reached us, durham_rambler said: "Philip Marlowe."

"Pleased to meet you."

"No, I meant, the Philip Marlowe books are first person."

"Oh, I haven't read any of his..."

Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!

That's the Durham Book Festival over for another year (not counting some outlying events, it now runs for about ten days, which makes a lot more sense than the full month it attained at its most bloated). We went to three - no, call that four - events.

Marcus Brigstocke has written a book about his thoughts about religion in the wake of the sudden death of his best friend. This could have been excellent - and then I saw Brigstocke hosting the TV Crime Daggers ceremony, and was afraid it might be terrible. It turned out to be neither: amiable, entertaining, cautious about exploring his own opinions and even more cautious about offending anyone else's. The performance took the form of a conversation with someone whose name we were given (and I promptly forgot), without any further identification - though from things he said, he must have been an academic. He prompted Brigstocke to run through stories and arguments he would probably have produced unprompted, and I wondered if the evening would have been more interesting with a more incisive interviewer - but it really wasn't that sort of event. Enjoyable but lightweight.

Then on Saturday we went to two consecutive events at the Town Hall: Valerie Laws and Linda Gillard, two writers whose work is informed and inspired by science, and Criminal Women, namely Ann Cleeves, Val McDermid and the team behind TV's Scott and Bailey. Plenty of old friends here, so no surprises. I always enjoy Valerie's readings, and there was a bonus for me in something Linda Gillard said about her reasons for writing about a blind woman in her novel Stargazing: without giving anything away, it was a purely technical reason, and I love these reminders that what the reader finds central to a book is not necessarily what was central to the author in the writing of it. The crime panel was fun. It was sponsored by Mslexia magazine, and Debbie Taylor of Mslexia was in theory chairing the discussion. But five people is maybe more than will fit comfortably onto a panel, and when Val McDermid is one of those people, the chair really doesn't have a chance. Gradually the other speakers loosened up and started joining in the conversation - the only one of the three events to achieve this.

The other pleasure of the Saturday was that events were taking place all afternoon in different parts of the Town Hall, The café / bar was open, and after each event books were on sale there and tables set up for authors to sign copies. For the first time that I remember, this created the social space that makes a festival more than a sequence of events. We hung around and enjoyed talking to friends, Ann and Val and Simon, the Festival photographer.

Sunday's event was bookstalls within the tent of the Food Fair, plus a chaotic book exchange in the cathedral cloisters - which is why I didn't immediately think of it in the same category as the others. But there were books, and more talking to friends, and we came home laden with swapped books, as well as purchases from the foodier part of the event (stewing veal!) all of which is good.

On Sunday evening we went to The Waiting Room, a vegetarian restaurant in Eaglescliffe, to hear Projet Brassens. We might not have travelled so far if we'd known earlier that Projet Brassens would be playing in Durham tonight, and we'd have been spared not only a longish drive but also a long evening (we'd been advised to turn up early, and it wasn't such a good idea). But then we wouldn't have heard support band Rudolf Rocker (this one, I think, although there's no sign here of the Brassens translations they played). They were joined by Bob Fischer who channeled Jake Thackray for a couple of songs ("I wanted to sing them as myself," he explained, "but it just came out Jake Thackray.") But the highlight of the evening for me was their Plea to be buried on the beach at Whitby (of which the internet has no trace, so have this instead).

Which isn't to say that Projet Brassens weren't good. Their interest (and it's as well I didn't know this in advance) is in creating jazz arrangements of the songs, and while they acknowledge - how could they not? - Brassens' brilliance as a lyricist, they are almost more interested in his tunes. If I had to find one word for Brassens' melodies, it would be 'earworm': they are impossibly contagious - and it was a revelation to hear Projet Brassen's free and airy renditions, so that was good, and a consolation for their choosing to perform very few of my absolute favourites.

And continuing the "Illuminatus" theme, the highlight of today's Guardian is a profile of Ken Campbell. What I recognised in this article is the breathless exhilaration of trying to keep up with his talk. Here's a sample:

Just as The Great Caper was a thinly disguised autobiographical story of Ion Alexis Will (played on stage by Warren Mitchell), so The Warp was the personal saga of the poet and painter Neil Oram, who still lives on a commune near Loch Ness in Scotland. There were 18 and a half hours of theatre, two one-hour meal breaks and a half-hour beer, sausage and coffee interval at 2.35 am. The cast included an unknown Bill Nighy, an equally unknown Jim Broadbent, Turkish policemen, Chinese officials, Buckminster Fuller, clowns, fire-eaters, military art enthusiasts, a raging landlord ("I don't have any friends; just different classes of enemy") and a comic postman.

Now, compare that to my account of Ken Campbell at the Durham LitFest: yup, same voice!

ETA that the link to the LitFest website is broken because the site no longer maintains archived material.

I haven't been writing much here, lately, since the Literature Festival has started and my writing is going on elsewhere: durham_rambler and I sponsor the Festival by maintaining its web site, and one thing we do is produce reports of all the events (or as many of them as we can). Is this worth the effort? Sometimes: but that's a big question, and this is just a small post.

One thing that was left on the cutting room floor when I put together my piece about last night's event was a story Christopher Brookmyre told about copy editors (a subject on which papersky has been venting lately).

It was - as it so often is - the house style that numbers up to ten were expressed as words, not numerals. But he wanted to tell the joke which begins: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world...". And yes, the copy editor "corrected" that to "There are ten kinds of people in the world...". Make that 11 kinds: those who understand binary, those who don't - and copy editors.