new bus ticket

New bus ticket, new start...

snippets

It was great being out on the new bike--rain or shine. I loved seeing the countryside again and felt so much healthier. Realised how important cycling is to my fitness. Walking just ain't the same. Today's cycle was the best in terms of weather and landscape--warm (car said 12° later), beautiful spring light, the grass greening up in the water meadows near the Thames. I did the route that takes you along the Great Brook to Aston and then to Mount Owen via Lew lane (from the top of Mount M you can see as far as Didcot power station and the Ridgeway). The Mojave went pretty well, although 5th gear on the big cog jumps occasionally. A pain because it's a useful gear when you need to catch your breath. Physically, I felt ok most of the time, even on the long haul back from Oxford. The worst day was yesterday when the sides of my knees ached for a bit after the first mile. Raising the height of the saddle helped.

Loved listening to Frank CB on Desert Island Discs. He's such generous-hearted man. It was because he liked my Oxbridge close reading paper that I got in--so I was told. When I met him years later he said he could still remember that exam paper. I will always be grateful to him for the kind things he said about Invisible and for allowing me to quote him on the cover. I know how much of his valuable time he gave up to read it. If I can track him down at the Oxford Literary Festival, I'll give him a copy.

I'll be reading from Invisible at Blackwell's on Wednesday sometime between 1 and 2 pm. It'll be just a short reading--3-4 pages with maybe the tardis poem thrown in at the end (see below). It'll be fun to read again.

I'm concerned about YouWriteOn's distribution to bookshops--the Anchor Book Club have been having problems getting their 12 copies. This shouldn't happen and I've emailed Ed at YWO about it. An incentive to get StreetBooks edition out.

Very proud to be chair of WiO when I prepared the Oxford Literary Festival and Oxfringe 2010 pages for the society's website (see http://www.writersinoxford.org).

Looking forward to Initiate preview at festival on Thursday 6 pm.

i remember, i remember

This afternoon at the LAC library I felt as if I was beginning to achieve something--for the first time since I started my new job, back in September.

It was the simplest thing that made me feel that way. I was just taking batches of weeded books off the shelf and marking their flyleaves in pencil so that I knew where each was destined. That this part of the weeding project had been completed seemed like a small triumph.

Then I thought about my first library, which I set up many years ago.

As a boy I was a compulsive--and, I have to admit, pretentious--reader. (Balzac's Black Sheep at ten... Did I understand it? Only a little, I suppose...) By the time I was in the 5th form at prep school I had about fifty books and I added them to the small collection that was kept in our classroom and was known as the Upper School Library. I got a notebook from the stationery cupboard so I could keep track of who the books were lent to.

A lovely profession, librarianship, I have to say. I'm glad I ended up going into it.

Thinking about my little library reminded me of my friends at Heatherdown, including Andrew. He was not my best friend but we got on well and he was in any case hard to ignore.

Did he use my library? Maybe, but I can't remember him doing so at all. (Andrew and I vied for 11th and 12th place all through our school careers and it must have seemed so odd to the masters, thinking about it, that I loved books so much).

We started at the school on the same day, mum and dad and all the other parents lining up in James Edwards' curiously sterile white drawing-room to meet Andrew's mum. My dad looking like a schoolboy--just like all the other dads, whether banker or marquess.

Rupert my cousin was there--his mum, Aunt Meg, had been, or still was, a lady-in-waiting.

Such a strange place, looking back, my prep school.

I remember Andrew, James S and me hanging from the hot pipes in the drying room like baby orangutans. We were trying to square our story, having been reported to the headmaster. The energy we put into that; the scenarios we created...

Not that we'd done anything serious. What we'd done was so innocent. Today, parents would laugh if they were told.

Mosaic.

heading for ox

On my way to Oxford.

Just watched Squeeze Cool for Cats video on youtube mobile. Vid seems familiar, although I can't be sure. Must've seen it at the time, even if I can't remember the pink vinyl 12" that Peter mentioned in his comment (see below).

The amazing thing about the vid is that it comes at the start of a Kenny Everett show, which kicks off with the Thames TV logo then bounces into sequences of cartoons (so psychedelic) and wacky KE appearances as he introduces the prog. Great. (I'll post link to this later).

Now listening to Sometimes it Snows in April by Prince. Had to switch off youtube because high-speed mob internet cuts out round Wytham Hill.

As I was writing above, Prince faded out and Marianne Faithful got going with As Tears Go By. Can't remember that one when it came out. First heard it when holed up in a farm cottage near Chichester in the early 80s at New Year. As soon as I got home I went to a record shop and scoured the catalogues. You could still order a 45 in those days.

Lovely walk this morning. But no pools--the fresh wind has licked them all dry.

Now in Ox, accompanied by Peter Gabriel and Games without Frontiers. (There's a lot of new stuff on this machine, honest. Shuffle's just in yesteryear mode...)

OMG it's Whiter Shade of Pale. Freaky.

weekender

Weekend. What weekend? Off to Taylor tomorrow for most of the day, then going through an extended essay on Sunday. Well, a good weekend, actually. True, I can't wait till next week and a short break but I love working at the Taylor, in the main reading room at the enquiry desk, and working on essays and stories is like breathing, really.

I wonder what the light will be like in the Taylor tomorrow. Those huge windows are amazing--views of Oxford and big skies, moods passing across the library, spilling, bursting, filtering.

I'll go on a longish walk before I set off. It's been fun exploring the countryside around the village again, since the bike broke down irretrievably. Particularly in the twilight at 6, 6.30 am (though now astonishingly it'll almost be light): the shapes of hedgerows, flooded hollows, the far escarpment, inquisitive deer peering, screech owls soaring--all emerging, muted, calm.

Next week, next week--I shall, with luck, buy a new bike, and be back cycling. It'll be fun exploring my favourite routes and seeing how things have changed over the last month.

Off to the Horse Shoe later for a pint or two of Peroni. FAB.

monday

It was great to get away to Shropshire at the weekend, even if it was only for a few hours. As we drove out of Oxfordshire into Gloucestershire, I suddenly realised I hadn't left the county for yonks. The only drives I've done since Xmas have been back and forths to Oxford.

Is it the getting away or the driving that's important? Life's 'never' either or, so it's got to be both. I suppose the point I'm making is that you shouldn't undervalue the effects of the drive. There's a particular quality to the thoughts that empty themselves out as you bat along, leaving somewhere, heading for somewhere else. They're thoughts that have been waiting, that couldn't form before then. Laying-to-rest thoughts.

The hills round Oswestry were beautiful in the sunlight and there were loads of snowdrops out in the gardens. The fields were quite yellowy-looking, though, because, it turned out, they've been under snow for weeks--it's only just thawed. Shropshire Alps, must've seemed.

Busy at Taylor, everyone keeping going till end of 8th week. After which comes? A whole lot of 9th week... But it is an important psychological barrier. Library guides working party lasted 2 1/2 hours and ushered in yet another new digital era.

snort

Over breakfast, I read a disturbing Times article about the jailing of a Porsche-addicted cocaine-dealing gangster and Britain's burgeoning love affair with the drug. From what the journalist says, you might be forgiven for thinking that people are so busy snorting coke they don't have time for anything else. (Maybe that's true, maybe financial meltdown was caused by everyone borrowing cash to fuel their habit. Not to mention paying for the nose refurbs.)

I have to admit I've only ever come across someone snorting coke once, and that was at a party over twenty-five years ago. Which probably makes me sound like the judge who asked who the Beatles were. But I wonder if anyone else has similar inexperience.

What I am addicted to, come to think of it, are articles about drug addicts, drug barons and the effects of drugs. Can't get enough of those.

On a happier note, there's also a great-sounding article on why owning a dog is good for you. As the coke dealer starts his eight year sentence, bet he wishes he'd just gone out and bought a pooch.

tardis

He looks through the window at the passing country,
at the hill in the distance where they last met,
its trees like lichen, purple and orange and emerald.

A screech owl flaps mechanically in the valley, stops short and swoops.

He thinks of another time, the first time, at her flat,
wishing he could rewrite it like a scene in one of his stories,
and that narrative could carry him to this parallel place:

She does not drink their bottle of wine the night before...
He brings food...
He does not doubt her, nor has reason to...
She doesn't doubt him...

He types into his phone and when he stops
the road ahead is a tunnel through the night.

In front of the hill a screech owl flaps mechanically, stops short and swoops.

fragment

...it's a gleaming, sugared-grass morning
but its chill is gentle and when I went to the pond
its surface was just a soft skim of ice
and the eastern sky was blue foil at half six, if not before,
whereas only a week ago, it seems like, it was still dark at seven...