can't believe, village idiot, kensington market (what a trooper)

Toronto seems like a dream. I can't believe I was really there. Maybe if I'd had a day or two's rest after returning, the experience would seem less unreal but as it was I had just four hours sleep after getting home before the alarm went and a busy week started.

More marking, First Week of Oxford's full term and lots of extras, including more Initiate editing (which is, though, looking very good--launches on Thursday 18th November at Blackwell, Broad Street).

This time last Saturday, I was eating my last Toronto supper in the Duke of York pub, after attending the final day at LASA and spending a couple of hours exploring something of the city. I'd been told I should visit Kensington market because I would love the atmosphere.

On my way I stopped off at the Village Idiot pub (or L'idiot du village), which is opposite the Art Gallery of Toronto, at the start of a fascinating oldy-worldy quarter that includes China Town. Amongst the newish buildings are a lot of Victorian-looking terraces. Nearly all the buildings, old and new, are pretty battered. Wherever you see shops selling Artist's Material you know you're onto a winner.

It was good to have a pint of London Pride at the Idiot (served better than in some UK pubs), although I did resist the triple-distilled Belgian Delirium Tremens (8.5%). Bar staff wore T-shirts with the slogan, 'A good pub couldn't function without an idiot!'

Kensington market was like I imagine the King's Road to have been in the 60s. The tatty Isuzu Trooper cruising past, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds blaring out, said it all.

Happy memories!

portrait room, humanities library, and gran baile?



Getting up early to go to the 7 am Gale presentation in the portrait room of the Law Library of Upper Canada was a bit of a shock to the system (not to mention the brain), although the walk downtown in the dark was magical, especially going through Queen's Park (all squirrels sound asleep, the sensible things). The Law Library is a magnificent Georgian-style building opposite the Sheraton--all oak panelling, chandeliers and, well, portraits. Thanks to Gale-Cengage Learning for the breakfast and coffee.

I really like the juxtaposition of old buildings and new in Toronto, especially in the university quarter, which I was shown round yesterday by my former colleague Miguel, a very experienced Hispanic subject specialist based at the humanities library. (He had faith in my abilities when he was in Oxford, for which I am eternally grateful.) The library itself has all the features that British libraries are only now beginning to aspire to--the banks of computers for readers, the provision of both informal and formal study space, cafes that help to make libraries not just places where you read but popular social venues, and 24/7 opening.

Some great events at the Congress earlier--including a moving documentary about the migration of Cuban farmers to the cities. It was clear how much the farmers loved the land and way of life and how let down they felt by centralised agricultural marketing schemes.

Tonight there is the Gran Baile at the Sheraton from 10.30 until the small hours. I'd like to go but am not sure I'll still be awake then. We'll see.

If I do go, my route will take me past the Royal Ontario Museum, above, which somehow looks even more of a disaster-zone than it must do usually, what with the building works and bollards on the opposite side of the street.

toronto

Arrived in Toronto the day before yesterday for the Latin American Studies Association congress, which is being held at the Sheraton and Hilton. Was really exciting to see the first signs of Canada--lots of tiny islands--just north of Goose Bay.

Staying at the Holiday Inn on Bloor myself, which is in the heart of the University quarter. Very buzzy and full of life, this area of town. Good pubs, cafes and restaurants, plus a mass of museums and theatres, it seems like.

I've settled on Overeasy for breakfast and Hemingway's for dinner--latter washed down with a pint or two of Tankhouse, a dark red hoppy bitter.

The half-hour walk to the congress takes me through Queen's Park with it's amazing squirrels--most of which have glossy black coats (some even have white paint stripes down their tails). What an amazing sight they are. I had no idea there were such squirrels.

Downtown Toronto is pretty impressive, especially at night. The towerblocks are like light sculptures.

A couple of coincidences. On the flight out I was sitting next to an Irish guy who now lives in Canada. It turned out that his brother is best mates with the guy who owns Hamilton's bar in Leenane--a favourite pub. It was good to chat about Galway and about Canada. Then, yesterday, as I was setting off for the conference, I caught sight of someone heading into a shop out of the corner of my eye. There was something about her. 'It can't be,' I thought. But it was--a friend from Osney days, over here to talk at another conference. She's staying at the same hotel and goes back on the same flight. Weirdly wonderful.

As well as attending the conference, I'm teaching online and marking.

It's good to have a lot to do, to be honest. No matter how exciting a new city is, there are always gaps that ordinarily you struggle to fill.

holmes, boom, old man's beard etc

Watching Sherlock Holmes--Robert Downey Jr is God.

Meanwhile, on a serious note, I was sad to read of the death of Holly Eley in the Times yesterday. About ten years ago when I'd lost confidence in my abilities as a critic, she sent me a series of about seven or eight seemingly random non-fiction books to review for the TLS, which by their very difference from the fiction I'd been writing about for years quite refreshed me. The last was the estimable She Moves Through the Boom, about what seemed then to be the Irish economic miracle.

How this reviewing came about was itself quite random. I phoned the TLS and got Holly. I explained that I wanted to speak to Lindsay Duguid about reviewing fiction. Holly talked to me about my work and when I asked her when Lindsay would be back, she said something like, 'I think I'd like you to write for me.' Two days later a parcel of four books arrived. We never met but I have always been grateful to her.

Went to the readings at the end of the first MSt residence of the 2010/11 year last night. Really enjoyed the students' work and that of the guest author, Tim Pears.

Funnily enough we'd been talking about In the Place of the Fallen Leaves when we were staying in Somerset. We'd been wondering about cider-heads and what it was about the drink that caused all the trouble. It was nice to see Tim again and he settled the point.

I thought the pieces he read from his new novel were very interesting. I know his early work, having reviewed both In a Land of Plenty and A Revolution of the Sun but this was different from those. There was a measured simplicity to his prose last night, which one suspects only comes with time.

Talking of Somerset, the above pics are the last of the holiday ones I'll post.

As far as Invisible is concerned, I'm really pleased that Blackwell is now stocking it.

Last weekend btw was partly spent working on an unusual Latin American subject request that involved researching the Mayan prophesy about cataclysmic events on 21st December 2012 and the problem of correlating the Mayan and Gregorian calendars. I had to research the subject and produce a short essay. I love my job!

Ho-hum, I can't work out whether SW is winding me up for some strange reason. Time will tell, I suppose. Which is where I shall end.

batcombe, veg, initiate, invisible, lasa

Happy memories of Batcombe (see pics) and some rather lovely weather today. Went to the Plough at Kelmscott this afternoon. A week ago we'd be sitting in the garden but this time we were inside, as close to the wood burner as we could get. Good pint of Anniversary from the Lechlade brewery (which has now established a second micro at the Radnor Arms, Coleshill).

Went to the allotment at first light to harvest--first opportunity to get up there since the mini-break. The courgettes have slowed but I was really surprised by how many runner beans and cucumbers there were. If the weather holds I'll be lifting the spuds tomorrow morning. Rent day Monday evening.

The online course is well under way now and the MSt residence has started--tutes on Monday and Tuesday and the official launch of the academic year on Tuesday evening at Kellogg. Meanwhile, the proofs of the MSt anthology, Initiate, have arrived. I'm really pleased that sabon was chosen as the main font. The book will be published in early November. It's exciting to see how the decisions we made about the order of the pieces back in the spring look on the page.

The StreetBooks edition of Invisible is now available as a Kindle ebook and the Search Inside function is already available on Amazon for the paperback. Blackwell's will be selling advance copies from next week and I'm due to be interviewed on BBC Oxford's Jo in the Afternoon programme on Thursday 21st October. I'm to discuss the book and StreetBooks and something of my journey through life (currently thinking about what to include on the advance info sheet the producer has requested).

Can't quite believe I'm off to Toronto in just over a week's time. The Latin American Studies Association programme looks amazing.

Wondering if the Horse Shoe will be screening Downton Abbey, episode one tomorrow night. Hope so as we don't have a telly.

somerset

Had a lovely three nights away at The Three Horseshoes, Batcombe, Somerset (http://www.thethreehorseshoesinn.co.uk). A great, friendly pub (with terrific beer, cider and food) in a beautiful setting, with amazing walks--lots of old cart tracks and green lanes.

More photos to follow but for now some pics of wild flowers, including montbretia (orange flower), which I can't remember having seen anywhere else--though I'm told I once saw it in Scotland.

I hope to post more regularly again now. The last few months have seen the preparations for the StreetBooks edition of Invisible--but also some very shocking family problems which have brought back some dreadful memories that I thought were long gone. It brought back many of the feelings that I referred to on the Scrapbook page of my website last year and which I thought I'd got over. How wrong one can be.

I think, though, that, with J's help--and with that of her family--I've managed to get things into some sort of perspective now. At the very least I realise that I can't change certain members of my family, nor their perennially bizarre and hurtful behaviour.

Nicer to think of wild flowers instead.

invisible

The last few weeks have been hectic--not just because I've been putting the finishing touches to the StreetBooks paperback and Kindle editions of Invisible and coping with the family's ups and downs but also because I've been doing various library tasks in advance so that I can take a short holiday.

Btw the StreetBooks cover design for Invisible is the work of fellow member of Writers in Oxford and designer Andrew Chapman (mail@awrc.info). Thanks so much for that, Andrew.  It's terrific.

You can find out more about both editions at http://www.frankegerton.com/talksand/publishing.html.

Two interesting articles about the effect of digital books, one from Boyd Tonkin in the Independent and the other from Ursula Mackenzie, chair of the Trade Publishers Council, The Publishers Association, writing in the Guardian.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/boyd-tonkin-the-man-who-starved-literature-2063024.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/27/digital-era-publishers-not-defunct

I liked BT's suggestion that universities should be planning joint degrees--landscape gardening and literary fiction, for example--to prepare writers for the need to develop a portfolio of parallel careers in the new post-Kindle world. Having said that, I think many writers (the majority, perhaps) have been doing this for years anyway.

reading nature

I'm due at the Oxford creative writing summer school later this morning. I'll be reading from both The Lock and Invisible and choosing the extracts has been fun.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping the Oxford bus will be on time so I can get off at Summertown and walk along the canal into Jericho. The wild plants along the water's edge are a mad tangle of leaf and stem and tendrils of elegantly ensnaring bindweed.

It is a moment of insane overreaching before inevitable collapse. It is also a strangely beautiful time of profuse weirdly-shaped fruits and flowers.

crack up

The roads in west Oxfordshire are bad but this is ridiculous. Seen yesterday near Aston when cycling. I wonder what happened.

Meanwhile, dark clouds teased us yesterday from time to time but apart from a few spots, no rain.