One of those strangely busy (and busily strange) days, but I just wanted to alert you to the fact that, as of today, m’chum Steve is the proud father of a bouncing (if you throw it) baby paperback:
I’ve written about how much I enjoyed the hardback edition, and now you can buy it in a new, lighter-to-pick-up form (though I still maintain that the title should be in joined-up writing by way of consistency of theme). And it’s cheaper, too.
Go on, buy one. Make him happy. Or rich. Or both.
I notice that the new Jeffrey Archer paperback features a re-telling of the life story of mountaineer George Mallory.
As you probably know, Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine may have been the first people to summit Mount Everest; on June 8 1924, Mallory and Irvine were climbing Everest and were seen from afar, as black specks just below the summit ridge, by another member of their party.
And then they were never seen again, though Mallory’s body was found about a decade ago. There’s never been any completely conclusive evidence to eastblish whether or not Mallory and Irvine made it to the top and died on the way down, or died en route.
Anyway, though I’ve never read an Archer book, the fact that his last book was a re-telling of The Count of Monte Cristo (one of my favourite novels) and his latest one is about another subject close to my heart inevitably makes me conclude that Archer’s deliberately trying to get my attention and make me read his books. And as a contrary type, I shan’t be duped so easily into parting with my cash (especially not to the funds of a convicted perjurer).
Instead, if you want to read about this subject, I’d recommend you either read The Ghosts Of Everest by Hemmleb, Johnson and Simonson for a very solid recounting of the search for the bodies and belongings of Mallory and Irvine; or – as pictured above – for a more fictional angle on it, have a look at The Summit of the Gods by Yumemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi.
It’s the first volume of a Japanese comic story based around a chap who thinks he may have found Mallory’s camera (and the camera did exist and has never been recovered), with some lovely art. I’ll freely admit that I’m only halfway through reading it myself at present, but it’s a very good read, with several storylines running at once – including, of course, flashbacks to the 1924 expedition.
What’s that you say? You want evidence of the loveliness of the art? Well, all right, you demanding tyke, have a look at this five-page preview here. And as it’s a Japanese comic, don’t forget you have to read from right to left.
.ti naem I ,ylsuoires, oN
Like many people who enjoy writing, over the years I’ve gradually realised that I prefer writing with certain pens and notebooks. They’re often ones which work more smoothly and without reminding you of the physical act of writing, so like the ideal tools, they’re at their best when they’re unnoticed.
There is, and I’ve certainly seen it in myself, a tendency to get a bit carried away when it comes to writing implements; “if I only had a nicer pen [or notebook or computer or whatever], then I’d find the writing more easy, and thus I’d write better stuff”… or so the theory goes.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily the case at all – for me, a lot of it is just procrastination combined with my inbred Western craving to be a good consumer – because I’ve done some of my better writing when using just a biro and sheets of A4 paper. But it’s horses for courses and all that, I suppose.
Anyway, that was a typically lengthy and digression-riddled lead in to the following, which is a link to what is claimed are the Top 10 Most Expensive Pens In The World.
Quite a few of them are obviously the results of great craftsmanship, but given some of the price tags, you probably wouldn’t be likely to use them – indeed, some of them look as if they wouldn’t be very comfy to use. And what was it I was saying a few paragraphs ago about tools being at their best when they don’t impinge or make themselves the focus of the task at hand..?
I’m not sure how many of you will be eligible to enter this – in all honesty, I’m not even sure if I can enter – but even if only one of you is able to have a go at this competition, this post will be justified, my work here will be done, and I can log off knowing I’ve done something useful (and how often can one say that?).
So. Recently announced is the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, a short story competition with a sizey prizey of £25,000. That’s the logo to the side there.
They’re looking for stories of up to 7000 words, and no theme is specified, and there’s a pretty impressive list of judges (even I have heard of them all). The possible hurdle to entry, though, is that the rules state “the authors must have been previously published in the UK or Ireland”. I don’t know if this means you have to have had a short story published, a novel or other book, or whether (and this is where people like me might sneak under the wire) comic stories and magazines count. And what about radio plays and TV sketches, or whole screenplays? I just don’t know.
Anyway, the prize is pretty alluring, isn’t it ? And there are five runner-up prizes of £500, which means it’s not quite a one-horse race. Entry is by hard copy (you have to send seven copies of your story), and the closing date is 30 November 2009, so you’ve got a while yet to work something up for it, if you’re going to enter… assuming you’re eligible to enter, I mean.
I’ll let you know if there are any updates about eligibility, but in the meantime, if you’re clearly and unequivocally in the ‘previously published’ category, then you might want to start putting some words together…
Being the aforethreatened post about the seventh-day activities of one John Soanes; a post whose position in this world is hampered by the contrivance of its title, if not its contents
So, I promised yesterday to tell you about my Sunday of contrasts; the butch morning and the camp evening. And so I shall.
The rugged and manly activity in the morning, lest you should think I’ve taken up yomping or arm-wrestling polar bears or something new and exciting, was my perennial favourite of running. Specifically, the Great Capital Run in Regent’s Park in London. Yes, when much of the capital was groggily waking and wondering why there was a kebab on the pillow next to its face, I was tying on my running shoes and heading off to run.
Not that I was going too far, you understand – it was 5km (which I think equates to 3.3 miles), but I haven’t done a formalised bit of running in a while (possibly not even this calendar year). So I was both looking forward to it, as a test of my running ability, and dreading it in case I ran out of breath, fell to the ground, and soiled myself a couple of metres past the start line.
Still, I made my way to Regent’s Park (assisted, as ever, by London Underground, who had cleverly scheduled engineering works and station closures on eight of London’s eleven tube lines – they’d clearly decided that I’d run better if I’d faced a challenge in getting from A to B before getting to the run, and increased my adrenaline levels).
The race itself began at 10am, but at 9.35am there was a ‘mass warm-up’. This was a good idea as you should warm up anyway, but especially as it was moderately cold yesterday, and there’s nothing to be gained from running with unstretched or cold muscles. And it was a good warm-up session, with stretches of all available muscles, though at one stage I looked at the thousands of us, all putting our arms up in the air at the bidding of one man on a podium, moving in unison, and I couldn’t help but think it looked like a rather scary political rally. Only with tighter-fitting shorts.
Nuremberg aerobics completed, there were some proper – oh, sorry, I mean elite – athletes running as well, and they set off before the rest of us, at a pace that genuinely caused eyes to widen amongst the common herd. And just like the Generation Game, once the display of world-level ability was over, it was time for the less capable to have a go. They gradually moved us forward to the line, and then we were off.
Regent’s Park is a pretty good place to run – it’s generally flat, and the concreted paths we were running on only occasionally turned gravelly, and I have to say that it was well-marshalled; there was never any doubt about where you should be going next, even if – as was the case just before the 4km marker – it was slightly uphill.
I kept up what I felt was a pretty steady pace, and despite the handicap of having to run as part of a cluster of people (something you can’t really incorporate into running practice unless you’re really good at arranging flashmobs), I felt I should be able to make it in under 40 minutes, which was my fairly conservative estimate based on how practice runs had gone. It turned out that I was being overly harsh on myself, though, as I came in at just under 31mins (30m 53s, according to the official timing), which I was pretty pleased about.
The combination of the warm-up and the exercise left me feeling physically fairly enlivened, and awash with testosterone, which of course was important since I was just about to go off to an event which, I sincerely expected, was going to be more camp than Alan Carr performing a tribute to Larry Grayson.
Because, constant reader, I had agreed to attend the BBC Radio 2 event in Hyde Park called Thank You For The Music – a tribute to the music of Abba.
Now, there’s nothing inherently camp about Abba – granted, the intervening years have given their clothes a certain kitsch appeal, but at the time they were pretty much the fashion – and the music’s perfectly fine, though I would make an argument that only a dozen of their songs are ones which, as the cliche now has it, we all know the words to, and not all of them, as some people seem keen to maintain. But I’m not knocking the work, and when Mrs Wife asked if I wanted to come along, I agreed pretty rapidly.
Once the tickets had been bought, though, I suddenly realised that the event had a pretty strong chance of turning into a bit of a camp bash: Lulu was on the bill, then Kylie Minogue was announced as performing, I started to hear stories about ‘lots of people going dressed up’, and I had the sudden feeling that as a heterosexual male, I was going to feel slightly out of place. I foresaw a sea of peacock feathers and spandex, neither of which I can pull off, not with my colouring. Yes, yes, you’re right: I’m just jealous.
Anyway, when we got to Hyde Park, along with some 30,000 other people, I was reassured to see that it wasn’t the case. There were a few people in late 1970s style gear, but not many feathers. In fact, the nearest that I got to a feather boa all night was the white one draped around the neck of the very drunk man who danced – well, all right, swayed – around us for most of the evening, looking (to paraphrase Fight Club) like the corpse of David Tennant, if you gave it too much drink and made it shamble around the party being annoying to everybody.
But he was in the minority. It was a friendly crowd, and the music was pretty decent – The Feeling were clearly having fun, and some of the people I hadn’t heard of were very solid too, though I struggled to hear the vocals by Lulu and, later, Chaka Khan; was there a sound problem, or was someone on the sounddesk dialling them down for other reasons, I wonder? Hmm.
Benny and Bjorn took to the stage at the end, and thanked the crowd, and seemed genuinely rather surprised that their music was eliciting such a strong reaction so many years after it’d been written, which I thought was rather sweet; fireworks went off overhead, and we slowly made our way out of the park, once more to negotiate the hardly-running tube system and go home.
Not bad for the so-called day of rest, then; like New York, London is a city that never sleeps, but of course that means that it can be rather short-tempered, and doesn’t always look its best. Still, beats being bored, I think you’d agree.
That’s enough about my weekend, though; what have you been up to ?
EDITED TO ADD: If you want to see me gasping my way round the Great Capital 5K, click here and enter the race number 727.
Just to forewarn you, today is likely to be a day of contrasts in my life: this morning, I’m taking part in a frankly manly and rugged activity, but later on today… well, I’m involved in something which looks very much as if it’ll be the campest thing ever.
And I’ve been in the audience of the stage versions of La Cage Aux Folles and Dirty Dancing, so you know I mean it.
I will, of course, report back in full and tedious detail tomorrow.
If I want abuse, I can get that from Mrs Soanes.
This week’s big technology news : the Apple iPod Nano now has video filming facilities and can play the radio as well as music files.
So then, just like most mid-range mobile phones. But without the facility to make phone calls.
Today’s post was bought to you by Fish In A Barrel PLC. Making cheap digs, for you and your family, since 1971.
Todays’s advice to would-be swipers: don’t nick both the imagery and the words from someone else’s work, or overgrown adolescents on the internet will poke fun at you.
Despite the fact I could do without the competition, I’d be remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to this writing opportunity: the BBC Radio 4 comedy programme Recorded For Training Purposes is inviting writers to send in sketches.
This is the fourth series of ‘RFTP’, as all the cool kids call it, and they genuinely have used sketches from people who’ve sent them in – why, none other than Lord Jason of Arnopp sent stuff in to them last year, and now he’s been commissioned to write stuff for the forthcoming series. That’s right, he went from being a speculative sender to one of the people on the inside. IT CAN BE DONE.
Anyway, I’ll definitely be giving this a go – full details can be found via the link above, including the general themes that they’re looking for (in addition to asking that all submissions huddle comfortably under the umbrella theme of ‘communication’).
The closing date is midnight on October 2 (though one has to hope that they won’t be there that late – long hours could mean they get tired and overlook the genius of my material), but I think I’ll be starting to work on this sooner rather than later…
Oh, and did I mention that they’re asking for no more than two sketches from each person? Ah yes, looks like I just did in that previous sentence. Good. Would have looked like an idiot if I’d neglected to mention that, and as regular readers (or even those with chronic constipation) will know, looking stupid is the last thing I’d want to happen.
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