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ashlymeMonday night I went to see M. John Harrison launch his new collection You Should Come With Me Now at Warwick Uni. In his seventies now, Harrison looks more and more like a vulpine, fey mage: bright-eyed, high cheekbones, salty ponytail and goatee. A lot of the book is flash-length pieces and this is a highlight from one where the English heritage industry finds many many royal remains under concrete in the wake of Richard III: Celebrity academics gangbanging the "past" and "I don't want to see that" just as the motion-sensor lights dimmed and went out in the room, followed by "I don't think we'll be seeing anything." He talked about climbing (which he's gone back to in the last year), the mechanics of writing, the three-day heart attack he at first put down to a hastily-gobbled pizza at a London reading. Which he seemed pretty damn sanguine about. "I'm not obsessed with obsession. I can give up any time I like." He talked more about Light and Climbers than Viriconium. You get the feeling Harrison's mellowed but the teeth are as sharp as ever. They had copies of the book on sale and I bought mine before we went in. I'm puzzled as to why the cover resembles a Minecraft image.
Midweek I headed out West to spend some much-needed timecybermule . A new shop's opened up on the Gloucester Road that sells craft ales and ciders and remaindered graphic novels. H picked up her copy of Alan Moore's Unearthing and a can of sour cherry beer; I bought a bottle of pumpkin ale and two noirish books including Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry. The next day we drove into Wales to spend time in the Gower Peninsula. We got settled in then drove back out in search of lunch and a walk. A murmuration of starlings passed over the car. First a cloud of birds then a sinewave, a pulse of starlings! The first I'd seen. I told H I'd wondered if you could feed the patterns of starlings into a computer or synth and get music from them. (The starlings came back later near the coast, but were seen off by rooks.) We decided to take a walk down to Whiteford Sands. A sandy path took you under the pines to the dunes. There was a whole swathe of shells on the beach: mussels, dark-blue and white like pottery shards, razor shells, scallops, Gigeresque crab-husks. A couple of beached jellyfish, blue-dim, deflated and about as realistic as a seventies Doctor Who monster. Look back and you could see horses riding at the far end of the beach like an old TV advert for Lloyds Bank. Look ahead and there's a cast-iron lighthouse ahead of you. I was determined to reach it - we walked and walked (admittedly slowly and pausing to pick up flotsam) but it never seemed to get much bigger. We did get close enough to see the wrought balcony and the birdcage for the lantern, but by then the dusk was coming on and it seemed best to go back to the car. We went back into the dunes and I sensed a presence at my back, the way you sometimes do, yelping to see a scarecrow on the beach - of course it was only the lighthouse. H joked it would follow me back to Birmingham. (So far it hasn't.) We ate chickpea saag and drank local cider and ale in front of an open fire at a local pub. I got back from Bristol last night and the city felt like a tight concrete knot. I miss H. Ten or so more days and I'll see her again.
Midweek I headed out West to spend some much-needed time
cybermule . A new shop's opened up on the Gloucester Road that sells craft ales and ciders and remaindered graphic novels. H picked up her copy of Alan Moore's Unearthing and a can of sour cherry beer; I bought a bottle of pumpkin ale and two noirish books including Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry. The next day we drove into Wales to spend time in the Gower Peninsula. We got settled in then drove back out in search of lunch and a walk. A murmuration of starlings passed over the car. First a cloud of birds then a sinewave, a pulse of starlings! The first I'd seen. I told H I'd wondered if you could feed the patterns of starlings into a computer or synth and get music from them. (The starlings came back later near the coast, but were seen off by rooks.) We decided to take a walk down to Whiteford Sands. A sandy path took you under the pines to the dunes. There was a whole swathe of shells on the beach: mussels, dark-blue and white like pottery shards, razor shells, scallops, Gigeresque crab-husks. A couple of beached jellyfish, blue-dim, deflated and about as realistic as a seventies Doctor Who monster. Look back and you could see horses riding at the far end of the beach like an old TV advert for Lloyds Bank. Look ahead and there's a cast-iron lighthouse ahead of you. I was determined to reach it - we walked and walked (admittedly slowly and pausing to pick up flotsam) but it never seemed to get much bigger. We did get close enough to see the wrought balcony and the birdcage for the lantern, but by then the dusk was coming on and it seemed best to go back to the car. We went back into the dunes and I sensed a presence at my back, the way you sometimes do, yelping to see a scarecrow on the beach - of course it was only the lighthouse. H joked it would follow me back to Birmingham. (So far it hasn't.) We ate chickpea saag and drank local cider and ale in front of an open fire at a local pub. I got back from Bristol last night and the city felt like a tight concrete knot. I miss H. Ten or so more days and I'll see her again.
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Date: 2017-10-31 08:05 pm (UTC)