Things people say...

A fab book by poet and writer Jen Campbell (who blogs at 'this is not the six word novel') is through to the final round of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 (you can vote here).

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops includes the classic lines:

'Have you got anything by Jane Eyre?'

'I read a book years ago. I don't remember who it was by or what it was called. but it had a green cover - do you know the one I mean?'

I've heard very similar lines in the library and now she's also looking for more examples for the follow up, I think libraries are included, so here are a couple of mine:

Borrower: Mumble, mumble, mumble...
Librarian: Sorry?
Borrower:  Mumble, mumble, mumble..
Librarian: I'm sorry, I still didn't quite catch what you said?
Borrower: I've come without my teeth.

But by far my new favourite was this one I overheard or a weary borrower losing patience with the library's Saturday assistant in his search for a specific volume by Anthony Trollope: 

Well can you just give me a list of all your Trollopes, please? 

Have you any classic lines you've overheard (or said) in bookshops or libraries? Jen would love to hear from you.

My Klingon for a horse...

If you're writing science fiction and running low on plot, it's not unheard of to dip into classic literature and... erm... borrow a story (I'm looking at you, Russell T.)

There are only so many plots, right?

Anyhoo, I was just about to go to sleep the other night when someone on Twitter started up  #SciFiShakespeare - a 'hashtag (or should that be mashtag?) game' with an irresistible combination if ever there was one.

As some of you are not on Twitter and so miss it's more fun elements, I have listed as I sometimes do here, some my favourites (some in the screen grab on the left, and some pasted below).

Do chip in with your own Shakespeare / scifi mashups in the comments below:

@Dr_Dmo: My Klingon for a horse

‏@JohnMoynes: 

But soft, what beast through yonder stomach breaks?

@Beanmimo: 

(Stolen from Spitting Images a long long time ago) To be not not to be, that is illogical Captain.

‏@HefSan:

Close Encounters of the Richard III Kind

 @sturadernie:

To take arms against a sea of tribbles and by opposing, end them…

And of course, not to be outdone, I came up with:

For in that sleep of Darth what dreams may come? and Don't Panic and let slip the dog of war!

Happy Towel Day

Did you know it's Towel Day?

Every year, around the known universe, fans of the late, great Douglas Adams do towel-related things to celebrate his genius.

I discovered Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in my teens - on radio, then the books. They are the works I most wish I had written. I love his fount of ideas and the way he marries comedy with deeper truths.

If you have never read it, and I urge you to do so, click here for a full explanation of the significance of the towel, which finishes with:

"...any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with"

I blogged a towel-related story yesterday without having even remembered it was Towel Day, so I probably already have Betelgeusian* Brownie Points for that.

Despite the fact that I really don't like being told not to panic, some of my favourite quotes are from the first of the six books in the H2G2** trilogy:

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

"It's horrible - it's like being drunk."
"What's so bad about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."

A man who no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India company.

"I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."

Anyway, I can't sit here blogging all day - it's a beautiful day and I'm off up the nearest hill... with my towel.

Later...

And here is the proof (and there's Hilbre Island in the background again!

* Full list of races and species in the Adams Universe is here

** Geek shorthand for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and also an Adams-created alternative to Wikipedia which is seriously worth a browse: www.h2g2.com

Mum's the word

My mum is quite adept at the inadvertent funny line.

She said to me just the other day: 'You always EMPHASIZE with people.'

And she's ABSOLUTELY right - I do, I really, really DO!

She has also mastered the fine art of the compliment, telling me: 'If there's one thing I like about you, you're punctual.'

Thanks, mum.

When I first started writing poetry and produced a little booklet of it, I didn't have any blurb for the back so I used this genuine comment from her:

"I think these poems are great, but I know nothing about poetry... and I am her mother." Mrs T. Kirwan

Me: I'm really struggling with the plot of this story Mum: Can't you just make something up?

Sometimes she comes out with fascinating, almost poetic, statements about the world around her: 'Your father has no joie de vivre - that's why he never understood the dog.'

So I should have expected this, this week:-

Me: I'm going to see Status Quo at Speke Hall next month. 

Mum: Are they still alive?

Probably... it wouldn't be much of a show if they weren't, would it?

Mink knickers and water damage

I was disappointed to miss the Duke of Edinburgh's* visit to my home town earlier this week - I would have enjoyed listening out for more gaffes.

Famous for saying the wrong thing, the Queen's hubby is 90 next week, and to celebrate The Independent printed a fantastic list of 90 of his best foot-in-mouth moments:

"I would like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family."

...which include racism:

"British women can't cook." To Scottish Women's Institute .

...sexism:

"I thought it was against the law these days for a woman to solicit." To a woman solicitor.

...snobbery:

"The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion."

... insensitivity:

"People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still drying out Windsor Castle." To survivors of the Lockerbie bombings in 1993.

and the difficult-to-master double whammy:

"Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" To a wheelchair-bound lady with a guide dog.

or

"You're not wearing mink knickers, are you?" To fashion writer Serena French at a World Wildlife Fund gathering in 1993

I've got a soft spot for the old duffer and the way he just says what he thinks. As he says himself: "I have never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing." I know the feeling.

Of course The Independent does have an axe to grind. Here's an exchange at a Golden Jubilee event in 2002:

Philip: "Who are you?"
Simon Kelner: "I'm the editor-in-chief of The Independent, Sir."
Philip: "What are you doing here?"
Kelner: "You invited me."
Philip: "Well, you didn't have to come!"

So anyway, he was in Wirral to judge a model boat competition, apparently. This is the Marine Lake here. I may post some more pics of it if you're interested... we have an evening view of people on the footpath that encircles it and an aerial view. Nice huh?

* Yes, the same Duke of Edinburgh as in 'Duke of Edinburgh Awards' for young people had this to say about them: "Young people are the same as they always were. They are just as ignorant."

No no no no November

November has tied me
to an old dead tree
get word to April
to rescue me.

November's cold chain
made of wet boots and rain
and shiny black ravens
on chimney smoke lanes

Tom Waits, 'November'

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, - November!

Thomas Hood, 'No!'

While November numbly collapses,
this beech tree, heavy as death
on the lawn, braces for throat-
cutting ice, bandaging snow.

Edwin Honig, 'November Through a Giant Copper Beech'

Fog in November, trees have no heads,
Streams only sound, walls suddenly stop
Half-way up hills, the ghost of a man spreads
Dung on dead fields for next year's crop.

Leonard Clark, 'Fog in November'

I'll be in gnawing off my own legs for sustenance in a snow drift somewhere in Aberdeenshire by the time you read this.  

*Opens door, blizzard swirls in*  "I could be some time..."

More November poems at gardendigest.com

Literary tattoos

I've edited newsletters, I've edited articles and reports. I've edited stories and poems.

But last week was the first time I ever edited a human body. 

To be fair, the tattoo was yet to be applied and I was only really being consulted on font size, but I noticed a grammatic error (it was a quote which had been cut down a bit, so the ends didn't quite fit together) and some dodgy punctuation. 

 
And, yes, it was one of my colleagues in the library - what have I been saying all along about librarians and dark underbellies (or in this case, two fairly symmetrical dark sides)?  You never know what lurks beneath the practical cardigan, stretch pants and sensible shoes. None of these pictures are of the tattoo in question, by the way.

It turns out literary tattoos are quite the thing. Not content with adorning their bodies with a rose/butterfly/names of soon-to-be-ex-lover/full-colour death metal scenario, today's bibliophiles, poet-fanciers and epigrammarians are wearing their favourite phrases, passages and even book covers close to their hearts...and other organs. 

I blame Robbie Williams.

It reminds me of the lines from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: 

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
moves on nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

More literary tattoos here: Huffington Post and here: Contrariwise and in the Guardian Books Blog but, for scale and variety check out the whole passages, illustrations etc at Yuppie Punk.

So you know what I'm going to ask, don't you?  What lines or phrase from a book or poem do you love so much that you would write them not in stone, but in your own skin?

Holy Wind, Batman!

I've been wanting to talk about wind for some time but I've been waiting for a really windy day.

You know how it is with winds - you're ages waiting for one than a bunch of them come all at once.

Dogberry of Inkyfool started me thinking, way back at the beginning of July with Some Winds where the windy origins of the words kamikaze and Chinook were discussed in his characteristically erudite manner.

But for me the most interesting thing about wind is this: Hebrew has far fewer words than English, and many words have to do the job of two or three English ones.

The word 'ruah' (the 'h' pronounced as in Scottish loch) is the word for wind, but also for breath, spirit and ghost. 

This explains why the 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost' of my youth became 'Father, Son and Holy Spirit'. I'm only disappointed they didn't settle for 'Holy Wind' or 'Holy Breath', but I get that what they're talking about is Holy 'Unseen Force' (and I hope you're impressed that I'm not adding 'Batman!' to the end of any of these - showing tremendous restraint, don't you think?)

There's more about 'ruah' in the Old Testament at the Franciscan Cyberspot - no, I'm not making that up - and the Vatican's website.  I particularly like the fact that the Vatican, when thus perplexed, has this to say: "In this regard it is better to give up in part the pretenses of neat reasoning in order to embrace broader perspectives." i.e. Translate it as fits best to your nefarious practices.

All of this only confirms one of my favourite quotes:

'Religion is man's attempt to communicate with the weather.' (origin unknown). 

Here's that part in The English Patient, where Count Almasy speaks of winds described by Herodotus (there's a transcript here about two thirds of the way down the page):

Blows me away, this!

My Lake District Hell

I'm off to the Lake District for a few days tomorrow - that'll make it rain. (Have you SEEN the weather forecast?)

Having never really been there before (just a couple of days a few years ago, or driving through en route to Scotland) - which is crazy considering some of the places I have been - my impression has always been of somewhere bleak and damp, looming hills, without the easy charm and ice-cream-scoffing nuns of say, the Italian Lakes.

It will be heaving with holiday-makers, awash with torrential floods and snooing with* murderous taxi drivers.

So I was delighted to find in a guide book in the library a couple of quotes that matched my own (probably errant) expectations:

William Gilpin, on Grasmere: "The whole view is entirely of the horrid kind. Not a tree appeared to add the least chearfulness [sic] to it. With regard to the adorning of such a scene with figures, nothing could suit it better than a group of banditti. of all the scenes I ever saw this was the most adapted to the perpetration of some dreadful deed."

Daniel Defoe, from A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (English Library) on Westmorland in the 1720s: “a country eminent for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself.”

This quote is especially enjoyable as it manages to put the boot in about Wales in the same breath.

And was it not Wordsworth himself who wrote (in an early draft):

I wandered moaning with the crowds
That blot the highways, hills and vales
When all at once I saw some clouds
Oh bloody hell, it's grim as Wales.

Let's hope I'm wrong. It happens. After all the Lake District was voted Britain's greatest natural wonder ahead of Scottish Highlands. Of course I daren't say anything against the Highlands or The Good Doctor will bite my knees.

So I may or may not be online before Sunday depending on wifi - but feel free to agree or disagree wildly in the comments if you feel inclined.

* This is an expression my mum uses but most people claim never to have heard of such a thing - this might be one for the Inkyfool