At half past one, US time, yesterday morning, five hours after we were meant to be in the air, I thought I might not be here now. Earlier, just as we were about to take off, a warning light had come on in the cockpit, and the engineers couldn’t locate the problem. They’d stripped, then rebuilt the engine and were about to test it. ‘We’re going to give it a try,’ the pilot said. ‘And if it works, we’ll be leaving in 45 minutes. Otherwise, we’re not going anywhere tonight.’ The rest you can work out. Earlier in the day, Georgina and I went shopping (like the hat?) then took the subway to Harlem, where we walked round for a while in the glorious winter…
So much for writing weekly entries. What with passing a significant birthday, the accompanying hangover, a paper, a novel and an article to deliver, forty short stories to mark – all by next Monday – and an impending trip to New York (on Tuesday), this is going to be a rushed entry. I’ve heard the Vampire Weekend album, out next week, and it’s wonderful – barely half an hour long and all the better for it. My not seeing them in New York a week tomorrow looks like being compensated by my meeting up with one of my favourite crime writers. More on this and whatever else I get up to at the AWP conference when I return in a couple of weeks’ time. The…
Stealers Wheel’s three albums from the 1970’s have been remastered and reissued, putting an end to a situation whereby you could only hear their music digitally on a cheap ‘best of’. I’ve been bingeing on them in the car and on the iPod this week and finding that the songs sound just as good now as they did in the mid 70’s, when I was a huge fan. Their music had a richness and invention that seemed to put them in the same league as The Beatles. Then they were gone. But if you’re under 45 and have heard of Stealer’s Wheel, it’s probably because Quentin Tarantino made memorable use of their first and biggest hit ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ in ‘Reservoir Dogs’.…
Welcome back. Had the place painted. What do you think? The new colours took a while to grow on me, and clashed awfully with the photo to your right. So I’ve gone for a black and white one instead. But is it too stern, too middle aged? I’ve got an RSS feed, too. Bookmark it and you’ll be able to tell whenever I do a new post (this year, I intend to write a lot more frequently than once a month, circumstances allowing). Thanks for the book recommendations below. Keep them coming. A free CD to the first three posters, all of whose suggestions I’ll get round to. Last night I finished my interim read (mostly a reread), Graham Greene’s Collected Stories. The less said…