Borderlines sags. Oh, no!

Borderlines Films Festival, now in its 18th year. We've attended most and seen about 20 movies over a fortnight each year. Wonderful memories but for the first time, after six viewings, disappointment has reigned.

Blackbird (Middle-class Eastern seaboarders, including my angel Susan Sarandon, discuss and practice euthanasia. I am not persuaded). Photograph (Wandering unresolved non-love story in Mumbai). Bait (Travails of Cornish fishermen; almost comical chain of technical errors by student film-makers). Little Women (Beautifully shot, beautifully acted but somehow hollow; "self conscious" period costumery).

So thanks for Parasite (Hated by the US president. South Korean blackest of black comedy with serious points to make. See pic.). The Personal History of David Copperfield (Capturing the essence of Dickens but without any of his egregious faults.)

Rictangular Lenses, my current novel, now back on track. 48,336 words

The Platinum Breakfast had included scrambled eggs dotted with flakes of smoked salmon. Lindsay tried a forkful but pushed the tray away; fish seemed alien at half-past-seven in the morning. She drank only coffee and ignored the toast, the croissant and the boutique-ish jar of jam said to contain Tyne Valley strawberries. Were strawberries grown this far north? Were they yet another part of the region’s laborious struggle to find enterprises that would replace the metal-shaping that had once occupied half the workforce?

The Kraken wakes

Suddenly the flood-gates opened. After more than a year of immobility and a growing lack of faith on my part, Rictangular Lenses leaped forward: 11,000 words in two months, homing in on halfway house at, say, 50,000 words. Here's the latest passage which - perhaps to reassure myself - I'm exposing to sunlight.

Alas, such exposures are often at odds. Readers want to know what's happening while I'm keen to know mainly how those happenings have been fashioned. Something of an indulgence, then. Especially since I've blown my 300-word limit for posts.

CHAPTER NINE

THE SENSE of luxury quickly palled but Lindsay pursed her lips, convinced her plans would eventually converge and everything would make sense. The limousine that had wafted them from Birmingham’s suburbs into deep, dark rural Oxfordshire was equipped with a sliding glass panel which isolated the chauffeur; despite this Greta Dane whispered. “I still don’t see why Gerald and Amber couldn’t come.”

Lindsay sighed. “It has to be private, just the two of us. It could even be embarrassing. If things work out we’ll arrange a celebration for all four. That will be up to you.”

“All so hole-in-the corner.”

Even so her mother had had her hair styled and tinted for the event. Her full evening dress may not have been new but Lindsay had never seen it before. Other changes were more organic. Greta’s neck had retracted most of its cords and her face was fuller, no longer strained. Best of all, despite a tendency to complain, her tone of voice had dropped half an octave. Had become more... What? Motherly?

“I have no secrets from Gerald,” Greta said primly.

Lindsay had sworn to control herself throughout this early awkward part of the evening but perhaps being submissive could be overdone.

“Mother, do you still see me as your daughter?”

And it was as if Greta’s face had retreated months, perhaps years. Back into embitterment. She remained a silent passenger in the vehicle and a degree of ease only returned when an acolyte handed her out and acted as escort into the converted Georgian manor-house.

Softly glowing lighting within the hallway flattered her and Lindsay took her hand. “Let’s enjoy ourselves,” Lindsay said and Greta’s fingers tightened.

A genial sommelier offered Greta the loan of his gold-framed grannie glasses when Greta worried – sotto voce – about the type size on the menu. The glasses struck an appropriate note, friendly and lacking fuss. Greta accepted but held the folded frame as if for lorgnettes; to have hooked them round her ears might have been over-familiar.

“Champagne?” Lindsay suggested.

“Goodness!” said Greta, since luxury was re-asserting itself. A table-cloth, thick as the Queen’s coronation robe, covered a circular table for two, privily pushed into a niche away from the centre of the dining room. For Lindsay had explained to the restaurant that things “would be said”. Lindsay, spying from her niche, looked out into the glittering concourse and listened to the sounds of people with money enjoying themselves. This was a very expensive restaurant. The talk was clear yet at moderate volume. Strangely it was non-assertive. But then people with money – out for an evening’s dining – could afford not to be competitive here. Their credit cards would do that in a hushed, very British way, offstage and handled by minions.

Gently urged by Lindsay Greta – never an over-enthusiastic eater – chose stratospherically priced turbot and the champagne did the rest. Mother and daughter relaxed into each other’s space, smiled and broke off occasionally for private memories. Once Greta touched Lindsay’s wrist.

Coffee was served but ignored. Lindsay had prepared for this moment.

“Mother, my professional life has changed. Profoundly.”

“So I can see."

Hits the spot

I swore I'd never force Proust on anyone, Proust should always be self-inflicted. Also there are pre-requisites. To finish A la Recherche du Temps Perdu a reader must incline towards France and Frenchness, including the bits that many foreigners find difficult. When Charles de Gaulle wrote "All my life I have had a certain idea of France." (Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France)" to kick off his Mémoires, it's advisable you have a clue as to what he was on about. For Proust demands that understanding.
             
On the other hand no one should ever turn away wilfully. Long sentences, paras, parentheses, yes. Complex but not obscure language, yes. Weirdos, yes. Subterranean analysis, yes. But... the Proust reader spends time, lots of it, in a four-dimensional universe and departs with memories as personal and vivid as any reality.
             
Why personal? Because Marcel tends to dig up stuff which can make you cry out in recognition. What would you expect from him? Tales of sexual whatnot? There are those. But how about a young child, vulnerable in his adoration of his mother, lying tearful in bed, fearing she may not kiss him good-night because there are guests and she may have other duties. How that endures. How the vulnerability nags at me.
      
I’ve read Kilmartin’s translation twice, perhaps three times. You can download the earlier Moncrief translation free, for a Kindle, as I have also done. During an idle half-hour recently I switched on for that evocative (and ambiguous) first sentence: “I went to bed early,” “I used to go to bed early,” or “I would go to bed early.” Reached the child’s sorrows and switched off. It’s not book you dip into.

Jana is loved - again!

I write novels because of a self-lacerating urge. But the urge dies when I try to flog the end-product. I ask myself who would want to read the scribblings of an unknown stranger?

Luckily my friend and publisher is made of stronger stuff. My work sells (imperceptibly) through Amazon who offer ingenious and cheapish publicity schemes for authors. My friend understands these schemes and we tried one for Opening Bars (a non-fiction account of my singing lessons) but it didn't seem to work. Never defeated, he suggested trying again with Out of Arizona and this is producing results.

Including a four-star review!

My books have been reviewed on Amazon before and I'm grateful for the friends who took time off to say what they did. What makes this review different is that it is not only by a stranger, but a foreign stranger (US since you ask). And it is apparent he finished the novel.

I won’t regurgitate the nice things he said. There are limits... Here’s something else:

At times I found the story a bit slow, and I was disappointed in the editing of it, punctuated minimally, but my heart went out to the heroine...

....adding...

... and I predict yours will, too.

I can afford self-deprecation. For one thing journalism has taught me that over-punctuation is a worse sin than under-doing it. For another, OoA’s Jana is my best realised character ever and I was sorry to let her go. I’m delighted she found another admirer.

Perhaps this was inevitable. His review ends:

If I could have afforded it, I would have (continued to pursue) a pilot's license. It was familiar territory to get back in the cockpit, metaphorically, with this woman...

I’m almost jealous.

V tells me what's what

MUSIC LESSON Told V I needed "propping up", my recorded singing voice was embarrassing, I felt wimpish. V pointed out I had arrived seven weeks before, aged eighty, untutored in singing during a frequently self-destructive life (I'm adding in that last bit). That on the first lesson I stumbled through one of the great bass operatic arias of all time, that I now use scores and obviously enjoy doing so. That I am "perfectionist".

And then what really mattered. V said: "If I'd thought I couldn't do anything for you I'd have told you, immediately." Exercises, then Benjamin Britten’s round, Old Abr'am Brown is Dead and Gone. Rebirth!

And now Santa Lucia (see pic). "Neapolitan and sentimental," I said. As ever V was way ahead. I'm singing in the language best fitted for singing: Italian. "Come, my love, to the agile boat," I trill and it's oh-so-liquid as Venite al l'agile barchetta mia!

PAINTING With the other V in my life, VR, watched egg-shaped, Waldemar Januszczak, prove the Renaissance started long before the Italians thought it did. Exquisite Jan van Eyck shockingly labelled a "Flemish Primitive". Funny really.

Hardline Hope, a novel (14,040 words)
“Watching women who present TV news gave me the idea. About age forty their eyesight tends to go off and they face the big choice. There’s one in particular - handsome, intelligent, speaks well and quick with it; she tried contacts and her face lost all focus, as if she was struggling in a fog. Now uses discreet glasses that are almost invisible - a lot better than contacts and I’m glad for her. But there is another option.”

Gayle’s face lit up. “Don’t tell me, it’s like the legs isn’t it? Getting in and out of the car. Go for it, don’t hide it.”

Noise that matters

Why sing?

Perhaps more broadly, why music?

If we ignore humming, whistling and blowing into a cavity created with our palms and fingers, singing has the singular advantages of immediacy and portability. Plus reasonable dynamics and a certain individuality.
 
Thus if we sing (including sing badly) we can create music which allows us to flirt with unique emotions, evoke memories, appreciate patterns, and all the rest. We may also time travel. Vibration is at the heart of all music and when we sing (in tune, that is) our bodies share frequencies with the people who wrote the stuff we're singing.

Listening to music is rewarding but passive. Making music has the added benefit of achievement. Our tribute to the composers, more involving than mere applause. We may - when we sing - please someone within earshot, but it is unwise to depend on this. Singing is audible but is most eloquent in the way it communicates its effects back to us. A note may be false but we alone may be aware of its good intent.

Hardline Hope, a novel (11,432 words)
Sleaford station – even now she recalled the decorative wooden fringe underhanging the building’s guttering – was where Lindsay had started to loathe her mother. In one day Lindsay moved from a manorial farm-house to a bed-sitter in Lozells, one of Birmingham’s feistier suburbs. Giving up her own bedroom with balcony, hens, ducks and geese to tease, huge hemispheres of skyscape and barns to go a’venturing; entering a cavity lit by one small window, surrounded by grubby wallpaper with an antique scroll pattern in ochre, and a toilet down the landing. A child’s summary of domestic tragedy, perhaps, but there was more to come and the loathing intensified.

“I’d understand if you moved out,” her mother said.

Gradus ad Parnassum

Novels take a minimum of two years. Aged eighty I worried. But what the hell; some unfinished novels have turned out famous

HARDLINE HOPE
Roderick Robinson

CHAPTER ONE

MR KOSSOF was almost finished; just a signature on the final page. Lindsay leant over the counter pointing to the line, discreetly managing her cleavage gap as she did so. One didn’t distract a customer signing over sixty kay for a new three-litre convertible. But then perhaps Kossof had earned a sly peep; deserved it? Suppose he offered her a ride?

He glanced at her name badge. “Well Leenzy, chwill the ladies be eempressed?”

“Of course.”

“Beeg car, huh?”

“Luxury car."

“Luxury? I dunna understan.”

“Like Buckingham Palace.”

He smiled, showing gold teeth beneath a ragged moustache. “Good for Her Majesty. You eempressed, Leenzy?"

But Lindsay never did get a chance to answer this promising question. Jenson, passing behind her to the photocopier, found pin-striped grey polyester, wool and Teflon stretched over her bowl-shaped rump just too enticing. Made no attempt to pretend it was an accidental brush-past, went for a fondle with added linger. Hearing her gasp, Mr Kossof looked up and did not approve, perhaps seeing tanks on a lawn he imagined he already commanded. He pushed the signed contract across the counter and turned towards a TV showing an over-hysterical video loop on car insurance for the over-fifties.

Furious, but keeping it under control, Lindsay went to the loo and dissipated her aggression in high-pressure pee. Thought about laddishness. Jenson was good-looking and devoted more of his salary to his appearance than any woman she knew. Used mousse on his hair while it was still controversial; patronised a Pierre Cardin boutique for males who were small but perfectly formed. Lindsay could imagine French-kissing him and simultaneously kneeing him in his – no doubt, perfectly formed – groin. How was it possible for her to contain these two emotional extremes?
....

Step one on two-year road

Possible central character for new (fifth) novel. No plot as yet.

Seen in Brasshouse pub, Birmingham. Pair late twenties, early evening meal.  He faintly resembling Ewan McGregor, lightish beard moustache/chin, leaning low towards her across table, quiet voice.

SHE. Hair imperfectly dyed blonde (irregular dark streaks) swept up from neck with largish bun on top, loose strands of hair, petite face with pink/white makeup, black mascara, prominent convex cheeks, glasses with slot-like lenses and black and white sidebars (wider near lens, tapering to ear), white tight-fitting knitted pullover/blouse buttoned up to scalloped collar detailed in red, thin upper body with prominent, seemingly spherical breasts, hands with coloured nails regularly in motion.

Speaks conversationally yet assertively, even shrilly but – strangely - not unpleasantly. Not in charge but talking/acting with conviction. Ate salad.

GUESSES. Working class/LMC aspirant. Education; probably not uni.

Employment: Not professional. Say: supermarket supervisor, admin at car main dealership, sales with car, managing show house/new estate. Not receptionist, not shop sales assistant.

Assets: Confidence, appealing not tarty, persuasive, energetic, resourceful (needed for plot). Glasses dominate face; ostentatious style deliberate, proving she can look “straight through” them.

Debits: No advanced education, non-reader, mistakenly seen as serious, bossy.

Conflicts: Frustrated by limited employment, tendency to discourage dull football-loving males (Intentionally? Accidentally?), satisfied/dissatisfied with marital status.

Holidays: Not on beach; activity. Leisure: Nothing literary or arty. Friend: An “opposite” who lacks her debits. Living with parents? – probably not, given her age. Outgrown parents? – yes.

Threats: Force drawing her back to her roots; mindless discrimination by male bosses based on lack of conventional prettiness; male belief that glasses make her sexually desperate.

Popular names 1985: Jessica, Ashley, Jennifer, Amanda. Stephanie, Nicole, Amber.

WHAT NOW?

What I've been up to

C, a friend dating back to the seventies, asked twice to read the recently finished draft of Second Hand. I let her and she said the ending was too abrupt. So I’ve added 10,000 words, including the following:

(Francine) took her purse from her shoulder bag and slid out a passport head-and-shoulders of X. Carrying the photo was a recent decision; she had found it progressively harder to gather all the elements of his face in her mind and combine them. More particularly to envisage the expressions his face was capable of. The photo itself met the rule for passports, notably that there should be no hint of a smile. X looked up at her neutrally, his thoughts unfathomable.

But when was he ever neutral?

Faces in novels are treacherous. Insert more than three details and the reader is lost. Besides readers often envisage a character's face and are outraged if the novel's cover carries a picture that "doesn't look at all like A!" But those who foolishly try to write novels must tackle this problem. Faces must stick. Here's another additional passage:

K (a woman) spoke briskly. “Look, I need you to be honest. Stare me straight in the face and come up with a word. My face isn’t pretty, is it? Not even striking. The closest I’ve come is that of a baby mouse, just delivered, pink and pointed. Not enough skin to go around.”

Meanwhile I'm experimenting, growing my hair long and making my own conclusions. There’s a tendency to romanticise long hair, implying it suggests wildness. Not washing it solves this. In the inset it was, however, washed the day before. Left uncombed and greasy, long hair suggests an old person who just doesn’t care. So what else is new?

Wheels squeak into motion

Suddenly the blocked drain that is Second Hand freed itself and in six weeks I wrote 10,000 words. Any good? You be the judge:

Unemployed in London, Alan Pratt, Francine's erstwhile squeeze, becomes news editor of a weekly  in Plymouth (the original Plymouth! - see above). Francine visits him.

He spread the newspaper out on the table. “They’re mostly kids, you know. Often nothing more than media studies, but they’re here for the right reasons. That front-page lead – Planning dept. admits ‘stupidity’ – was put together by a nineteen-year-old from Woking. I thought her plummy accent would hold her back but on the phone she sounds like a middle-aged barrister. People quiver and give her the goods.”

“How hard did you sub her?” she asked. “I see a couple of Prattisms in the second para.”

“What Prattisms?”

“Insinuated instead of alleged, for one.”

He stared. “Is that one of mine?”

“Don’t look at me like that. As you used to say: I’m only telling you because I love you. An outright lie but you seemed to think it softened harsh editing.”

“Did it?”

“Actually, it did.”

“Now who’s fibbing?”

But she wasn’t. Those were the early days when it pained her to see 350 words she’d slaved over reduced to a brief. He’d said it unselfconsciously, dismissively even, and somehow it had worked. Kept the sentiment going during the shared BFI visits but brought it to a close, for good and all, the first time they kissed each other good night. How mechanical of him. But then men, in return, often insisted women were flibbertigibbets so she supposed it was tit for tat.

Men! They could be desired, manipulated or detested but often they seemed too crude, too obvious to be worth understanding.

A few lines of admin

OUT OF AMERICA Now also available as a Kindle download at a quarter the price. I flick through my paperback, re-living the love affairs I had,  especially with dear, determined Jana. The fun of creation. And now there's the hawking and a deep depression enters my scruffy atelier.


NEW HOME PAGE PIC The outdoors pic was never me, certainly not these days. I needed an image that caught the sordid, unsociable privacy of what I do, day in day out.

Ironically, I'm not untidy, obsessionally the reverse - tidying away sections of the weekend newspapers as I read them. But I'm different here. I'm comforted by the rag-tag-and-bobbletail of half-formed ideas and half-forgotten memories.

Vanity too must be served. Black chinos, black fleece and a triangle of chemise de matelot beneath my scrawny neck emphasise the newly svelte figure. Plus the gaunt cheeks. The smiling pic at Stuttgart Christmas market wasn't me either.

Zach with friend - yesterday

Thy greater creation

 Creativity at Robinson Towers is not limited to novels based on woman worship. There are others strands, more inventive, more titillating, more useful. VR is less demonstrative but she gets things done.

Last night she produced a casserole, black with plenitude No name, of course, for she rejects the persiflage of gustation. I forked it in, my chin close to the plate; to waste a scrap would have been a Robinsonian form of blasphemy.

On other occasions, cakes. Especially seed cake, that most adult of flavours, light years away from chocolate-smeared bravado that duller palates rave about.

VR reads hugely (220 titles a year) and summarises each experience in a long long alphabetical list. The first three entries:

Author: Achebe, C. Title: Things fall apart. Date finished: Jun 27 2007. Rating (out of 10): 7.00    Plot: Europeans come to tribal Nigeria. Life of one man and family in lake.
Author: Ackroyd, P. Title: Clerkenwell talkes. Date finished: Mar 10 2005. Plot:  Mystery during deposement of Richard II. Cant. Tales char's. Not sure what was done, by who. Light
Author: Adams, J. Title: Angel eyes. Date finished: Jan 17 2005. Plot: Mystery drugs, disfigured ex-cop. Ghosts. Computers.

Like the other sage, living in Brittany, VR knits. Grandson Zach attends a CofE school and the above will be his Christmas gift to his educators.

GORGON TIMES
".... success tended to be the norm. Marking it wasn’t necessary. But I must mark it now. I’m proud of you. And I…” The sentence tailed off.

Her mother’s eyes shone. Clare could never recall such emotion. Conceivably that final sentence held a confession of love which Mrs Morgan was unable to admit. But it didn’t matter, the admission was tangible. They embraced awkwardly. Through lack of practice, Clare imagined.

Self-exposer (f.) needed

It takes a big ego to say aloud: I'm good-looking. Only in our privacy dare we hold such a view. Especially if it isn't true.

Post-diet, on optimistic days I used to toy with "bare" and "lined", imagining myself as Lee Marvin (see pic) but with a thinner nose.

Better eyesight has eliminated this. Blotched complexion, melted candle-wax eye-bags and wearied cheeks drive out secret comforts. Not that it matters. I write, therefore I may lie.

Actually it does matter. My central characters are women, their private thoughts are my happy hunting ground. All are endlessly attractive to me but only one is beautiful; beauty is part of Judith's story in Blest Redeemer. Clare (Gorgon Times) has a drawn face and is buck-toothed. Jana (Out Of Arizona) is blemished. Francine's face (Second Hand) is bony, her blonde hair as lifeless as silk.

Those are the easy bits. But what about their inner opinions of their own looks? Do they make secretly exaggerated claims or are they terrified? Do they care? As a male author, wanting to do my best (ie, tell the truth) on their behalf I face an insurmountable barrier. No woman is going to volunteer, even hint. I must invent. And I may not be plausible.

Unless some supremely confident being can throw me an idea. Too late for Clare, Jana and Judith. But Francine (life rent by hideous trauma) needs help.

Second Hand (behind the scenes)
Guess whose physical persona I had in mind here:

As old as the hills, Torvald had said. Pratt had a gaunt face, his mouth bracketed between vertical grooves. His clothes hung like those of a fat man who’d abruptly lost weight. A shock of white hair looked stagy, flagging a spurious form of wisdom.

I stand corrected

“Never perfect a self-tied bow-tie. It might look like a made-up.” RR to JH

When we miss someone are we being selfish? Or is it just me?

VR and I recently attended a drinks reception to honour Joe Hyam's editorship of the influential magazine, Caterer. The usual worthies were present, including telly celeb chefs Anton Mossiman and Anthony Worrall-Thompson. People spoke warmly for Joe was well regarded. Afterwards, on a more personal level, VR and I enjoyed a meal with Joe's nearest and dearest.

Back home I'm doing what I usually do. Rewriting one of my novels, Blest Redeemer. Thinking of Joe in a different context.

When Blest Redeemer starts Judith is 51 and has suffered. Time then steps back and a lengthy central section covers her mid-teens to her late thirties.

I concentrated on middle-aged Judith, thinking younger Judith would slide in naturally. How wrong I was. In effect I needed a new central character. Like asking the plastic surgeon for a replacement face.

I’ve never worked so hard on so much unusable crap. Joe, my editor, stayed calm, urged and suggested. Frustrating months passed. Finally Joe was able to say: "Time to have a bit of fun with Imogen.” Imogen is a secondary character and I could leave Death Row.

In comparison the current work is superficial, polishing not re-creating. Goodish bits are showing up. Joe deserves to see those bits; they are his as much as mine. Mind you, he might disagree. I miss him. Selfishly.

Blest Redeemer. Imogen had a theory about Middle European carnality and after three weeks it was made flesh. Momentousness occurred.  Since it wasn’t news Imogen felt could wait she told the tale still wearing an immaculate bandeau and sitting on Judith’s bed at two in the morning.

Lovable or a louse?

 Beth, preparing for winter in Montreal (see above) has a warm heart. Says one of my posts has "a tenderness" adding "maybe because you're being less self-deprecating than sometimes". The quote charms me and I accept her possible reason.

But the problem remains. What tone do you adopt when writing about yourself?

Boastful? A good chance readers will drop away like Montreal flies. And indirect boasting ("People tell me... ") is just as obvious as the direct sort.

Truthful? Harder than it looks. To keep the faith you must give both sides - good and bad - which risks boasting (qv). Also, "balanced" judgments become wearisome.

Fantastical? Replacing oneself with another persona, allowing some extravagance. I did this  via my blogonyms: Barrett Bonden (dependable bosun in the nineteenth-century Royal Navy) and Lorenzo da Ponte (Mozart's main librettist). But it's a strain and can be misunderstood.

Impersonal? No capital i. You become the Ministry of Pensions. What the Hell, blogging is you and me.

So, self-deprecation. Ie, knocking oneself. But wittily (one hopes). Pro tem that's it.

Blest Redeemer (Title change imminent, I think).  141,465 words.

Mabel ignored Judith’s mug, filled a bone china cup, placed it on a saucer and put it down on the desk. “You’re clever and you’re better looking than Fiona Bruce. Yet you barricade yourself behind tons of mahogany and wear bookie’s suits. A very high-class bookie, but a man of the turf nevertheless.”

Judith sipped coffee. “I needed to be taken seriously.”

“I realise that, canny. But you’re long past that. Time to be yourself. Look at you, I mean. None o’ that should be disguised.” 

Cruel to be kind? No, just cruel

 I have known cruel teachers but Anne G. was the cruellest. She was also the most effective. She had a secret weapon and used it relentlessly - sex.

In a suicidal gesture - albeit in happier economic times - my employer allowed me two mornings off a week to learn French. For well over a year. Very quickly I was joined by Joe plus a whole lot of sales layabouts.

Willowy Anne G., our teacher, was not only cruel but capricious. She took exception to one journalist student, possibly because of his rather prominent facial birthmark. She sneered at his incompetence, marked down his work savagely, and eventually insisted he moved to another teacher.

We, her toadies, were more or less immune. But then our Sunday afternoons at home were devoted to more and more elaborate devoirs, using more and more advanced literary conceits, the aim being to make her laugh. When this happened it was as if she had transformed herself into that woman in the classical painting - you know, the one emerging more or less naked from a scallop shell. Bliss.

But when we got things wrong, her green eyes became slitlike, her mouth a rat-trap, her condemnation piercing. The words arriving like arrows at Agincourt.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I progressed. The alternative was unthinkable. I often wondered if she'd been able to teach chemistry.

PIECE O’ PROUST
… in that little room with the high ceiling, hollowed in the form of a pyramid out of two separate storeys, and partly walled with mahogany, in which from the first moment my mind was drugged by the unfamiliar scent of flowering grasses, convinced of the hostility of the violet curtains and of the insolent indifference of the clock…

Got it? Flaunt it!

Luxury is several things:

● Ease/comfort based on habitual or liberal use of expensive items without regard to cost.

●  Something desirable but costly or difficult to obtain.

●  Something relatively expensive adding to pleasure or comfort but not indispensable.

Do I do luxury? Ignoring wine as too complex, the answer must be no. I once bought a Savile Row suit but only to dazzle potential US employers at job interviews. Several shirts were excessive but were needed for special events - notably weddings.

My Longines wristwatch cost lots but was a gift. Dictionaries? - they're big but I flatter myself I need big. Dover sole costs much more then cod but it's better; in any case it's a rarish treat.

Only my shaving bowl refills are luxurious. A tenner, they cost three times more than the competition and come from Geo F. Trumper in swanky Curzon Street, London, who once cut James Bond's hair. When they lasted a year they were almost a bargain. Now only six months.

Trumper is "for the discerning" and issues instructions: "Only shave after a bath or shower; prepare the skin with Trumper’s skin food.”

Why Trumper? To keep tabs on the enemy.

PROUSTIAN TITBIT
I would sleep wrapped up, as it were, in a great cloak of snug and savoury air, shot with the glow of logs which would break out again in flame in a sort of alcove without walls, a cave of warmth dug out of the heart of the room itself, a zone of heat whose boundaries were constantly shifting and altering in temperature as gusts of air ran across  them to strike freshly upon my face…

Re-introducing Blessed Jane

Recently I’ve been off Jane Austen. Not her fault. She simply became inescapable on telly which is how most newer fans identify her. Far too many versions of P&P although the P&P sequel, Death Comes To Pemberley, was a moderately entertaining TV Christmas special.

An interactive Austen session at Hay put me back on track and I'm presently re-reading Mansfield Park. For those who only know P&P, MP will come as quite a shock; for one thing the heroines are polar opposites. Feistily forward Elizabeth Bennett has little in common with MP's timid, self-effacing Fannie Price.

Only a year separates the novels yet MP includes much more real-time narrative. Given a good idea (the multi-motivated visit to Sotherton, the unsanctioned amateur dramatics) Jane lets the dialogue - and the action - run, page after page. Thus there's less need for those visible contrivances whereby A is transported to B, or C "accidentally" meets D.

And then there's Mrs Norris, a Gorgon who is almost too realistic. Am I glad I was born into the twentieth century!

JOE'S NUDGE
No more shilly-shallying with dubious doggerel. For me this is good:

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages.

Now over these small hills they have built the concrete
That trails black wire;
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret

Reasons why. I love the compression and the palindromic echo of the first two lines. The choice of “turned on” in line four. The simile in line eight and the way “secret” is picked up again and somehow reversed. OK, it’s just descriptive, there’s no philosophy. But that’ll do, Pig.

Stephen Spender

Octo-medicine

Next month I'll be seventy-nine. After that, who knows? If being seventy-plus is to be enfeebled, being eighty-plus inevitably directs my mind towards higher things: should I or should I not add one of Strauss's Four Last Songs to the valedictory programme?

I haven’t blogged recently about the novel, the present one, Second Hand.  Instead I've written thousands of words of comment for others' blogs, revelling in that privileged community. I launched Joe's Nudge, frequently discovering I'd bitten off more than I could chew. The novel lurked.

The draft stood at 58,000 words. I checked what I had and the subsequent editing came perilously close to a rewrite, with 5000 words blowing away like chaff. Three weeks ago I resumed the story. Francine, tough-minded, tortured, transmogrified,  returned. As always it's the hair that counts; hers is loose floppy blonde, flat to her head, can't be styled. (Blonder and flatter than the pic; with a less knowing face).

Re-starting brought that terrifying moment; imagination is an infrequent visitor and may not call at all. No guarantees. A week in I wrote:

He laughed, poured her some more Burgundy. Both had ordered fish but had merely haggled what was on their plates. The restaurant was expensive and modern, in the heartless straight-line style. The waiters were expert, sympathetic and young, with open-necked shirts and rolled-up sleeves, and they were smiling at a minor dilemma – at what point would the ruined fish cease to be part of the meal and demand removal?

It's not Molly Bloom's soliloquy. Or Robert Jordan in his chancre of a hill. Or the funeral of old Mr Crouchback. What pleases me is when I started that para, I couldn’t see the end. A muffler and slippers against being eighty.

Towards a front cover

Graphic design isn't my forte but I enjoy fiddling, hoping things will come out right. Or preparing the ground for a real designer. When Out Of Arizona was still Risen On Wings (changed because it sounded churchy) the cover was based on a Cessna 172, in flight, shot from below. But I could never find the copyright owner. Here's the latest iteration.

ZAP! The trouser culling season has started. Not as gruesome as the season for baby seals ("the furry animal looked up with limpid trusting eyes") but equally terminal. Why now? Because 44R has become 42R.

Male readers will recognise those as waist measurements. After several months (slowness is the nature of my diet) I have shed about 1 stone - 14 lb - and it's noticeable. VR cannot bear all that visible bagginess to the rear.

So all my 44R trousers are becoming landfill. Including an experimental pair in bright red which I rather liked, pleased by my own audacity. The aim is to hinder regression.

SNAP! Nine-ish, both of us clicking our Kindles. "What are you reading?" I asked. "Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch," said VR. So was I. Me: "Where are you up to?" She: "43%." I'd reached 66% but I knew I'd be rapidly overtaken. VR gobbles up fiction.

The Goldfinch was on special offer download just before Christmas; neither of us could resist the deal. It's a good read, packed full of info as is often the case with US novels. Strong on antique furniture.

WIP Second Hand (55,734 words)
Technical note: Francine has floppy light blonde hair and a pale complexion. Beyond that I don’t plaster in excessive appearance detail. Which is fortuitous because – quite unexpectedly - she’s having her portrait painted. Now such detail works.