Thursday 19 June 2008

Old people crossing


I did something nasty to my back on Monday while manhandling four bikes into and onto a car, so when, at the Society of Authors’ awards do last night, Jennie Walker was asked to step up to receive the McKitterick Prize, which is for a first novel written by an author aged over 40, it must have looked to the audience as if the prize was this year won by a cross-dressing author aged over 85.

Some people were confused. I was – and have been for some time – a little confused myself. This is a perfectly natural state to be in.

PS – Journalists, of course, are more confused – and cause more confusion – than anyone. The Guardian website today has Jennie as a poet, and notes that her name is a pseudonym of the ‘novelist’ CB. This is straightforward inability-to-read-a-press-release. Usually they get it wrong by exaggeration. There was lovely headline in the Hammersmith & Fulham Gazette earlier this year: ‘New Bus Stops Cause Mild Confusion’ – yet in the accompanying picture none of the people at the bus stop looked in the slightest confused, they knew exactly where they were going and how to get there.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about your back, Jennie.
I'll bet you looked stooping lovely.
Congratulations on a well-deserved prize.

rb said...

i am always confused! congratulations, JW, and best wishes- take care of CB's back for him

Anonymous said...

If you think that was awkward, wait until you win the Orange prize...

Anonymous said...

Sorry, just realised that everybody has already made that joke...