Monday 28 July 2008

Next Monday


Here is BBT/me again, having just said or done something that doesn’t entirely meet with James Gandolfini’s approval. There’s a difference, though: Billy Bob Thornton holds his cigarette in his right hand, I hold mine in my left. A detail, but it counts. It’s how you can tell us apart. As the wonderful John Berger wrote about Morandi: ‘That he was left-handed is, I feel, important, but I do not know why.’ If BBT was left-handed perhaps he’d still be together with Angelina.

Anyway . . . Next Monday, 4 August, is the official publication date of the Bloomsbury edition of Jennie’s 24 for 3, and though exact dates of publication are pretty meaningless (the book is already on sale, has been reviewed on radio), in this case it will be worth opening a bottle because – as well as being the anniversary of the day Britain entered the First World War, and of the last day alive of Marilyn Monroe, and an oddly significant date in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (Leonora’s birth, marriage, suicide) – it is BBT’s birthday.

Saturday 19 July 2008

Catfood

There’s been a gap, I know, and I’m sorry (says he, apologising to his non-existent readership of several thousand). I’ve been busy, not in a writerly way (which involves very long pauses) but in a journalistic sort of way. I have written, in the past week or so, a ‘My Week’ piece for untitledbooks.com, a piece on CBe (for a magazine), a piece on the Uxbridge Road (for another), a piece on pseudonymity (for nowhere in particular, but someone says he’ll try to place it), a piece on something called ‘guerrilla publishing’, two columns for the Shep Bush & Hammersmith Gazette (Jennie has been offered a monthly column), a publishing proposal for a book that’s far too big for CBe, and the draft of a proposal for the Arts Council. I got in a rhythm, but it may be ending. So if anyone wants my views on 9/11 or global warming, or some advertising copy for catfood, get in quick.