A rift in the space-time continuum

See, you thought I'd forgotten all about this blog, didn't you? But instead I've just been away, to a place where the BT Openzone wifi is shakey, probably because of all those time-space disturbances and people constantly having sex with aliens: Cardiff.

I was in Cardiff on Thursday and Friday to give a talk about online storytelling and digital stuffs at the National Theatre Wales - who are literally the loveliest bunch of people you'll ever meet, and who talk about the arts as if they are serious, proper and important things. Which I did not realise was something I'd missed so much. It is a strange experience to have a book published: people start talking about your creative work as if it is a commodity, there's a lot of talk about covers and publicity and not so much about what the book means or how one responds to it. Which I suppose is as it should be: it'd be terrible to have a publisher who spoke movingly about the meaning of one's work but failed to think about how to sell it. But it's still very nourishing to spend time with people who just think that the arts are the most important thing in the world. Novelists get editors, but we don't get directors, I suppose that's the difference.

Anyway, Cardiff was surprisingly pretty and pleasant. Why do I say surprising? Because I realised while I was there that I am ever-so-slightly prejudiced against Wales. I suppose it's because of history, because of how early England conquered Wales and installed our own Prince there, that English people tend to regard Wales as 'not a real separate country' in a way that we don't feel about Scotland. Scotland, because of geography, was harder to conquer and hold; the eventual union was a grudging mutual acceptance of James I/VI, rather than a full-on conquest. So, basically, English people have a slight prejudice that Wales is more 'ours', and maybe a bit more 'wussy' than Scotland. Scottish people eat haggis and allow us to take their lives but never their FREEDOM. Welsh people eat leeks and organise charming male-voice choirs.

It's quite surprising, even shocking, to find prejudices like this lurking in one's mind. I was thinking about how I've heard Dr Who fans be quite scathing about the fact that Torchwood is set in Cardiff (after all the capital city of one of the four countries in the union) - I can't imagine they'd complain if it were set in Edinburgh, or even Manchester or Liverpool or somewhere pretty and historical like Oxford. Having noticed this, I feel I want to apologise to the Welsh for a lifetime of unconsciously thinking they were slightly marginal. Sorry. I'll try to do better in future.

Cardiff, anyway, is worth a visit. Not only for the Torchwood-hub above, which really does hang in the sky like an alien spacecraft, but also for its bustling streets, lively nightlife and really gorgeous hilly landscape all around. Here is a statue to Ivor Novello, another son of Cardiff:

And here is the light, airy Castle Arcade where the offices of the National Theatre Wales are. I loved visiting, I hope they invite me back.

 

Sigh

The past few days I've been mentally composing the blog posts I might write when August is over, maybe summing up the project, picking my best-of and worst-of lists. And until today, the worst-of list was topped by The Warrington. But today hit a new low.

I went for a wander around Camden Town. Which is something of a pit on a Sunday, but in a fascinating way if you're willing to be fascinated. There are so many sub-cultures represented in such a small space, from the juggling shop where I heard someone say "I live to skate; when I skate it's like the world disappears" to the goth/vampire stalls where I saw a girl with amazingly intricate hair curls pasted to her head and face with gel. (I did take some pictures but my mobile phone is currently refusing to sync with my computer; when I sort it out I'll post them.) And there was a shop with a giant mirrored Buddha in the front window, amazing.

So I was feeling strangely peaceful surfing through this world of other people's interests and passions, when I stopped into a cookware store. Where the woman behind the counter decided to tell me what she thought was wrong with my body, and that *she had the miracle solution*. So I told her she was being offensive to me, put down the items I was planning to purchase, and left. As a warning to others, therefore, I would advise against going to the Reject Pot Shop in Chalk Farm, unless you enjoy that sort of commentary from strangers.

Sigh. This sort of thing is quite shocking, in a way. I remember being really horrified when an Asian friend told me about the casual insults thrown at him on the street because of his ethnicity. And Athena Stevens has a great post about how people try to *heal her* in Starbucks. Who *are* these crackpots and wankers? What is going on in their brains?

The good news, I suppose, is that only a very small minority of people in the world are this kind of tosser. Got into a lovely chat on the way home with an Italian and a German student, both of them trying to communicate with each other in broken English, not getting much further than 'you like pizza?' but both going at it with much goodwill.

Why do we go back again and again to the same places? Because we know we'll have a good time there, we know it's safe. New places and new people are often something of a gamble. But the truth is the gamble very rarely backfires horribly; most people are full of goodwill. Last day of August tomorrow, and I'm not even looking forward to all this being over. It's been enriching.

A travelling day

Spent most of today in a car on the way from Seaham back to London but... managed to stop off at The Blake Head, a very gorgeous vegetarian cafe/bookshop in York on the way home. Their risotto cakes are excellent, the cafe is very sunny and clearly popular. Here's my mum going in:

If I hadn't been travelling for nine hours today, I'd try to write something fascinating, reflecting on the meaning of a project that makes me seek out newness.

It might be about the uses of the old and the new. How new things are exciting but old things are comforting. New things offer the promise of improvement, but sometimes we only know how much we'll miss the old things when they're gone. How having too many new things leaves us exhausted and overstimulated, while having too many old things leaves us dull and bored and grey. How sometimes I feel impatient that the future I hoped for hasn't yet arrived, and sometimes I feel appalled at how much has already been lost from the past. I might talk about how difficult it is to achieve balance in life, finding room for both old things and new things.

But, I'm tired. So instead, here is an advert from a magazine directed at Very Orthodox Jews in northwest London. I promise it's genuine.

Edit, Thursday 27 August 11.23pm

Because a couple of people have now said to me "eh? Krefttik? I don't get it!" I feel I ought to explain what was so obviously hilarious to me about this ad. 1) Who on earth calls a food product Krefttik? It sounds like something you should be using to regrout your bathroom. 2) *What is it*? We know what it's not! But... so many options are left. I think it is a fish omelette. Any other ideas? Google is of no help in the Krefttik Quest. Clearly I have to go to Kol Tuv and find some.

North to the Future (or in this case, to the past)

I am in Seaham, County Durham, for the first time in 14 years. It is peculiar. I feel like I'm in 1991.

To explain more fully. In 1988 my parents bought a little two-up, two-down miner's cottage in Seaham, at that time, one of the most depressed areas of the UK. My dad has links to the area; he and his mother were evacuated here during the war and she remained good friends with people around here all her life. She used to enjoy coming up for visits to her old friends. I spent pretty much every summer here between the ages of 13 and 19, and then stopped coming. (Got too old to want to spend summers with my parents, really...)

But now my parents want me to clear out the relics of my childhood that are still here. It is very very odd to be here. The house is full of old furniture from my parents' house, sofas from my grandma's house, my old schoolwork, books I read as a child... there's a Proustian madeleine everywhere I turn, essentially.

Anyway, more of this tomorrow. On the way up, my mum and I stopped first at Boundary Mills discount clothing outlet which was marvellously full of old ladies looking for polyester mother-of-the-bride trouser-suits and also some awesome hats:

For dinner, we went to what is apparently the best vegetarian restaurant in the UK, The Waiting Room in Stockton-on-Tees. It is very quirky, with an incredibly peaceful atmosphere, old schoolroom furniture, and cute waitresses with good hats:

Also, the food was pretty nice.

Now, I have driven about 300 miles today, and had my senses assailed by objects from my past. I think it's time for bed. As a final word: last Tuesday I went to hear the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at the Proms. If you haven't listened to the concert yet, do it before it vanishes from the website, cos it was lovely.

Things that make you feel old

Spent today at the Buckinghamshire Railway Museum with my friend Esther and two of her children Benjy and Zara. Aren't they lovely?

Zara has a habit of sticking her tongue out if she knows you're taking a picture of her. Probably a form of protest which I ought to respect, but I just got around it by taking the picture before she had a chance to stick her tongue out.

We spent 4 hours wandering around, looking at steam locomotives and riding on little trains - after which fairly unstrenuous activity I ended up with a migraine. And they weren't even *badly behaved* children! No shouting, no screaming, no fighting, just lively sweet kids.

So, apart from ending the day having to lie down in a cool, darkened room, things that have made me feel old today:

1) Trying to explain to Benjy what a 'typewriter' is when we saw one in a mocked-up War Office railway carriage.
"Well... it's like a computer, in a way. Do you see the keyboard there?"
"Yes! So where's the screen?"
"Um well it's not quite like that. See those strips of metal? They had little bits of metal on the ends of them which had letters carved into them..."
"Why...?"
"Well, when you pressed the key here, the metal would move and - "
Benjy, rapidly losing interest: "And then where's the button to press to make it print?"

2) Realising that the very signage board Esther and I used to use to see when our trains were coming from Wembley Park when we got the tube into school is now so obsolete it is *in a museum*. This is it open, so the writing is mirrored:

I didn't even want to ask them if they had any of those cardboard 'return' tube tickets I remember from my first year of school. Do you remember them? You had to tear them in half, and the top half was for the outward journey and the bottom half for the return journey? No? Ah, see, I feel old.