Slightly twitchy, slightly nervous. Today I am presenting a seminar on horror as part of Reading Writers’ 2024 Writers Day. Yes, I know I am amongst friends, in a safe space, talking on a subject i know intimately.
Even so, I know when I stand up there will be a rock on my chest and a bone in my throat. I know I’ll rush it, there will be a weird quaver in my voice throughout. I will be breathless and at some point halfway through I will have to give myself an abrupt mental warning to clam the heck down. Why do I put myself through this? Because, ultimately, it’s good for you. Talking in front of people teaches you, if you’re as terrible at extemporisation as I am, to prepare as well as you possibly can.
People keep telling me I’m good at this. Boy, they have no idea. Come tomorrow afternoon, the Negroni Of Victory will be very well deserved.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
I’ll begin, if you’ll indulge me, with an extract from the Introduction to William Wordsworth’s The Prelude, which speaks strongly to the reason TLC and I find ourselves up in the Lakes time and again. Willie was from around these parts, of course—educated in Hawkshead, lived and worked in Grasmere—so he understands the draw of this wild and beautiful place.
The earth is all before me. With a heart Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty, I look about; and should the chosen guide Be nothing better than a wandering cloud, I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
That’s as highbrow as you’ll get this week.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
By the time you read this, TLC, Harvette and I will be heading north, up to a real happy place for us—Coniston. As such, normal service has been interrupted for the week. However, as I hate to leave you all hanging, a bit of a free form infodump to keep you all up to date.
To start, and for background, here’s a primer on what we’ll be up to this week, based on our last visit to the Lakes two years ago.
Meanwhile, the Autumn/Winter term at Reading Writers kicked off on Wednesday with a session on the craft and publication of poetry. Which sure yes OK, sounds a little dry. In practice, with the expert guidance of actual poet Katherine Meehan, the evening was a warm and joyful experience. Geeky, yes. It’s a room full of writers talking about writing, after all. Another one of my happy places.
Anyway. There was a prompt writing exercise at the end of the night. Katherine passed out tarot cards and over the course of three exercises, teased us into writing some pomes.
Here’s my card.
And here’s what I came up with.
My father told a story Of a garden constellation That he found one golden autumn In a corner of his field
Seven stars all in a cluster Scattered all across the spinach And he stood and contemplated His bizarre celestial yield.
So he hung them in a garland Up above the farmhouse lintel And they shone there till the skies fell And the heavens brought them home
So we toil and work and suffer But the memory keeps us shining Of the stars my father brought us From the great celestial dome.
So. Yeah. that happened. I’m a poet now.
A few life notes.
The best thing we ate this week was a sneaky little weeknight gnocchi hack from the New York Times. Do not, for the love of all things holy, use brussel sprouts. Broccoli works brilliantly. Take the time to get the gnocchi crispy. It’s well worth it.
We’re watching season 2 of Colin From Accounts and season 375 of Taskmaster. TLC has got into the Aimee Lee Wood and David Morrisey comedy Daddy Issues, which is utterly hilarious. I’ve been notified that the Apple+ show Bad Monkey is showrun by the guy behind Ted Lasso from a novel by Carl Hiassen, so that will need watching. The weather is closing in. It’s telly time.
Prime Reading continues to be a source of useful comics goodness. I’ve just found out that all ten volumes of Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra’s Scalped is up on the service. A black-hearted, blood-red noir set on a Native American reservation, it’s tight, sharp, twisty and nasty—you know, in a good way. Brilliantly written and illustrated, moves like a truck, kicks like a mule oh look you get the idea. If you enjoyed Justified, you’ll frickin love this.
Oh, and I have a low-key obsession to share.
This is apparently a thing on the TubeGrams…
Which naturally brought me here. Delicious.
And we Outro on a high. An utter gem of British variety programming from the 70s, please enjoy Marti Caine tearing the room up with her disco version of a folk rock classic. You won’t be feelin’ low after this.
The Paralympics have been a complete lock on our telly screen this week, for good reason. Drama, tension, comedy, tragedy, triumph and defeat, all played out across the stadia of Paris thanks to Channel Four’s exemplary stewardship. It has been an incredible week, with Team GB blasting past their previous medal total. It’s been fascinating to see how the old guard, legends like David Weir and Laura Muir, have fallen back while exciting new names have stepped up to the podium. The banner has been passed. It is being held high. What a week. What a show. What a tournament.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
The crushing inevitability of next year’s Oasis reunion finally dropped with a clang this week. Once Blur did Wembley Stadium it was only a matter of time, a poker game of bluff, hold and raise until all interested parties came up with a number they could live with. This is a nostalgia-fuelled cash grab, whatever you think of the band and their music. I’m not going to snark, though. Oasis are beloved by millions, and I’d be every colour of cunt if I judged anyone by the tunes that bring them joy. If you’ve been going through the hoops of trying to get tickets this morning, I hope you got the venue and seats you wanted. Me? I’m waiting for the World Of Twist reunion.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
Over the August Bank Holiday in 2004, TLC and I packed up everything we’d somehow squeezed into a little end-terrace Victorian two-bed house in East London, and lit out for the sticks. The decision to move was partly to do with work—C’s job was relocating out of London and we needed to find a place within shooting distance of the Oxfordshire science zone near Harwell.
The main reason? We were done with the Big Smoke. Too crowded, too noisy, too dirty too—much. We needed a reset. It was time to go west, where the air is clean. We needed to breathe again.
So we looked at a map, drew some lines and circles, figured out the perfect midpoint between where C and I needed to be for work.
Slough.
We reconfigured.
A bit more research and we settled on a big town with a big heart twenty miles west of Betjemen’s bete noire, straddling a river and a canal. A couple of visits and one very fortuitous twist of real-estate fate led, six months after we started looking, to a bulging-at-the-seams Nissan Micra pulling away from Woodville Road in Walthamstow for the very last time, as R.E.M’s Leaving New York synchronistically rolled up on the car radio.
That was twenty years ago, and we’ve never looked back. Reading is our home now, in a way London somehow never was. We have built a life for ourselves here, and although it doesn’t have all the facilities that a big city can offer, Dingtown has a big double handful of gems which give it a bit of a hometown advantage. In honour of two decades in a town called Ding, here are twenty reasons we like it so much.
It’s sunflower season. Well, actually, it’s everything season, as the garden reacts to the hot wet weather with an explosion of fecundity. My cucumber plants, grown late from seed and slow to start, have filled the greenhouse in the space of a week. Our trug, which I planted with two tiny squash plants, is invisible under a ramble of greenery and fruit. The brambles from next door which I’ve somehow managed to keep in check this year have rewarded my patience with great heaped handfuls of sweet, finger-staining blackberries.
And of course, the sunflowers, high and proud, shining in late summer sunshine, some taller than me. In February they were seeds in a packet. Now they are a spectacular show. A little time, a tiny bit of effort and here we are, nodding along to each other, shoulders back and chins high.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
After last week’s adventures, my poor old brain has insisted on a reset. Consequentially, it’s a short chapter this week. I’ll regroup next week with a less scattershot offering.
This week: early rising, a Frasier murder mystery and the greatest Emmy acceptance speech ever.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
These are the strange times. The dog days. Summer is in full swing, yet at the time of writing (Thursday afternoon, a quiet time after work, TLC working away upstairs, Millie in the conservatory snoozing while pretzeling herself into increasingly impossible contortions) it is wet and windy and—well, a bit blah, frankly. Post-anniversary blues, I suppose, with our next break a whole (checks diary) SIX WEEKS AWAY! How are we to cope? When shall we breathe fresh Northern air again?
Oh well, at least the roads are quiet.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
A couple of days ago, TLC and I were heading back to our digs, aching and bone-deep weary after we’d somehow changed a quick stroll before dinner into a route march across poorly-mapped pastureland and rocky hillsides. Honestly, we do this to ourselves so often that it’s even funny anymore.
The last part of the track was, luckily, mostly downhill but there was one last upward dogleg to navigate. I sensed TLC slowing. She’s had trouble recently with her knees and Achilles tendon, yet she’s the one who will always lead us into uncharted territories. Wordlessly, I reached out my hand. Wordlessly, she took it and we negotiated the last slope together.
‘Thanks for the assist,’ she said once we were heading downhill again.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 