We got a man in to watch our tv whilst we went on holiday.
He was there for two weeks, leaving pieces of himself all over the place. Skin cells, hair, etc.
He had a bath in melted chocolate, in our bath.
Every day he watched the news, several films, some quiz shows and all the adverts.
On balance, we were happy with the service he provided.
I knew a plain man – he had a plain face and a plain haircut. He wore plain t-shirts. He ate plain sandwiches and listened to plain music. He had a plain voice and said plain things. If you didn’t have to interact with him, you would barely notice him. No one thought about him. There was very little to say about him, very few adjectives you would use – and you just wouldn’t go out of your way to describe him anyway. He had a very plain name.
I was minding my own business, eating ready salted crisps.
He was there.
He gave me a nod of recognition.
I went home and looked at all the things in my house – the colours of my walls and the colours of my clothes – and pledged to transform, starting with a purge of anything that suggested I was plain like him. I threw plain items into a bin bag but all that did was expose the plainness of my surroundings. It was impossible to get away – when I took my plain clothes off, I saw my body was ordinary and when I closed my eyes, I realised my thoughts were unremarkable.
In the pale gloom of early evening the air became spreadsheet grey and I felt overcome with weariness, a complete lack of ability to make the effort to be interesting. I didn’t leap from my seat and I didn’t switch on the light, and now I could feel all my own adjectives were seeping out and drifting away.
End of another year. These were my standout reads in 2023:
Three novels stood out amongst the books I read this year. All three were books I bought whilst on trips, though I don’t think there’s much else that links them.
First, and probably favourite, was The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, which I picked up on a visit to Shakespeare & Co in Paris. It’s a novel I’d wanted to read for a while and it lived up to my expectations. It tells the story of an unnamed narrator who wakes one morning to find herself alone behind an invisible wall that has settled overnight around the part of the Alpine valley in which she is staying. On the other side of the wall, everything else appears to have stopped still, dead. The novel follows what happens afterwards, as she gets on with life – for company she has a dog, a cat, a cow. She has a finite number of matches until she runs out. Working from a farmer’s diary, she makes the best of working the land and surviving, with the constant question hanging over her – to what end?
The other two were books I picked up whilst in Manchester, on my way to Heptonstall for a week of writing. When I Sing Mountains Dance is a strange, experimental novel by Catalan author Irene Sola – the story of a people and a village in the mountains, told by the elements and the landscape, by flora and fauna, by people living and dead. There are chapters narrated by clouds and by mountains. There’s a chapter narrated by mushrooms. I loved the inventiveness of this, more than anything, and the way the natural world was given equal weight alongside the humans.
The Gospel Of Orla is the debut novel by Lancaster-based author Eoghan Walls. I found it to be big-hearted, fun-but-serious and very, very muddy. A short summary of the plot would run thus: teenage girl runs away from home, bumps into Jesus (literally) and the two strike up a strange inter3dependence. Jesus is on a mission to spread the word but keeps getting told to get back to where he came from; Orla just wants him to help bring her mum back. I don’t usually put a lot of stock in endings but this has a great one.
What else, what else? I found Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper And The Professor (a young woman starts working for a professor who only has a memory of one hour at a time) to be gentle and touching, whilst also having fun with maths (!) and Alan Lightman‘s Mr G. shared a similar mood, his tale of God as a self-effacing scientist creating the universe and watching it develop was very reminiscent of Italo Calvino. I found This One Sky Day by Leone Ross to be a lot to process at first, but once I got into it I found it to be an enjoyably lavish slice of magical realism in which all the magic had purpose and heart.
In short stories, I was not disappointed by Camilla Grudova‘s second collection of sordid little masterpieces, The Coiled Serpent. Grudova’s appetite for the strange and grotesque is rampant and together these stories combine to build a picture of a world in which everyone is struggling, stagnating, fighting against a cruel hand.
Finally, some non-fiction picks. All The Beauty In The World, Patrick Bringley‘s memoir of working as a gallery attendant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was an interesting insight into a job that involves standing still and watching life pass by. I liked the appreciation for the stillness and slowness of the task. And Rob Wilkins’ Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes made me think about an old favourite again, and reminded me I should read him more often. When I’m not finding more new things to read…
Now-traditional Extra Music-Bloggery Content: My Favourite Albums Of 2023
DEERHOOF – Miracle-Level
MITSKI – The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We
LIA KOHL – The Ceiling Reposes
LAUREL HALO – Atlas
VANISHING TWIN – Afternoon X
NATALIA BEYLIS – Mermaids
YOUNG FATHERS – Heavy Heavy
THE GOLDEN DREGS – On Grace & Dignity
FEVER RAY – Radical Romantics
And then we were there, sitting across a table from one another, and both struck by a conviction that we had met somewhere before.
We pored over the possibilities: places we might both have been, people we might both know. Nothing.
We couldn’t find a shred of evidence, but the feeling was so strong it made me feel queasy.
Like I was standing on the top of a tall building. Like I had just realised the tall building wasn’t everything I thought it was.
“You feel that too, right?”
“Yeah. I feel like I’m on the top of a tall building.”
We clung to the table.
Having eliminated those scenarios we might easily explain, we turned to the more far-fetched. I wrote a list on the napkin:
-Knew each other in a past life?
-Somehow related? Long lost brother and sister?
-Amnesia / our memories have been wiped?
-Some kind of simulation? Living same moments over and over again?
-Met (will meet) in the future / time travel
Around us, the whole of reality seemed questionable. I shivered to think about it. Nothing seemed very dependable now.
“We should try and act normal.”
“Ok.”
“Maybe order some dessert.”
“Ok.”
Reality began to appear more solid again, as if pleased with us. I thought I could feel it purring.
I just wanted to make sure the tall building didn’t topple over.
At the far end of the beach, an old man sits at a chair behind a table. And it’s been… I can’t remember the last time I saw a table or a chair or any piece of furniture that’s retained its purpose.
Behind me, the road and everything that’s happened on it – all the trudging, scuffling, foraging – melts away. They’re just things that happened, those things are gone and done. Before me is the sea and that is formless and colourless like my clothes which are makeshift and beaten into submission with wear, tear, mud, blood.
But the old man is wearing a suit. It’s seen better days, but I cannot comprehend how he has kept it from becoming rags like everything else.
On his table are arranged various pebbles. This, on a beach covered in pebbles.
“These are for sale,” he tells me.
“For… sale? I… I don’t have any money.” Nobody does.
“No, not money.” He gestures to the beach.
“With stones?” I ask. I realise I am whispering, as if what I have found here is a dream I don’t want to break. I haven’t dreamt in months.
“Pebbles pay for pebbles,” he smiles. I wonder if this is his joke or his fantasy. His way of dealing.
I look at the pebbles on the table again and realise they are the most beautiful pebbles on the beach – the most entrancing colours, the most pleasing shapes. He has collected them, as if they have value.
“Ok,” I say. I find myself walking back across the beach, scanning the beach for any pebbles of an unusual colour or shape or… any with a particular eye-catching quality, something I cannot quite explain. All these months on the road, scavenging for scraps of food and things I could use, and now… I’m searching for pretty rocks?
Eventually, I have a handful of stones – one is vaguely heart shaped, one has a pleasing seam of blue, one feels smoother than the rest. I return to the old man to go through with the charade of buying one of his most beautiful pebbles and he examines my haul before deciding which of his pebbles I can afford.
It is a fragile moment.
I am cold and tired and damp; flattened out, worn down, made inhuman. I haven’t yet decided whether I will take this from him, whether I can let him get away with maintaining fiction in a place like this.
There was a man who was arrested for impersonating a phone box.
The prison warden released him early on the condition that he delivered a cup of tea to an old man who lived on the other side of the mountains. The journey was long and he had to walk very slowly and carefully to ensure the hot tea would not slop out over the sides of the mug.
With uncertain footsteps he crossed marshland, waded across a small stream, scrambled up slopes covered in scree and back down again, lost his mind and seemed to pop briefly into another medium – stop-motion animation perhaps – and back out again, came to his senses, climbed through the forest and strolled into the village to find the old man’s house.
The old man was grateful for his cup of tea and offered to make him one in return before he started his long walk home. Inside the old man’s house, all the furniture was crumpled against one another as if there had been a traffic collision between the bed and the chest of drawers and everything else had piled up behind them. It was impossible to see through the windows, which were just slabs of coloured plastic. One window was blue, the other green. One yellow, one red.
When he finally got home, his wife asked what he’d been up to.
“Oh… nothing much.” He was taking his shoes off.
She stared at him for a moment, shaking her head. Then she busied herself, muttering under her breath, “don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect… some sensible answer… an explanation of where you’ve been.”
He was busy thinking about his expedition to take the cup of tea to the other side of the mountain, about the difficulties he had faced, each step a balancing act. He had a feeling that completing the task had proved he had repented the error of his ways – and that he was worthy of ongoing existence.
he asked what I’d like to do for my birthday & I said well the weather looks alright so we could maybe go out & have a long walk & take our cameras & shoot & chat & he said sounds good, I’ll swing round after lunch & we can head out & I said good fine cool & he said see you then then
he turned up just about when he said he would & we set off into the day, which was nice & open with a good big wide open sky & perfect light for shooting all things though our favourite was to shoot the old & broken down greenhouses that were full of plants & trees & ferns & brambles all desperate to get out, all overgrown & pushing to be back in the outside world, like a soft slow green explosion which we found endlessly fascinating
we usually shot from the outside, taking photographs of the creaking greenhouse timbers & the flaking paint & the overgrowth pushing out & through the broken of the glass, but sometimes he persuaded me to join him in breaking (it was never difficult – the greenhouses had already fallen apart) & entering so that we could shoot from the inside & then it was like being in a different little world, quiet & forgotten
we would shoot & shoot & fill up our cameras, or at least the film within – my camera was a clunky old SLR that I had owned for twenty years & bought second hand, it having had a previous life with the police (& I liked to imagine the stake-outs it had been on & the evidence it had shot) & was tough as old boots, as evidenced by the fact I had once dropped it on the floor of a car ferry & it had barely put a dent in it, & I loved its weight & its mechanical processes & actually the results I got out of it were immaterial, the pleasure was in the act of carrying it around & using it & I didn’t really care what we achieved that afternoon
all I wanted was to spend a pleasant day out & about with my friend, exploring greenhouses & the time in which we lived, which was unique, the present being the only time in which we could possibly exist, & what I found interesting was the fact that these greenhouses were in this exact state now & only now & never again – there had been the boom time & the bust & they might come back again or they might fall further into ruin, crumpling & sinking into the ground like fossils, but they would never be exactly this again & I was thinking this as we both focussed our lenses on the broken glass & the dense thickets
& I thought about the fact that I might say all this when we stopped at a pub for a drink, maybe sitting outside on a bench in the slightly chilly sunshine on my birthday, the only day like it, the only moment at that exact point in time as we continued on & on, crumpling & falling through time & tumbling down again, vibrating in the light, the perfect light of the universe
They had been sitting at the table for half a goddamn hour and no one had come to take their order. He was getting hungrier and angrier, looking around at the other tables where diners were laughing, joking and eating, and was incensed by the implication that these people were somehow more deserving. This was a classy place – had they been deemed not good enough?
“It’s like we don’t exist,” said his wife of twenty years. Twenty years today in fact.
“What are we, invisible?!” he said loudly as a waitress passed, not appearing to be tending to anything in particular. Then, to his wife: “Maybe we should just go in there and get our own food.”
He had not meant for the remark to be taken seriously, but her eyes widened, and it made him think it might impress her. Surprise her. Twenty years it had been – he liked the idea that he might still be able to surprise her.
He pushed his chair back and stood. “Right then.”
She followed him across the restaurant. He was already rehearsing his explosion, the exact words he would use when the staff questioned his sudden presence in their kitchen. He imagined them trying to calm him down, how he would storm out. How they would pick up a takeaway on the way home and have vigorous sex on the sofa, fuelled by the sheer righteousness of it all.
But when he pushed through the double doors and into the kitchen, neither the chefs nor the kitchen porters looked up from what they were doing, and as he collected an empty plate no one batted an eyelid. Growing bolder, he started to load the plate, helping himself to handfuls of food, burning his fingers as he picked up sizzling steaks and fistfuls of chips.
After completing a circuit of the kitchen, he had collected an obscene amount of food, a heap piled high on the plate. The two of them tucked in, shovelling it with their hands, devouring with an appetite they hadn’t shared in years.
When they were finished, he said: “Watch this.”
Then held the plate in one hand and casually let go. It fell and smashed on the floor. They both laughed. No one else seemed to notice.
“Maybe we should have dessert right here,” she told him, grabbing the front of his shirt in her greasy grasp, pulling him towards her.
I mean, you’re right, it does seem foolishly late to be going on about 2022, as we find ourselves here, already 6.5% of the way through 2023. But I didn’t get this done before now, so here we are and there we go. I’ll keep it brief anyway, and let the pretty pictures do most of the work. Below are some of my favourite things I read last year + my favourite records released in 2023 (I don’t know why, it seems kind of wrongheaded when you think about it, that I do this every year and my books are books published any year and the record are only those released in that year).
My two favourite novels of the year, Hotel Splendid by Marie Redonnet (published in 1986) and Children Of Paradise by Camilla Grudova (published this year) had much in common – both are tales of havens deteriorating, falling to rack and ruin.
Hotel Splendid is about a hotel built on the edge of a swamp, somewhere, somewhen. It is run by three sisters who argue amongst themselves and try to accommodate the series of workmen who are extending the train track through the swamp. 110 pages of damp, sinking, faulty wiring, blocked pipes, bills, illness and various other types of turmoil. Brief moments of respite shine through the gloom to make all the work seem worthwhile, but the hotel’s trajectory seems inevitable.
The setting for Children Of Paradise is an ailing old cinema, at which the narrator, known only by the pseudonym Holly, is employed. Taking on a job at the Paradise, she descends into the strange permanent-night of cinema work and finds herself sucked into a dark, dingy and surreal underworld.
I read loads from Fitzcarraldo Editions and they pretty much all hit the spot. Paradais, the new Fernanda Melchor, dialled back the magical realism of her debut Hurricane Season (my favourite novel of the year a few years back) to become a flat, brutal, desperate tale. Box Hill by Adam Mars Jones was a beautifully-written eulogy to a time and place. Best of all was Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra, a slight but perfectly formed novella which I read in one afternoon, sitting in the sun.
Hand in hand with my year’s favourite works of fiction, I was fascinated by Cal Flynn’s Islands Of Abandonment, and her reports from places in the world that have been abandoned by humans and taken back by nature.
Now-traditional Extra Music-Bloggery Content: My Favourite Albums Of 2021
BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD – Ants From Up There
CAROLINE – Caroline
JEREMIAH CHIU & MARTA SOFIA HONER – Recordings from the Åland Islands
MITSKI – Laurel Hell
AOIFE NESSA FRANCES – Protector
MOUNDABOUT – Flowers Rot, Bring Me Stones
DRY CLEANING – Stumpwork
CLARICE JENSEN – Esthesis
THE SOFT PINK TRUTH – Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?
He phoned in sick, having woken up vibrating. They had to pull him out from under a big pile of sweat.
On the news, reports of a national reality shortage. Also they read out a list of recently deceased dogs (they don’t normally do that). He had been reading a book that convinced him it might be possible for him, a human, to fly – that wasn’t what the book was about, but reading between the lines, he understood how it might be possible.
All day he suffered from moments in which perspective seemed to zoom out and he became aware of his nonsensical position in the world, in the universe, in time – and not just his, but that of everyone and everything else. In those frequent moments, he felt like he was going to fall and never stop falling, so he carefully made his way down to the ground and hugged it. He came to believe he could feel the earth’s bones moving, shifting to respond to his touch.
Late afternoon, they sent out an engineer to try and set him right.
“Get serious,” the engineer told him.
He wrote this on a piece of paper and stuck it to the wall so he might remember how serious he ought to be.
Digestive Press 