Monday, October 29, 2007

Current reading: First Boredom, Then Fear, Richard Bradford's recent biog of Philip Larkin. Entertaining stuff: in response to the many critics of Larkin's less savoury personal qualities, Bradford's particularly keen to stress the development of Larkin's writing voice/persona as distinct and separable from the writer himself as 'real' person, and he draws on Larkin's correspondence and early attempts at fiction to suggest not only that that he created multiple writing personae depending on his audience, but that his poetic voice was a sort of nexus (rather than a synthesis) of all these voices. He also proposes that in writing prose and then poetry, Larkin allowed the writing self to govern the 'real' self, as well as the other way around. All most enjoyable but really more interesting for the mucky details about what a faithless shit Larkin was, especially as Bradford gamely tries to account for his shittiness in terms of the creation and maintenance of his writing persona. (Although when he comes to Larkin's racism he appears to lose heart.) Of course, now I'm going to have to read the Andrew Motion version.

Permanent link - 0 comments

marking time

Sunday, October 21, 2007

No time to post: among other things, am busy marking. (Just the ticket for a sunny Labour Day weekend.) But looky! New photies!

Permanent link - 0 comments

only the young can be alone freely

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Just read 'Vers de société', in which celebrated literary misanthrope and lifelong commitmentphobe Philip Larkin moans about, among other things, how tough it is to get the poetic contemplations in when people keep mithering you all the time. To which all I can say is: Philip old son, if you hear a dripping noise, it's my heart bleeding for you.

(Of course it turns out that even when you do find time for appropriately poetic solitude, all you can do is sit there next to your gas fire freaking out about the imminence of death anyway. Buggrit.)

Permanent link - 0 comments

resorts

Friday, October 12, 2007

My resolve eroded by lack of sleep,* have been letting Becca watch Actual Telly in the morning rather than plonking on a DVD to buy me some mins for, y'know, cleaning, and stuff. Laundry. Coffee. To discover the latest - now what's the word? Um. Excrescence. I think. Anyway, the latest steaming pile of sheer dreadfulness to have passed in front of my daughter's impressionable little mind is something called In The Night Garden: sadly, nothing to do with Maurice Sendak, it's what happens when the Tellytubbies meet Victorian children's literature, with graphics by Monty Python. And narrated, God forgive him, by famous thesp and 'confirmed bachelor'** Derek Jacobi. It's so bad it makes Fifi and the F***ing Flowertots look good by comparison.

* Becca coughed and keened until two; when Maggie woke for a feed at four I was, perversely, relieved: if she'd chosen last night to sleep through the irony would have been altogether too much.
**Not my phrase: I saw him thus described in an otherwise fawning article in some Home Counties lifestyle mag.

Permanent link - 0 comments

not the winning formula

Thursday, October 11, 2007

She still won't sleep through, even after we gave up the good fight and plonked a bottle of formula into her at bedtime. I mean, what is the bloody point of making a pact with the devil if he won't keep up his end of the bargain? Feh.

Oh, I could try to summarise the endless recursive loops of rationalisation and agonisation (is that a word? it is now) that went into this decision but Becca is home from crèche pouring snot and coughing like a drain so I don't have time.

(We're back, by the way. More on the Auckland trip when I'm not nursing the sick.)

Permanent link - 0 comments