Reblogged from the m john harrison blog:

I couldn’t take a better image myself. So shameless lifting from M John Harrison’s blog. Thanks Mike! x

Stephen was a resident (ie a recovering addict) and I was on the other side, not staff, but a member of the support group, who were a collection of young people, all under 25 years old, as were all members of Alwyn House, and who were in regular employment and could act as sort of role models for the residents. Well, at least that was the idea.

However, Stephen seemed different to the other residents who, even at my callow age, I recognised were the products of extremely neglectful and abusive backgrounds, and, were, in the majority, from very under-privileged families. Middle-class users were cushioned by their families’ connections and money and didn’t end up in down-at-heel state-funded institutions so early on in their addictions. Residing in Alwyn House was a bargaining chip with the criminal justice system – a way of sidestepping a custodial sentence for someone whose habit, and the attendant need to fund it, had given them cause to appear in front of a judge.

Imposing a relatively unstructured routine on the residents, and not adhering to a 12-step therapeutic framework, or intensive group therapy, Alwyn House had a different character to most rehabs at that time and was, therefore, regarded by the addict community with some suspicion – Alpha House and Phoenix House being the rehabs of choice due to their employing a more macho approach to rehabilitation, admission to Alwyn House was seen as something of a cop-out.

However, I’ve got sidetracked here. I’m sure there’s a PhD, or at the very least a well-thought out article, to be written on UK rehabs in the late-20th century, but this is neither the time nor the place, and I am hardly up to that task.

Despite my callowness (I think I mentioned that) I instantly pegged that Stephen was not like the other residents – he just didn’t have that air of heavy duty chemical devotion about him that they did. I strongly intuited that, despite his crack use (hey! Stephen – you were an early adopter!), he just really needed to get away, fast, from a bad situation going down in east London and needed a place to lie low in for a while.

And what could be better! An anonymous safe house, a far cry from the boisterous, unglamorous streets of E8. A residence patrolled and policed, however light their touch, by a team of social workers (with questionable degrees of eptitude and experience). There were certainly no brass plaques or signs outside Alwyn House to identify it.

Coincidentally, the rehab was around the corner from the house in Powis Square where the Nicolas Roeg/Donald Cammell film, Performance, was set – where another Eastender, Chaz, sat out his exile, under the radar in W11.

But anyway, enough of these ruminations. Stephen and I hit it off instantly. I think we recognised that we both had a somewhat distant mien – two people slightly apart from the other inhabitants of Alwyn Houes, and also shared a predilection for solitude – observers rather than participants.

And after spending some time with Stephen, I discovered that he was trying to make sense of his life on the streets and was writing it down (or out). As I had been participating in a young writers’ workshop led by Hanif Kureishi at the Riverside Arts Centre in Hammersmith, I invited him to accompany me.

Residents’ outings were heavily monitored in the first few months of their stay at Alwyn House (if they managed to clock up even that minimal amount of time – some were out of the door within a day). However, this instance, the social workers were in favour. Stephen would be in my, a trusted support group member, company, and so apparently, would be carefully supervised and monitored. What could be better! An improving evening class!  From those early tentative days, Stephen began writing seriously and, now, 20 years later, three novels and numerous articles published widely in, for instance, The Observer and Scotland on Sunday, Stephen Thompson is an well-established writer.

Coming full circle now – it’s Stephen who is living on Ladbroke Grove now, and it’s I who resides in Hackney, E5, just a few minutes away from the streets he grew up in.

I thought it might be interesting or fun, even, to invite Stephen back to Hackney and accompany him while he revisited his old turf – to find out through his eyes what has changed and what remains the same since he lived here.

Welcome to Hackney Downs! Where it all began

ST: First of all the front line … That block of flats looks quite posh used to be derelict and was where we used to play pool, hang out and take the piss out of the Old Bill. We used to steal sweets from that newsagent I was 15. We would run in, stuff our pockets and run out. The whole row was derelict but the shop is still the same. It’s funny because some things have changed and some things are exactly the same. Of course, there is no one at all around here now, but before, every one of these corners had clumps of people – youths mostly and every five minutes, you’d see the Old Bill, either a van or a car – sometimes both at once patrolling very slowly. This place here used to be a drug den – it was a council house at the time but it was squatted.

A drug den once upon a time

That pub there used to be one of the most notorious in Hackney.

This was one once of the most notorious pubs in Hackney – now it's the venue for fashion shoots

FS: It’s not a pub anymore it’s used as a venue for fashion and film shoots locations.
ST: Classic! It’s no longer a pub! It’s a venue for film shoots that sums it up in one sentence! I think it used to be called the Kingsland Arms or something. That estate over there is called the Cromer Estate which is where I spent most of my childhood. We were known as the Cromer Possee. Another thing I forgot to mention is that there were always cars parked up here pumping music with people smoking weed, shooting the breeze, loaving basically.

Cromer Terrace estate –the home of Stephen's old possee

My mum and I were living in Colvestone Crescent, just a few streets away. When they rehoused us, as that place was unfit for human habitation, they moved us to this place, 158 Amhurst Road which is this red door here. The one with the window open was my mum’s flat and I had the one above it. There is a scene in Toy Soldiers which takes place when the central character Gabriel has a freak out after smoking crack. He tries to open the window and jump out but his friend restrains him …

Stephen's old home 158 Amhurst Road – the setting of some of the scenes in Toy Soldiers

Here we are at Downs Park Estate. This was quite a bad estate. It was known for dealing. The police were always in there. Very poor working class families, mostly black, lived here. I spent a lot of time in there. It looks very quiet now – almost abandoned.

FS: There is your old school hoving into view …
ST: Hackney Downs Secondary, now called Mossbourne Community Academy, formerly the Grocers Company which as a grammar school in the 1940s boasted amongst its former alumni Michael Caine and Harold Pinter no less. Of course, when I went there in the late 70s, it had moved on since those days. Truancy was at the highest in the entire country. Sometime in the 90s, it was dubbed the worst school in Britain. It was closed down long after I left, but there it is.

Stephen's former school, Hackney Downs Comprehensive, now the Mossbourne Academy

FS: You did your bit!
ST: I made my small contribution to the statistics. But there it is. It’s reopened as the Mossbourne Academy. There is Hackney Downs Park where I spent a lot of time after school playing football and also during school hours dreaming of going over there to play football. As soon as the bell had gone, we were out of the gates and into the park. It looks now like a gated school like you see in The Wire. The funny thing is the same basic structure has been kept – the playgrounds were always at the back. It just looks brighter. Before it was just a grey slab with the train lines running next to it which we used to hate.

Hackney Downs itself

FS: Because it was noisy?
ST: No, because it seemed to encroach on the space. We would much rather have been able to go over that side of the wall but we couldn’t – “be careful of the trains”. It was always high fences and stuff. There were a few near misses as people ignored that rule.

There’s the Pembury Tavern. I don’t know what kind of pub it is now, but in the early 80s it used to be full of East End villains.

The Pembury Tavern

FS: Just white people?
ST: Yes, it was a no-go zone. If black people went there, it was because they had been incorporated into a villain family – they would be Cockney black guys.

Number 238b was Ozzy’s – as you can see it’s changed now – it was where we used to hang out, kill time, smoke weed, play pool and arcade games like Space Invaders.

What once was Ozzy's – now Chase and Sorenson, a cafe and furniture store

FS: It’s a posh Scandinavian cafe now.
ST: Ozzy’s now a posh Scandinavian cafe! I can’t believe it! Chase and Sorenson.

That is the biggest change I’ve encountered today.

(Our walk now progresses along Clarence Road, the location of the most sustained of last August’s riots that took place in Hackney. We pass two men hanging out by the end of the street, at the junction of Dalston Lane.)

I recognise those two guys.  I left Hackney in 1989, think how long ago that was 23 years ago! I recognise them but they didn’t recognise me! They are still here.

(We walk towards Pogo, a vegan cafe on Clarence Road.) You can see why they say Hackney is now trendy.

FS: I don’t think they are very trendy there. Pogo is more full of crusties.
ST: Pembury Estate has not changed very much. It’s just got more satellite dishes!

It’s bit prison-like with all those grills.

We reach my flat and our walk concludes.

Foggy Sapphires’ interview with Stephen Thompson:

FS: What would you say are the high points and low points of your writing career?
ST: The high point was getting Toy Soldiers  published in 2000 and it being so widely publicised and widely reviewed. Although I have some regrets about how I conducted myself during that time.

Toy Soldiers – Stephen Thompson's first novel

FS: What regrets?
ST: When you are getting a lot of publicity for your first novel you are prepared to do and say almost anything. I regret a lot of the imagery that was used to publicise myself as an author

FS: Like what?
ST: Almost every photo portrayed me as a thug from Hackney.

FS: Ghetto?
ST:  Exactly. I wanted to smile more (I would later satirise this in a novel). Photographers would say “no smiling, no smiling”. They wanted me to look serious and I think I should have been a bit more determined to make a distinction between my life and  the book, which was a heavily fictionalised account of my own experiences. I didn’t do myself any favours. I didn’t promote myself enough as a creative writer and that is a regret. But overall the book coming out was a high point. The low point was when my follow-up fell into the world still-born. The publishers did nothing to promote it.

Missing Joe – his second novel

FS: Missing Joe?
ST: It was almost the opposite of Toy Soldiers in terms of review and publicity. I’ll never forget the night Courttia Newland and I drove around in my car with posters I had printed up at my own expense, putting them up around Ladbroke Grove so that people would be aware of the book.

FS: Why didn’t the publishers push that book?
I don’t know, exactly. It did get reviewed. I also did radio interviews. However, there were no big features on me or the book. And the sales were disappointing. If I’m perfectly honest, and this isn’t easy to prove, I think it failed to get attention because it wasn’t as incendiary as Toy Soldiers in terms of the storyline, I would consider it to be much more a work of literature, much more a work of imagination, although it deals with my parents and my parents’ generation. Toy Soldiers has a lot of drugs and crime set in the black community, which, let’s face it, is more interesting to the media.

FS: I really liked Missing Joe. I thought it was ambitious and I thought it was good that you got out of the comfort zone – the stereotype zone of guns, crime and crack. What inspired this ambitious move?
ST: As you just mentioned, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and prove myself to be a diverse writer. I wanted to move away from myself and talk about my parents. If Toy Soldiers is about me and my generation, Missing Joe is about the so-called Windrush generation. I didn’t know very much about that group of people and I wanted to see if I could examine them through fiction.

FS: I liked the book’s menacing sense of what happens in small town England, those nasty spiteful crimes that no one talks about – and people get away with.
ST: That’s what my publisher said to me as well.

FS: They came out quite consecutively.
ST: I had a very embryonic version of Toy Soldiers when I was at rehab in 1990. I really began it in 1991, when I had left. Then I worked on it off and on for 10 years. Once she had placed it, my agent managed to secure a two-book deal in 1999 so I had to write another one. Thus the pressure was on. I had a bit of money left from my advance and I went to Thailand to celebrate and think about the book. After that, I went to Jamaica to spend some time with my mum. It was while I was there that I started to think about Missing Joe.

I started making notes there in 1999 and more-or-less as soon as Toy Soldiers came out. I knew what the next book was going to be, although I hadn’t told my agent or publisher. I moved to Paris in the summer of 2000 to begin work on it. I initially went there for six months but I ended up staying there for three years.

It didn’t take me that long to write Missing Joe. It’s actually a shorter book than Toy Soldiers. And about a third of the story had to be grafted on. My original manuscript was more like a novella. My publisher said it was really good but it was too small and that I had to make it longer. It was the first time I came up against this notion of writing to length as a novelist, how commercial considerations come into novel writing. For instance, if you are going to buy a novel for £10, you clearly want value for money. Only the very, very successful authors can get away with publishing something short for that kind of money. However, I wasn’t in that category, so I had to make my story much longer. That’s how I came up with setting part of the story in Jamaica. I spent five years of my childhood growing up in rural Jamaica, so most of that section of the book was done from memory.

FS: I think it is very successful. I love the sense of mystery and menace.
ST: I wanted it to be a page turner as well. In retrospect, there are a number of things I was trying to pull off in that book. I wanted to write about my parents. I wanted to write about their lives in London and in Jamaica. I wanted to write something “literary” but also a gripping page turner, a psychological thriller, for want of a less clichéd definition.

FS: So we turn to your next book Meet Me Under the Westway.
ST: It came out a full six years after Missing Joe. Actually, this puts me in mind of your earlier question about what was the low point of my career. That was probably after I had published Missing Joe and it hadn’t done very well. I went from that to losing my agent and also being out of contract. So that was a deeply insecure and worrying time. Because I was almost back to square one.

They always say you are only as good as your last book. So I felt really under pressure to write something very quickly. Again, I wanted to write something different, which ended up being Meet Me Under the Westway. I wanted to go back to my experiences but I wanted them to reflect the new me, if you like. I wanted to write about my time in Notting Hill, when I joined the Royal Court Young People’s Theatre and was exposed to a different world to the one I’d been used to, namely, a white middle class theatre set.

Meet Me Under the Westway isn’t a so-called black book, in fact it’s non-colour specific. It’s not clear what race the narrator is. Again, I was deliberately trying not to get pigeonholed into being a so-called black writer. The upshot was that my agent at Curtis Brown turned it down – which was a shock to the system.

Stephen's third published novel – Meet Me Under the Westway

FS: Did she give you a reason?
ST: Yes, she said that it wasn’t a patch on Missing Joe and that she was sorry to say that she just didn’t like it. She thought I could do a lot better. Which was not just a shock to the system but to the ego. This was a time when I had started to think I could do no wrong, that whatever I wrote would be published. If you don’t have an agent in this business, you can’t get your manuscript in front of a publisher, even though I had a good relationship with my publisher. I scrambled around trying to find a new agent without success. In the end I bit the bullet and took the book to the publisher myself. When she turned it down, my world collapsed. It felt like my career was over before it had even started.

So, that was the lowest point. That manuscript of Meet Me Under The Westway ended up being put in a drawer. I finished it in 2002. I left Paris in 2003. My girlfriend and I split up. It was a worrying time. I went to Thailand, where I always seem to end up when I have to lick my wounds, and stayed there for five months. This time I thought I need to write something else to get back in the game.

While I was there, I recklessly started work on another novel, this time about the slave revolts 19th century Jamaica. It was hard-going. In fact, before I went to Thailand, I went to Jamaica to do my research. I spent a lot of time with my family. I was very excited by the project, although as things turned out, the actual writing was very taxing. I think writing should be enjoyable, but this wasn’t. This was more like drudge. Now when I look at that manuscript, I see terrific passages of prose, but it’s only there in patches. Anyhow, I now had two manuscripts on my hands.

FS: What was that one?
ST: It’s called Rebellion, and it’s thematically inspired by Camus’ The Rebel.

FS: … and you haven’t published that?
ST: Not yet.

FS; And how did you get Meet Me Under the Westway published?
ST; When I came back from Thailand I moved to Edinburgh, where I met a woman who was starting up a literary imprint called Chroma, specialising in contemporary fiction. I told her I had something she might be interested in. And as soon as she read it, she said she would take it. But then I was faced with more difficulties. The book was going to published by a small press, and one that was based in Edinburgh. The publisher was confident about the Scottish market, but how to make inroads into the southern market? How do we get the book out in London? It was very, very difficult. It’s very difficult for Scottish writers full-stop to get a look in down south.

FS: Even after Irvine Welsh?
ST: Even after Irvine Welsh. But we did our best. I managed to get some copies sold down here. The Waterstones in Notting Hill Gate did a massive window display and we sold quite a few.

FS: It’s a great title.
ST: Thanks. I had a sense of vindication after that book came out because I thought it was never going to see the light of day and that really knocked my confidence. So for someone to see something in it, and to want to pay money for it gave me a real shot in the arm. It was published and people bought it. Then I tried to get Rebellion placed but couldn’t and my confidence took another knock. My agent that I found in Edinburgh just couldn’t place it with anyone. So I had to draw a line under that. So all in all, it was a very troubling period between 2001 when Missing Joe came out and 2007 when Meet Me Under the Westway was published.

After that, I started doubting myself as a writer. I didn’t know if I wanted to continue and if I did, what sort of things I wanted to write about and whether anyone would be interested. I had the feeling that I was being subtly pushed in the direction of writing about the black urban experience, whatever that is, and I just didn’t want to do it, or at least not exclusively. It was far too limiting. At the same time, I wanted to be published. There was a tension there, and I don’t think I’ve resolved it yet. Perhaps I never will.

FS: So what were you doing at the Royal Court?
ST: I was writing for the stage. I wanted to see it I could do it.

FS: You weren’t acting?
ST: No. There were two groups, an acting workshop and a writing workshop, and at the end of each term we would do a joint production. Writers would write and actors would act. But for most part, the two groups were separate. I liked it because you met up once a week. There was a tutor who would facilitate readings. We would write our pieces during the week and present them to be critiqued. I enjoyed it because for the first time since I was in rehab, I was in the company of other budding writers. Do you remember when you and I used to go to Hanif’s class?

FS: Yes.
ST: It was a similar vibe. I met a bunch of really lovely young people at the Royal Court Young People’s Theatre and a couple of them, Joe Penhall and Nick Grosso went on to become famous playwrights. You could tell that there was a handful of us who were really ambitious, who wanted to succeed. But I quickly realised that writing for the stage wasn’t for me. That’s much more of a collaborative process.

"I want to be a writer with longevity"

FS: You are more reflective aren’t you?
ST: (Laughs) Playwriting is reflective, too. No, what I mean is, I’m more of a loner. It’s funny because my group used to tease me a lot because if I got any bad criticism for my theatre pieces, I would always say, “I don’t really want to write for the stage anyway. I’m a novelist. I’m working on my novel right now”. It’s true. I was working on Toy Soldiers the entire time.

FS: So where do you see your writing progressing?
ST: In 2008, after Meet Me Under the Westway came out, I started thinking about writing as a profession. It’s ironic, actually, as this predates the current debate that writers are having in the wake of the ebook revolution and the notion of free-content. I was thinking about it from the point of view of being able to make a living, but also whether I wanted to explore other forms of writing. I enjoy other forms of writing. I like writing my diary, I like writing short stories. The only thing I don’t write is poems. I’ve always written screenplays.

So in 2008, I decided I wanted to try to get into film, writing them and directing them. Someone at the time advised to enrol in a film school, but I didn’t want to become influenced by film theory. I wanted to learn the craft of film making by actually doing it, just as I learned to write novels by getting on with it. Not long after making my decision to start making films, I wrote a short, which was filmed and then I directed another short. I loved it. Actually, I say I’ve never studied film. That’s not quite true. Like Tarantino, I worked in a video store for years, which has helped my understanding of film enormously.

FS: When did you do that?
ST: In Edinburgh, off and on for about five years. I regard that as my film school. It fuelled my appetite for film making. And not only for fictionalised stories. I am working on a documentary at the moment.

FS: What’s that about?
ST: Not so long ago I got a call from a friend saying, “Stephen I’ve just got hold of a book about the black power movement in London during the 1970s, which I think would make a great film”. The book is called The book is called Black  for a Cause … Not Just Because and was written by Winston N Trew who was one of a group of four men who were arrested in 1972 at the Oval tube station in south London who were sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Their case became quite famous as a miscarriage of justice. My friend thought the book would make a great TV drama, but when I read it I thought it would work better as documentary and so I set to work right away trying to conceive it my mind’s eye.

I am very excited about this project and about film making in general. I used to see myself as a novelist and now I see myself as a storyteller who is prepared to explore other forms of storytelling besides the written word. But don’t get me wrong, writing remains a passion of mine, it’s just that I no longer limit myself to writing novels. I like writing journalism for instance. I write essays, too. I like writing them too. In fact, I am going to have a piece published by Five Dials in a couple of months’ time about Marcus Garvey.

FS: Yes, you are a very good journalist. Why do you think you like writing so much?
ST: That’s a very good question! If I go way back to when I was a child, the one thing I was always good at school at was English – both written and spoken. I was always told I had a facility for the English language. And when I was at rehab, I thought this is my strength, I am not really good at anything else. How can I make this work for me, which is why I thought I would become a journalist and earn a bit of money. How naive was I!

And as you know I stumbled into writing fiction. If Hanif hadn’t encouraged me, I might never have continued.

FS: What did he say, exactly? I remember he was very tight with the compliments..
ST: You can say that again. Anyway, he told me I had it in me to become some kind of writer.

FS: I guess there’s a compliment in there somewhere.
ST: (Laughs) I guess.

FS: Why did your mother send you to live in Jamaica?
ST: For economic reasons. She was a single mum with four boys and one girl. I went to live with my grandmother in a very rural part of Jamaica for five years, between the ages of five and ten. It was just me, my gran and my imagination. The emotional and psychological effect is one thing, but it’s great preparation for a life of solitude. I was recently discussing childhood experiences and how we repeat them in adulthood and it occurred to me that the reason I go off to far-flung parts of the world for long periods of time is because that’s what I did as a child, albeit against my will. The point is that I still live a life of solitude, I am quite a solitary figure, so for that reason I’m grateful for that early childhood experience. It prepared me for the life of a writer, which is essentially one of solitude.

"I see myself as a storyteller who wants to explore other forms of storytelling"

FS; Are you an avid reader?
ST; Yes. I think it’s because I came to literature quite late. When I was growing up, there were no books in my house. Apart from the odd book we studied at school, such as Kes, books weren’t part of our existence. I only started reading books at rehab. I remember the very first novel that really made an impression on me was Love in the Time of Cholera, which I got out at our local library in Ladbroke Grove. And the other one was Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. I don’t know if you remember a guy called Riz, an Asian guy who was at the rehab?

FS: I think that was after I had left.
ST: Riz had all of Rushdie’s novels at that time.

FS: Was he in the support group or a resident?
ST: He was a resident. He handed me Midnight’s Children one day and said, “Stephen you’ve got to read this”. And then I just started reading everything. And I thought, “Bloody hell, where have I been?” I felt quite resentful that I had never really been exposed to literature. Having said that, I realise that if I had done, I probably would have rejected it, since my childhood was about rejecting everything that I was forced to do, whether it be studying at school or going to church on a Sunday. I am glad I came to books of my own volition.

FS: Sometimes you have to live first, don’t you?
ST: Yes. Now I don’t read as much as before, as voraciously I mean. These days I am much more discriminating.

FS: Are there any contemporary writers you like?
ST: I don’t read a lot of fiction these days. Someone told me that once you get past a certain age, you don’t read much fiction as you are always looking for an experience which is much closer to the truth, closer to the source, you want to hear directly from a writer what they think or feel. You don’t want it mediated through the artifice of fiction.

But I do read the odd fictional work. I like Rupert Thomson who is one of this country’s best imaginative prose writers. I like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I thought Half of a Yellow Sun, her follow-up to Purple Hibiscus, was terrific. I reviewed it for Scotland on Sunday. I thought it was great how she went from having potential in one book to realising it in the other because often it can go the other way. Some writers arrive in a blaze of glory and they can’t live up to it. I think it’s always better to be a bit of a slow burn. She’s definitely done that – a very talented writer.

I really like Luke Sutherland, his Venus as a Boy is one of the best things I’ve ever read. There are other novelists out there who I admire, but the truth is you’re much more likely to find me with my nose between the pages of a non-fiction book. I’m heavily into history at the moment. Perhaps at a certain point in your life, you start looking back. I like African, Caribbean and African-American history. This all started when I began researching my historical novel, Rebellion, and I’ve kept it up. And I like anything that’s to do with human consciousness, how we raise our consciousness, which can be anything from Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom to a Life of Buddha.

You can follow Stephen on Twitter @ss_thompson

As mentioned in an earlier post, the very talented Mcleod has his private view for his show Ottoman Fight Club, which the interview focuses on, at Dalston Superstore tonight, January 12 starting at 7pm.

The formidable and fantastic Tiff McGinnis, aka Grande Dame, will be providing the sounds, the author Bertie Marshall will be reading and the Ginger Light, fronted by poet and writer Jeremy Reed will be performing.

This new work, although eight years in the making as Mcleod immersed himself in the Turkish wrestlers’ culture, marks a departure and development in the London-based New Zealander Mcleod’s work which previously explores his fascination and  empathy with the outsiders, desperadoes, the forgotten and lost of the metropolis.

The images of Ottoman Fight Club were taken at the annual Kirkpinar tournament, held in Edirne, Turkey, which Mcleod visited over an eight-year period and where he established a friendship with the wrestlers. Shot in black and white, and screen-printed in a panoramic style, Mcleod examines the themes of male kinship and sexuality as expressed through the body.

The private view takes place at the Superstore tomorrow (Thursday January 12) at 7 pm and will be a very special event as the punk legend, author and mainstay of the Bromley Contingent, Bertie Marshall shall be reading and the Ginger Light, the musical collaboration of the poet and writer Jeremy Reed will perform a short set. And the magnificent Tiff McGinnis aka Grande Dame aka Crazy Girl will be spinning some maximum rock und roll.

Ottoman Fight Club

“He turned up on Xmas Eve. I was feeling sorry for myself. I kept hearing that song on the radio, something like ‘So now it’s Xmas/And what have you done?’ (Fuck all.) It ends balefully – ‘the Xmas you get you deserve’ – so reassuring.”

And:

“How does that hymn go? ‘Change and decay in all around I see …’
Right. I should get that methadone and some extra sleepers and come off. I know I should.

I’ll start tomorrow.”

Young was one of the most gifted literary critics and writers to emerge from the UK over the last 30 years. Very, very sadly she died of Hepatitis C at the age of 51 in 2001. Combining an extraordinarily fierce intellect with a filigree sensitivity, natural unforced writing talent and enormous breadth of literary knowledge. An elegant writer and perhaps too talented for this world.

A collection writing of most of her writing (but not, unfortunately, containing any of her fiction), Pandora’s Handbag, was published by Serpent’s Tail, posthumously, and it is a book that I highly recommend. It is a work of unassuming genius.

Pandora's Handbag – Adventures in the Book World by Elizabeth Young

Anyway, here is a short story by her: Jonesying – the End, Young’s mordant riposte to the other eponymous Miss Jones,  which was published in the Time Out Book of London Short Stories Volume Two, edited by Nicholas Royle (2000).

Her good friend, the writer Stewart Home, who Young described in Pandora’s Handbag, as being a “conceptual artist, installationist, theorist, novelist and all-round cultural terrorist”, wrote a very moving tribute to Young.

I realise that these jpgs  are possibly not the best way to present scans online, so I apologise in advance for the legibility, or otherwise, of these scans. If anyone would like me to email them my pdfs of the pages, please contact me.

From Snowflake:

“I could forgive you anything,

I’m not here to stand in your way,

I’m just struggling with the weather here and the short winter day.

What hell have I created here?

What was in this for me?

Suck it up baby,

well I know what your eyes are telling me.

When hope flies in on a plane from I don’t know where

She brings a snowflake and some sunshine and a feather for my hair.

I need a doctor and a politician to put a bandage on this incision.

Got to get over this need

Got to get over.”

As she says, suck it up baby. xxx

* The video shown on Heather’s myspace page is made by the brilliantly gifted film maker Dario Vigorito of 241-24-7

Heather Mae Jones aka H Jones x

Here is a small thing I wrote earlier this year about Heather (who I am lucky enough to count as a good friend, which I should declare now, I guess):

‘With her music having been variously described as possessing the lyrical sharpness of Patti Smith and of evoking Annie Oakley, Smith & Wesson, empty highways and empty beds, the Californian musician and songwriter, Heather Mae Jones has just released her first single, Midway City.

Originally from LA, and with impeccable rock n roll credentials, as a teenager Jones – then Heather Hiegel – was in the original line-up of Hole, before leaving to form The Hotshots with ex-Cramps bass player Candy Del Mar with Aaron Sperske of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti on drums. Jones has collaborated with with an range of LA musicians, including The Beachwood Sparks and Bobby Bones of Sky Parade and The Morlocks.

On her marriage to Jim Jones, she moved to London where she still resides with her son, Jude. Since her displacement here, and wishing to free herself from “the confines of a band situation”, she has been writing, performing and recording her solo material and has also learnt sound and music production.’

Heather Mae Jones’  first release on Smoky Carrot records is produced by David LaChance.

Follow Heather on Twitter at @Hjonesx

Insect Ball/Midway City cover image

Happy Holidays! Xxx

This attractively designed and produced 110-page book (which reminded me very much of the US-based Semiotexte publications) has been compiled, written and edited by Serge and Laura and is the first book on their Hotpencil Press imprint and costs £12.99.

The book covers various aspects of the experiences of 12 trans men across south-east Asia, the UK and France who contributed their stories firstly to the (Trans) Mangina Monologues, and which now appear in There Is No Word For It. The book is comprised of 12 chapters – with titles ranging from “Childhood and family”, “Transitioning bodies”, “From low to gung-ho”, “Male privilege”, “Medical settings” and “Sex (part one)”.

There Is No Word For It is simple and spare in its content and presentation (and all the better for it). It is a sensitive, honest, non-sensational,  provocative and fascinating account of an experience which, if discussed at all, is usually in a prurient, sometimes trivialised, lurid manner. It’s also funny and pretty damn sexy too.
This autumn, I talked to Serge and Laura about the (Trans) Mangina Monologues and There Is No Word For It.

FS: Where did you both meet?

The cover of There Is No Word For It

SN: Probably through First Out coffee shop which was like LGBT finishing school. Everyone’s  worked there, from Graham Norton to      Amy Lamé. I worked there 19-20 years ago.

LB: I was doing stuff for the Transfabulous festival  [of which Serge is a co-founder] wasn’t I? We just started hanging out and I remember we were in your flat and you said that you had this idea to do the Trans (Mangina) Monologues, a version of the Vagina Monologues with a cast of trans guys.  I just looked it you said that’s a fantastic brilliant idea. This was properly four years ago.

SN: We would be in the middle of the Transfabulous festival

FS: What’s the Transfabulous festival?

SN: The Transfabulous Arts Festival ran from 2005 until 2008 with three international festivals of International transgender artists and artists of interest to transgender people. We did three summers at Oxford House in Bethnal Green. It was a full packed-out festival programme that was completely sold-out. It was always a summer weekend with performance nights, spoken word workshops. Laura and re-met there and Laura came and did stuff there. So by the 2008 Festival, we had had the idea for the monologues. We started to test and collect stories. We had talking booths in the gallery at Oxford House to see if people would to see if people would like the idea and share stuff with us that easily. We tested it there, and then after the festival ended, we knew we’d got something and we could really go and advertise for trans-masculine people to come to us.

I think if you didn’t know about the Transfabulous effect, not only was it an arts experience,but  over those years, it also broke down a lot of barriers. So that lots of people could work together and attend work together. So in terms of trans women and trans men, partners, friends, gender-queers, queer people, butch dykes, it could be possible that we were all there together. And that also quite a few love affairs started at those festivals as well.  And things have shifted a lot in terms of how people understand each other, dare to approach each other. so that’s also part of what happened because of Transfabulous.

LB: Yes, you created a dynamic space   – quite an unusual space as well – all encompassing as well.

FS: (To LB) You’re a performer. Is that your background?

LB: Yes I went to drama school then I left and worked with lots of writers in theatre companies. Then I formed my own theatre company.


FS: What did your theatre company specialise in?

LB: I did some performance art events and the last big thing I did was when I got some money from the London Arts Board (as it was at the time). I did a production for the Battersea Arts venue in a site specific venue, a disused dance hall in Clapham Junction. I curated the show and wrote it. This was the last big thing I did. And post then I started to get commissions from Radio 4 and from other theatre companies to write for them. The writing took off and the performing dropped away.

FS: So you were writing plays?

LB: Yes, writing plays more – more traditional work. Then I went to University of East Anglia where I did a MA and PhD and turned to prose. And this project is kind of a mix of the two. It started off as a theatre show with a script and the publication felt more of a prose piece that exists within its own right. I had my own company for a while.

FS: What was that called?

LB: Art Throb, then I changed it to Girlboy. I started to work with Michael Atavar on some projects together and we affiliated ourselves. After this, the writing took off and I started to be commissioned. I wasn’t performing so much but then through Transfabulous I started to do a little more live art and the tiny bit more writing and performing. Then Serge approached me to do this and it just built.

FS: (To SN) Do you have a performance background?

SN: I did two Gay Shames at Duckie.  I’ve also done things with Transfabulous – things to do with trans  masculine visibility. So Jason and I did the F-to-M Full Monty – which almost caused a riot. It brought the house down. This took place at the Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green Road. Somehow, the council got wind of it and some inspectors came down and said we couldn’t strip. If we didn’t do it however, it would have brought the house down. So we just had to do it – quickly – and it was absolutely riotous, with screaming like Beatlemania. It was done very much like the Full Monty with hardhats, so you weren’t really exposing yourself. We also went on to do the Puppetry of the Phalloplasty which was about going to the Charing Cross gender clinic and all the hurdles you have to jump over. And it was about all these horrible psychiatrists who are power mad that you have to see. So we did these two pieces which were humorous but were working with stuff that everyone really wanted to see. And in the Puppetry of the Phalloplasty, we had a puppet cock that actually shot milk – it was gross.

Serge Nicholson (left) and Laura Bridgeman (right) at the launch for There Is No Word For It

FS: So you started with the talking booth at Oxford House and you saw that people were open and they wanted to talk.

SN: Only within the safety of Transfabulous – where we really took over the whole venue. There was also that sense of integrity behind what I was setting out to do. I was known as someone doing transgender activism through the arts. So I already had the trust of people. We couldn’t have just set it up in an ordinary arts space. Oxford House was now our home and people knew us. It was the right kind of safe playspace for people to come and speak to us. We were us just testing out the idea for the future and it worked.

FS: When was that?

SN: In the 2008 arts festival weekend.

FS: And the actual (Trans) Mangina Monologues were performed in 2009? So you got 12 people together who wanted to collaborate with you?

SN: Yes.

FS: So did people write down their stories or did you interview them?

LB: No, a few people wrote stuff. When contributors were based quite far away, we asked them to write down material. Serge and I went out individually and talked to people, gathering hours and hours of transcription. At the beginning, we didn’t lead or guide it, we just let people speak as we weren’t sure of the shape of the show – whether we were going to cut the monologues up. However, as we went on, it seemed as there were areas where people’s journeys cross-referenced. Then we started to cut our material into the sections. By the time we were taking the latter transcripts, with the last few contributors, we decided which sections worked. We were able to guide it a bit more.

FS: I think the book is great because there’s all these different aspects, different angles and different elements that I would never have thought of. It’s very beautifully and sensitively done – good-humoured and very intuitive. It’s entertaining. There are many insights, into a subject that usually sensationalised – if it’s ever dealt with at all.

SN: I think the humour is part of a survival armour. It is essential really to not get defeated.

FS: And the book does contain the best riposte ever. One of the contributors describes how to deal with any insults one may encounter with, “You’ve really got to work harder on your chat up lines”. You said in the book that you had evolved three general headings.

LB:  We wrote down lots of stuff we had sheets of wallpaper.

SN:  With all of our scrawls all over it.

LB:  If you go through the material looking at childhood and family, and what the contributors’ backgrounds were like, it seemed to be that people didn’t feel like they belonged, as other kids did at school, or in the family environment, and during the teenage years where your sexual preferences might have developed. And then the material moved on to sexuality and re-addressing sexuality; and then the journey might be about gender. It seems to be the beginnings of people’s backgrounds were obviously very different, and, then, what was interesting for us was people’s transitions and dealings with the medical services. In this respect, the experience of people living abroad was very different to people living in the UK. It seemed to us that we should include those stories in. We had one contributor who was based in Europe during transition and another one who was in Australia. So it was actually compare and contrast.

SN: What we were looking for also was a certain British voice – whether the contributors were living here, and had been here for some time, or they were living in other countries. We were looking for UK backgrounds rather than US ones. I think that worked very well so even though Americans might have some difficulty with some of the slang and the jokes and the language.

Serge Nicholson. Photograph byJamie Mcleod

FS: But you have a handy glossary at the back of the book.

SN: But in terms of the humour.

FS: The British sense of humour?

SN: We also wanted to cover people from quite a few different regions of Britain and then, to protect their anonymity, we switched things around a bit so that no one is going to stand out.

LB: We said to the guys from the beginning that, ultimately, you have the last call on what we will put in the script, and also publish. However, in the editing process, obviously things change – you may say things in the moment that you might not remember saying. So we always asked the contributors to approve the text before it went to the final draft. We took the transcripts and then we started to write them up and we weren’t sure initially how that was going to go.  I did try with, the early passages to make them more poetical but it didn’t seem to work. So what I do now, which seems to be a stronger thing, or a more authentic thing, to try to get down word for word. We tried to keep very close to each person’s speaking voice.

FS: I really like this style. I think it’s really beautifully written.

LB: It’s quite conversational I think.

FS: I think there’s something very beautifully understated and poetic about it. I like its subtle little jokes

LB: We tried to keep that lightness of touch. Serge and I felt that would work well and not sort of over-egg the pudding. In the live piece, we had a lot of material and people felt we went at a cracking speed. However, some people wanted a little time to just sit with it and reabsorb it. Certainly, with a publication you can go back and revisit a story, or just take time with it let it filter down. I think the material from the performance lent itself quite naturally to publication.

FS: Were the performers some of the people who told you their stories?

LB: We can’t say that.

FS: But there are more people telling you their stories in the book than you had performers on the stage.


SN: Yes, in the same way what we found when you did perform a piece, people thought it was your story. Wherever you go, you have to bear this in mind.

Laura Bridgeman signing copies of There Is No Word For It at the launch

FS: Were the performers trained actors?

LB: No. What Serge and I decided to do was to actually keep it within the community, although some of the guys had had stage experience.

SN: Or the Transfabulous experience as well.

LB:  But not everyone, and that’s why when we approached the director Lois Weaver who I thought would be a good person as she has worked with people who are not trained actors. I knew that she would just make everyone feel comfortable, confident and that worked well.

SN: Oh yes. It was a hugely empoweringly thing to be involved in it and also for the audience. They would never necessarily have seen five trans masculine people on stage together ever before.

LB: That’s true. We were worried. We debated it. I always said to Serge that I wanted to make the work, or the publication, or the experience, as inclusive as possible. So that is part of the reason we put the glossary in the book. We didn’t want to preach to the converted – nor want to alienate people. In fact, a heterosexual friend of mine came along who doesn’t really know much about this experience, and she said something quite poignant, “I am sitting here and gender affects you whether you are trans or not, gender affects you on a daily basis. I’m listening to these stories and it is involving and it is engaging for that reason”.We wanted that people could bring relatives along who don’t know much about the trans experience, but be able to get something from it.

SN: And that the friends and lovers are also part of the transition process and they will be audience members and so the work resonates.

LB: It’s like hidden histories.

SN: It was harder than we thought.

FS: That’s my next question. Is it easy or difficult to put on a show like this?

SN: It’s hard to get around the British reserve when you’re talking about sex. That was harder then we thought.

FS: What for the writers or the performers?


SN: No, the contributors. There were some people that were very much ease with it. But it was hard. I also think that is part of Britishness too.

LB:  Essentially, if you offer up a story,  it’s your story. So we never asked contributors to say something they didn’t feel comfortable with. But, by the end, we were saying we would welcome hearing about your sex life. But it was up to the person to draw their own line about what they felt comfortable. But actually looking back over the transcripts, Serge and I definitely saw a correlation with the guys that weren’t transitioning in the UK, and the guys that weren’t British, were open and more comfortable. I don’t know if was a coincidence – but they were more at ease. And what was different and  interesting were that some guys were in the existing relationships before transition and guys that had started different relationships post-transition – all those sort of things that were quite fascinating for us as well.

FS: Was it hard to put the actual performance on or was the money easy to raise?


LB:  We got some money from the Arts Council  just prior to the cuts. But at one point because we couldn’t match-fund it in the way we anticipated, which was a conditions of the grant, as it was conditional. We didn’t get the funding that we thought we would. However, eventually we managed to put a package to them which they accepted. That was very tough. We had to have some stiff phone conversations with the Arts Council.

SN: We did feel as well that we were misunderstood.

Serge Nicholson. Photograph by Jamie Mcleod.

FS: In what way?

SN: Don’t know that they didn’t see …

LB: The relevance of it …

SN: They wanted something fluffy lesbian and gay loveliness. But anyway we won.

LB: And when we went to sell tickets for the performances at Queen Mary, University of London and the Soho Theatre, they had sold out. I have never worked on anything like that. So, actually, there is a massive audience and appetite for the work. And the book launch was the same again.

FS: There were a lot of people there.

LB: The time is now. Doing this work, I totally underestimated that appetite and I think Lois did as well.

SN: If only we had the book then …
LB: That’s true.

FS: So how many performances did you do? 


LB: We did the two in London [mentioned above]. But on the back of the book, we are setting up more. Serge and I always had this idea that we would go around the country and collect new stories all the time and invite guys from those regions to join us on stage, if they wanted to contribute. This was more or less Eve Ensler’s idea with the Vagina Monologues which is always mutating and changing. We had the idea to do a sort of roadshow.

FS: Is there anything comparable with the (Trans) Mangina Monologues anywhere else in the world?


LB: We know it’s the largest piece of trans theatre work going on in Europe.

SN: I don’t think there’s anything else that can compare to this in terms of current voices and that is also something people could pick up and perform themselves. So I would really like to see someone take it and put it on. But in terms of just pieces that just stand up in their own right, and at readings, I think to do this in other countries or places, like San Francisco and New York, will be powerful. I don’t think there’s anything like it. Also as a collection it covers a really wide scope. We costed it.

LB: But it’s hard financially. So you have to go back to the Arts Council again. We went back to the drawing board. We realised that once you’ve got a product (ie a book) in your hand, you can get readings and shows booked off the back of that.

FS: You realised that a book was the next step?

LB: We priced it up we went to the Arts Council and tried to get money to publish the book.

FS: Did you get some lottery money?


LB: We got that originally for the show but nothing for the book in the end. And so we just thought we are going to  do it anyway.

SN: We didn’t want it to disappear.

LB: Exactly. A few people who contacted us online to give us their story. One guy didn’t show up and another was going to do a telephone thing but they didn’t happen. So maybe they thought it’s not there anymore We did the two shows and now there is physically a product. This is in existence.

FS: What are your next plans?

LB: We we are trying to set ups some UK dates, potentially for Brighton Festival next year. And we’re doing an event with the Arnofini Gallery in Bristol. We are keen to take it to the US. We’ve had some interest from New York, where Lois is based, also San Francisco – potentially for Pride next year. But again we need to think about the costing and pricings.

SN: If we do develop this further, or we go onto the companion book of the lovers of  trans masculine people, there has already been a shift in time and language. The glossary at the end of the book is out of date already. There will have been rapid  changes.

LB: Very early on Serge said to me he was keen to get in the lovers’ voices. I said at the time that it’s properly going to be too big, I’d rather  concentrate on the guys’ stories and just get those really solid and firm. And once we had that I do think there is a place for the lovers and partners and to get their stories told . We actually did some writing workshops up at the Central School of Speech and Drama with Jay Stewart’s company, Gender Intelligence  and we worked with some of the trans youth group and other members of the public who wanted to come in.

FS: So are you pleased and satisfied with the results of the project?

LB: Yes.

FS: What have the responses been like? Are they all positive?

LB: Yes. And we would love to do more. Obviously, we have got people supporting us. Anyone who has read the publication has said it is fantastic or that they love a particular story. It just seems to be hitting a nerve. We are really happy. If we had more time or more money, we would do this full time. What Serge and I find hard about doing projects that are self-governed is that all your time and energy is taken up. You are doing everything. Of course you are doing all the artistic work. Serge was in the piece so he was on stage as well. And he was dealing with the technical side too. And it got to the point where we were actually selling the tickets too. And buying the beer for the party afterwards – we were doing everything. I really believe in the work and the project too. I think it is really needed. Theatre is sometimes accused of being elitist and not for the people. And I think this project counters all those accusations.

SN: Because there would be nothing for me or other guys to go and see like this. Or there would be nothing about sex. There was also a need that I could see. I feel that I wanted to read something like this.

LB: I suppose that in a way the book and the performance is quite political because it’s from the personal.  I think we were only worried about changing the order [of the texts] when we did the stage show. Lois was quite keen to put the section on male privilege first. And we did do that although I said to Serge that I thought it was a mistake because then it looks like a series of statements – a bit soapboxy and heavy. In fact our idea was always to introduce people or have inclusivity. So actually when we went back to doing the book, I said I know childhood and family needs to go first because people step into the world as a child and everyone has a childhood.

SN: When trans people face psychiatric assessment, it always goes back to the family make-up and childhood. And in most films, or documentaries, there’s always that and it always goes into medical settings and surgery. We were  trying to move on from that. But on the other hand, when it came to the book and accessibility, we fell back into that [pattern] as well.

LB: And I wondered about the logic of the order of the texts. And for me, it felt like having a timeline seemed the natural thing to do even though Serge’s point is right. It means that you can start with childhood and then you can go to things like male privilege, you’ve taken people, guided them into it. And when the show started with considering male privilege, I always felt that it began with something with something heavy and it’s best to start with something lighter.

FS: I think it’s very brave of you to address the issue of male privilege.

LB: Yes, and it’s quite easy to think it puts you on the back foot a bit.

FS: As what a trans person has to go through is so heavy anyway. It quite a brave thing to discuss.

LB: I think that it is sometimes thrown onto the trans male experience. There is an assumption that you’re going to be earning double, or your salary is going to increase, and all these things are going to fall into place because you’re no longer female. Actually all the stories were in counterpoint to that. I think that is an assumption that your life is going to get easier because you are presenting as male.

FS: One thing I liked in the book was  how the trans men said they were happier because they’d lived  both women’s and men’s lives and they weren’t frightened of getting old. I thought that was quite interesting – how the trans person experiences life from such different angles and points of view.

SN: The whole point of putting on the show was that the technicians and everyone involved was trans masculine, either in the show or the volunteers working with us. There was quite a large group of us and when we would go after rehearsals for a drink, Lois was surrounded by this adoring group of men, so she loved it. We love Lois. Lois loved us. It was a phenomenal experience. I also think now that it’s a different time and that there is now more people examining either that they feel gender queer or gender fluid. There’s more range of people forming their identities or fluid identities. Things have changed from maybe the old days of  lesbians and dykes and trans not mixing together. I think times have just so changed and people can grow into themselves rather than being held back by community.

Which way up? The controversial image used for the postcards for the (Trans) Mangina Monologues (designed by Simon Croft)

LB: For us, the move from a theatre experience to a book encountering all those decisions you have to make when producing a publication. We had collaborated with the visual artist Simon Croft on the performances. It was also the first time he had ever worked on a book cover. We went so far ahead with ideas that they were too complex and had to come back. So it was very laborious but we still like its pleasing simple appearance. The title and credit font on the front cover is actually paper cuts.

And the postcard was an image that he made for us to promote the show. It was actually really controversial. So it’s only now that it is produced for the book with no type on the front cover of it. When it was first made the image was in a vertical position because of the position of the text and people would recoil – we had complaints. It’s a really powerful image and we just countered any complaints with the answer it’s just two moustachioed lips. It’s tongue in cheek and it’s really  clever. Maybe too clever for some people.

Or this way? Tongue in cheek?

I’m so used to reading theatre texts and and plays. For me just the words on a page are what are important.  I thought photographs would potentially weaken the book because sometimes when you’re offered the image, it takes away from the imagination. So I kind of felt we weren’t serving any purpose (in having images in the book). I said to Serge that we are so close to the material that we forget how strong the stories are. They are kind of like bombs going off your head and your hand. Actually I thought we would do a disservice to the work and the words. It would take away the power of the words.


FS: So was it a lot of work to edit all your material?

LB: It was just the thing of going over all the material. We added a more few stories too. We were paranoid that there might be a spelling mistake. At the end of the day, we couldn’t even look at it when it came out. We had reached that point. There were a lot of decisions to make. But I still believe in the power of the voices. And Serge is right – opinion, attitudes and experiences are changing the whole time.

SN: Nowadays, there are so many online groups about where you can share experiences. So times have really changed in terms of how you access information. On the other hand, I was thinking that the language has changed so rapidly that female-to-male and male-to-female are no longer going to be used, as some young people (and we learn a lot from them) say, “That’s not us. We were never female so we don’t want to be called one to the other”. Or in terms of using the phrase “trans masculine” this could be something used now but it could change again.

LB: Yes, that’s interesting and obviously the landscape is entirely changing with younger people growing up and, as you say, they have access to services that people of different generations just wouldn’t have had. However, again, I guess we are referring to people who are living in the metropolises in the West. I am still interested in flushing out the stories of people who are living in communities that more isolated. But we will see we are certainly up for still moving it on and doing other editions and seeing where it goes.

There is No Word for It is available at  Gays the Word bookshop or via the Hotpencil press website http://www.hotpencilpress.com/

If you want to contact Serge and Laura, email them at: manginamonologues@live.com or, info@hotpencilpress.com

Hot Pencil Press also has a blog: http://pressthepencil.blogspot.com/

Many thanks to Laura and Serge for allowing me to interview them.

Credit: The phrase Genderful was coined by the wonderful Little Annie Bandez

They will be supported by musician, composer, nightclub host, actor, curator and adventurer and Cabaret Futura impresario – are there no end to his talents? – Richard Strange.

Doors open at 7.30. £5.

The Ginger Light!

The Ginger Light perform at the Poetry Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist

My good friend, the author Stephen Thompson invited me to accompany him to the launch party of the book, Londoners, by fellow writer Craig Taylor which was held at the Canal Museum, in the back streets of the now newly smartened up Kings Cross. Published this week by Granta, Londoners is Craig’s attempt to “assemble an oral history of London, a panoramic portrait of the city and as much about Londoners as about London itself”.

To this ambitious end, which took him five years (and I, for one, do not relish the sheer amount of grinding transcription this entailed), he interviewed 300  Londoners across everyone of its boroughs  and “gathered almost a million words of conversation” of the city’s glorious cacophony and already the book is receiving some fantastic coverage (and see my earlier post below) in the press.

A large number of the Londoners Craig interviewed were present at the Canal Museum event and Stephen and I fell into conversation with the garrulous cab-driver from Essex, and his wife, who contributed to the book. As Craig said in the short speech he gave, look around and talk to someone you don’t know.

Copies of Londoners stacked up for sale at the launch

Two authors – Stephen Thompson (left) and Craig Taylor (right)

The launch at the Canal Museum begins to fill up

Thanks for the invite, Stephen! It was a fantastic night.

Growing up in the UK in 70s was quite a different experience to doing so now. Most families weren’t, how can I put it, child-centred. It was more like children should be seen and not heard, at least that’s how I remember things. But I was just another tortured teen, I suppose.

Let me know what you think and I’ll post some more.

Robert – a short story page 1

Robert – a short story page 2