April, 2004

Easter has come and gone, so it must be time for another missive. This isn't right. Time never used to go this fast. Someone is up to something, mark my words.

Over the course of the London Book Fair I was delighted to meet my Russian publishers from Azbooka in St Petersburg. What I particularly like about Russian people is what majestic toasters they are. They clearly regard taking a drink as a barbaric or at least uncultured act unless it has been preceded by a toast, however incidental, commonplace, tangential, long or short. It's a good habit. It punctuates rounds of drinking, cements friendships and operates as a kind of benchmark testing of the declining faculties over the course of an evening. Plus while in a restaurant we were all in such high spirits that I was shown, thanks to my editor Alexander's patient translations of his colleagues narrative, the secrets of pre-glasnost space technology. This was demonstrated in sensational form by the spectacular, slow ascent of a flaming tea bag that almost singed the eyebrows of our astonished waiter. My new Russian friends tipped heavily, and we left quickly, still celebrating a successful rendezvous in the space that is London.

Meanwhile Faber in the UK have commissioned me to write a Young Adult novel, and in it I'm trying to undescribe the world so that anyone who hits the age of fourteen and stops reading might rediscover the habit. That would be a good project: to write a book so that it would be >uncool< not to have read it. I wonder if that's possible. I'm probably going to fry a few Mums and Dads and Teaching Boards along the way. But I can at least claim I know the audience: I spent eight years in Youth Work, single-doggedly preventing the nation's youth from going to hell in a hand-cart before I gave it up for a writing career. One thing is certain: writing for fourteen year olds with no mention of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll is like opening an alcohol-free bar for Russian sailors on shore-leave.

Joe rushed up to me recently. 'Dad, I know what sunbathing is. It's nothing. You just lie down.' Heck, I wish I could defamiliarise the world like a five-year-old. Writers are always trying to defamiliarise the world, trying to undescribe it. In a perfectly described world we're at the mercy of the phrasemakers and the ad-men and people with evil hidden agendas. We all know what Weapons of Mass Destruction are, now that it has been undescribed, whereas I wasn't entirely clear before. Like "collateral damage" is nothing: it's just dead civilians.

I must wish happy birthday to TTA magazine. The Third Alternative continues to be a beautifully produced publication containing high-q fiction and non-fiction and has just reached its tenth year. The latest episode contains a very smart interview of the inspirational Ursula Le Guin by Andrew Hedgecock. Chris Fowler's Film column is always stimulating and the fiction is some of the very best interstitial work around. I don't usually shill for stuff in this column but more people ought to know about TTA. You can subscribe at http://www.ttapress.com/

Finally some good news to report regarding The Tooth Fairy film Project. The option with Radar Films has now officially expired. This means that Radar will not be pressing ahead with the project. As you know this is a matter of relief to me because the direction in which a producer there wanted to take it was not cognate with my own ideas. Cognate, that's a good one. You hear that one Joe? Anyway, I've ranted on this subject before in these columns, time to move on. So I've had meetings and discussions with Nick Brandt, the spectacularly talented director of several pop videos, including several of Michael Jackson's, Badly Drawn Boy, Moby and others. Nick is hugely enthusiastic about the idea of taking on TTF and would prefer to set it back in England. I was bowled over by his knowledge of the book. So far we're just talking, but everything is in >reset< mode.

While in Norfolk over Easter we took a boat trip to see a seal colony. The savages were ecstatic at the sight of the huge basking and cavorting colony at Blakeney Point. But as co-incidence would have it, on the very same day the newspapers were full of pictures of the bloody Canadian seal cull. I don't protect the savages from the news and I always try to explain it and give it a context. But Joe was distraught and Ella was so appalled she was moved to tears. So I've tried to convert some of that emotion to action. We're writing to the Canadian embassy and other venues. But Ella demanded that I bring the issue on my webpage, which she seems to think is read by The Whole World. I tried to break it gently that my readership for these pages is slightly more modest than that, but here I am, under clear instruction, to request that >you too< tell the Canadian government what you think of them. I should also add that Ella is pretty angry with the type of women who might wear seal-cub fur. She's taken to scanning the streets, looking for them.

With the seal issue enough to contend with we also visited, while on holiday in Norfolk, a mocked up Iceni village. Ella has been "doing" the Romans at school and Boudicca of course, not the type of female to drape herself in seal-cub fur, features large in the story. Anyway, as I was explaining some of this (what a pompous ol' windbag of a Dad, eh?) it did occur that the Roman invasion of ancient Britain has many parallels with the Coalition forces action in Iraq. Not that I told Ella any of this: she having enough to think about with seal carcasses, never mind human ones. Anyway, ancient Roman manuscripts cite the civilising advantages of Roman Law; we of course offer Democracy. We justify the operation by pointing out that Saddam Hussein kills his own people; the Romans cite the barbaric practice of human sacrifice by the Ancient Britains (not that they ever found any evidence of that). The Romans skilfully exploited tribal division; we arm the Kurds and liberate the Shia Muslims from Sunni hegemony. The Romans are brutal; we exact "collateral damage" on civilians. Boudicca somehow united the feuding tribes; Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has somehow united the Sunni and the Shiites against the coalition. Gosh the Americans even have an eagle, and (gulp!) the Romans marched under one, too. Real reason now: oil investment. Real reason then: tin. Oh, and here's the real kicker: George Bush is an anagram of Bugger Shoe.

Back to work young Graham. You've had too much sun in that there Norfolk.

Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net