I don't want to ruin the Dickens biography audiobook but he dies in the end. It took a long time getting there, but his brain finally overheated with ideas halfway through "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" and I was sad to see the old hypocritical, actress shagger go (did he like biscuits too? - I don't think having had sex with an actress on its own would make you a literary/movie writing genius, but maybe the love of biscuits in tandem with that might be the magic combo). My next audio book was "Great Expectations", a book I studied for O level I think, but which I haven't read since, read by Martin Jarvis (who I have to say does a fantastic job with it - must be a hard gig and I wondered how much prep he had done and if he'd marked up challenging passages in his copy of the book and worked out all the voices beforehand, or whether he just winged it) but which had me laughing by the second paragraph, which is utterly brilliant.
Read this -"As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence."
Now that in itself almost makes up for the horrible way he treated his wife and his desire to keep his reputation lily white. How fucking awesome. What larks!
The drive home from Newcastle was long and took up most of my day. I listened to audiobooks and to Jeremy Vine decrying the fact that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is no longer going to be printed as a book. His sole cause for complaint seemed to be that with printed version of encyclopaedias you can look back at old ones and enjoy the way that words have changed their definitions, whilst digital ones are forever updated and correct. Even if that was true it would seem a small price to pay for having the correct information, but I suspect you can still do the same with most on line encyclopaedias as well. Every change is surely stored somewhere and the internet actually allows us to keep endless copies of things and of old books without taking up massive amounts of space. Yes, there's something nice about leafing through a book, but the fact that the world has information (and all literature - I got that Great Expectations quote from the internet for example) at its finger tips is surely a good thing. But the Radio 2 show didn't even give voice to anyone who might want to say that there might be anything good about this change. I guess that's not what the Jeremy Vine show is for.
Most of my day was taken up inside my battered and dirty car. It got cleaned and valeted a few weeks ago when I got it serviced, but it seems pointless taking it through a car wash as within a day of driving on this country's filthy motorways it will look almost the same. Though I really should do something about the prodigious amount of bird shit that has been on the bonnet for over a week. I won't though. It's probably been there long enough now to be permanent and I am just going to pretend its part of the design. Yes, it's an artistic statement and one that can make you blind if you get too close to it. Which again is true art.
Anyway I got home about teatime and celebrated a night off with my fiancee by going out for a curry and a pint and a half of beer. I might not be able to fit into my wedding suit now, but it was worth it. I am liking Harpenden and not missing Shepherd's Bush too much - though curious to see what state the house is in now.
In other news I enjoyed
this article describing me as a fiery redhead. I didn't even know I was a ginge, but if it's in the paper then it must be true. And actually looking at the photo there does seem to be some flame coloured hair in there. Why did no one tell me?
I am not sure I said her first question "So, what's love got to do with it?" was fantastic. I remember thinking at the time that it was an odd thing to say, almost as if she didn't know what the title of the show was or had become confused. But again if the paper says I said that then it must be the case.
