Gwyneth's personal blog

Thursday 21st October, bright sky; chill air. Definitely crispy out in the garden at 7am, which makes this the first frosty morning of the autumn for us, though not for the UK.

Tuesday night, down to the Dukes to see The Social Network, on Gabriel's earnest reccommendation (But Gabriel, surely you must have noticed I'm not interested in Facebook, and not excited about money?. . . Oh, okay, since it's a piece of your world. . .) It was pretty good. We thought Timberlake (Sean Parker) took a very good part, very natural, and the Mark Zuckerburg actor, Jessie Eisenberg, was excellent. I barely got bored at all. In ways, this reminded me of the movie version of UK political sitcom The Thick Of It (In the Loop 2009). The same almost total concentration on the chilling, painful frivolity of young men in positions of status and power: the same young female voice, offering exasperated commentary from a distance: either disgusted -that would be Erica, the girl who resists Mark's resentful advances, played by Rooney Mara-; or pitying (that would be the young lawyer who passes final judgement on the lad, I think played by Rachida Jones).

We live in a young male world, it says here. There is no alternative, this is it. Girls are either rapacious WAGS, disposable groupies, (shedloads of drug-and-alcohol soaked Asiatic cuties!); or they're some kind of alien life form: superior, benign, and helpless.


Dunno if I'm in a position to argue with that view.

But did you ever notice, with all the evolutionary psychology arguments banging on about what women should be like, or should not do (such as science, such as expect promotion at Larry Summers' Harvard) because they are female animals, you rarely hear what evolution says about the young male hordes, being pronounced as social gospel. They're supposed to die, that's what they're supposed to do. Maybe what I liked best about this movie (and cf Fight Club, not surprisingly), is that Zuckerberg, in Fincher's view, is well aware of this. I know I'm supposed to die. It's written all over Jessie Eisenberg's sad little defensive blank of a face.

The illustration? That's North Wind, from At The Back Of The North Wind, George MacDonald. I'm auditioning cover images for the Aqueduct Press ebook edition of the Aleutian Trilogy. She represents worldly misfortune, ruin and grief. Which is I suppose what our young male world quite rightly fears must ensue, from their point of view, if Women's Liberation should ever become a serious force*.

George MacDonald approves of her, actually. What an old misery eh?

Friday 15th October, grey still and cool. Birdsong returning to the garden, as it does at this time of year.

Sunday 10th October, clear blue skies, we take the 79 bus up to Ditchling Beacon. Wildlife spotting at the bus-stop (I'm easily bored), I started counting ladybirds on a garden wall. Ladybird larvae too, creeping around in curious numbers.

Peter: Are those the bad guys?

Gwyneth: I don't think we're doing that anymore, they're just immigrants now. (These East Asian ladybirds, where are they flocking from?) They've moved in, fait accompli.

Yes, indeed, they are harlequins. About this time of year they are looking for somewhere to hide, just like the natives: a bark crevice, a hole in a concrete plinth, to doze away the winter. What are the larvae looking for? I suspect they're about to pupate, how interesting, on a plastered concrete wall?; but here's the bus.

This is kind of a utility walk, for a day when we haven't the time to get further away from town. On the new turned earth, ready for winter wheat, Herring gulls are following the plough, doing like gulls are supposed to do in the Ladybird "What To Look For In Autumn": urban scavengers looking rather amazed at themselves

Hey, just look at us. How positively bucolic!
Still, it's nice to get out.

Walking from Ditchling Beacon, down to the village of Ditchling, a kestrel hanging below us, poised in the air; out the other side & across the downs to the Clayton Windmills, back to the Beacon by Steadman Common. Some of the time on the South Downs Way itself, always on well-trodden tracks, this is a part of the downs that has lost some detail, become coarsened by use rather than by agribusiness, on its way to getting the feeling of a municipal park, but even so, under these wide blue skies, a fresh breeze chasing around us, Sussex is still so beautiful. Ropes of translucent bryony berries, hawthorns thick with matt ruby haws, wild roses covered in flask-shaped carnelian hips, but no fungi, because no undisturbed pasture; no foraging except for some kindling.

I've had a nudge from the Sussex Wildlife Trust, must fill in the DEFRA questionnaire at surveymonkey. How do you feel you benefit from the natural environment?

What am I supposed to say to that. I don't care if I benefit or not. I want this beauty to exist for its own reasons, I owe the Downs, they don't owe me a thing.

Ich bin ein piece of the natural environment. I don't have a separate existence.

Which parts of the natural environment matter most to you?

Maybe I'll put TREES, lay off my trees you pedants, which is somewhat a dig at the Wildlife Trust itself, currently gripped by a passion for reverting to the ice age vegetation of this area.

No, I won't.

Thursday 7th October. Yesterday, just at sunset, a huge weather front crossed our sky in a sweep of marvellous colour. Was that the rain saying, so long for now? This morning, crisp and fair.

Hey, a letter from Speranza. What can it be? A response to an Amnesty International Action? I don't think Strasbourg was on any of my recent recipient-lists. No, it's an invitation to write for an anthology, something sf or fantasy, for young people. (For free, I hasten to add, it's a proper project, no snouts in the trough here). Has to be somehow related to one of the Human Rights Convention articles relating to children; the anthology being published under the umbrella of a programme titled, with my favourite Futuristic Utopian Megastate's usual elegant concision "Building A Europe For And With Children".

Anyway, it sounds okay to me and I've signed up. If I write a story that gets accepted, I'll let you know.

I have just spent about half an hour patiently trying to post a comment on the Aqueduct Press blog. Anyone with any sense would have thought, a glitch: quit and started again later, but I'm used to attempting these trials about a zillion times before I succeed so I kept on and on, ghryleebs, mmmgsheba, cantelsin. . .

Wrong every time. I am hopeless. Sumbitted it to the human moderator instead.

Tuesday 5th October, grey skies, mild, a fine drizzle. Looks like bountiful autumn has been and gone, for now. I actively like walking over the downs in wet wild October weather, but looking out of this window at the draggled colourless garden, I can only long for spring.

30th September, up to Blackheath Halls for a reprise that might well become an institution, the second Trinity Contemporary Music Ensemble Concert. Our principal motivation of course the pianists, Gabriel Jones and Lydia Aoki, but the music grows on you. Met Gabriel at the station and took him for a quick Italian at Zero Degrees, (it's on the Greenwich Meridian see, comes highly reccommended). See your child, feed your child, even if your child is forty seven and a High Court Judge, it's a law of nature. G jnr's sober dandy ensemble (Gabriel with cufflinks!) somewhat marred by a seen better days black woolly jumper with raggedy cuffs: it's a trick of the trade, saves the sides of the hands from getting bruised purple when piano abuse is called for; he proudly showed us the blackened and bloody cuticles caused by violent glissando work. What did I like? (what do i remember?). I liked husk, paul newland, with the countdown screens and all the spaces inbetween (and a slight technical hitch I'm afraid I took for part of the score, until the pianist got restive). The Hammerhawk stephen montague, that's the violent one, Blond Afrodite. . . Gregory Rose, and The Dream Cat, Deirdre Gribbin, the deceptively conventional chamber piece. The student pieces just went by too fast, but I remember Double Rainbow, because of the daft youtube video association, and Anthropogenic was clever, it's carbon emissions, see, the gases translated into chords, Contemporary Music is full of puns.

And then, the next night, a biography of Vaughan Williams turned up on the telly. What a shifty great amorous old hearth rug, what a giant human badger he was. . .and in the middle of it suddenly found myself listening to the roots of what I'd heard at Blackheath Halls in a piece of music I've known all my life, and never thought remotely weird or "challenging", how could I? It was a favourite with my parents. But it is.

I think they really know where they're coming from, those Trinity Contemporary Music people.

And then, the night after that, it was an Eighties reunion, in the upper room at what used to be The Richmond, down in Brighton by the sea, & Dinah & I were dancing, the sole representatives of the old front row, to The Jungle and This Colour. It never rains but it pours.

Wednesday September 29th, damp morning, a mild interval in a chilly start to the autumn, grey skies, spider webs.

Grey skies, revision work, conversations with Gabriel, failure to find the Brown Card Folder, left by the grand piano, it should be obvious, no it isn't! Actually, it isn't anywhere, and I'm, far too vulnerable to these excuses to leave my desk. What is the man from the bank of England really saying to "savers"? He's saying, mate, you can save up for your funeral expenses if you like, but possibly you have not noticed, you are poor. Only rich people are supposed to be able to live on the income from accumulated capital. The poor are many, the rich are few, that's the arrangement, always has been: this is not a moral issue. There was a bit of a glitch for a few decades, normal services have been resumed. Get used to it.

Definitely a science fiction issue. Possibility of a Movement! But a U-turn will first be necessary.

I like the french word for it, decroissance. Sounds like a real word, unlike that "degrowth". But of course it's a promise of hurt; and hurt for the poor, first and worst, same as most kinds of trouble. Ideally, decroissance doesn't mean no public health, no sewage treatment, no road repairs, no education except for the elite. What it has to mean, no matter how fair the distribution of wealth, is putting the brakes on the global culture of stuff-accumulation, and that's obviously the most painful idea in the world, to the devotees, both the ignorant many and the greedy few. No more the everlasting new phone, new car, new washing machine.

What on earth's Stephen Fry going to do? (that's the "lets go and visit all the lovely animals on the brink of extinction" presenter, who confessed he can't possibly resist yet another latest new phone) Or any other gadget-greedy soi-disant liberal?

See how that term "ideally", meaning, "if things go well", immediately made you think "this isn't going to happen"?

Ah, well. Yesterday Peter saw a kingfisher, flash of blue on the stream that runs through the old railway land by his college. That's good luck. Also, I saw a frog in the soi-disant wildlife pool:that's minor good luck too, at this time of year. Something good will happen.

Follow this link for bar-to-bar's treatment of Gwyneth Jones. Perhaps the White Queen would have preferred a meeting of equals in a cosy alcohol den, but as I feared, it was not to be. In virtuality we meet ourselves as others see us: it can be terrifying.

None of the effects you are about to experience are faked. Tibor Moricz is an inteviewer like no other, and a very brave man!

Friday 24th September, luminous cloud burning off. So far, it's going to be another day of autumn sunshine, no sign of the high winds.

Haha! I've finally found a practical use for those Twitter and Facebook accounts. I can pester people! When NGOs hopefully ask me if they can contact all the people in my email address book, to spread the word on Drop The Debt and the like, I always turn the idea down. It's intrusive, it's chugging, and it would only look like spam. But Facebook and Twitter, that's different.

Last Saturday, harvest foraging from Robertsbridge to Bodiam, retracing a springtime walk we made when David & Ruth &co were staying just over the border, but this time driving to Robertsbridge as the Kent trains are being routed via Hayward's Heath at weekends, and that's a Ryanjourney. Why do the papers and the BBC always say there's "a bumper crop" of nuts and berries? It'd be a strange September if the hedges weren't full of sloes (we picked our share) and blackberries, hips and haws and crab-apples. Actually, this year the apples have been disappointing so far; sharp and late. An old pasture thick with dark green fairy rings delayed us, plentiful supplies of field mushrooms. I hoped for boletus, "edible and delicious" in the heathy woodland, but found only interesting non-edible species. On the way back, despite the helpful due west sunset arrangement of the equinox, and a high-sailing three-quarter moon, we got a little lost. The bowl on the right holds specimens of a beautiful Amanita, called The Blusher (not eaten) picked in Wennow Wood in deep twiglight. The other handsome devil, probably an Agaricus, I couldn't positively identify, except it wasn't as I'd hoped a Parasol variant, so we didn't eat that one either. I'm not careless with my fungi (famous last words).

What luxury to be lost in a wood on the Kent Sussex border in deep twilight. To find your way out to a lane, and walk down the hill to the river in the moonlight, pale strawbales in the glittering shorn fields; to the convivial lights of a roadside village pub, and pass like ghosts. . .

Animal Alterity I have to take issue with Sherryl Vint over the Eqba's righteous cleansing operation on planet Earth. Far as I can tell, if you invent imaginary aliens who are going to hygenically dispose of 6billion surplus humans for you at a stroke, that is a sentimental solution. How about if you imagine the Extreme Greens as people like us, taking the job on? Six billion corpses, mm. That's quite a stink.

On the other hand, I have never read anything by Karen Traviss. She fit the old !SFnal Tomboy! profile so exactly, I thought I already knew her work well. . . I should give her a try, but clearly you don't start with Judge.

And last night (finally getting there) we watched the Tigers In Bhutan show. How lovely it was, and how thrilling. All those different big cats! And the pika, and the dried medicinal caterpillar with fungus growing out of its head. But I was afraid. Don't tell! I kept thinking. Don't tell! I just hope none of those dxxxxd Traditional Medicine tycoons were paying too much attention.

Tuesday September 14th, cool morning, herring gulls crying, grey skies thick with rain.

I used to think the Studio Ghibli movies were stateless, set in some Cloud Cuckoo land, a Japanese cartoon version of the Fairytale Mediaeval Europe invented by Disney. Then I saw Tokyo Story, a grim and rather repellent Great Movie by Kurosawa, and there was Miyasaki's lost country, right there: the crooked roofs, the jumbled little streets, the causewayed paths between the rice paddies, a homely countryside close by the tumbling haphazard low-rise warren of the industrial city. (reminding me very much of the outskirts of Manchester, when I was a child myself).

I used to think Zelda and Final Fantasy were Stateless fantasies, the seemingly bizarre and arbitrary cod-mediaeval features the product of random, deracinated game-developers' imaginations. Now I know different, and I've just been reminded how far from rootless they are, these landscapes, these eternal pilgrimages from shrine to shrine (or dungeon!); these treasures that we must obtain, at lengthy cost. I'm reading The Confessions of Lady Nijo, an old paperback I picked up on the South Bank bookstalls, on my birthday trip to London, in February. I have a small collection of Heian ladies' writing, but though this one was new to me, I didn't rate it at first glance, just bought it on reflex: it was a late work, two hundred years after Genji, and written (it says here) with the explicit purpose of restoring the lady's family fortunes. Derivative, I thought. Bound to be dilute, formulaic and feeble. I was completely wrong. It's true, Genji keeps coming up in the first three books. Parties are staged to recreate episodes in the incomparable (fictional!) Genji's court life. Courtiers, and court ladies like Nijo, imitate the poems, the actions, the emotions of Murasaki Shikibu's characters. Of course I don't know how much of this is part of Nijo's cunning plan to ride on the classic writer's trailing sleeves, and how much Genjification really happened. It's weirdly modern, though. Then comes the best bit. "Nijo", concubine from childhood to one retired emperor (the indulgent GoFukakusa, who has never really objected to the girl having private lovers on the side), is in a dire predicament over Gofukakusa's conviction that she's having a clandestine affair with another retired emperor, Gofukakusa's brother-enemy. She's lost her protector, and the knives are out at court. You know what, she decides. I'm sick of it all anyway: and sets out one morning, dressed as a Buddhist nun, on a life of pilgrimage. Here's the passage, that prompted this post.

"A sacred mirror made by a god to reflect the image of the sun goddess was enshrined at Koasakuma. It is said that it was once stolen and dropped into deep water. When it was revovered and presented at the shrine, the goddess spoke through an oracle: "I have vowed to save all living things, even the fishes in the boundless sea". Then, by its own power, the mirror vanished from the shrine and reappeared on the top of a rock, beside which grew a lone cherry tree. At high tide the mirror lodged in the top of the tree; at low tide it remained on the rock. . . " Confessions of Lady Nijo, tr Karen Brazell

Nah, it's probably impossible to convey the little thrill of pleasure those words, connecting me to the greater half of Zelda's cultural sources, give me. Never mind

Now I want to see Top Girls, the Caryl Churchill play in which Nijo is a character. Except I think she's a fount of mature wisdom in the play, whereas I just met an engagingly fallible human being.

Speaking of mature wisdom, here's the latest from bar to bar, featuring that grand old man of hellish anarchy and angelic mayhem, Hal Duncan


*Ouch. I just imagined a Lady Nijo tv series, probably hosted by Julia Bradbury, a poetic walking tour (with sea voyages) around Japan. Awful thought!

Oh well, what do I know. Maybe that literary pilgrimage has been big in Japan for decades. The Lady Nijo Trail.

Thursday 9th September, damp garden, cool air, warm sunlight, blue sky and luminous cloud.

Reviewing the galleys for a story collection that spans thirty years is a salutory task.

It's nom de guerre, not nomme de guerre. I wonder how long that howler's been lying there, unquestioned by several copy-editors and proof-readers including me. Since the story first appeared in Interzone, I bet.

Colloidal cracking. Weirdly okay as an expression, but definitely a mistake. The well-known symptom of dry-rot infestation in an awful old wreck of a house is cuboidal cracking. I ought to know. I'm currently a reluctant expert on dry rot, again.

The pathological reluctance of Gwyneth Ann Jones to make up different names for her fictional characters. I can remember that Gwyneth Ann Jones character stating trenchantly on a convention panel platform that her characters didn't mean a thing to her. They weren't people they were labels, and she was too well aware that every "character" is really just a part the writer is playing. Didn't go down well. Did I know I was doing it? Ann, Anna? Of course I did. Francis, Frances, Francois? I think that one just sneaked in and established itself. On the other hand, the writers Francois Villon, Francois Voltaire and Francois Rene De Chateaubriand have meant something to me for a very long time; my father was deeply francophile, which had a big effect on me, I'm very fond of animals, and the other derivation of the name is supposed to be "free-man".

Guessing at near-future terms. The great William Gibson said, science fiction is not predictive, it's about the present (paraphrase). I totally agree, but in staging these dramas about our age's science/technology in collision with human society, we all make judgement calls on the sets, the decor, the language, etiquette, costumes of the future. I clearly thought I was onto something with "virtuality" (like, a reality, see, but virtual. . .) but nope, virtual world swept the board. I really was onto something with subscriber soap. The idea is, instead of watching highly trained celebrities wash their dirty underwear in public on so-called Reality TV, subscribers get their houses wired up for interactive surveillance, and anybody on the network can watch anybody else's little adventures, upsets and dramas of daily life. No holds barred exposure is hardcore, but "everybody" loves this game, and "everybody" starts acting as if they're in a soap opera the whole time (or in the Big Brother House). . . Spot the difference. I never was a docile consumer.

Merle is the French word for the black European thrush, the bird we call a blackbird in English, it makes a pretty name for a woman. Thrush, of course, is the name of the yeast infection. The pun's convoluted, but I'll let it stand.

What's left? A couple of stories deliberately suppressed, a couple of orphans (eg North Light) that simply never got chosen for reprinting. I hope I don't get pathologically convinced I have to make up another collection's worth before I die. Madness.

Friday 3rd September, clear blue skies, brisk autumnal temperature.

A curious variant form of the Online Interview landed on my desk a couple of months ago, courtesy of Kim Newman. It's a kind of prose-poem, in which the interviewer encounters the interviewed in a virtual version of the artist's (actually, both participants are artists) fictional world; not the world of a specific novel or story, but the ambience. I don't know, maybe "frombartobar" invokes not only the chance, somewhat altered-state encounter in half-light but the vital, elusive and universal ambience of a material alcohol den, the pan-cultural location so dear to many of our hearts,

Anyway, here Tibor Moricz interviews Kim Newman

Here, Jean Claude Dunyach

Here, Libby Ginway and here the artist's recent review of his experiences

I've been interviewed. I don't know if "I" so to speak, will make it to the gallery. Gwyneth Jones World may be a degree of separation too far.

Tuesday 31st July, clear and bright, pure blue skies.
Here's a thought. If 17, 18, 19, millions of lives have been utterly disrupted (various estimates), and the people of the UK (at least) have been scraping out their pockets, for the sake of the Holy Month or the teachings of the prophet Jesu, or whatever inspires us Infidels to compassion, isn't it ludicrous that Pakistan, as well as struggling under the burden of climate-change related civil unrest, and decades of political corruption, has to suffer this huge ecomomic catastrophe while still servicing the old monster post-colonial debt? If you think this is nuts, then let somebody know. Here's the link: http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/?lid=6381&bid=16

Here's another thought, somewhat more frivolous. The Cheltenham Literature Festival has an exciting Science Fiction strand this year, curated by China Mieville, including a history of genre event in the Inkpot Tent on Sunday afternoon. Of course if you are in the region you want to come along, and I hope you can make it. Full details and a preview/review can be found here at Torque Control.

Thursday 26th August, cool air, rain clearing.

Sadly the photo isn't mine, it was taken by Bill of the Birds, but it's quite like the moon as I saw it rising over Racehill on Tuesday night. So now the year has turned and I'm back at my desk, though not fully back at work until after the fourth, as my schedule is too broken up.

Have paid ritual visits to the Interzone hangouts in Tanger, have played in the Atlantic waves, have endured a horrible train ride from Fess to Tanger (why can't we take the nice bus, says I? No, no, says Peter. See here where it says, trains are efficient, air-conditioned and comfortable. Pah. Rough on tourists, if you ask me. And might have been a reliable Guide if they'd troubled to do a proper update in the last decade). Have tramped for hours around the Prado, have walked in the hot night and found a real Eygptian temple in the Park of the West, shimmering above its reflection in dark water. Madrid is the city of dogs, Tanger is the city of Alpine swifts, Meknes is the city of storks. Worst bit, when we found that they've moved the shiny new ferry port half way to Algeria, so not only do we get the Airport Experience we were trying so hard to avoid (though thankfully without any evil War on Terrorism stuff), but they made it a Ryanairport. Best bit, and worth the price of admission, the Cedar forest of the Middle Atlas, a wonder of the world. And fantastic hailstorms. (is this normal? we asked the hotel manager. No! he said. Nature has been very strange this year).

The pools are brimming, the little frogs (such as have survived a summer with the cat population) are hopping, my little shorn meadow is a carpet of slugs and the plums are past praying for. We came back to sad news for this small part of the world: new outbreak of Dutch Elm Disease. It sounds as if it's really bad in the Friston Forest. Brighton and Hove City Council insist that within Our City quarantine is still being maintained, but we don't believe them. We can see the losses, another of the giants by the Pavilion gone, another of the survivors around the Level. And that's only in the most public places. There's a man in Essex says he's found and is propagating a resistant strain, and I'll try to believe that. But I think they'll all go. All our elms. There's no funding left you see. No money for proper removal of affected trees, no money for constant vigilance.

If the devastating floods in Pakistan have the same root cause as our cold winter (blocked jet stream weather systems, low solar activity, it says here) does that mean there were devastating monsoon floods in our seventeenth century little Ice Age? I suppose there must be records.

News of coming events to follow. Now back to family business admin, and preparing White Queen. The Aqueduct Press are going to bring out the Aleutian Trilogy as e-books, and I'm very pleased about that. I wanted to put the books out there again, but I wasn't totally happy about offering them for free on my website. Adult material, you know.

Monday 12th July. Cloud and sun, cool but very humid.

Breathless weather. Last week our weather was almost Aegean, cloudless sky, warm sun, cool constant northerly breeze. Now we're sitting under a blanket of moist air, that thickens and curdles into a mat of grey and dissipates for a while into swirls of white on blue, but the breeze is from the south and somehow doesn't stir the breathless closeness. Just glad I'm not in London. At least it rained this morning.

What shall we do with the old sofa? It is ancient and made of rattan, and used to live in the basement swathed in shabby generations of wraps, rugs, the faux fur blanket known as The Wolf, until I had a suburban moment and insisted on buying a proper sofa bed with a proper folding out mattress from the Futon company. Then it was moved upstairs to Peter's room, where it has stayed, looking all bohemian and welcoming and concealing the 1901 aspirational gentility of his fireplace, with the inlaid panels of different coloured marble that are really transfers. . . But Peter already has to share his study with a grand piano (I'd have taken the piano, of course, except that sadly my own room is up two more flights of stairs and much smaller) & he is feeling cramped. It is too old and battered, and if it ever had a fire regs label it lost that long ago, so we can't give it to the YMCA. Shall we haul it up to Sheepcote, perhaps on rollers, and dump it? Shall we leave it out on the pavement, with the traditional notice "PLEASE TAKE", so that the Roundhill corner boys can use it as their outdoor HQ, West Baltimore style?

I'm afraid we may fall back on chopping it up for firewood, poor old sofa.

But not now, because now we're going away.

It's been a hectic week, what with my brother's birthday, the Sci-fi event at Manchester Oxfam Emporium (which worked extremely well, and I met such nice people, including hosts Emma and presenter Florence, and the other writers, Paul Magrs, Steve Lyons and Tom Fletcher); Gabriel's phonecalls from Switzerland, daunted at first by the magnitude of being piano soloist in front of a whole orchestra, and then triumphant and delighted with the whole experience; the final concert with the BYO at Hove town hall on Friday, which ended in a stage invasion by the livelier parts of the audience(encouraged by the conductor) and impromptu Celtic stepdance, and then there was the HGWells society, a beautiful long trainride to Canterbury for me and an intriguing walk from the station, following the footsteps of Ariel Manto (I then proceeded to ask everyone I met who worked or looked as if they worked at Kent to convey my appreciation of The End Of Mr Y to their colleague Scarlett Thomas) Anyway, thanks for inviting me, Andy, and dear H.G people, thank you for being so tolerant, friendly and informative. I could and should have worked out the Zoological Gardens connection for myself, and I think I did know about the gruesome goings on at the butcher's next door when HG was a child. But I'd never heard of the Old Brown Dog

After such a flurry of activity (and I've missed out all the developments in my family's Forever War, which still continues to devour so much of my time), it's strange to be packing, discovering I have no teeshirts fit to be worn, choosing paperbacks, changing euros. But so it is. The Frog Nursery has been disbanded, the last tiny frog set free, along with about 100 well-grown tadpoles from the Plasterers tub. The swifts have swarmed in the warm evening sky for the last time that I'll see them this summer, and the next time I write anything in this secret diary (kept in an unlocked drawer) it'll be Hungry Ghosts, my year will have reached its turning point, and 2010-11 will have begun.

So long.

Saturday 3rd July, warm and clear, tempered by a cool breeze, fair-weather cloud up high.

So, I watched Michael Hastings getting interviewed on Democracy Now, courtesy of Common Dream (who are having a fund-raising drive, by the way) and here's the link: http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/07/01-1

& then I thought I might as well read the whole Runaway General article on Rolling Stone, which I did & I was surprised, though not really, at what a tactful and patriotic piece it was, and how loyal to the approved War on Terror scenario, despite a few reservations of a pragmatic nature. Didn't spot the words Blood for Oil anywhere, not a whisper about mineral wealth, or any other ulterior motive for the growing death toll. Yes, throwing money at a corrupt government, while at the same time sending death squads to roam around racking up extrajudiciary kills of "insurgents" probably isn't the way to win hearts and minds, but all the corrupt officials were Afghanis, after all. Yes, President Obama instantly fell into the pit he'd been determined to avoid, does anybody think he didn't? Yes, the war is unwinnable and yes the President actually said so, practically literally in the same sentence as his promise to send a shedload more troops, but that's undisputed fact too, isn't it? And yes, McChrystal was actively involved in an unwise attempt to hide a celebrity friendly-fire incident; yes, he may have made the mistake of being in the same room while some torture -I'm-sorry-I meant-enhanced interrogation was going on & that was foolish. But again, this is not doing the dirt, the dirt is old dirt. At the worst, Hastings turned back the carpet. On the tv he gave the impression of being uncomfortable at the fate he'd brought down on those good old boys who'd hung out with him and trusted him a little too much. He claimed he'd been amazed that the general actually got fired & maybe that was even true. I don't think he should blame himself too much. Someone's got to take the candy from these ferocious (and vain?) military heroes, at least every now and then.

As we now know, it won't happen again & perhaps this reaction (wow, we better not let our military talk to journalists, we didn't know any of them still had teeth!) is as mistaken as McChrystal's unguarded openness. The USA looks good when it shows it has a free press
(I'm green with envy)


And all this is perfectly normal. All wars are like this. They go on too long, they become unpopular. The Generals hate the politicians, the politicians hate the Generals, the natural born fearless killers (some of them extremely bright and charismatic) just want to get on with their bloody work, in the fond embrace of the natural born fearless killers on the other side. . . (Afghanistan! What a culture! The Perfect Place to hold a Proper war, no wonder it's been so popular!) And most of the soldiers, most of the time, would rather NOT actually murder people but the culture makes it impossible for them to confess this shameful weakness, & so the game goes on. Nobody knows anything, every battleplan goes awry, the local chiefs are never credible partners, tell all that to Napoleon or Wellington, you'd see them shake their heads and grin. (Well, allowing for temperament). Nothing is wrong with the war in Afghanistan, as your average non-essential war it's just about average.

What happened in the USA in the sixties was a bit of an innovation, but that proud and positive refusal to fight a stupid war that was not worth fighting came from a particular historical situation. It couldn't happen again. Nah. Those songs are over.

Happy Independence Day, cousins.

Tuesday 29th June, unexpectedly much cooler, grey skies.

Making heroic efforts to organise myself, remember to charge phone before setting out for the South Bank this afternoon; still working on my H.G Wells talk for "From Kent To Cosmopolis", which has sucked me in, as essays tend to do; thinking about writing, horrified by how little time I've had for the core activity (ie writing fiction) any time in the last 18months. Or more. Failing to work out how to use Facebook for the benefit of the Oxfam event on 8th July. (This is the downside of having as little as possible to do with social networking. I don't mind if I cease to exist in the C21 sense of extended-personhood, but when I need to use the network for a good cause, it'd be an idea if I knew how. . .) And then a phone call from Charlton, Gabriel's, on the point of leaving for an extensive (well, Switzerland and Germany, I think) Brighton Youth Orchestra tour as piano soloist suddenly engulfed in a housing crisis, changing the plans for this evening: oh, and his clothes are all wet, as he left them out to dry last night and it rained, what to do?

Do not stuff them in a bin bag, says I. Drape them around your room.

My copies of The Time Machine and Dhalgren (Gollancz Masterworks) have arrived. The Time Machine's a solid little hardback volume, and the shades of gold livery suits it. Something a bit odd about Dhalgren, all the italics have come up in Bold, it looks stranger because the normal font is quite thin and spidery.

Last night, in the clear twilight about 9.30: swifts swarming up high, must have been fifteen or twenty of them, and later, what an amazing moon rising above Race Hill, just barely past the full, glowing pale apricot, the mares and brightest craters wonderfully clear through binoculars.

Think I'll go and check on Fred, my latest froglet, again. Called Fred because it is so tiny, arms and legs like thread. Timid too, how can I dump it in the big bad pool.

Sussex University Alumni News: someone wants respondents for a psychology survey. "In most ways my life is close to my ideal" Agree strongly. . . Disagree strongly.

My life is bounded by a walnut shell, and I am queen of infinite space. Except that I have bad dreams, and they are really bad.

Deep Horizon,
Blood for Oil in Afghanistan,
Starvation and desperation mounting in the wake of climate change;
already, and we've barely started,
The death of the living world, the casualty list growing longer and more grievous
Fresh Faced Public schoolboys governing to keep The Markets happy. . .
My family's gothic novel; but that's minor except it eats my time.

(just a random sample)

So how should I answer?

Wednesday 23rd June, light breeze, clear and very warm. In the evening, having set aside my various struggles, I sit out on the patio re-reading "Life" so I'll know what I said about the "disappearence of the Y chromosome", should anyone ask me at the Seeing Further Cafe Scientifique next week. Balmy air. Swifts hawking and shrieking in the clear sky, those Nordic tiger moths, who seem to have settled down and colonised the gardens, batting about up in the treetops, a big white three quarter moon on the rise. It's midsummer, soon be July and time to pack up and go away. The squirrels have taken all our strawberries, it's nearly the end of another working year.