Bookpacking’s Blog

One thing was very clear tonight: Winston Churchill drank an inordinate amount of  booze. Whisky in the morning, champagne in the afternoon and evening, and a little brandy to top it off. Carrying on the best traditions of the eccentric upper classes, he is supposed to have supped his way through 42,000 bottles of champers. Never in the field of human boozing had so much been drunk by so few.

At Notting Hill pub The Churchill Arms they were celebrating the big man’s birthday, complete with wartime uniforms and memorabilia. An impersonator with an uncanny resemblance gave one of the speeches that Churchill delivered so effectively. The right man at the time for the job of leading Britain against the Nazis, he was actually loathed in some parts of the UK.

Bookpacking mentioned his name to an elderly relative who remembered the Depression and the General Strike of 1926. She remembered her husband walking for an hour in the dark to get to a job he hated – crawling underground in precarious 18-inch high tunnels, with the constant threat of accident or explosion.

And when Churchill ordered the troops in, to deal with Welsh miners in 1926, she remembered his instructions to send “the rats back down their holes”. He also advocated the use of poison gas against Kurds and other troublesome ‘colonials’ around 1917. So while Bookpacking enjoyed the bonhomie tonight, we were understandably reluctant to carried away toasting the man himself, rather than his (WW2) achievements.

What really stuck in our mind tonight was a minor detail: a song playing in the background. A song ignored in the hubbub of beer-fuelled banter, as khaki-clad barmen with Sam Browne belts squeezed through the throng collecting glasses; young lads who’d have been called up in 1940. A song that – despite its cheery tone – was laden with pathos. A song that might be the last one you ever heard: “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye…not a tear but a cheer…goodbye everybody, I’ll do my best for ye.”

Bookpacking was bereft when we finally reached the last word on the last page of The Time Traveller’s Wife. Outside, our new playmates toasted marshmallows on a Yosemite campfire, but we felt we’d just lost a couple of old friends; a good book conjures up characters and images on the internal screen that are more real than anything in a cinema. Similarly, music can go beyond creating moods and endlessly redevelop the mental landscape in our own interior boom-towns.

Whenever Bookpacking listens to Ladytron we are immediately transported to a non-specific European city with a Berlin-like feel. It is an icy winter’s day, in a wide open space. We are dressed all in black; for a rendezvous with a partner who is stunning but in a low-key minimalist-chic fashion. We have both travelled from our respective capitals to this historically isolated meeting point of ideologies. An angular black haircut complements the smooth lines of their equally dark outfit. Think meaningful looks, impassioned but clipped speech; think French 60s cinema. There is not a single yellow Lidl carrier bag in sight in this all-but-monochrome movie. Bookpacking has not left their shoelaces undone and does not clown around, making stupid jokes and losing our Oyster card.

Sometimes it’s better to ring-fence those fantasies and leave ‘em be. There’s no holographic half-life, if anything they get stronger. And the real world’s banalities are kept at bay. Possibly it was the ennui of endless touring, or possibly the studied cool of Ladytron doesn’t translate to the live arena; but there was something missing tonight, and bad sound didn’t help either.

Aloof; unattainable; impossibly cool: these are the words that spring to Bookpacking’s mind when we think of the characters in our Ladytron movie. But when you pays your gig money, it’s to be moved, or to just plain get your rocks off. No satisfaction.

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Bookpacking had such a good time in Peckham on Tuesday that we headed back there the next night. Red wine and readings with the lovely ladies at Head Space 157 were followed by tea, music and poetry at Persepolis. Sadly we missed the charismatic Bernadette Cremin, but we did see Jazzman John riffing his West Coast beat-style prosody - accompanied by some highly-accomplished Iranian musicians on drums and guitar. All that was missing was Kerouac in the corner shouting “Go! Go! Go! Go!”

The evening was defiantly non-elitist, as you might expect in Peckham. But Bookpacking’s companion was straying into new territory, and was worried about ’saying the wrong thing’ or appearing ignorant. This frustrates Bookpacking no end. The notion that the art of words, music or images - or even ideas themselves - should be reserved for certain sections of society is some kind of sick feudal joke. A Phd is not a prerequisite to recognise repetition, an MA is not a ‘must’ to acknowledge alliteration. Bookpacking is a strong believer in art as a force for good. The wider the net is spread, the better.

This is why Bookpacking likes Beuys, and is dismayed when some gatekeeping hacks - seeking to ringfence their cultural capital (see Bourdieu) and preserve their monopoly - decry the spread of “citizen journalism”. Joan Byrne and Anne-Marie Glasheen at 157 had both self-published, and the results were small things of beauty.

Better out than in. Wir sind die Revolution.

(FYI Bookpacking subscribes fully to neither a red nor blue hue of political paradigm. It’s a post-postmodern world we’re all living in now baby)

You could be forgiven for not immediately thinking of Peckham as the most obvious venue for a literary festival. And as Bookpacking walked through the chip papers and past the metal shutters outside Peckham Rye, it didn’t look too promising.

But a quick pint of Star in under-the-arches Bar Story and we were ready to hit the cultural front line on Bellenden Road. It’s quite an achievement for a small (but beautiful) bookshop to have a published poet on the staff - but two? Review bookshop hosted readings from staffers Retta Bowen and Evie Wyld.

Retta mused on broken love affairs while Evie made a stand for prose with an excerpt from her forthcoming novel After the Fire, a Still Small Voice. The Q&A led to some interesting questions about using material sourced from close to home.

Artists have traditionally put themselves ‘out there’ to push boundaries, allow the rest of us to live vicariously, and ask the questions we dare not to. But they also have to live among their friends and families, so there’s a balance. Both writers had experience of either toning down their writing, changing names, or using composite characters. So before you embark on that Philip Larkin-style polemic, think about the fallout.

Alison Goldfrapp has got duality down. Her voice soaring over the Brixton Academy, the sublime sound of Utopia lifted us into the ether; the poet in all of us recognising a semi-operatic appeal to our finer sensibilities. As they dipped into the more recent Seventh Tree, it was the sound of a band finding themselves. In Bookpacking’s humble estimation it’s a masterpiece, and the strings and harps did it full justice tonight. Two stunning dancers in pure white threw flowers into the crowd in a psychedelic-solstice celebration.

But no-one can be all good, all the time. Dressed in glam-clown black, Alison slipped back over the wrong side of the tracks for a little electro naughtiness. The vamp was back as their trademark dirty synth turned the heat up. Like a platonic pub meeting with an ex, it had only been a matter of time - and a few drinks - before you just couldn’t help yourself. “Ooh La La” pounded its way through any inhibitions and a static crowd finally cut loose.

The curvaceous dancers had abandoned their white dresses; now it was the sinister sexiness of bikinis with wolves’ heads masks. As the relentless riff of Train whipped the audience steadily into a frenzy, it was only ever going to end one way. Inexorably, we worked our way up to an intense Strict Machine climax: a shower of ticker tape raining down on a writhing front row.

Goldfrapp may have turned over a new leaf, but when it gets late, this leopard can’t hide its spots.

Ever looked at those people strolling about nonchalantly during the daytime and wondered what they get up to? Well today Bookpacking followed a few of them to the most excellent Housmans bookshop in Kings Cross.

Owned since 1959 by Peace News, the shop’s amiable manager Malcolm had organised for host MC5 legend John Sinclair to come in and plug the new book he edited, Headpress 28. If you’re a youngster like (ahem) Bookpacking, your only direct knowledge of MC5 might be the sample on the KLF’s What Time is Love: “…Right now it’s time to bring on the dance ‘Mofos’”. (For anyone not hip to the street, daddy-o, that’s a bad word and not an 18-30 holiday island). The audience was the usual mix: poets like Niall Ferguson (Rimbaud-rhapsodiser extraordinaire), aging radicals and confirmed hippies.

Rocking up proper rock ‘n’ roll late, in a quiet gravelly voice John read from the book. Some Kerouac, a polemic on the radical ethnic restructuring of New Orleans (never let a free-marketeer anywhere a blank canvas, seemed to be the message) and a poem.

As he stopped to chew the Kings Cross rain-sodden fat, the few that had real jobs – albeit with elasticated lunch breaks – went back to work, formulating as they jogged through the puddles. “A dog stole my sandwich? No, er, I had to help an old lady who was mugged? There was a bomb alert at Greggs? Nah. Aw to hell with it. I’ve just been to see a rock and roll star, Boss!”

Forerunner of modern electronica he may be, but the easiest of listens he is not. Bookpacking is just back from a performance of Kurzwell (shortwave) at the South Bank. A collection of musos – including students from Leicester’s De Montefort University – manipulated a wide variety of analogue and digital devices to produce a bizarre mishmash of (seemingly, but obviously not) random sounds.

It’s all about the textures and the tones. We compare it to going up close to a painting and examining the brushstrokes and paint. And there’s a joy in that, for sure – the pleasure f a colour or a sound just for the hell of it. But when you’re used to melody, it’s a demanding exercise, especially when it’s early evening and your blood sugar’s low.

And now for curry and beer. Because Friday night is curry night when the social eddy doesn’t beckon (’whirl’ would be an exaggeration). The random synthesis of sounds is all well and good, but everyone needs a few firmly fixed points of reference to hold on to in uncertain times. And this is Bookpacking’s.

It was party time last night for London Democrats at a packed-out Texas Embassy Cantina. Guests included Democrats Abroad activists and organisers, jubilant expats, curious Brits, and the odd MP. You’re going to be hearing more about the organisation that went into such a mass mobilisation of new and expat voters; political parties around the world will be looking at the Democrats’ model to see what they can learn. Expect a personal email from David Cameron soon.

The odd note of caution was sounded, with one experienced political animal telling Bookpacking that his Republican friends wanted Obama to win - so that at the next election they could blame the downturn and the war on him. “I know how Republicans think,” he said. “I used to be one!”

“This time must be different…” (Barak Obama)

Ironically, on the day the UK celebrates an attempt to blow up Parliament with firework displays and bonfires across the country, we watch the US elect its first black president. Truly, a red hot slice of history – with a side order of “change” to come.

Giving his reaction, Dr Robert Franklin of Morehouse College in Atlanta talked of an end to the politics of militarism and division. While Europe is certainly ready for a change in the US – particularly in its foreign and environmental policies – and there’s a mood of optimism abroad, it’s tempered by a realisation that things aren’t going to change too much. As one American told Bookpacking on the QT, “Congress makes the laws, the President only enforces them”.

But when a Republic blogger said that her bulletin board was talking of a “dark day” for the US, it kinda made Bookpacking wonder where that person has been for the last few years. And then it hit home that really, anything has to be better than what’s gone before. The US has less than 5% of the world’s population, but when they sneeze, the rest of the globe is covered in snot.

Expectation weighs heavy on the new man’s shoulders. Last week in London, Bookpacking spoke to a lifelong Labour activist who said she now loathed Tony Blair even more than right wing British icon Margaret Thatcher. In 1997 Blair’s victory song – and Bookpacking was there, blagging our way into the press enclosure – was “Things Can Only Get Better”. How much better things can get, in a country with as much potential as the US, remains to be seen.

Bookpacking is finally taking its first tentative steps into cyberspace. Our mission is to blindly go where a few people have already been before - but maybe doing it in a slightly different style and offering a few lit-linked tidbits of travel info.

Bookpacking is about arriving in an interesting city, hitting the bookshops, bars and cafes and finding yourself having a great time only hours later. It’s about finding an old copy of a 20th century classic for a couple of Euros; stumbling into a 50s-jazz concert in the backstreets of Paris; finding yourself in a poetry reading in a DDR-era Berlin bar; or watching a prosody-led improvised jam in north London.

It’s about joining the dots between all these places and feeling the pull of that river of creativity that connects the Paris of the 20s with the Barcelona of the 90s, or the Edinburgh of the 1700s with the San Francisco of the 60s. But most of all, it’s about now. Because now is the time. Now is always the time.

So come on in, the water’s lovely!