I remember coming home from primary school at lunchtime and hearing the news on Radio 4 as my dad made lunch — "Dominy Carrot" (Dominic Harrod) and the World at One. I knew it was important even then, at the age of 7 or 8: my dad would be shaking his head, worried about portents, concerned about developments (oil, the Middle East: plus ça change). This was serious. At school we had to report back, every second day, about "real" news: the other days were about what had happened to us personally (fell over, scraped knee, climbed tree, built a little dam of sticks to block the stream, ate wild garlic on the way to school, got a puncture on the bicycle, climbed on a hay bale). I listened intently to the radio to glean "real" news, but I remember only writing about murders, even then being fascinated by them: the Black Panther, self-titled (oh the hubris) who murdered the heiress Lesley Whittle by hanging her in a bunker after his demands weren't met (what a sad and pathetic and, ultimately, 1970s story that is!); and a bit closer to home, the World's End pub murders (still officially unsolved, but controversially so).
I've been what you could call a "news junkie" ever since — albeit I object to that term, since on the facts, I wouldn't steal from my mother, or inject myself with anthrax in order to get my fix. The Australian press is shockingly poor, partisan without admitting it, partial and lazy; I still read whatever I can get my hands on. I still read The Guardian (the best newspaper in the world - am I wrong?) every day, a habit that's almost lifelong (my brother Robin, when he was 13 and I was 15, brought a copy home and we were all hooked). Even though it sometimes seems absurd and pointless, I check every day to see what's happening in the world and become enraged anew at some injustice.
It's fascinating to look at Max and wonder how he will get his news — if he is even interested in it — and what he will find to sigh over.
Showing posts with label unreliable witness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unreliable witness. Show all posts
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Bark and bite
In all the jobs I've had, I'm sorry (but not that sorry) to say I've never had much time for the marketing department.
Exhibit A, the marketing team for a small Scottish legal publisher who regularly rushed out leaflets without consulting the legal editors, with resultant howlers like "an excellent guide for practicioners" and "a vade mecum for the tyro" (who even knows what that means? They certainly didn't).*
Exhibit B, the same team, when asked to produce a cover for a book on medical negligence. Their suggestion? A picture of a wheelchair.
Exhibit C, the much larger marketing team for a major London-based publisher. Said publisher's offices near Canary Wharf had been blown up by the IRA and all but destroyed. Two people lost their lives. So when, not long after, we published a book on buildings insurance, what did an inspired marketing team come up with as cover art? Why, a photograph of the bombed-out building.
Exhibit D, any marketing person asked to produce promotional materials for the legal services market. The gavel is not in use by judges in any jurisdiction I've ever worked in. In fact, it's not in use anywhere except in some courts in the US. So what always appears on marketing literature in every jurisdiction? It's a gavel!
Exhibit E, the trailer for a US show on FX called Terriers.
What does the name, and the above picture, which was on billboards promoting the show, tell you? It might be about dogfighting. It might be about... dog shows? It's definitely not a comedy drama with noir undertones, about two mismatched, likeable private detectives. Which it, in fact, was. No matter, the show has now been cancelled after its first season because it didn't get the viewing numbers, presumably, and at least in part, because of the terrible marketing campaign.
In any case, the show's theme song, by Robert Duncan, turns out to be much better than the series, which starts well but peters out somewhat, and is certainly no Breaking Bad (if you have never seen the latter, do yourself a favour and find a way to see it). But the marketing department torpedoed any chance of it finding an audience and finding its way, thus proving that my wild prejudices are in some small way justified.
* "An indispensible beginners' guide" would have sufficed.
Exhibit A, the marketing team for a small Scottish legal publisher who regularly rushed out leaflets without consulting the legal editors, with resultant howlers like "an excellent guide for practicioners" and "a vade mecum for the tyro" (who even knows what that means? They certainly didn't).*
Exhibit B, the same team, when asked to produce a cover for a book on medical negligence. Their suggestion? A picture of a wheelchair.
Exhibit C, the much larger marketing team for a major London-based publisher. Said publisher's offices near Canary Wharf had been blown up by the IRA and all but destroyed. Two people lost their lives. So when, not long after, we published a book on buildings insurance, what did an inspired marketing team come up with as cover art? Why, a photograph of the bombed-out building.
Exhibit D, any marketing person asked to produce promotional materials for the legal services market. The gavel is not in use by judges in any jurisdiction I've ever worked in. In fact, it's not in use anywhere except in some courts in the US. So what always appears on marketing literature in every jurisdiction? It's a gavel!
Exhibit E, the trailer for a US show on FX called Terriers.
What does the name, and the above picture, which was on billboards promoting the show, tell you? It might be about dogfighting. It might be about... dog shows? It's definitely not a comedy drama with noir undertones, about two mismatched, likeable private detectives. Which it, in fact, was. No matter, the show has now been cancelled after its first season because it didn't get the viewing numbers, presumably, and at least in part, because of the terrible marketing campaign.
In any case, the show's theme song, by Robert Duncan, turns out to be much better than the series, which starts well but peters out somewhat, and is certainly no Breaking Bad (if you have never seen the latter, do yourself a favour and find a way to see it). But the marketing department torpedoed any chance of it finding an audience and finding its way, thus proving that my wild prejudices are in some small way justified.
* "An indispensible beginners' guide" would have sufficed.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Family fortunes
When I read The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe, I liked the first line so much that I memorised it: “When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent”.
There’s something about the rude vigour of it (and the book that follows) that reminds me of the gypsies who lived behind our house for a few months. We thought of them as gypsies, but called them “The Bussies” (and in my mind, somewhat unfairly, they were connected with a fantasy family that my sister and I used to tell stories about as we lay in bed at night, called “the Slummies”, living in a tenement and roughly based on The Broons); they called themselves “travellers”, and they moved in one day out of the blue, because another neighbour had been keeping an ancient, yellow, single-decker bus (“the Bus”) there with a view to selling it. The travellers wanted to buy it, or so they said, but ended up living there for a while with no money changing hands, with much hand-wringing around the neighbourhood but no one willing to do anything about it.
That site behind our house, next to the woodshed, ironically enough had once housed a real gypsy caravan in the ancient style with awnings and filigree and once-colourful paint; it belonged to another family friend (whose daughter had trapped her arm in one of those old-fashioned electric clothes wringers, a story that both horrified and fascinated me and which affected the way I viewed that caravan: in my mind’s eye there is, illogically, a clothes wringer inside it), and it gradually collapsed in on itself until it had to be towed away to the dump, to be replaced not long afterwards by the Bus.
We were fascinated and frightened by the travellers: there were about eight of them, including children, but their numbers seemed to be very fluid with new people arriving or departing regularly; they were obsessed with Elvis and within hours of arrival had bedecked the Bus with pennants and red and gold banners proclaiming He was King. When I went out the back with the wood basket, to collect wood for the fire, I was a bit scared of what the travellers might do to me. This must have been around 1978, when I was 10. I have the clearest memory of a girl a bit younger than me, with ruddy cheeks and long black hair and a stern expression, who spent her time pushing an equally ruddy-cheeked toddler around in a pushchair. One shameful day I followed them into “the dell”, a scoop in the hillside that the road passed through on its way to the village, with a stream at the bottom and trees all around; in the quiet, with no adults around, I pinched that little toddler’s cheek very hard, to see if he would cry (he didn’t) as the pair of them stared at me fiercely (and with good reason) but without a word being exchanged between us.
The travellers disappeared in the dead of night, after a furious row, and as soon as we were sure they were gone for good the neighbourhood kids swarmed all over the bus to see what they’d left. It was a mess of broken Elvis records, discarded pots and pans, and clothes; they’d broken a window, and the Bus had stopped working so it couldn’t be sold, so it too took its turn to be towed away to the dump.
It seems with hindsight quite a bizarre thing to have happened; but aside from the nasty little cheek-pincher (me) there was a remarkable tolerance (which could, have course, have been engendered by fear, but was more likely just bemusement) of their presence there. We accepted them as they were and everyone got on with it. I don’t even remember wondering where they might have come from or what might have happened to them after they’d gone: they were there, and then they were not, and they didn’t exist outside my solipsistic little world, except that we had some scratched Elvis records and other little souvenirs to remember them by.
There’s something about the rude vigour of it (and the book that follows) that reminds me of the gypsies who lived behind our house for a few months. We thought of them as gypsies, but called them “The Bussies” (and in my mind, somewhat unfairly, they were connected with a fantasy family that my sister and I used to tell stories about as we lay in bed at night, called “the Slummies”, living in a tenement and roughly based on The Broons); they called themselves “travellers”, and they moved in one day out of the blue, because another neighbour had been keeping an ancient, yellow, single-decker bus (“the Bus”) there with a view to selling it. The travellers wanted to buy it, or so they said, but ended up living there for a while with no money changing hands, with much hand-wringing around the neighbourhood but no one willing to do anything about it.
That site behind our house, next to the woodshed, ironically enough had once housed a real gypsy caravan in the ancient style with awnings and filigree and once-colourful paint; it belonged to another family friend (whose daughter had trapped her arm in one of those old-fashioned electric clothes wringers, a story that both horrified and fascinated me and which affected the way I viewed that caravan: in my mind’s eye there is, illogically, a clothes wringer inside it), and it gradually collapsed in on itself until it had to be towed away to the dump, to be replaced not long afterwards by the Bus.
We were fascinated and frightened by the travellers: there were about eight of them, including children, but their numbers seemed to be very fluid with new people arriving or departing regularly; they were obsessed with Elvis and within hours of arrival had bedecked the Bus with pennants and red and gold banners proclaiming He was King. When I went out the back with the wood basket, to collect wood for the fire, I was a bit scared of what the travellers might do to me. This must have been around 1978, when I was 10. I have the clearest memory of a girl a bit younger than me, with ruddy cheeks and long black hair and a stern expression, who spent her time pushing an equally ruddy-cheeked toddler around in a pushchair. One shameful day I followed them into “the dell”, a scoop in the hillside that the road passed through on its way to the village, with a stream at the bottom and trees all around; in the quiet, with no adults around, I pinched that little toddler’s cheek very hard, to see if he would cry (he didn’t) as the pair of them stared at me fiercely (and with good reason) but without a word being exchanged between us.
The travellers disappeared in the dead of night, after a furious row, and as soon as we were sure they were gone for good the neighbourhood kids swarmed all over the bus to see what they’d left. It was a mess of broken Elvis records, discarded pots and pans, and clothes; they’d broken a window, and the Bus had stopped working so it couldn’t be sold, so it too took its turn to be towed away to the dump.
It seems with hindsight quite a bizarre thing to have happened; but aside from the nasty little cheek-pincher (me) there was a remarkable tolerance (which could, have course, have been engendered by fear, but was more likely just bemusement) of their presence there. We accepted them as they were and everyone got on with it. I don’t even remember wondering where they might have come from or what might have happened to them after they’d gone: they were there, and then they were not, and they didn’t exist outside my solipsistic little world, except that we had some scratched Elvis records and other little souvenirs to remember them by.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Aural testimony
When I was 7, in the summer of 1976, I had post-aural lymphadenitis (this is what it said on the plastic tag around my wrist, and I memorised it, much to the annoyance of anyone who subsequently asked me why I'd been in hospital). I remember blinding pain in my ear, which started when we were at the beach, 1976 having been a long hot summer; and I ended up in "the Sick Kids", Edinburgh's children's hospital, crying with pain and fear at being separated from my mum.
Piercing little memories from that time come back to me. I remember them in much the same way as I can recall, as a three year old, not being able to read and looking uncomprehendingly at street signs (much like being in a foreign country). I had a room of my own, and it was the first time I had ever seen, much less eaten, liver, which wobbled alarmingly on the plate and which I comprehensively rejected; a neighbour brought me "Five Children and It" to read - I'm still, even now, unsure what or who "It" was, although I remember he/she/It could grant wishes which somehow had a Monkey's Paw-like tendency to backfire; I watched the diving in the Olympics on a tiny TV perched high in the corner, and really didn't comprehend that it was a sport; I cried hysterically when I was told that I had to stay in hospital for three more days; I fell in love with my nurse and insisted on giving her a mawkish plastic rose when I left, which has forever haunted me since as having been quite possibly nicked from someone's graveside tableau; and being transported, for one horrible night, to the general children's ward and lying awake, terrified, to the sound of others' breathing and moaning.
Afterwards, of course, as a manipulative little sod I turned the experience to my advantage as a badge of courage and source of stories, including an entirely made up tale of a child dying in the bed next to me and being taken away in the night. The thrilling story retold never, for some reason, included a description of a terrified 7 year old crying abjectly at being abandoned.
Piercing little memories from that time come back to me. I remember them in much the same way as I can recall, as a three year old, not being able to read and looking uncomprehendingly at street signs (much like being in a foreign country). I had a room of my own, and it was the first time I had ever seen, much less eaten, liver, which wobbled alarmingly on the plate and which I comprehensively rejected; a neighbour brought me "Five Children and It" to read - I'm still, even now, unsure what or who "It" was, although I remember he/she/It could grant wishes which somehow had a Monkey's Paw-like tendency to backfire; I watched the diving in the Olympics on a tiny TV perched high in the corner, and really didn't comprehend that it was a sport; I cried hysterically when I was told that I had to stay in hospital for three more days; I fell in love with my nurse and insisted on giving her a mawkish plastic rose when I left, which has forever haunted me since as having been quite possibly nicked from someone's graveside tableau; and being transported, for one horrible night, to the general children's ward and lying awake, terrified, to the sound of others' breathing and moaning.
Afterwards, of course, as a manipulative little sod I turned the experience to my advantage as a badge of courage and source of stories, including an entirely made up tale of a child dying in the bed next to me and being taken away in the night. The thrilling story retold never, for some reason, included a description of a terrified 7 year old crying abjectly at being abandoned.
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