Feeling thorny?

Digital cameras and cheap air travel have so much to answer for. If you find this photograph amusing you’re probably reading the wrong blog or having an off day. If you don’t find it amusing but would still like to see lots more photographs of people transforming fragments of the world about them into substantially larger penises than the ones they already possess, along with many other wonders, take a look at this site, entitled Photo Clichés. After which you can come back and explain to me why belonging to the second group is somehow wittier and more noble than belonging to the first.

I apologise for the title to this post. Not because it isn’t funny (because, in a way that’s congruous to the general mood of the post, it is), but because I sort of stole it from Photo Clichés. This is what happens when you try to be- or pass for being – original, but don’t quite make it.

March for Equality

If you’re on Facebook and think that equality matters (these categories don’t, alas, always coincide), you might like to take part in the Online March for Equality. All you need to do is go to this site and choose an image to replace your profile picture for the next few days. It’s a simple procedure and you don’t even have to leave your desk, but that doesn’t, I hope, make it entirely useless. Of course, if you’re anywhere near the actual inauguration and can actually march that would be even better.

Isak Dinesen? Yes!

Moira Crone has just reviewed The Scent of Cinnamon at The Short Review, an essential site for anyone who cares about short, or long, fiction. It’s a great review and I’m thrilled, above all because I feel not only that I’ve been read and understood, which is always wonderful, but also, and perhaps more importantly, that I’ve learnt a few new things about what I do and how I do it. You can read it, and be thrilled (though perhaps slightly less than I am), here. 

This is the first time I’ve been compared to Dinesen. I am without words.

Update from the very dark cave

According to a story in today’s Sun, a woman in Britain who’s been told that her unborn child has one body but two heads – an extreme example of conjoined twins -has decided to go ahead with the pregnancy. She’s a ‘staunch’ Catholic, apparently, which gives her the right to do what she wants with her body, while denying it to everyone else. She’s also unmarried, and appears to have no intention of marrying her partner, also Catholic and clearly from somewhere very close to her in the local gene pool, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Why embrace an entire religion when you can cherry-pick? Besides, where’s the money in marriage?

On a slightly lighter note, increasing numbers of god-fearing Christians in Texas are putting the fun back into fundamentalism by attending cowboy churches. Around ten percent of baptisms in the state are now conducted by men in chaps and stetsons. And that’s not all. According to the MSNBC report:

At a recent Sunday morning service at the Cowboy Church of Ellis County, the Rev. Jess McCabe, a visiting pastor, held up different sizes of deer antlers to illustrate his sermon about how people grow as Christians.

“That’s one thing about cowboy church — we all got room to grow,” McCabe told the congregation with a smile.

Well, hi ho, Silver!

Coffee and Cronenberg

Just over six months ago, I wrote a rather snippy post about the way quality newspapers were as entranced by celebrity as their tabloid counterparts. The post was occasioned by a couple of reviews of first novels written by people who, regardless of their own ability, were also extremely well-connected in the literary world, and I was in a huff about how they got all the attention while poor little me other first novelists didn’t. To my surprise, and joy, one of these novelists – Nick Harkaway – got in touch with me that very day to say that he agreed with me. Since then, we’ve been in touch frequently about all sorts of things, we’ve almost shared a spaghetti alla carbonara in Rome, I’ve read and been very impressed by The Gone-Away World (out in paperback on February 5th) and Nick has agreed to interview me on my Something Rich and Strange virtual book tour. You can find the interview here. I have a photograph of Nick holding a copy of The Scent of Cinnamon with a look of disturbingly manic glee on his face – a reaction I hope the book routinely evokes – but I have too much respect for the man, and his reputation, to reproduce it here.

(I’m still waiting to hear from Martin Amis’s wife.)

Tease

I’m looking forward to something occasional tomorrow. (Well, later today.)

Talking Heads: Bringing down the House

A little music to get things up and running again.

Pickles

Not to be outdone when it comes to relevance and quality, Italian state television has its own version of Celebrity Come Dancing. It’s called Ballando con le Stelle (Dancing with the Stars) and it has the same cavalier approach to stardom as CCD does to celebrity. Presumably on the principle that no one with a real reputation to lose would appear on the show (pace John Sergeant), it’s redefined the word star to cover ‘ex-spouse of star’, ‘glamour model’, and so on. This year, though, it’s gone one better (in barrel-scraping terms). It’s invited Emanuele Filiberto Savoia to shake a leg on prime-time telly.

EFS, for those of you who don’t know, is the grandson of the last king of Italy, forced to skedaddle after palling up to Mussolini. His father, Vittorio Emanuele, a slack-faced halfwit with the brains and moral equipment of an amoeba, managed to use his ‘business’ contacts under the last Berlusconi government to have the whole gang re-admitted to the country after decades of gilded exile in Geneva, Paris, Sardinia (yes, Sardinia is in Italy, but money makes borders permeable).

Since their return, Daddy Savoia has been in trouble with the law for various ‘business’ dealings involving gambling, sex slavery and prostitution, and, along with his son and wife, a botoxed biscuit heiress who makes Ivana Trump look classy, has sued the Italian government for moral damages. (More about this here.) EF’s first bid for stardom (in the televisual sense) came when he endorsed a pickle manufacturer. Along with many others, I wrote to the company to suggest that this wasn’t a wise choice and received, within seconds, a long, carefully-worded email in which the pickle makers hedged their bets, defended their decision, apologised, etc. Two days later, the ad disappeared from Italian TV screens and EF’s contract was rescinded.

Since then he’s entered politics, running for a party whose name I forget and registering the polling equivalent of nul points. His political sympathies remain on the market, for anyone who might regard them as a worthwhile investment. He was last in the news just over a year ago when he refused to pay a speeding fine. He refused to pay for two reasons. The first was that he wasn’t driving the car at the time. The second was that the road signs weren’t very clear. This is known in legal circles as the Billy Bunter defence. (As in: I never ate the cake. And, anyway, it was horrible.)

Ballando con le Stelle starts on Saturday. Waltz on, Pickles.

Scones and tales

My seventh visit on the Something Rich and Strange tour and this time I’m in Devon, enjoying a cuppa and a couple of home-made scones with Dovegreyreader as we talk about The Scent of Cinnamon. She asks me some great questions about grief, writing habits and writers I love and I answer with alacrity and a blob of clotted cream on my chin. All is revealed here. There’s also a draw for two free copies of the book, but you’ve already got one, haven’t you? Haven’t you?

All sorts of fun activities

http://www.liveleak.com/e/eb1_1230835836
This is from Liveleak, and was first spotted by Matthew Gallaway’s cousin. My thanks to them both.