Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

1959 Hollywood
'Funnily enough what I remember most about (David) Niven's house in Beverly Hills was the men's changing room. On the men's side he had this see-through mirror. We spent quite a bit of time in there, depending on the female guests of the day of course.

Niven was a great practical joker, and I was quite famous for lighting farts. The preparation is funny on its own. You have to lie on your back with your legs in the air trying to light the thing. This one time at David's when I clicked the lighter I ignited like a Bunsen burner - a foot long and blue. Sensational. Niven laughed so much he had to be taken to hospital.

One time I was stuck at the top of the Jungfrau during Scott and the weather closed in for four days. The boys were getting fed up....and I said, 'Look, I'll do my trick.' It was a bit of luck because I'd had some grapes for lunch and they worked a treat. I did a terrific one and put the whole unit right.'

You're Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!
by Lewis Carroll

After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you've had your mind opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser, you have to ask yourself what's real and what's the picture of illusion. Little is coming to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that it's starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile too much,and just avoid hat shops altogether.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
(Via Poesy galore)

At the library today I had a good natter with my old mates and reserved quite a few books. Robert Nye is a good historical novelist with a penchant for literary figures - "Falstaff" is wonderful; he's a considerable poet too and the warm review in Saturday's Times of a recent collection made me go back a little way and request his 1998 Collected Poems.



Then Larkin's Early Poems and Juvenilia which I await with some trepidation, this being a sample:

After the war
We shan't fight any more
We shall stop making arms
And live on farms

Because when it all ends
We shall be friends
(Erasing from the memory
Cologne, Coventry)

And it will come to pass
There shall be no lower class
We shall do what we like
And no one will strike ...

As Blake Morrison says in his Guardian review, one will feel almost disloyal to the later stuff. Still, this is one writer whom I have learned to love unconditionally, warts and all and I have read most everything else he wrote.

And why do I want The Legend of Spud Murphy, a children's novel by Eoin Colfer, creator of Artemis Fowl?

'Will and Marty are forced to spend six hours a week in the library....there is a scary librarian called Spud Murphy who has a spud gun. She is so strict that when she wants silence she just flashes a card that reads "Ssh".'

Oh yeah! I was always far too lenient with the little beggars; though in the story it turns out that Spud Murphy 'is not what she seems.' Can't wait.

À propos of absolutely nothing literary, that name raises a lousy memory. At a school dance in the sixties I got asked out to the cinema by a sixth-former from the Jesuit college up the road on what was likely my first date. He was a hefty specimen by the name of - Spud Murphy. It was a bit of a coup as he was Head Boy. I was so nervous about my appearance that I shoved two big wodges of cotton wool down my bra to make up for my self-perceived deficiency in that department. Trouble was, he perceived it too quite rapidly on making the inevitable investigation. I hadn't seen it coming. Boy, we were naive back then. I sat red-faced in outraged silence for the rest of the film; he never asked me out again. I expect that nowadays, at fifteen, I'd be experiencing peer pressure to go for silicone.