festive

 

 "OK, that's, like, a bit weird," said Katie. Richard was describing our Moggy and its habit of bimbling around Bristol; and that is precisely what it was doing at that very moment, bouncing us over Cotham Brow, down to Whiteladies Road and the studio where Richard was being interviewed live on BBC Bristol. He was up in town for the Bristol Festival of Literature, and we got a passing mention as Richard talked about those of his books with a local flavour to them...

Minutes later he was on board and we were heading home. 

"You gave good radio," I said.

"She was a good presenter," he said. "The taxi from the station got me there with two minutes to spare. You have to go through this huge news room full of people, then she's in a tiny little room at the other end..."

We had an early dinner. Oven chips, Pukka pies and mushy peas. Just the thing to keep you going through a busy evening. Twenty minutes later we were on the bus down to Broadmead, industriously folding up leaflets for the National Academy of Writing, hot off the printer, ready for the reading. Richard showed me how to do it, and I did it a different way because I thought my way was better. All that time making origami frogs in maths lessons at school wasn't wasted, let me tell you.  We were a bit cramped, though. "These seats are bloody small," I observed. I've not been on a bus for years. Maybe buses are now being designed with an eye to the future, when everyone is going to be a midget.

 At Foyle's, Richard talked about Lazarus Is Dead with Jari Moate. Then we dashed across town to Easton, where Richard and Pete Salmon held a NAW masterclass.

...and then it was time to go to the Apple, a cider pub that is also a boat. James Russell was already installed on a bench, having been at Stanfords Bookshop earlier, doing an event for his Naked Guide to Cider.

A late night, then.

non-standard narratives

this is what a transsexual* looks like

I found a folder of photos from the Welsh walk, the other day, that I thought I'd accidentally deleted. It was nice to find them again.
Coincidentally, that very same walk across Wales, that forms the framework for Becoming Drusilla, got criticised recently in the first unfavourable review that the book's so far received (on Amazon, anyway).

'Just give me the facts', 'get on with it' were what I was thinking more and more as I read on. Finally I gave up. The camping interludes killed it for me. Camping doesn't interest me, the trans-gender story did. Ultimately the latter is bogged down by the former and I didn't make it even halfway....

...said Zeddy12.

It got me thinking. A big part of why we did the book was to break away from the notion that the'transgender story' is something pink and fluffy, or possibly angst-ridden, and involving femininity coaching and trips to shopping malls and nightclubs. Camp, as it were, doesn't interest me... The Standard Tranny Narrative. You know. The same sort of reason I started this blog in the first place; to provide me with my own voice, and to talk about stuff that I do and that interests me. And if I am indeed transsexual, or transgender, then my drawing, cycling, cooking, parenting, poetrying, fixing the car or whatever, even the occasional forays into trans activism, generally living, are all part of my own particular 'transgender story'.

I invited Zeddy to write more, about what he had hoped for or expected from the book. It would, I thought, be a potentially interesting dialogue. After all, if someone doesn't like the book to the point that they don't even finish it, then the book has failed, in that instance at least. And it is a book with a message. Which didn't get across.

Oh well. Can't win 'em all.


Now then. Richard will be in Bristol tomorrow, Thursday 20th October, for a couple of events under the aegis of 'Unputdownable', the new Bristol Festival of Literature. You will find him at Foyles, talking about Lazarus Is Dead, and later at St Mark's Easton, discussing and critiquing.





*yes, transsexual is an adjective. I was being ironic. Ironic? Yes, I think that's the word.

Bringing Things To Life

And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?

Oh post-Anglican muddling, somewhere between the unpleasantly excessive certitudes of the God-botherers and the atheists. We have our quietly spiritual moments, and model them in the trappings and half-remembered rituals of the faith we were raised in; one populated by a blond, bearded Jesus and assortment of goodies and baddies, dresssed as for the Nativity play. And somewhere in the background, an urbane God, moving in a mysterious way, but almost certainly On Our Side. Even though we ruefully acknowledge, in quiet moments, that we have left undone that which we ought to have done, and done those things which we ought not to have done. Oh yes.

Reading Richard Beard's Lazarus Is Dead was like returning to the village I was brought up in, but now being included in the grown-up conversations, and finding that there was much more going on than I'd previously noticed. Lazarus and Jesus are childhood friends; the core narrative of the book describes the last year of Jesus' life, and the last year of Lazarus' first life, as it were. It examines the difficulties you face when your best friend turns out to be the son of God, and therefore either less or more than human; and how disruptive it can be to your life when you're just trying to get on with things and suddenly find yourself part of a divine plan. If that is what it is.

There are layers and layers going on here; the story is true to the biblical narrative, as far as that goes and as far as that is consistent; beyond that, there are historical records, and artistic and literary interpretations of a story that we thought we knew but (in my case at least) turn out not to know that well. And, of course, Richard's own telling of the story. Romans and Sanhedrin work hard at realpolitik to shape events in a manner favourably to them. Points are missed. Wrong is got, in a darkly comical way. Lazarus tries to make sense of it all. Does he succeed? Read the book, and maybe you'll find out.

The story is vividly told; the past is brought to life. And there's enough space in this book for any shade of belief or unbelief. I enjoyed it hugely. Go and do likewise.