Wordless Wednesday #1

Taking inspiration from The Omphaloskepsis blog, here's my first Wordless Wednesday post.

I see Dead People's Stuff

How do you get your thrills on Halloween? We just take a tour of our local ‘antique shop’. Owned by a house clearance company, it's the end of the road for dead people's stuff, and the sight of all those personal things piled-up high - as if a JCB was involved, not a human hand - is more chilling to me than any horror film.

It's a clever trap. A Victorian building offers a respectable face to the high street with an almost tidy and ordered interior, you browse at ease, but once you step through the door at the back - into the much older buildings that lurk behind -  it begins. No wall is straight. No angle is 90 degrees. No floor is level. Under your feet a crazy patchwork of grimy linoleum, mildew carpet and spongy floor boards fractures your sanity, but you barely notice.

I spotted three church organs like this with the
cliché pull-out stops labelled in gothic writing. Unfortunately, not one of them read "bats"

And then there's the stuff. Pictures so crammed in a box so it’s impossible to look at them. Pianos going slowly insane in the dampness. Suitcases piled-up behind a wooden staircase.

This room had many metal hooks embedded in the ceiling.

When you do pull-free of these spaces and head for daylight, you don't find yourself back in the safety of the high street, oh no. You blink a little and realise you've arrived at the centre of the Antique Shop experience, in a courtyard, also crammed with things, things full or rainwater. Surrounding you are more doorways. And more rooms. Waiting.

The courtyard. Rainwater gathers in Grandma's best china.

The owners have another outlet in town. There things are cherished: dusted, ordered, displayed in cabinets with posh price labels tied on a string. But this stuff failed the test. Poor peoples' stuff; stuff they don't think they can sell.

It’s ghoulish to walk around, I admit. But the stories these things tell.

Photo albums. Boxes labelled 'Mrs Mason's House'. Shell monstrosities bearing the legend A Souvenir from Scarborough.

Then I see things from my Grandparents' houses (not the actual thing but something just like). Then I see something that was brand new when I was a child. The shudders keep on coming.

It's curtains.

I giggle at other people voicing my thoughts:

'Oh my God! There’s another room.'

'I’m going to need a bath after this.'

'Urgh it’s full of rainwater; who would buy…?'

How many Christmas Dinners have these witnessed?

In one room are several dolls houses that have been hand-made, probably because the family could not afford one from a shop. That's what happened in my family, anyway. These seem especially sad.

At this point in our ride, my boyfriend (a photographer) asked if we could leave now, because he was getting the same kind of cough he got when he had to take photographs in that dead man's house. I said to him 'har har, very funny'.

Then he reminded me of the details of the job, and I remebered it did happen.

A few years ago, he had to take some 'before and after' shots for a cleaning company that specialised in clearing houses after people had died. People that had never cleaned or thrown anything away. He recalled the dead rat they found in the living room under a pile of junk, with dead maggots inside. Opposite the comfy chair was a stack of take-away trays to head height.

Time to go indeed. Sleep well.

Bookshelves and Brick Dust

I suppose it started here.  

This was my living room a month ago. See either side of the sooty mouth of Hell? Empty bookshelves. I had taken the books down and tucked them away from the nasty man with the big hammer. And here lies the tale of how I put the books back. But first, a little more about that building work.

The hole became a tunnel to the ‘others side’ (well dining room, actually) so the brick dust had a whole new place to huff and puff into. The tunnel became this...

Ah… lovely straight lines, smooth surfaces and a proper passage that my children ran through a thousand times. But no mopping or painting or putting-back yet for my twitching fingers. Plaster and cement had to dry.

Then there was this, the whole point of the exercise: a double-sided wood burning stove that is designed (because our home is mostly on one level) to provide our heating in winter. Rude gestures at the gas company and a very dainty carbon footprint should be the reward of all the work, and so far the stove has made both rooms supremely cosy. But what about the books?

The books. I may have 500. In my living room: fiction. Upstairs, non-fiction. In my children’s bedrooms, children’s books. In my bedroom, knackered books, the ones the ghosts hover around. A set of Greek mythology my grandfather bound himself back in the 60s. The Warfare of Science with Theology by Andrew Dickson White. The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, in the Year 1805 by Mungo Park. A Welsh bible, Y Beibl, that was my great-grandmothers.

But back to the empty shelves in the living room. Having suffered a ball and chain of a cold for the duration of the building work, I found that I couldn't be arsed to put these particular books back. At least, not as they were. I had a new stove, a new dimension in my front parlour. I craved a new look from my books, too.

Then I remembered a blog post by Miss Read on the very subject of how to organise your bookshelves, which I had read and commented on. I went back to the blog, and found myself saying:

"I order my books by look, which can lead to some kind of order, the poetry tends to be small, art books big, Penguin Classics make an orange block over there, and as long as you don’t switch from paperback to hardback by the same author, their stuff tends to go together too…"

“Penguin Classics make an orange block over there”. Hmm, there was a thought that tickled. Maybe I had to take that logic further. Could I put them back just by spine colour? Sod the author, genre, size even. The Dulux paint chart approach to ordering books. 

And that thought was quite a starting pistol. Without pausing for Lemsip, I stopped reading spines and started seeing colours. Aiming for contrast, I stacked greens over purples and reds, and blues over yellows and oranges. Blacks created a solid foundation on the bottom shelves, whites the top. So much easier than working out where you are in the alphabet. So much kinder than forcing books into clichéd genres. Grabbing and slotting by shade felt wonderfully liberating.

Books I had forgotten about took on new significance because of their fabulous spines of indigo, jade or acid lemon. Books I loved were tutted at for not trying hard enough with their faded white.

Patterns emerged. Science fiction dominated the blues, horror the blacks, fantasy the greens, chick-lit the pinks. Like a row of sunbeams, the Penguin classics welcomed Irvine Welsh’s orange and black Trainspotting into their ranks.

I loved the surprises. Alan Moore's From Hell, a new edition of Jane Eyre and Robert Sabuda’s pop-up treatment of Wizard of Oz formed a bohemian gathering in sultry purples and magentas. Titus Groan and Gormenghast parted company with Titus Alone. Clad in black, Dickens and Austen skulked among the thrillers and horrors. India Knight's My Life on a Plate crash landed on Brian W Aldiss’s Helliconia Spring, the planet where seasons last 1000 years. John Wyndham's Seeds of Time, its red spine bleached by sunlight to a delicate pink, embraced an anthology of love poems.

And then there was the whites. Two shelves of them. I left these till last when I was reaching the point of obsession with nuances of shade, so they were sifted further from pristine to yellowed, which indicated the age of the actual edition. A good way to see how long you have owned something.

So that's how it looks (with some editing of the chimney breast for effect). But can I find anything with my new system? Actually I can. When I think of a book I own I can see the spine in my head, clearly, so it works just dandy for me.

My beloved books are back and they look decorative and dramatic. I can’t ask for more. But there is more: I think the books are enjoying themselves too.

Gormley's Field in a Shoe Box

I do love Anthony Gorlmey's Field for the British Isles.

I think I first spotted it in The Independent when it was unveiled back in 1991, and spent a long time staring at the photographs of it in poor quality newsprint, clear proof I needed to see it for real.

If you don't know it, I suggest you put it into Google Images and have a real good look, but if you're in a hurry here's the jist. It's a sculpture: 35,000 small, unglazed terracotta figures packed tightly together in a huge space. More that you can count, many disappearing out of view, all staring at one point: the small doorway you are standing in. A few – stargazers – stare upwards. It can be set-up in any large room, and has indeed toured the UK and the globe. If you get chance, go and see it.

Field for the British Isles gets you in a lot of ways.

Firstly, biologically, because you cannot help but perceive those lumps with two holes at the top as faces, bodies, heads, eyes and personalities. Spend long enough with them and you'll be picking out the lovers, family groups, gangs, loners and elderly among them.

And what’s more, they’re a huge crowd, which gets you psychologically. It makes your hairs stand on end. Crowds do not gather lightly, there has to be spectacle, protest, exodus, battle. A crowd that big suggests world changing events, or at least an event the world sits down to watch.

But wait: this crowd are all staring at you. Silently. We’ve all been unnerved by a portrait watching us as we walk across the room, and Field multiplies that feeling by 35, 000.

Is this what it feels like to be a monarch, rock star, messiah, dictator? Do you feel scared? Humbled? Are you looking behind you to check for Elvis? Or do you find yourself thinking home at last?

And answer me this: If one of the figures at the front waddles towards you, tugs your sleeve, and ask a question, what is that question?

For me it's: Why did you use so many plastic bags?

Whatever your question is, I'll bet it reveals some inner obsessions.

And aside from the Field's bio-psycho-social mojo, my sister, Louise, was one of the volunteers that set the little figures up when it was displayed at The British Museum a few years ago, so now it’s not a major work of art, it's part of the family.

I finally got to see the Field at Lincoln’s Usher Gallery in 2003. I recall the comments book in which one disgruntled visitor vented: “I have travelled 30 miles to look at the paintings of Peter De Wint only to find I cannot get in to see them because this pile of rubbish is here”.

Now for The Field in a Shoe Box...

So this summer holiday I decided it was time to introduce my kids to the Field through the medium of a shoe box and modelling clay. Here’s what we did.

Total spend £1.98 on two packs of modelling clay (the stuff that does not dry out) and an adult sized shoe box. We got our clay from The Works for 99p, woot!






We cut the clay into tubes about one inch long, each a blank waiting to be moulded into a little figure. My sister told me the terracotta figures were called Gorms, a term we happily adopted for our sculptures. In this raw state we called them Gormless.





Using fingers and thumbs, we squashed the tube into head and shoulders plus a flat bottom, so it would stand up.







We used a cocktail stick to make the eyes. Some were evil slanted eyes, others big round goblin eyes.










Our first Gorms waiting to be put in the shoe box. Note Ruby's alien Gorms with several eyes, and Emelia's super tall ones with Dr Seuss wobbly grins. It does take a while to do all the Gorms, so the more hands you can get involved, the better.






We cut a letterbox style hole in one end of the shoe box. A crucial part of the real Field is you are only allowed to look at the Gorms from one viewpoint. This is ours.






We positioned the Gorms in the box, facing the hole. You have to press them down quite a bit to get them to stick, so all our Gorms ended-up with quite fat bottoms. We decided to mix all the colours together rather than segregate. Dad joined in at this point. Perhaps, like barbecues, Gorm planting is a Dad thing.

We then cut a large window in the shoe box lid to let the light in. You can cut round holes to make spot lights, or a big square hole covered in tracing paper for big, diffused light.



We looked through the hole, and this is what we saw.


And what did the kids think? Well we had a happy hour making the thing and all the whole family got involved, so smug-parent points earned there, I think. They loved the little Gorms like the colourful little munchkins they are, and soon made mummy and daddy Gorms and lots of little kiddie Gorms (which may be hard to see in the picture, but they are there).

They have also showed Field in a Shoe Box to every visitor that has come to the house since, and have told everyone that Aunty Lou Lou made the real one (sorry about that, Anthony).

So, as you can see, it's very easy to do. So have a go. And let me see the photos, too!

#worthaF ...how it works

The #worthaF hashtag is a way to recommend people to follow on Twitter by doing an RT (re-tweet) of an outstanding tweet by them, with the hashtag added at the front.

Like this:

#worthaF RT @bestmate blah blah blah [fabulous tweet]

It is an alternative to #FollowFriday that you can do anytime. The F stands Follow.

Some examples:

#worthaF RT @stevyncolgan: barely anyone on Twitter tonight. I can't see anything of particular merit on TV. Are you all at a party without me?

#worthaF RT @sarahjpin: Pinot meet Ice. Oh you two know each other? Fancy a three way? ;-)

#worthaF RT @Glinner: Brilliant. My final tweet last night was accidental RT of my username. Like leaving a party by standing up & saying "Graham Linehan".

#worthaF RT @guestblogme: Hmmm. Wondering why Americans merely ROFL, while Brits really go for it and PMSL :)

#worthaF RT@ EmmaJaneR: I'm so confused about what to add to my avatar! A sheep or a bandwagon?

#worthaF RT @AmnestyUK Seen a few stories about immigration & asylum laws today, but have personally found this quite shocking: http://bit.ly/sAkiV

#worthaF RT @nicky_t New at M&S. Chocolate Velvet Cake I think. In a blue box. Like sex in cake form *yes I really said that*

You don't have to do #worthaF on Friday, you can do them on-the-spot when you see a great tweet by someone you admire. Think of it as the Twitter equivalent of a belly laugh, clap on the back or an elbow in the ribs.

However, a lot of people have been doing them on Friday to replace their #FollowFriday recommendations, having planned-ahead and spent the week stashing favourite tweets in their aptly named Twitter Favourites folder.

You can of course do on-the-spot and a Friday 'Pick of the Week' approach combined.

As this is an RT, you will have to pick shorter Tweets for the #worthaF treatment. This is why I picked a hashtag that was as short as possible whilst still having meaning. So far I've had no problem finding super shorties, but I follow a lot of writers and they seem to produce a wealth of them.

Want to know more? Please click these links for the full #worthaF story, the idea has been in development for quite a few weeks.

My original post Follow Friday can Bugger Off, where I have a rant and put forward an alternative of saving uber-tweets in your Favourites as a way of recommending people to follow. The 'go look in my favourites' idea.

My second post Are you #WorthaF where I describe @gibbzer's genius leap forward of retweeting Favouites back into the Twitter stream, and suggest the #worthaF hashtag to thread all these Tweets together.

Another post, A Brave New Hashtag #worthaF, by @guestblogme, which thoroughly analyses the idea and gives it the thumbs-up. Thank you Chris.

So that's it. Give it a go, and if you like it, please encourage your friends to join in.

This is a perfect example of "The more the merrier".

Are you #WorthaF?

In a hurry? Click here for the quick guide: #worthaF... how it works

You might have noticed, I don’t do Follow Friday on Twitter. I fell-out with it a while ago for lots of reasons, which you are welcome to read about here in my first post Follow Friday Can Bugger Off.

In that initial post I put forward an alternative to Follow Friday of collecting the best tweets your saw that week in your Favourites folder, and on Friday telling your followers to go look in your Favourites by tweeting the link http://twitter.com/Angpang/favourites.

But that’s not working for me right now.

Firstly, because my Twitter honeymoon period is over. I am now in the happily married phase; I’m there, but I’m not obsessed. Real life is being attended to more and I’m not on Twitter often enough to collect Tweets in Favourites so efficiently.

(For an excellent post on Twitter as a romance do pop over to read Debra Snider’s ATwitter when you have a moment).

Secondly, let’s be honest, Follow Friday is also I 'Heart' You Friday. People are blowing kisses at each other as much as trying to pimp their follower lists. If you Favourite someone’s tweet, they don’t automatically know about it, as they do when their @name is broadcast on your Follow Friday list. No one wants to blow a kiss and not have it land.

Last Friday I watched @Gibbzer (an advocate of my Favourites approach who really is worth a Follow) take her Favourite tweets and re-tweet them along with a tiny message that sort of said ‘you should follow this person, just have a look at this brilliant Tweet they did…’ and I thought

‘ooh follow recommendations through the medium of retweeting, I like that, that’s the way to go’.

So I’m going to follow Gibbzer’s lead.

My take on it will be adding a short & sweet hashtag and doing it anytime, not just Friday.

At the moment I'm thinking of #worthaF (because it's short, descriptive and cheeky). Should other people take this up, it's easy to search with a hashtag and see other recommendations.

And my reasoning for doing this anytime of any day is because I might not be on Twitter on Friday, because the recommendation will stand out more, and because I like to do stuff on the spur of the moment.

So, an example (pay attention):

#worthaF RT @thingy blah blah [wonderful tweet] blah blah

And if you’re jaded with Follow Friday like me, I invite you to chuck a few out there. I would love to search #worthaF and come across lots of recommendations by clever people, yes, people like YOU.

And if you don't like hashtags and feel they're the Twitter equivalent of dancing to The Birdie Song (by The Tweets, I have just discovered, now there's appropriate), you don't have to use any: put your own spin on it. But I didn't need to explain that to you, did I?

If you do give it a go, pick short tweets if you can or you'll have to faff about editing them.

I am not looking to overthrow Follow Friday. And if you do FF and enjoy it, carry on. It's just not working for me. I want an alternative that's all ice-cream and no wasps.

As ever, let me know your thoughts.

UPDATE since publishing this post, Chris Nash has written an excellent critique of the #worthaF idea here: A Brave new Hashtag: #worthaF

And that photo of Monroe blowing a kiss is by Weegee, fascinating photographer, read more at Weegee's World

An incomplete list of British Authors on Twitter

A few weeks ago, US author Carin Berger re-tweeted Mashable's list of the top 100 authors of Twitter. I had read the list already, and enjoyed it, but found it missing a lot of British names I knew were on Twitter because I was following them.

So when Carin also asked ‘but what about the British authors?’ I decided I could at least offer her a list of those I knew. And rather than cram a load of tweets with author userames and chuck them at Carin (causing many authors to think 'is it Follow Friday already?') I thought a list on my blog would be no more effort and a lot more useful. I was wrong about the effort, but hey-ho.

After much cutting and pasting and cursing, it's ready. And, wouldn't you know it, I have a blind spot on spelling 'author'? It keeps coming out 'authour'.

There are Very Important Notes at the end, which should answer some questions you may have, and a few links to other lists of writers on Twitter, including the original Mashable post.

Each name links to that person’s Twitter page. The list is alphabetical (by first name).

So... an incomplete list of British Authors on Twitter

(NEW added August 2009)

Alain de Botton
writer

Allyson Bird NEW
Horror writer. My collection Bull Running for Girls has been published by Screaming Dreams. Working on a novel called Isis Unbound

Andrea Gillies
Writer. Author of 'Keeper'. Now writing novel.

Andrew Keen
The Anti Christ of Silicon Valley

Belle de Jour
Writer, ne'er-do-well, and inspiration for the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Bernadine Kennedy NEW
Novelist (7 books published), Freelance Writer, Traveller and occasional Blogger

Bill Thompson
I'm a hack and pundit

Caroline Smailes
I write novels and I'm trying to live happily ever after.

Charlie Brooker
Miserable writerist

Chris Cleave NEW
I'm a novelist and I write a weekly column for The Guardian

Clare Dudman NEW
British writer with works published by Viking, Sceptre, Serpents Tail, Tor Bantam. Interested in science & history

Clive Barker
Born and Still Living

Daisy Goodwin
Author, poetry anthologist and tv producer. Head Girl at Silver River Productions.

Dave Gorman
Don't drop litter.

Elizabeth Buchan
Best selling author, wife and mother.

Ellie Levenson
Londoner, journalist, lecturer, writer. Author of The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism

Euphrosene Labon
mind body spirit artist author writer cartoonist freelance journalist

Fiona Pitt-Kethley
Author of 21 books.I live with my chessGM husband and son in Spain. My hobbies: snorkelling,minerals,karate,music, cycling, fishing, hill-walks,food,film, cats

Fiona J Mackenzie NEW
Author of The BEAUTY QUEENS and The DARWIN MYSTERIES. Failed saint, successful sinner, descended from a pirate.

Gary William Murning NEW
A writer living in the northeast of England, Gary's first novel, If I Never, is due to be published later this year.

Greg Stekelman
Writer, illustrator, worker bee, idiot

Helen Smith
author - I write novels, children's books, plays, screenplays and poetry

Iain Aitch
Author and journalist, nosey git and Tottenham fan, sometimes funny

Ian Hocking NEW
I'm a novelist and psychologist

Iain Broome
Fiction writer and copywriter for leading UK design company, The Workshop. Blogger-in-chief at Write for Your Life and Websites for writers.

India Knight
Sunday Times columnist, novelist, mammal. This is my personal Twitter.

Jag Bhalla NEW
Sharer of amusing and intriguing expressions from around the world. Author of 'I'm Not Hanging noodles on your Ears'.

Jane Costello NEW
Author of novels including Bridesmaids and The Nearly Weds

Jason Bradbury
TV presenter and author of Dot.Robot

J K Rowling
Children's Author

Jojo Moyes NEW
novelist/author/writer of fiction. mother of three.

Judy Astley NEW
Novelist and supreme timewaster

Katie Fforde NEW
Romantic novelist and bad Flamenco dancer

Kate Harrison NEW
writer & procrastinator

Kerry W. Purcell
Writer on design and photography, father, swimmer, and secret lemonade drinker.

Laura Anderson
Writer of screenplays, novels and stories, reader of words, filmmaker, vegetarian, redhead

Louise Bagshawe
Author/conservative PPC for Corby

M Murray
Ex UK and USA, artful idler, freelance journalist, author, Tuscany holiday houses landlady. Politics, food, gardens, books, animals

Margit Appleton
Author, translator, journalist: Food, fun, France

Marika Cobbold
author, family person, book lover, city dweller, animal lover, ballet fan

Mark Chadbourn NEW
Writer of stuff - novels, TV, comics, movies.

Mark Morris
UK-based writer with 17 novels and dozens of short stories, articles and reviews to his name.

Matt Rudd
Writer/editor at Sunday Times forced by his publishers, Harper, to tweet and twitlit in build-up to 1st novel.

MichaelMarshallSmith
... And Michael Marshall, too.
Author of ONLY FORWARD, THE STRAW MEN, THE INTRUDERS, SPARES, BAD THINGS, THE SERVANTS and other stuff.

Milly Johnson
short romcom novelist and rubbish dieter

Neil Gaiman
will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down.

Nick Harkaway
Author of The Gone-Away World. General enthusiast.

Oliver Morton NEW
editor and writer concentrating on sci/tech change and its impacts

PD Smith
a writer, reader and photographer. I review for the Guardian, the TLS and others, and am the author of 3 books, most recently Doomsday Men (Penguin).

Sarah Dunant NEW
Novelist, broadcaster, critic. How grand it sounds. How far from the truth. I am however, not complaining. Though I am now older than I ever intended to be.

Sarah Pinborough
Author for Orion Gollancz of supernatural thrillers.

Stephen Fry
British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger [though I am pretty sure you have to tick a box to not follow Mr Fry when you start Twitter]

Stevyn Colgan
Writer, Artist, Musician, Squid Hurler, Beer Monkey

Stuart Clark NEW
Science journalist and author. Author of The Sun Kings and the up and coming CosmoThriller, the history of cosmology – fictionalised!

Tania Kindersley
writer, mostly

Terry Pratchett
Books Written Cheap

Tim Atkinson
stay-at-home dad and author of Writing Therapy

Tim Dedopulos NEW
Hi. I'm Tim, and I'm a Brit who writes books. Like sff/horror, oddness, inspiration, INFJ. Always hunting interesting people!

Tim Lebbon
Bald Horror and Fantasy Writer, and lover of fine ales.

...and that's the lot at the moment.

There is also a valuable list of Screenwriters that Tweet on Miss Read’s blog, which you can look at here.

Very Important Notes

The descriptions are not mine, they are taken direct from each author’s Twitter bio.

The list is not my personal recommendations. My recommendation is: read a baker’s dozen of anyone’s tweets before following them. Having said that writers do, in my experience, tweet the best. If you want to see people (to paraphrase Clive James) turn a phrase until it catches the light (in only 140 characters), following writers is a good place to start.

This list is not every British author on Twitter, so it’s open to additions, but because I want the list to be worthwhile (without getting elitist) here's what I am interested in:

1. Published British authors on Twitter.
2. Writing should be a major part of what they do, not a sideline.
3. They should be Tweeting as their author selves.
4. At the moment the bias is to fiction, but I’m not saying no to non-fiction. Maybe there should be two list. Maybe I need a secretary.
   

Let me know who I missed with a comment here, or by contacting me through Twitter (I’m @Angpang). I'll update the list as and when my workload and children let me.

PS - If you want to know more about the Fragonard painting that opens this blog, it's at The National Gallery of Art, Washingto, DC.

Oh, and that Mashable list can be found here.