The journey itself was more or less uneventful, apart from the back end of the bus seemingly managing to have an altercation with a stationary lorry whilst stationary. I certainly noticed the secondary knock, sustained as we tried to ease ourselves away. Thankfully we were close enough to the bus station that the driver allowed us to disembark and flee the scene of the crime.

Woke this morning to the news that the art critic and author, John Berger, has died. I remember reading his seminal book, Ways of Seeing, as an art student myself and how readable and understandable he made it all seem. I seem to recall some of his thinking made it into how some characters in my (unmade) televison serial, Dreamscholars, looked at the world.

Ways of looking at the world is something that I’ve been thinking about a bit today. Much of what I am about to say will probably make it into some kind of book review, but I’m very much enjoying reading Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories. The first section – the untold stories of the book title – is untold in two ways. One, because it is actual untold family history and truth that you only discover years later. The other, secondary reason is because, unlike the diary entries that then follow it, this is Bennett looking back at somthing that has not been written about before in diary form. In this way, the two sections, balance themselves out. The first section is a narrative. The second section is a miscellany of life: long reviews of art or music, or accounts of discussions with famous people alongside in every sense of the word with records of the sandwich he made for lunch, or what ordinary thing he watched on television, or a curiousness about something he’s seen on the street. This is my kind of miscellany.

The true holiday spirit is about love and kindness, not materialism and shopping. Do your best not to get caught up in the latter.

This is a very good point. And related to this, I’ve always found it weird, and indeed ungracious, how so many people seem to find it necessary to head straight off to the Boxing Day sales, only a day after they’ve just been given lots of presents. Whilst some of this might be to spend money that they have been given (which is understandable, but also slightly weird if people have ‘asked’ for money), and some might be to go and purchase something for which they have been saving up for, which isn’t terribly ‘presenty’ and which they can get cheaper in the sales, I’m sure a lot of it is just people trying to escape the family or buying things that they want but haven’t been given, which is, to me very much not in the spirit of Christmas.

Of course, when so many people buy things that people don’t want, I guess this behaviour is hardly surprising. So why do we buy things that people don’t want? Why is it necessary? Why don’t we all just do the ‘natural’ thing and ask our loved ones what they would like? And as a lead up to this why don’t we all, instead of buy, buy, buying everything we want when we want, just stop for a moment and think, ‘No, I don’t need that now, and it would make a good Christmas (or birthday) present’, and add it to a list. With luck, come each Christmas and birthday our lists will be too long for the number of presents and so there shall still be the element of surprise but we all get things that we want. And it all means so much more to everyone.

Oh, and we should learn to spend good quality time with our loved ones, be them family or friends, in the comfort of our homes, and allow the poor shop/restaurant staff to have some quality time with their loved ones instead of serving a load of ungracious shoppers…

Such a nice man; it refreshes your faith in human nature.

Edit: I think I may well write Maurice into one of my novels. Maybe he could help Mr Tumnal out in some small way?

I met up with veeb after work tonight. Fighting my way down the Cowley Road, I meet up with the fellow ex-ECQC’er in the Cafe Coco, for a drink and a bit of a chat. We talked, a bit about work, a bit of rememberences of the ‘old days’ – ten years ago – when the internet still seemed like a really neat idea. He was talking about the new site that he’s designing for himself, and of how it will have a ‘journal’ element to it – but it won’t be livejournal. This kind of led to me saying that how, for me, livejournal has been wonderful at providing me with the writing/writers network, something that I lost after leaving college.

This brought to mind me talking about the excellent Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn which I have just finished reading. At the end of it there are two pages of acknowledgements, including, towards the end, this:

‘I would also like to acknowledge the insights and expert knowledge of the Samurai History Archive on the World Wide Web and members of the discussion forum.’

This got me thinking. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing an acknowledgement to message boards on the internet, for a novel before … I wonder how long it will be before before LiveJournal is mentioned specifically in the dedication to a novel. And then I thought, if it’s not already been done, maybe I could be that first. Certainly my novel has gained a lot from the input of such friends and communities as applecatching, cloud_less, veeb, rachel2205 and . The e-beast kind of deserves some kind of mention… *grins*

Did I say this before? I like Autumn.