Big Sam version 2

This was for an assignment for a creative writing course I did. This was my original idea, but I soon realised I wouldn't be able to fit it into the 1,000-word limit, so I changed tack. That version can be read here. But I wanted to continue with my first idea, and this is the result.

---

THE man checks his watch and grins. Same time, same place, every day. He pushes the street cleaning machine up the dropped curb and onto the pavement, stopping in exactly the same spot outside McDonald's as every other morning. He switches the machine off and locks its wheels in place. He checks the heavy-duty black plastic bag; it's half full, just as it should be at this point in his morning routine. He pulls off his gloves and tucks them into his belt before yanking open the heavy glass door and entering the restaurant.

At the counter he orders the same thing he does every morning: bacon and egg mcmuffin with fries and a large black coffee. He waits the few moments it takes for the order to be prepared and then carries it over to his usual table. He settles into the yellow moulded chair, his food and drink carefully arranged in front of him. He starts, as ever, with the coffee. First stirring in three sugars, he takes a sip of the hot, black liquid. The sweet, insipid taste floods his mouth as he swallows, relishing the slight burning sensation at the back of his throat. He unwraps the muffin and takes a large bite. He chews enthusiastically, shoves a few of the fries into his mouth. The muffin is demolished in two more bites and he turns his attention to the fries, finishing them with the same efficiency. He wriggles his ample backside against the smooth, cool plastic of the seat and holds his cardboard coffee cup in both hands.

His colleagues on the council cleaning team can't understand his love for McDonald's, the cheap fast food and watery coffee, or his pleasure at the ritual repeated every morning, but he doesn't care – it's his routine and he's going to stick to it. He smacks his lips as he drains the last of his drink and congratulates himself on a job well done. Gathering up the detritus from his breakfast to be tipped into the bin on his way out, he returns to his cleaning machine on the street.

Big Sam they call him at the council and he knows they laugh at him behind his back because of his routine, but he doesn’t care. Order is important.

***

Sam checks his watch. He grins – he’s done it again. Same time, same place, same ritual. The girl behind the McDonald’s counter smiles at him; she’s already started on his order. He pays for his food with the exact change, and takes his tray to his usual spot.

Sam freezes. He blinks hard and, balancing the tray with one fist, rubs his hand across his eyes. But when he opens his eyes the interloper is still there. A boy sitting, no slouching, in Sam’s seat. The seat that he always sits in. The boy can’t be older than 15, wearing a hoodie and jeans that must be at least three sizes too big. He’s shovelling fries into his mouth, chewing loudly.

Sam doesn’t know what to do. In all the years he’s been coming here this has never happened. He waits. That kid should be on his way to school, Sam thinks, outraged. But the boy shows no sign of moving. Seconds stretch to minutes and Sam’s food is getting cold. He will have to sit down and eat. But where? He manoeuvres to a table close to the invader and sits down.

He tucks into his breakfast, but finds he can’t enjoy it. He eats quickly, glaring at the teenager in his seat. But it makes no difference. The boy doesn’t even notice. Sam abandons the remains of his meal on the tray and leaves the restaurant.

***

The display on his digital wristwatch informs Sam that, as ever, he’s arrived at McDonald’s at exactly the right time. But for once he doesn’t feel like congratulating himself. Instead he’s apprehensive – what if that awful teenage boy is in his spot again?

He cautiously enters the restaurant, forcing himself to look only at the counter. He doesn’t want to crane his neck around and see his seat already occupied. He’s determined that he’ll behave exactly as he has done in all the years he’s been coming to this McDonald’s on the Lewisham high street. The person behind the counter has changed, he notices. This doesn’t concern him – the ephemeral nature of the staff is, paradoxically, one of the many constants about McDonald’s that Sam finds so reassuring.

Sam orders his usual meal and as the server passes the loaded tray, Sam takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. It’ll be all right, he reassures himself. He turns towards the seat, his seat, and there he is, the invader, the cat among Sam’s well-ordered ranks of pigeons. Sam is horrified. This time, he decides, this time he isn’t just going to put up with it.

He marches to the table and hauls his bulk into a seat on the opposite side to the boy; the wrong side, it feels strange and Sam thinks he doesn’t quite fit, like there’s slightly less space on this side of the table. The boy frowns.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Granddad?” He asks, his belligerent tone masking his shock.

“This is my table,” says Sam. “I always sit here.”

“Not today, you don’t.”

Sam ignores him and starts to eat. “How old are you, anyway? Shouldn’t you be at school?” He asks after a while.

The boy shrugs. “No point, innit. What does school get you?”

“An education. A proper job.” Sam indicates his green council-supplied overalls: “You don’t want to spend your life wearing these, do you?”

The truth is Sam loves his job. He believes he’s doing good – keeping the borough clean and nice. But he knows that most people look down on him. He didn’t finish school, didn’t get any qualifications and if he regrets that now he knows it’s too late for him. But this kid is just starting out.

The boy shifts uncomfortably in the plastic seat, recalling the argument with his dad. The old man was a loser, and the boy tried to tell himself that he didn’t really care.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Sam asked. “I’m Big Sam.”

Sam’s voice pulls the boy from his reverie. “Oh, yeah. Paul.”

Sam nods as if he somehow expected this answer. He turns his attention to his breakfast and for a while silence rules.

And then Paul begins to speak. He’s not even sure why, but this quiet, big man instills a kind of trust. “It was my dad, weren’t it? He said school’s no good for the likes of me. Said I’d never amount to nothing anyway, so’s I might as well not go.”

There’s a catch in Paul’s voice as he talks, and Sam briefly glances at him; the boy doesn’t notice, he’s staring down at the scratched plastic table. He reminds Sam of a frightened puppy and the big man knows that he’ll have to be careful not to scare the boy off. Sam hasn’t got kids of his own, but his sister Jemima had four strong boys and Sam had always been good with them.

Sam thinks of his own pa, how he was no more than 18 years old when he’d given up everyone and everything he knew to get on a leaky ship to London. That journey from the West Indies almost killed him, he always said, The only thing that kept him alive was determination; Winston knew that he was meant for better things than death at sea. He would make it to Great Britain and make a life there.

Winston found a home in Lewisham and there he met tall, beautiful Ghanian Wanda, whom he courted and married and who gave him two children. But Wanda failed to flourish in cold, wet London and every year there seemed to be less of her, until eventually she was just gone.

Sam wonders what Winston would say right now. Winston, who had always told his children that they could be whatever they wanted, who had worked three jobs to give his kids the best start in life he could, and who had dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. He was simply exhausted, the doctors said. Winston would never have allowed the words ‘never amount to anything’ pass his lips, especially not where his children were concerned.

“Well, it seems to me,” Sam said, slowly and thoughtfully, “that maybe your pa’s jealous.”

Paul opens his mouth, ready to defend any perceived slights to his family, but he realises there were none. He thinks on what Sam said. “Why would he be jealous of me?”

“He sees that you got all kindsa opportunities he never had. He’ll be worried that some day you’ll just leave him behind.”

Paul pulls a face. He’s not convinced; far as he can tell it’s the other way round: his dad’s the one leaving him behind, him and his mum. But what if Big Sam has a point, Paul wonders. His dad always said he didn’t have much time for education, but maybe the truth was that education had never had much time for him.

Sam thinks he can almost see the thoughts whirring behind Paul’s eyes. He doesn’t know why he cares about this kid who has now ruined his breakfast two days on the run. But for some reason he does. Somehow it matters to get just this one boy back into school where maybe he can make something of his life.

“My old pa always said people could be anything they wanted to, so long as they tried hard enough.

Paul laughs. “Yeah? So how come you ended up sweeping the streets?”

There’s a silence as Big Sam turns his head to stare hard at the boy. “Maybe I didn’t try hard enough,” he says.

Paul frowns. He feels like he’s been tricked somehow, but he’s not sure how. He thinks over Sam’s words; they make sense. But he still can’t shake the feeling that he’s somehow having the wool pulled. The boy gets up to leave, sliding his skinny bum along the slippery seat. He doesn’t say goodbye, but as he passes Sam, the older man mutters “See you tomorrow?” Paul nods.

The next day Sam finds himself hurrying on his round just a bit. He arrives at McDonald’s before 9am and cranes his neck to see if Paul is at what he’s already thinking of as ‘their’ table. The boy is there and Sam realises he’s pleased, and he doesn’t at all mind that he’s early.

Paul picks disinterestedly at his fries, his eyes darting towards the door every few seconds. He clocks Sam and the corners of his mouth turn up, until he catches himself and carefully puts his expression back into neutral.

Sam takes his food to the table, sits down and starts to eat. At first they sit in silence, but then: “Did you go?” Sam asks.

Paul shrugs his left shoulder. “Stuff to do,” he says. Sam nods his understanding, as if this truncated reason explains everything. “What ‘bout today?”

That shoulder rises again, almost touches the boy’s ear. It’s a gesture of defiance, but Sam sees the doubt in Paul’s eyes. He reckons he’s got the boy. Paul’s scared, though he’d never admit it, but the seed that Big Sam planted yesterday has taken root: school might not be such a bad idea. But Sam realises it’s today or never. If Paul procrastinates any longer he’ll talk himself out of it. Today is vital.

Sam leans back in his seat, stretches his long arms and with exaggerated movements looks at his watch. “Still plenty of time,” he says. A ghost of a smile appears on Paul’s face. The boy gets to his feet. “Fries are cold,” he says by way of explanation. He abandons his rubbish on the table, despite the many signs asking customers to use the bins. He doesn’t say goodbye, just takes his leave.

Big Sam’s mouth stretches into a grin that seems to cover his whole face. He’s proud – of himself and Paul. He’s already looking forward to seeing the boy the following day.

Big Sam

This is the final piece from the creative writing course I've just taken. I really enjoyed writing this. I hope you enjoy reading it

---

The man checks his watch and grins. Same time, same place, every day. He pushes the street cleaning machine up the dropped curb and onto the pavement, stopping in exactly the same spot outside McDonald's as every other morning. He switches the machine off and locks its wheels in place. He checks the heavy-duty black plastic bag; it's half full, just as it should be at this point in his morning routine. He pulls off his gloves and tucks them into his belt before yanking open the heavy glass door and entering the restaurant.

At the counter he orders the same thing he does every morning: bacon and egg mcmuffin with fries and a large black coffee. He waits the few moments it takes for the order to be prepared and then carries it over to his usual table. He settles into the yellow moulded chair, his food and drink carefully arranged in front of him. He starts, as ever, with the coffee. First stirring in three sugars, he takes a sip of the hot, black liquid. The sweet, insipid taste floods his mouth as he swallows, relishing the slight burning sensation at the back of his throat. He unwraps the muffin and takes a large bite. He chews enthusiastically, shoves a few of the fries into his mouth. The muffin is demolished in two more bites and he turns his attention to the fries, finishing them with the same efficiency. He wriggles his ample backside against the smooth, cool plastic of the seat and holds his cardboard coffee cup in both hands.

His colleagues on the council cleaning team can't understand his love for McDonald's, the cheap fast food and watery coffee, or his pleasure at the ritual repeated every morning, but he doesn't care – it's his routine and he's going to stick to it. He smacks his lips as he drains the last of his drink and congratulates himself on a job well done. Gathering up the detritus from his breakfast to be tipped into the bin on his way out, he returns to his cleaning machine on the street.

Big Sam they call him at the council and he knows they laugh at him behind his back because of his routine, but he doesn’t care. Order is important.

***

Sam checks his watch. He grins - he’s done it again. Same time, same place, same ritual. The girl behind the McDonald’s counter smiles at him; she’s already started on his order. He pays for his food with the exact change, and takes his tray to his usual spot.

Sam freezes. He blinks hard and, balancing the tray with one fist, rubs his hand across his eyes. But when he opens his eyes the interloper is still there. A boy sitting, no slouching, in Sam’s seat. The seat that he always sits in. The boy can’t be older than 15, wearing a hoodie and jeans that must be at least three sizes too big. He’s shovelling fries into his mouth, chewing loudly.

Sam doesn’t know what to do. In all the years he’s been coming here this has never happened. He waits. That kid should be on his way to school, Sam thinks, outraged. But the boy shows no sign of moving. Seconds stretch to minutes and Sam’s food is getting cold. He will have to sit down and eat. But where? He manoeuvres to a table close to the invader and sits down.

He tucks into his food, but finds he can’t enjoy it. He eats quickly, glaring at the teenager in his seat. But it makes no difference. The boy doesn’t even notice. Sam abandons the detritus of his meal on the tray and leaves the restaurant.

In his haste, Sam has left the place early; he hasn’t checked his watch and, distressed by the presence of this stranger ruining his carefully planned routine, he isn’t looking where he’s going. The first he sees of the woman is when he collides with her. He’s a big man and he’s moving fast, she doesn’t stand a chance - she goes straight down and lands heavily on her backside. Just like a sack of potatoes, Sam thinks, and immediately recalls the disappointment of eating his fries in the wrong seat.

The woman emits a loud ‘oof!’ as the air is knocked out of her on impact with the pavement. Sam’s attention is pulled to the woman. She’s inspecting her palms, the skin has been scraped off. It stings, but it’s the only injury she’s sustained.

“Oh my word!” Sam exclaims. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry?” She squawks. “Sorry won’t get me up off this pavement.”

Abashed, he extends both hands to take hold of her wrists and help her back to her feet. Gently he pulls her to standing and as she rises he realises he knows her. She’s older - who isn’t? - but he would recognise those sparkling light brown eyes anywhere.

“Lottie?” He asks, still holding on to her bird-like wrists. “Lottie Mabuse? I sat next to you in English class.”

Lottie nods, but the look on her face is quizzical. She doesn’t recognise him. And then a smile breaks out, revealing a row of shiny white teeth behind her red lipstick. “Sam Benson,” she says. “You got big. And older. But I guess we all got that.” Rather sadly she touches her greying hair.

“Oh, but we should go out for a drink this evening. Talk about old times.”

Sam is gobsmacked. Go for a drink with this grown-up vision of the girl he had such a crush on at school? But this evening is Gogglebox on the telly and shepherd’s pie for dinner. He thinks about the boy in his seat, about how he wouldn’t have bumped into Lottie if that boy hadn’t been there. He grins and says: “Yes. Let’s do that.”

Disco Inferno

I’m doing a free online course in fiction writing. The piece below was the first writing assignment, inspired by the first thing heard on the radio. I heard Burn, baby, burn! Disco inferno!

---

DISCO pulled the curly platinum blonde wig off her head to reveal her own short, greying locks. She pulled a face at herself in the mirror, the same one that George the landlord had stuck lightbulbs all round the edge. “Just like a real dressing room in one of them fancy theatres, Dis,” he'd said. “It won't be long till you've got one of your own, one with your name on the door.” But that was 30 years ago, and George and the mirror and the lightbulbs and Disco herself were all still there. “All a bit tarnished now,” she muttered to herself ruefully.

She tugged a baby wipe from the tube on the dressing table and started cleaning off her make-up. Underneath the thick foundation her skin was pale and lined. She was tired, she realised. She'd been Disco Inferno for so long, singing the same songs, performing the same dances, she could barely remember her real name or the mousy girl who had hidden behind the stage make-up and Marilyn Monroe wig.

She was only 50, but she felt like she was 100 years old. It was her birthday; no one had wished her happy birthday, not even George. She picked up the rapidly warming glass of chardonnay and saluted herself. “Half a century and what have you done with your life?” She asked the reflection in the mirror. No career, no family, no husband. George had asked once. Convinced she about to hit the big time, she'd said no. He never asked again.

“We've seen some changes round here, ain't we, Dis?” George had said to her earlier that evening. She grunted non-committally. She didn't want to be reminded of the lost years, of how she hadn't made it out of Deptford, hadn't even made it out of the Dog and Bell.

She dropped the soiled baby wipe in the waste paper bin and tossed back the rest of her wine in one gulp. She buttoned her faux fur coat over the skimpy outfit she knew was too young for her. She pushed open the door into the bar; George was still wiping down tables. “All right, Dis?” He said. “Another drink?”

“No, thanks. I've got to get off home.”

“Course.” He smiled and his face lit up.

He's got kind eyes, she thought. I should have said yes, all those years ago.

“See you next week, then?”

“Yeah, next week.” She smiled back and left the pub.

There was no one about as she walked along Watergate Street, going in the opposite direction to her tiny flat. She stopped at the edge of the Thames and stared down into the dark water. Would it be cold, she wondered. Would her body go numb before the sodden weight of her coat dragged her into the murky depths? “I'm sorry, George,” she whispered into the night, and took one final step.

Review: Sampled at Sadler’s Wells

This wonderful show provides a taster of some of the goodies that will be available in this north London venue’s 2016 dance programme

---

I can’t claim to be a dance expert. I’ve been Sadler’s Wells a total of five times, I’ve seen Billy Elliot and I watch Strictly. That’s the sum of my dance experience (unless you count the many lost hours in various clubs, which it’s probably best not to). But I do love it, so I’m trying to get to know it better.

It was with this in mind that I went to Sampled at Sadler’s Wells on 30 January. This two-hour show provides a small taster of the venue’s upcoming season, hence the name. I didn’t really know what to expect as I’ve never been before. The show started with a short film of interviews with some of the performers of the first piece, Outlier by Wayne McGregor. Then the auditorium went completely dark, the lights on the stage went up and the performance began.

Sampled at Sadler's Wells. I was a lot higher up than usual. Bit scary.

Outlier is a contemporary ballet piece. To me it looked like ballet but exaggerated. There was an air of threat, of violence, to the performance. It was awe inspiring and powerful, but didn’t have the grace and beauty that I associate with ballet. It was stunning.

The act that really stole the show for me, though, were the duets by Julia Hiriart Urruty and Claudio Gonzalez. They danced two tangos in the first act. The first was heart-breakingly beautiful – the story of a man remembering his dead wife and bringing her back to life through dance. It moved me to tears. They also danced a more contemporary version to the song Wicked Game and then an impressively athletic tango in the second act. They were frankly amazing and I want to see them again – which is surely the point of the show. I will certainly be going to Immortal Tango at The Peacock next month.

Equally impressive, and also on the ‘must see again’ list, was Connor Scott performing his piece Get Up. This contemporary dance won him the BBC Young Dancer 2015 award, and it’s easy to see why. The piece was powerful, athletic and yet graceful; this 17-year-old is certainly one to watch.

The first was heart-breakingly beautiful – the story of a man remembering his dead wife and bringing her back to life through dance

Special mention must go to The Ruggeds, a world champion b-boy crew from The Netherlands. They performed Adrenaline, possibly the most appropriately named piece of the evening. This isn’t a dance form that I would usually watch, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and anyone with an interest should really book tickets to Breakin’ Convention ‘16, Sadler’s Wells’ festival of hip-hop dance.

Much more traditional was Zenaida Yanowsky’s rendition of the Dying Swan from Swan Lake. Making up the rest of the programme were BBC Young Dancer finalist Vidya Patel, performing a traditional Kathak dance Khoj - The Search, and 7 Fingers with Nocturnes, a dreamlike contemporary dance and circus crossover.

They were all excellent. All incredibly different and a wonderful example of the breadth of dance styles. I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening and will definitely be sampling (haha! Sorry …) this show again next year.

Toxic masculinity and how it damages us all

Masculinity and privilege are thorny topics, as writer Matt Haig found out recently. Here’s my response to his blog post

---

This was going to be an email to Matt Haig in response to his blog post about mental health and masculinity, but it got too unwieldy for an email so I thought I’d post it as a blog. Really it’s too long and unwieldy for a blog post, too, so read as much or as little as you like.

I pretty much agree with everything Matt has written. I’m rather disappointed that he’s been discouraged from writing a book on this subject by Twitterers who essentially think he’s wrong to care that men are killing themselves in increasing numbers.

Concepts of masculinity that repress emotion and encourage violence are equally bad for men and women. We need address this if we are to improve life for all genders.

Boys don’t cry
We start them young, telling schoolchildren that ‘boys don’t cry’. I believe this amounts to psychological abuse. Crying is an important – if not necessary – emotional outlet, and to deny that to a child must be hugely damaging. How else is that child going to express emotion? Well usually through the only route left to him: violence and anger.

We encourage boys to fight, telling them to stand up for themselves, to not be weak or cissies or, worst of all, girlie. Because this is what happens when you admit of two, polar genders. What one is – masculine = strong, admirable, desirable and so on – the other becomes the opposite, making the feminine weak and undesirable. Being a girl is bad; for a boy, being associated with girls and girliness is hugely insulting.

There are massive problem with this, for both boys and girls. Being strong brings benefits: adventurousness, confidence, self-belief, among others. Girls who show these characteristics are called tomboys, because girls aren’t meant to be like that, are they? They should be demure, quiet and retiring. Adventurous, outgoing girls are a bit abnormal, a bit boyish.

Our girls are growing up with no self-confidence (read The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman for more on this). In world already stacked against them (think unequal pay, women underrepresented in all walks of life, lack of power and so on and so on), we aren’t adequately preparing our girls to succeed.

And what about the boys? There are the ones that don’t fit the mould. The ones that don’t want to raise their fists to defend themselves, who cry when they’re hurt, whether physically or emotionally. These children are bullied, made fun of, laughed at, and not just by other kids but by adults too, who should know better. And then there are the ones who do resort to fighting.

In either case these children are not being given the tools they need to deal with the complex emotions that human life brings. Instead they’re being taught that emotions are not for them, not if they want to be real men. Feelings should be hidden away, repressed, their only emotional outlets are anger and violence.

Photo: Regret by Neil Moralee 

Boys who can only express feelings through anger and violence will grow up to be men who can only express feelings through anger and violence. This won’t always come out as actual violence. In fact mostly it won’t. One of the more confusing things we do to our boys is punish them – with violence, either physical or verbal – when they do ‘stand up for themselves’. So they learn to express their anger in other ways.

In the adult world this could be aggressiveness in the sports field or in business; it could be a need to control a man’s own life and those of people around him; it could be that he completely shuts down when faced with emotions he can’t deal with.

Silent isn’t strong
How can you talk about something that you’ve hidden so deep inside yourself that even you can’t recognise it anymore? You can’t. How do you admit you have an emotional problem when your entire life you’ve been told that men, real men, don’t have emotions? You don’t.

A friend of mine once described depression as anger directed inwards. There are many ways in which I don’t agree with this. I think of anger as being quite a galvanising emotion – it prompts you to get up and do something, even if that something is negative, whereas depression is all about the apathy.

But in other ways it seems totally right. Anger is an incredibly destructive emotion that causes all kinds of damage, and depression is so very damaging. It separates you from yourself and then turns that self into an object of hate. The final, though certainly not inevitable, outcome of that hate is suicide.

The most recent figures for suicides relate (from the Samaritans) to 2013. In that year, 78% of all suicides were men and the rate of suicide among men was at its highest since 2001. Suicide is the leading cause of death for men aged between 20 and 34 in England and Wales. The proportion of male to female deaths by suicide has increased steadily since 1981.

These figures don’t show the whole picture, of course. Men tend to choose more violent methods of suicide which are more likely to succeed. When you take into account attempted suicides, men and women are more evenly matched. But still, more than three quarters of suicides were men. That’s shocking. And one of the reasons given is that men are reluctant to seek help. Think about what this means: in modern society people are being driven to take their own lives rather than admit they have a problem. There is something deeply wrong with this.

If your reaction to this is a sarcastic “Boohoo!” or “Didums!”, as some people’s was on Twitter, then that’s part of the problem. Ridiculing men who don’t fit into a fixed and dangerous concept of masculinity contributes towards male anger and violence, it strengthens those forms of masculinity that we should be breaking down. If someone is in pain, we should react with sympathy, regardless of gender.

Anger turned outwards
Arguably much more frightening is that anger that isn’t turned inwards. The anger that leads to violence towards women. Last year 150 women were murdered by men. This is significantly higher than the average of 104 women killed in this way per year. Male violence towards women increases in times of economic hardship (this government is creating a situation in which women die).

As a woman, this is both shocking and terrifying. What’s worse is that it doesn’t even begin to cover the amount of violence and abuse that women experience on a daily basis. One thing that I’ve experienced is a man standing in front of my gate so I couldn’t get into my flat until I gave him my telephone number. He then phoned the number to ensure it really was mine. Only then did he leave me alone. I have plenty of similar stories.

Boys who can only express feelings through anger and violence will grow up to be men who can only express feelings through anger and violence

There are women who have been threatened, spat at, even punched just for turning a man down. It’s incredibly common for a woman to be called a bitch or a slut because she didn’t react with rapturous joy after a man has yelled at her in the street. I count myself lucky because these things haven’t happened to me. Lucky because I’ve not experienced violence and abuse. That isn’t right.

There’s a growing movement on social media that says that we need to teach men not to rape instead of telling women not to get raped. This should be the ultimate no-brainer. I shouldn’t have to avoid going out at night, avoid certain areas of town, avoid wearing certain clothes, to ensure my own safety. I should be able to take it for granted that I’m not going to be attacked.

The vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults are not about sub-human monsters hiding in bushes and jumping out on unsuspecting women. No, most rapes are committed by ‘normal’ men – men we’re friends with, who we work with, who we sit next to on the bus, who pour our drinks in bars. Ordinary men who think they’re entitled to access to our bodies, who think that sex is a right rather than a privilege.

And why do they think that? Because that’s what society has taught them. And when they’re thwarted in their desires, they can’t go home and shed a few tears because they feel humiliated at being turned down (because let’s be honest, being turned down isn’t nice, it’s upsetting), they can’t turn to a friend and say “She said no and actually that hurt my feelings”. No, they have to ‘stand up for themselves’ and take what’s rightfully theirs.

Feminism is surely about equality. About lifting us all up so that we all have the opportunity to succeed. Mostly this will be about giving women more power, more opportunities, because, obviously, historically we have been denied this. It’s also about creating safe spaces for women by removing male aggression. The quickest way to do this is to remove men – give us women-only spaces, which is happening and is a good thing.

But even better is to have spaces where men and women can be together and be safe. Equality can’t be about dividing genders. It has to ultimately bring us all together. We don’t just want safe spaces, we want all of society to be safe. Doing this must involve giving men the emotional outlets they need so that they don’t have to resort to anger and violence.

Review: Nymphomation by Jeff Noon

VERDICT: This alt-Manchester-set thriller and urban fantasy is exceptionally well written

This is an exceptionally hard book to review. Not because it's bad – it isn't, it's excellent – but because it's almost impossible to define what it's about.

Gambling? Definitely. It nicely sums up our seeming obsession with the National Lottery and Euromillions, the faith of the poor and the desperate that a game of chance will turn their lives around.

But it's about much more than that. Love, friendship, mystery, murder, maths and the idea that information creates more information – it reproduces, hence nymphomation.

It’s 1999 and Manchester is in the grip of a new gambling game based on dominoes – match your domino with the randomly chosen one to win. One side means a smaller win, getting both means winning big. Every Friday night the populace of Manchester hold onto their ‘bones’ and hope to match the winning numbers. A double six garners the best prize, while a double blank (the ‘joker bone’) is the booby prize – no one knows what it is, but everyone knows it’s bad.

A double six garners the best prize, while a double blank (the ‘joker bone’) is the booby prize

But of course there’s much more to it than that, and a small group of Mancunians are brought together to look at what really might be going on. What does the joker bone really represent? Who is the mysterious Mr Millions? What does all this have to do with groundbreaking yet dangerous maths research from the 70s? And what it the true nature of luck?

It’s hard to go into further detail without giving the game – pun intended – away. Suffice to say this is an exceptionally well written thriller crossed with urban fantasy. It’s part of Noon’s Vurt series, but doesn’t require the others to have been read.

Review: Eeny Meeny

A thriller with an intriguing set-up and plenty of twists and turns

---

I really enjoyed this book. The premise is intriguing: two victims, one bullet; one dies, the other lives. The first two victims are a young couple who are snatched while hitching home from a festival. When the girl bursts from the forest, emaciated and starving, at first no one believes her story that her boyfriend begged her to kill him. They assume it’s a relationship gone wrong - maybe he turned on her and she shot him in self-defence. But then two more people go missing and the authorities start to realise they’ve got a serial killer on their hands.

The police investigation is led by DI Helen Grace. Grace is possibly the best female lead I’ve ever encountered in a crime thriller. In fact she might be the only one I’ve encountered – women tend to be victims, seconds-in-command, family members or support in some way to the main male characters, the DI or private eye and the killer.

Grace is ambitious, driven, strong willed and yet dedicated and loyal to her team. She isn’t a particularly sympathetic character, which is quite refreshing. It’s nice to read a female character when the author has resisted the urge to make her likeable. She is impressive, though. If someone you loved had been murdered you’d want someone like Grace heading the investigation.

Helen Grace is possibly the best female lead I’ve ever encountered in a crime thriller – in fact she might be the only one I’ve encountered

The author has previously written screenplays, and this discipline seems to have served him well. The short chapters are episodic and told from the point of view of various characters, often Grace, but also members of her team and the victims. Each chapter manages to reveal information – and often misinformation – while keeping the reader in the dark.

The book is full of twists, and I usually pride myself on being able to work out what’s coming, but with this novel I was really kept guessing.

Overall this was a well-written, pacy thriller that provided a very enjoyable read.

Disclaimer: I received this book through the Goodreads First Reads scheme.

Review: Thor: The Dark World

The second Thor film has come in for a bit of criticism, but I loved it

---

I’ve seen quite a lot of criticism of Thor: The Dark World: it’s humourless, takes itself too seriously and is somewhat ridiculous. But I think it’s fantastic, and here’s why.

First off, it looks gorgeous. The SFX are excellent. But it’s not just that – the overall ‘look’ of the film is beautiful. It reminds me Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II and Blade II films.

I don’t agree with the charges that it’s humourless and takes itself too seriously, either. Some scenes are hilarious: Darcy and Ian the Intern, Thor on a tube train. And while Chris Hemsworth is rather po-faced throughout, Tom Hiddleston seems to be having great fun. In fact his Loki is worth the price of admission alone.

There isn’t much of a plot – but who cares when you’ve got Tom Hiddleston in a leather coat and chains?

I admit there isn’t much of a plot. Just some stuff about invading dark elves, Earth at risk of total destruction, blah, blah. But really who cares when you’ve got Tom H in a leather coat and chains? Mostly it just seems to be preamble to the next Avengers film – a long-winded way of getting Loki where he needs to be for that film. But when the preamble is this pretty, what does that matter?

I only have two criticisms. First, Anthony Hopkins as Odin. It just doesn’t work for me. Ron Perlman would have been far more badass. Second, Greenwich is NOT three stops from Charing Cross! In fact the bit of Greenwich they go to isn’t even on the sodding Underground. This might not seem important, but it wouldn’t have taken much to get that bit right, and as London is the best city in the world they should have got it right.

I found the film highly entertaining and that’s all I ask for from a comic book film. It’s also left me thirsting for next Avengers installment.

Musings: why fantasy got ‘gritty’

Inspired by reading Aeon’s Gate, some thoughts on traditional fantasy being stuck in a rut and why it had to change

---

The book that started it all.

This isn’t a review. I don’t like to review books that are part of a series until I’ve read the whole set. I don’t think it’s fair to put my thoughts down before I’ve got the whole picture, as it were. So this more some initial thoughts on Sam Sykes’s book Tome of the Undergates, first in the Aeon’s Gate trilogy, and more general musings on the genre.

I’ve loved fantasy ever since first reading Raymond E Feist’s Magician when I was about 10. But it seems to me that traditionally fantasy has been rather, well, traditional. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the genre itself or if fantasy authors and readers are just resistant to change, but since Tolkien it seems that the genre has stuck with certain ways of doing things.

There tend to be three main races: humans, elves and dwarves. Of these only humans have any kind of diversity. Elves are always good, beautiful, sophisticated and forest dwelling. Dwarves live in caves, are bearded, industrious and axe wielding. Their evil counterparts are orcs (sometimes replaced by dark elves) and goblins, respectively. And these races are always evil. Only humans can be either, and even then it’s pretty uncomplicated. You’re either good through and through (think Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings) or thoroughly bad (Grima Wormtongue).

Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary

Magicians tend to be one of two types. Either old men (Gandalf) or youngsters whose bookish ways have left them weak. They would have been bullied by the bigger boys, all except one who befriended and championed him and grows up to be the hero warrior (Pug and Thomas in the aforementioned Magician, Raistlin and his brother Caramon in Dragonlance).

You’ll notice that I’ve only used the male pronoun. This is because women don’t feature much in traditional fantasy. They’re mothers, sisters or daughters. They might facilitate the hero, but they are never themselves the protagonist. In more than 1,000 pages, The Lord of the Rings has three female characters. Galadriel and Arwen pretty much do nothing. Eowyn is more interesting, but even she has to pretend to be a man in order to achieve anything.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. Fantasy was a boy stuck in his teenage years, where everything is black and white, girls are some terrifying ‘Other’ and any kind of diversity or ambiguity is scary. Things had to change – it was time fantasy grew up.

With his New Crobuzon books, the wonderful China Mieville just invented a whole new genre – a kind of steampunk urban fantasy. But there has also emerged a more realistic type of fantasy – something that turns the genre on its head. I credit George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series as the initiator of this.

Shades of grey
Suddenly things weren’t quite so cut and dried. Good people did bad things or had bad things happen to them (who could forget Eddard Stark’s fate?), bad people didn’t necessarily get their comeuppance, women actually had a part to play. Characters could be morally ambiguous - they didn’t all choose a side and stick to it. And you really shouldn’t get too attached to any of the characters because you simply don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

As well as GRRM, writers of this brand of fantasy include Britain’s Joe Abercrombie and Americans Peter V Brett, Mark Lawrence and Brent Weeks.

This new, grittier fantasy turned the old tropes upside down and inside out. It’s also often really rather violent, leading to the use of the term ‘grimdark’. I think this was originally meant to be disparaging but proponents of the sub-genre have embraced it.

If I had to identify one thing I don't
like about these books it would be the
cover art. But I'm reading them
on a Kindle so that's not really important.

So back to the book that started all this musing: Sam Sykes’s Tome of the Undergates. I’m not sure if this is grimdark, but it has all the characteristics. Moral ambiguity; characters with complex reasons for behaving the way they do; violence, lots of violence in fact; it’s dark and gritty and full of things like murder, betrayal and bad things happening. It’s also great fun, has some wonderfully crude humour and some stunningly beautiful descriptions.

I downloaded the book because I follow Sam Sykes on Twitter. I think that if you follow an author and find them entertaining then the least you can do is buy one of their books. This does have its drawbacks. What if you like the author on Twitter but end up not liking the book? This happened to me with Mary Robinette Kowal. She’s lovely on Twitter but I just didn’t get on with her book, Shades of Milk and Honey. Luckily that didn’t happen here, and I really like this book. In fact since I started writing this rather long blog post I’ve finished both Tome of the Undergates and the second book and made a good start on the third and final installation, The Skybound Sea. I also bought the first book for my dad.

The problem is that I’ve started Twitter stalking Mr Sykes, sending him @replies like we’re friends, when clearly we’re not. He hasn’t blocked me or anything, so I guess it’s not that bad. But I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise, anyway. Also, if you’re on Twitter follow him, he’s @SamSykesSwears.

Book review: Shades of Milk and Honey

This Austen/magic mash-up didn’t prove spellbinding for me

---

The problem with following authors on Twitter is that when you don’t like their books you feel bad. I do, anyway, especially when said author seems to be so nice.

I really didn’t get on with Mary Robinette Kowal’s Shades of Milk and Honey. Jane Austen-esque, it was essentially Sense and Sensibility with magic, or glamour as it’s called in the book. I didn’t warm to the main character, Jane, at all. Mostly I just thought she needed to get over herself and grow a backbone. Her younger sister Melody was just plain annoying.

While the passages on glamour were often beautiful, the story itself was completely predictable. In some ways it was both too similar to Jane Austen and yet not similar enough. It was so alike that I couldn’t help but compare it, unfavourably, to the original. Had it simply followed the story of Sense and Sensibility, more like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (the story of P&P with added zombie fun), I might have been able to let the story wash over me and just enjoyed the addition of magic.

Modern-day menace
I found some of the language jarring. Depression instead of melancholia, for example. The former was in use in the 19th century, but the latter was far more common, especially among laypeople. And using gift as a verb is just plain wrong (as in a synonym for given, rather than talented).

I understand that Kowal did a lot of research to ensure the historical accuracy of the series so it’s likely that she had good reason for using the language she did; unfortunately I don’t know what those reasons might be so I can only judge as I find.

Melody was just plain annoying

It was also really very obvious what was going to happen – who would turn out to be the rotter, who the good guy behind the taciturn exterior. And it was about as subtle as a punch to the face. I got it from the very first page that Jane was plain and Melody beautiful. It didn’t need to be repeated every couple of paragraphs.

It’s a shame, because I really wanted to like this book, but I just didn’t warm to it. I won’t be reading any of the others in the series.

Review: My Mad Fat Teenage Diary

This teenage diary wasn’t what I expected, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing

---

I bought this having watched the excellent TV show on Channel 4, but then I had a look at the comments on Goodreads and was a bit apprehensive. The main criticism was that the book was nothing like the series, and it’s true: the book is different.

Much of what made the series so good is missing: Rae’s social worker; her friends back at the hospital; her burgeoning relationship with Fin. She’s also younger in the series and it’s set in the early 90s rather than 1989. In the diary she’s on a scholarship to a private school, creating all kinds of wealth issues, which aren’t in the series. Several other elements are present and correct: the bitchy best friend; the weight issues; the sex-mad teenager-iness; the visit to a rave.

Rae’s mental illness was much more visible in the series. In the diary it’s hardly mentioned at all. In fact she explains that she doesn’t want to talk about it because she doesn’t really know how to deal with it.

I challenge anyone who’s ever been a teenage girl to not identify with Rae on some level

But once you accept these differences, the diary is actually a very good read. In the series Rae was always the ‘good guy’, but in the diary she can be selfish, thoughtless, mean, even cruel at times. Often she doesn’t realise. But it makes her more real. In fact for all her mental health problems, Rae is a normal teenage girl, with body issues, love life issues, arguments with her friends and her mum. She’s just trying to find her identity in this world, and I challenge anyone who’s ever been a teenage girl to not identify with her on some level.

Book review: Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford

Hard work, but worth it – mostly.

---

I downloaded this having watched the BBC adaptation starring the wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch. This is the first of Maddox Ford’s books I’ve read and I’m not sure it’s the best introduction to his work. For a start it’s huge – 906 pages, according to my Kindle. It’s also quite hard going.

Set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of Christopher Teijens, the youngest son of an old, respected Yorkshire family. Unhappily married to Sylvia and bringing up a son who might not be his, Christopher finds his head turned by the young Valentine Wannop.

This isn’t an easy book to get into, but it is worth the effort. It is incredibly well written. Christopher goes off to fight in the First World War and the sections on his experiences of trench warfare are some of the best I’ve ever read. At times moving and comic, it conveys both the horror and the stultifying boredom perfectly. Christopher’s frustrations with his commanders and the politicians back home will surely be recognisable to any captain in the field.

There are some great moments of humour, with Sylvia’s arrival at her husband’s barracks almost farcical in its mistaken identities and misunderstandings. None of the characters are particularly likeable, but this didn’t matter. In fact it made more sense than the BBC adaptation, in which Christopher was essentially sympathetic and I couldn’t understand Sylvia’s antipathy towards him. In the book her behaviour is much more understandable.

Sylvia herself is an interesting character. It would have been easy to cast her as The Bitch or The Whore, but she isn’t. She takes lovers throughout her marriage and there is a suggestion that Christopher isn’t the father of her son, yet she isn’t judged by the book. In fact all the women are ‘real’ characters, with their own motivations. A very unusual and refreshing situation.

So why only three stars? The book is seriously let down by the ending. The BBC series finished with the end of the war and the troops coming home. The book, however, carries on with some rather long-winded and to my mind pointless chapters told from the point of view of Christopher’s brother Mark and his French mistress, as well as Valentine and Sylvia. For me this final section put something of a dampener on what was otherwise an excellent book.

Organisation - how am I doing?

Back in February I wrote a post about organising my time better. I wanted more time to do the things I enjoy, while getting on with things like cleaning; I had four areas I wanted to improve on: organisation, blogging, Spanish and designing. We're about halfway through the year (yes really), so how am I doing?

Errands is a great way to get organised.

1 An organised flat
Using an app called Errands, I've been planning my evenings so that I do a small amount of cleaning and tidying every day. This worked so well. My flat has been a joy to live in. My mum has come over a couple of times this year. Normally this would involve two or three days prior to her visit spent in frantic cleaning mode. Not this year. The flat was already clean and tidy.

2 Blogging
I've managed to stick to my schedule of three posts a week, with the only breaks being when I've been away and when I was ill. I'm happy with that. I know I could schedule blogs for when I'm away, but I really don't feel the need to.

3 Spanish
Yeah, totally failed on this one. I started off well – doing Mi Vida Loca on the BBC website once a week and with plans to sign up for the next language course offered by HALS (Haringey Adult Learning Services). But then I missed the enrollment date for the course and the rest just slipped. I will pick it up again, but probably not until at least September now.

4 Design
Another success! I've been designing for knitting and crochet and I've even managed to get a pattern published.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with myself. I've managed to hit three of my four goals, I'm a whole lot less stressed and I feel like my evenings are my own.

A Scottish Sojourn

No 'proper' blog post today as I spent the weekend in Scotland. This was my first-ever visit to the country, which is shocking really as I used to go up to Northumberland two or three times a year when I was younger. You'd think at one point our parents would have taken us across the border.

I travelled up with my mum. We stayed in the village of Tomintoul in the Glenavon Hotel. The point of the visit was to see Black Grouse and Osprey, and we got both, so we were very happy. There were also bonus Red Grouse, Eurasian Curlew, Oystercatcher and tiny Northern Lapwing chicks. Mammals seen were Red and Roe Deer and Red Squirrel.

I'll be writing up a full report for the Birdwatch website and post a link on here.

Sunday Best - a new direction

Just a short post today. When I first started doing Sunday Best posts the idea was to find cool stuff from around the interwebz, but I’ve realised it’s very quickly turned into a list of stuff that you can buy from Folksy or Etsy, which isn’t the point at all.

To fix this I’m introducing a new, more structured approach. Each week I’ll have a series of ‘Bests’ which I’ll have found over the internet, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. These will be Best Picture, Best Pattern, Best Pin and Best Product. Hopefully this will make these posts altogether more interesting and useful.

The new approach will begin a week on Sunday, as this weekend I shall be in Scotland looking for Black Grouse and Osprey.

How to read more and pay less

The coming of the Kindle and other eReaders prompted predictions of the imminent death of publishing. Predictably, this didn’t happen, and in fact most people I know who have Kindles are reading more than ever – I certainly am.

There are also many more books out there to choose from. eReaders have led to a veritable explosion in self-publishing. Of course this does mean there’s a lot more dross to wade through, but it also means there are lots and lots more diamonds to find.

I’m a huge fan of my Kindle. I love that I can finish a book in a series and in seconds be reading the next one. I love that there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of out-of-copyright books that can be downloaded for free. I love that self-publishing is opening up new avenues for both writers and readers. And I love that reading all those books doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Twitter
Are you on Twitter? Then get following @FreebooksUK. This feed tracks and lists free ebooks on Amazon. Follow the link, read the synopsis and if you’re interested download it for free.

A lot of these books are by indie authors or the first in a series. So if you enjoy the book, repay the author by buying the next one or by rating the book on Goodreads or Amazon. Writing a short review is even better.

Another good source of cheap books is @eBookDailyUK. This account tracks reduced price and occasionally free titles on Amazon. Unlike FreebooksUK, it often includes bestsellers.

Project Gutenberg
This project is really quite amazing – tens of thousands of free books that have been digitised by an army of volunteers and uploaded so that you can download and read them. All the book here are out of copyright, so it’s a great source for classics.

If you use the resource often you might want to consider donating or volunteering some of your time.

Amazon
Of course Amazon itself is a great resource, with books for £2.99 or less, as well as seasonal sales.

So there's my tips for some ways to get hold of cheap and free books. What resources do you use?

Thrifty finds

I do love a bargain, and recently I’ve managed to pick up a few I’m quite proud of. I was ultra-excited last week when we had our first warm(ish) days of the year. Not just because it was the first time in months that going outside didn’t reduce me to tears – although that did play a big part – but also because it was the first time it was warm enough to wear my new coat. It’s a gorgeous fake fur and corduroy 70s-style extravaganza that I adore and can’t wait to wear more of. I picked it up in a local Cancer Research shop for under a tenner. I’ll be getting some outsized sunglasses and flowers for my hair to complete the look, obviously.

Still waiting for that warm day to wear this again.
Hopefully this weekend?

I also found a lovely knitted lace top/dress, originally from Oasis, but again discovered in a charity shop. It’s gold with a sparkly gold thread running through it and should look great over jeans with a T-shirt underneath or worn as a dress with a slip underneath.

It's a friend's birthday party soon.
The ideal time to break this one out, I think!

My final thrifty find is for the kitchen. I’ve been struggling with a very old and mostly blunt knife set for a while now – I had to give up buying squashes because I couldn’t actually cut them. So when a multi-coloured set complete with perspex block from Jean Patrique came up for sale I didn’t hesitate. It’s currently advertised on the company’s site for just over £200, but I got it for under £20. I’m not entirely sure how they can offer such huge savings, maybe it’s a loss leader for enticing customers to the website and then getting them to buy other items at full cost.

Arty shot of my new pretty knives!

The high street unchained

HMV's flagship store in Oxford Street. Photo by
Edward (commons.wikimedia.org).

The loss of high street stores HMV, Blockbusters and Jessops is sad news, especially for the thousands of employees who find themselves out of work. General belief seems to be that these - along with Woolworths - may be the first to go, but they certainly won't be the last. The internet and supermarkets simply have too much power - economies of scale mean they can offer products at ever-cheaper prices and stock pretty much everything you could ever want, and in the case of internet shopping at any time day or night.

One of the big questions is what this might mean for our high streets. As more chains fail, will our towns be overtaken by endless charity shops, bookmakers, mobile phone shops and pound shops? A few years ago there was something of an outcry about ghost towns and clone towns - town centres abandoned as shoppers move to out-of-town malls and retail parks or high streets that look exactly the same wherever you might be. The authors of that study can hardly have known just how accurate their predictions might be.

A different way
But does it really have to be like that? Back in the deep and distant past, the first video-rental shop my parents were a member of was a small, independent store. It was killed off by the likes of Blockbuster, and, no doubt, the advent of cheap videos in chains like HMV. Could it be that the loss of national chain stores will open the way for small independent shops to rise again? If, as predicted, more chains will go, it will leave behind a vacuum that will be filled one way or another.

It won't be easy. If the internet can see off national, (once) successful household names like HMV, then it can certainly beat off competition from an indie. But difficult doesn't have to mean impossible, and a savvy indie can survive, and even - dare I say it? - be successful. Running an independent store these days is very different from back when I used to visit that video-rental place. For one thing to make a success of things now requires a pretty high-profile web presence. And that doesn't just mean having a nice-looking website. No, today customer engagement is also about Twitter, Facebook, blogging, eNewsletters and more. It's about using all these (often free) platforms to keep your customers' attention.

In my little corner of north London there are knitting shops Nest (Crouch End) and Knit With Attitude (Stoke Newington) as well as bookshops the Big Green Bookshop (Wood Green) and the Stoke Newington Bookshop (unsurprisingly Stoke Newington again). Further afield is Cambridge's The Sheep Shop, another knitting shop. All of these outlets have several things in common. Firstly they're all active online - blogging, tweeting, Facebooking or keeping customers aware of their goings-on via newsletters.

Knit With Attitude in Stoke Newington, London.
Photo by Knit With Attitude.

Customer service
Any shop, online or on the high street, can sell you a ball of wool, some needles and a pattern book, and you can bet that Amazon, eBay or Tesco can do it more cheaply than most. But can Amazon, eBay or Tesco tell a beginner knitter what makes a good starter project? Or advise on which yarn to substitute for the lovely but pricey Debbie Bliss Cashmerino? Or extol the virtues of circular needles over straights? I can, and I'm sure the ladies at Nest, Knit With Attitude and The Sheep Shop can too.

Similarly, a while a go I happened to mention to one of the owners of The Big Green Bookshop that I was waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the next book in George RR Martin's opus A Song of Fire and Ice. He suggested I read Joe Abercrombie. Some few years later I've read every book Abercrombie's published and he's one of my favourite authors. Think you'd get that kind of service from Tesco? Yes, Amazon has recommendations, but sometimes they seem so random that the criteria is nothing more than Hey! You bought a book, here are some more books! It also can't distinguish between items bought for oneself and those bought for friends or family. So my Amazon account is currently trying to offer me CDs similar to Michael Buble (bought for my mum), Frank Sinatra (my dad) and Twisted Sister (my brother).

Don't get me wrong. I use Amazon. I bought the majority of last year's Christmas presents there. The choice is phenomenal and the prices right. I can't get the CDs my brother wants for the same price anywhere else. I can even get everything delivered straight to my parents' house so I don't have to lug is all from London to Cambridge. But I suspect - although I don't have any evidence - that brand loyalty to these 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' emporia is pretty non-existent. If eBay or Tesco can provide the same products cheaper or quicker then we'll go there. The only thing that keeps us from swapping more regularly is inertia.

Amazon can offer choice and cheap, what it can't offer is personal service. And it's that that breeds brand loyalty. Find a local store staffed by real people who know their product and loyalty will follow. If you know you'll get great service, wouldn't you be willing to stump up a bit more cash or go a bit out of your way?

Stoke Newington Bookshop, London. Photo by
Tony Corsini (commons.wikimedia.org).

Belonging
There's another 'C' that Amazon, Tesco and the like can't offer: community. This is especially significant in London, but I think it’s important everywhere, even the sleepiest of villages. I’ve lived in London for nearly 13 years, and in that time I’ve lived in five different boroughs. The only time I’ve ever felt like I belonged to a community has been in the last three years and part of that is because I joined two knitting groups and one book group. One of the knitting groups was at a pub, the other two meetings were organised by and took place in shops.

All of the stores I’ve mentioned above run various meetings, classes and activities, making themselves important parts of their local community while also helping to create that community, that sense of belonging to something that is missing from so much of modern life. Another example would be Theatre of Wine in Greenwich, with its wine club and monthly tastings and knowledgeable staff.

What I’m advocating is a return to a time when retail was career that imparted knowledge and skills, when staff and managers understood what they were selling and could offer well-thought-out advice, when customer service was important and staff were invested and interested in what they did. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? But it could work.

• Many thanks to Charlie Moores (Talking Naturally), Annie Martin (Annie Sparkles) and others on Twitter and Facebook for comments and thoughts.

Confessions of a sewing machine virgin

I have a sewing machine; I’ve had it for quite a while. I bought it from my good friend Danger Badger (she’s awesome; follow her on Twitter) when she needed money for drugs*. So here’s my confession: I’ve never used it. I’m scared of it.

See, with knitting or crochet it doesn’t matter if you do something wrong. Most mistakes aren’t even noticeable and those that are can generally be rectified; even if you can’t fix something you can just rip back what you’ve done and start again. But sewing involves cutting. And once you’ve cut something you can’t just go back and do it again. I’m also a worried about sewing in a straight line. Really, how do you do that?

I know I should just get an old pillowcase and sit down one evening and practise - cut some fabric, sew some (not-so) straight lines. Which brings me to my other issue with my sewing machine. It involves so much work. With knitting, I just pick up whatever I want to work on, turn on the TV or stereo and curl up on the sofa. Simple. Chuck in a glass of wine (oh, OK, two. All right, the bottle) and you’ve got a perfect evening. With the sewing machine, I need find space for it on the kitchen table, get it out of its cover, plug it in, work out how to get needle and thread in it - it’s all too much. So it just remains in its cover, forlorn and unused.

But this is fast becoming Not Good Enough. I’ve been designing knitted and crocheted iPhone and Kindle covers and I want to line them, maybe making little interior pockets to keep money or cash cards in. I need to learn how to use my sewing machine. And due to the great customer service at Elna I no longer even have the excuse that I can’t find the user manual, because I emailed them and got a PDF version back the very next day.

*to move to Switzerland

It  doesn't look that terrifying does it? But it is. Photo by Idoru Knits.

What if meat were no longer murder?

Will cows soon be safe from the meat industry?

I’ve not eaten meat for 26 years, so it was with some interest that a few weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian Weekend magazine about ‘fake’ meat and how scientists are looking into ways to make it more ‘meaty’. The feature is now on the Guardian’s website.

Two means of making fake meat were discussed. The first was pretty uncontroversial: using plant material to synthesise meat, much the same as Quorn today but actually tasting and - crucially - feeling like meat. I can’t actually remember the taste and texture of meat, but I understand that any replacement meat products currently on the market don’t come close.

Well, I say uncontroversial, but that’s not so to the many companies making millions from producing and selling the real thing. To them this research is highly problematic. But not from a moral standpoint. The second method, however, is more complicated.

In the future we could all be eating meat grown in test tubes.

This involves in-vitro meat - flesh grown in test tubes. Take a pig, or a cow, or any animal for that matter, kill it and, using stem cells, grow some meat. It’s obviously a lot more complex than that, involving all sorts of science magic. It also requires killing an animal. But, the article says, one animal “could provide the seed material for hundreds of tonnes of meat”. This is obviously much better than is currently the case - about 1,600 mammals and birds are slaughtered PER SECOND for human consumption, according the Guardian.

According to this Time article, the average person in the industrialised world eats around 176lbs of meat a year. There are 2,204 pounds in a tonne. So just one tonne of in-vitro meat would feed 12 people for a year. Hundreds of tonnes would feed thousands. One animal for thousands of people doesn’t sound like too bad odds (unless you happen to be that animal).

The in-vitro process seems to somehow remove the act of killing from the production of the meat - that cow can’t possibly have anything to do with those lab-grown steaks can it? And it certainly answers the environmental questions. But is it enough? For me, no. I want to see a process in which no animal is harmed.

What if that were possible? What if, instead of killing the cow, scientists could just administer a local anaesthetic and chop out the bit they need? Patch the cow up and send it on its merry way. They could ‘borrow’ animals used for other industries - dairy cattle, sheep or goats raised for their wool and so on. The environmental arguments against the meat industry are again safely rebutted, so what about the moral issues? The animals are no longer harmed and there’s no need for factory or intensive farming; in fact the few animals that were bred for meat production could live in the lap of luxury.

Guilt-free steak?

It seems I would no longer have a reason to be vegetarian. I’m still not sure I’d want to eat the meat though. Why? I’m not entirely sure. Its provenance doesn’t bother me, although I’m sure it would worry many people. I think that, after 26 years of not eating the stuff, the idea of ingesting flesh just doesn’t appeal. That said, I’d happily eat the plant-derived stuff, even if the taste and texture were exactly the same as the in-vitro version.