Crinklybee

Brandy Snaps

The last Friday morning of the working year, and as I write (well there's bugger-all work to do after all), an eery quiet has descended over the usually hectic office.  An artificial Christmas tree flickers over by the Stationery cupboard, and the muted sounds of a some sort of heavenly choir drift, tumbleweed-like, out of the tannoy system and become hopelessly tangled up in the air conditioning, causing the duty site manager to look up from his game of onscreen solitaire and put through a call to a firm of maintenance contractors in Blackburn- where, against a backdrop of 'Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer' seemingly played on a 1980s Bontempi organ, a pre-recorded message tells him everyone has gone home, and to call back on January 2nd.  The duty manager sighs, puts the phone down, and moves a virtual nine of diamonds into position underlapping a virtual ten of spades. 

Around him, the skeleton staff clatter about among rows of empty desks covered in chocolate wrappings.  On the automotive flange team a desultory conversation on the subject of the latter career of Cliff Richard breaks out, only to peter awkwardly away into the middle distance, rather like the latter career of Cliff Richard.  Somebody from Metalworking and Finishing comes back from the coffee machine with four steaming styrofoam cups, and the tin of king-size tin of Quality Street- 'Thanks for all your help in 2006- Bob National Salesmanager'- makes its ninth circuit of the desks since 9AM.  But there are only those hard ones left-you know, the ones with the walnuts in- and they go unclaimed.  The heavenly choir drifts off into 'Come all ye Faithful', and the Duty Manager, with a triumphant flourish of the mouse, slaps a virtual two of spades onto a virtual three of hearts.  The day's work is nearly done.

And Christmas- in case you didn't quite catch what I was getting at yet- is very nearly upon us.  This morning at-work-but-not-really-at-work is the calm before the storm.  In just over an hour's time the Duty Manager will, with a benevolent, almost Papal flourish of the raised right arm excuse us from our duties for the year, and a gaggle of like-minded souls (read: hardened, desperate drinkers) will descend on that trendy bar opposite Deansgate Station, whatever it is called nowadays, and embark on the utterly serious business of  the yearly end-of-term drinking session.  I will intend to join them for a couple, but end up having more like four (read: five, at least) before stumbling through Manchester streets rapidly emptying of scurrying last-minute shoppers to catch the last train home to Levenshulme before the trains start, like the latter career of Cliff Richard, to peter awkwardly away into the middle distance.

And then- and then, Christmas will really begin in earnest, my fine feathered friends.  As we speak, Charlotte and young Frankie are somewhere in deepest Cheshire, scouring the aisles of Marks and Spencers in preparation for a staged strategic invasion by various branches of both of our families, set to last half-way to the New Year.  I've put in a request for a packet of Port Salut cheese, and four big bottles of M&S own-brand 'Birra De Oro' (like Peroni only somehow more Italian and more English at the same time, a snip at £2.19 for 2 litres, you should all try it).  Back in Levenshulme a game of charades will be held up for ten minutes while a stewards enquiry is held into a little known, arcane ruling- and attempts are made to rescusciate several of the less robust competitors using a festive combination of smelling salts and brandy snaps, whatever they are.

None of which, I don't think, will leave me much time to report from these pages again until, oooh, January 2nd or thereabouts.  So- if you have got here in time (perhaps you are filling in the last hour of that last eerily quiet morning in the office, or are just, like everyone else, trying to find a way out of writing last-minute cards for the neighbours), then, on behalf of all the staff here at Crinklybee Towers, I would like to wish you the very finest compliments of the season.  Don't overdo it on the brandysnaps, now, will you?

Book Review- A Year In The Life Of TheManWhoFellAsleep, by Greg Stekelman

Greg Stekelman, AKA TheManWhoFellAsleep, got in touch recently asking if I would like to take part in a 'virtual book tour' to promote his new novel.   Today the tour stops off at Crinklybee- what follows is my review of A Year In The Life Of TheManWhoFellAsleep.....

January 1

The doorbell rang.  I looked at the alarm clock.  It was 3AM.  I closed my eyes and pretended I hadn't heard it.  It rang again.

I put on a pair of jeans and answered the door.  It was Jesus.  He looked terrible. His hair was unkempt and there were grey bags under his eyes.  He stank of whisky.

'You had best come in', I said.

So begins Greg Stekelman's very novel indeed first novel, which takes the form of a journal recording a year in the life of the eponymous narrator, a male bedsit-dweller of indeterminate age whose banal, drizzle-drenched North London existence is punctured at surprisingly regular intervals by mid-afternoon visits from celebrities, both living and dead.  The Son Of God doesn't make a reappearance until December 9th- but in the meantime we make the unlikely acquaintance of the likes of Simon and Garfunkel (who bicker tiresomely over which of them gets to have the last fondant fancy),  Walter Matthau (who reports that he is finding being dead to be quite agreeable, 'like living in Florida') and Morrissey (who calls unexpectedly and, in the absence of any alternative sustenance, is fed 'a plate of iron filings.  Later on, I had fun pulling him around the lounge with a giant magnet'.) 

The irresistable surreality of this last vignette is entirely typical of A Year In The Life, a supposed journal which at regular intervals wilfully throws off the strictures imposed by the diary format to veer off at wildly varying angles from a loose narrative (which centres around a shadowy figure named, appropriately enough, The Shadow, who reappears at intervals to torment our sleepy hero with puzzles, never entirely resolved, of an existential nature).  In the hands of a lesser writer these tangential interludes (typically explained as originating in newspaper cuttings found by the narrator during his daily aimless perigrinations around suburban north London) could prove jarring- come across as self-indulgent, even.  Fortunately however, Stekelman's perfect deadpan comic pitch (and equally flawless grasp of culture, both highbrow and popular), ensure that the journal entries, however wildly varying in subject matter, combine to sumptiously satisfying effect.

So- one moment we are being treated to a page of alternative Premiership predictions in which Mark Lawrenson is recast (entirely believably, as it happens) as a power-crazed and vengeful deity, the next we are confronted with a Kafkaesque tale, in which a twelve-year-old Buenos Aires boy is abducted by a giant ant from an alien planet, only to be released when it becomes apparent that there has been a case of mistaken identity-an error which is not surprising given that, as the alien explains with a sigh in his faltering Spanish, 'all you humans look the same to us, anyway'.  A little later, when the ManWhoFellAsleep travels back in time (you don't need to know how he manages this right now) and catches a glimpse of his own childhood, Stekelman shows the deft, arresting turn of phrase that raises his work above the throwaway comic and into truly literary realms- recounting how 'my family looked so solid and yet so fragile- a bomb that hasn't been informed it is going to explode'.

The ManWhoFellAsleep may traverse continents, even occasionally travel through time- but the action always returns to a prosaic north London, where unscrupulous Greek newsagents sell multipack cans of cola in singles, the Northern Line grinds to a halt due to a power failure at Goodge Street- oh, and polar bears roam the streets, terrorising the inhabitants with their innate withering sarcasm ('it's not irony- it's sarcasm').  It is a curious world indeed, where encounters with polar bears and dead film celebrities are deemed too commonplace to be worthy of lengthy discussion - but snatches of overheard conversations on the the narrator's beloved Underground (which, collected together in neat sets of ten, form another of the strands holding the work together) contain great, zeitgeist-defining truths:

'The Civil Service is full of reformed goths and indie-kids'.

'They say Woody Allen's new film is a return to form, but then they say that about every film he ever makes'.

'We went into that posh bar and had raspberry beer.  We were the only people there'.

These soundbites of Tube Gossip, like much in Stekelman's debut novel (it is based on his acclaimed website, sections of which have been serialised in London's Time Out), pull off the seemingly impossible trick of being at once bleak and life-affirming.   At its best, A Year In The Life touches some remarkable heights- calling to mind by turns the irrepressible comic invention of early Woody Allen, the existential dismay of Sartre's Nausea, the haughty misanthropism of John Kennedy Toole.  The work bears comparison, I will go as far as to say, with every caustically perceptive comic work written from the perspective of a misfit lowly clerk struggling with contemporary urban existence that you or I have ever read. 

Yes, this book really is that good- a cult masterpiece in the making, no less- and, if you know what is good for you, you will put a call through to your loved ones right now, demanding its presence in your Christmas stocking.  In fact- don't rely on your loved ones- they'll probably get mixed up as usual and buy you Frank Lampard's autobiography instead.  Just go out and buy the damn thing for yourself.   And then follow the rest of the ManWhoFellAsleep's virtual booktour here. (it's stopping off at blogs far and wide over the next, ooh, couple of weeks).    Thank you everyone, and goodnight.

Nocturnal

Damn I've been keeping some strange hours recently.  It's all down to the impromptu siesta I've taken to having round about eight o'clock, on nights when it's my turn to put young Frankie to bed.  Typically, I will put my head down as well, thinking 'long day at work, just shut my eyes for ten minutes, won't actually fall asleep of course', only to find myself waking up with a start on the floor next to a slumbering baby, and stumbling wide-awake downstairs and turning on Channel Five to find it is nearly nine-o-clock, and Newcastle are well into the first half against whatever mediocre European opposition are being served up this week for the delectation of the Geordie nation (I am wondering by the way what I ever used to do with Thursday nights before they came to be dominated by the avuncular tones of match summariser Joe Royle, who is Channel Five's answer to Mark Lawrenson, except it is possible to conceive of going for a pint with Joe Royle without feeling the need to smash his head repeatedly against the fruit machine within the first ten minutes, just on general principles).

Where was I?  Oh yes, those strange hours.  So then it's ten o'clock, Newcastle United have set the nation (or at least the half-dozen neutrals who will tune into a meaningless UEFA cup tie on Channel Five on a Thursday night) quite a-buzz with a stunning backs-to-the-wall goalless draw in Frankfurt, and you're still wide-a-fucking-awake.  And it is your turn to make the dinner, so there is nothing for it but to search the larder, where for some reason you become strangely attracted to a combination of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, beans, and mushrooms, topped off with three strong cups of tea, a slice of toast and a healthy helping of gentleman's relish.  Twenty minutes later you're sitting in front of the evening news with a full English breakfast, and entertaining serious thoughts of moving straight onto a light ploughman's lunch over the late-night Dutch Premier League highlights, to be immediately followed by a Roast Beef dinner complete with Yorkshire puddings and after eight mints while perusing the early editions of the morning papers. 

By then of course it is past your weekday bedtime, but the strong cups of tea are starting to take effect so you decide just to sit down and attend to some business at the computer.  Three hours later you look up to realise you have written an entire Residents Association Newsletter (complete with headline puns which you are inordinately proud of in your sleep-deprived near-hallucinogenic state, such as 'See You Later Alleygating'), written a very lengthy email largely concerned with Newcastle's European adventure to fellow Geordie Ben, and drank two more cups of strong tea...and that yorkshire pudding/ morning paper combination is starting to look ever more tempting.  It is at that point that you come to your senses and decide to go straight to bed without any further ado- only in climbing up the stairs you wake the baby up, and have to spend twenty minutes soothing him to back to sleep with a ball-by-ball analysis of Newcastle's European set-play defensive strategy.  And then, of course, it is time for another cup of tea.

So- you get the general idea, I hope.  What I am saying is that I am gradually becoming nocturnal- or at least as near to nocturnal as it is possible to become while still holding down a nine-to-five job in a town centre office.  The whole sorry adventure is sure to end in tears and I will end up hopelessly deranged- but on the plus side, my neighbours will receive more pun-filled newsletters full of reminders about when to put their wheelie bins out than they will know what to do with, and I will become an expert in Dutch football.  Hell, and if I have any time left I may use the hours between five and seven AM to launch a bid for the Prime-Ministership, like that crazy woman who ran the country on two hours' sleep a night back in the eighties (what was her name again?)

Right- I'm going to bed now before the temptation to start work on a Yorkshire pudding, them maybe destroy the miners' unions and launch into an ill-conceived invasion of a faraway South Atlantic island, becomes absolutely irresistable.  That's if I can get up the stairs without waking Frankie up again, of course.  Wish me luck everyone.  I really do need some sleep.