Fleet Street in its heyday

News-gathering doesn't seem to have changed much over the years if Evelyn Waugh's Scoop is anything to go by. Shenanigans described in the 1930s book are remarkably similar to some of the tactics portrayed in 90s British sitcom, Drop the Dead Donkey, or the numerous fake news headlines one finds online these days.

But let me return to Scoop, a satire that lampoons the English newspaper industry in the run up to WW2. It follows the misadventures of William Boot, who is very happy writing puff pieces about country life for The Daily Beast, until, to his consternation, he is suddenly sent to Ishmaelia to take the post of war correspondent.

Like Waugh's The Loved One, which I read a few years ago, I didn't appreciate the humour until I tried to explain it to someone else. There's a pithy, satirical description of the two opposing Ishmaelite ideologies, Communism and Fascism, very topical when the book was written. It is of its time of course. Indeed, one short, eye-popping paragraph uses language that would probably get Waugh cancelled today. There's also an in-joke for the careful reader who might spot the phrase "Up to a point" repeated throughout the text. It's used by the foreign editor, Mr. Salter, to obliquely signify that he thinks his boss, newspaper magnate Lord Copper, is wrong

Up to a point, then, Scoop is most likely a great read only for those who worked on Fleet Street in its heyday. Since the online media revolution, it's somewhat anachronistic.

The prudes of Facebook

In 2018 I went to a friend's art exhibition and wrote the review below. I posted a link on Facebook, where it has lived happily for six years. And then I got this message:

6 Dec 2024
We removed your content
Why this happened: It looks like you shared or sent something that shows nudity or sexual activity.

So, good luck with sharing images of classical artwork such as Michelangelo's sculpture of David.

Here's the original review, with the image that caused such a fuss.

A peachy exhibition 🍑🍑🍑

Olivia Brazier's new exhibition, Les Pêcheuses (fisherwomen), uses witty French wordplay to link the fruity subject of the art (peaches / pêches) with the name of the venue, the Galerie des Pêcheurs (fishermen). As with her November 2017 show in Monaco, Olivia's current collection uses collage and painting techniques to create images that explore the link between the female body and language used to describe it. In this exhibition cut-outs of women taken from porn magazines have been paired with peaches.

The larger works have been transferred onto silk, the smaller ones onto tile-sized wooden blocks. Some have a slightly fuzzy, distressed finish, giving the impression that they have been rescued from a deserted Italian villa. A peach-coloured palette, with earthy umbers, ochres and siennas suggests warm, balmy days.

There are images of hands and arms adorned with jewellery which appear to be tied to the fruit with lines, giving a sense of constraint. But we also see subjects surrounded by foliage and flowers, enjoying freedom and sensuality, the type of women who are certainly not fishes in the sea, waiting for fishermen to reel them in.

Check out Olivia Brazier's work at:

• Olivia Brazier website
• brazinraizin on instagram

Les Pêcheuses exhibition, 16 November-30 January 2019:

• Galeries des Pêcheurs
  Parking des Pêcheurs, levels 1 and 2

Open 24/7, accessible from down escalators at 4 avenue St Martin and from car park at Chemin des Pêcheurs

Waiting for the train

I was waiting for the train the other day. It was early afternoon and I thought it wouldn't be too busy, but there were lots of people milling about and chattering. With a few minutes before the train was due, I found a seat and made some notes, and for some strange reason, Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade popped into my head. Perhaps the galloping rhythm reminded me of the train's movement. Anyway, here's the result.

French to the right of me,
Italian to the left of me,
a loud guy on his mobile on the edge of the platform.
Travellers tugging wheelies,
passengers pushing buggies,
a disembodied voice echoes from the speakers.
Footsteps, laughter, chatter.
Backpacks, bum-bags, handbags.
A humming train pulls in, sighs, stops. I push on.

Learning how to be independent and how to recycle

Stig of the Dump takes me back to when it was read out in my junior school class. I was probably the same age as Barney, the boy who was told, "If you went too near the edge of the chalk pit the ground would give way". Barney wanted to see if what the adults said was true, and of course, "the ground gave way." He "felt his head going down and his feet going up" as he fell into the world of Stig, a stone-age character who speaks no English, and who uses discarded rubbish to make useful implements. Barney returns to the pit to see Stig whenever he stays with his Grandmother in Kent.

Figure out where you're going before you go there

I decided to read Rabbit, Run after seeing it included in a couple of listings of great literature of the 20th century. It's about Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, the most selfish, self-centred, tin-eared, immature character that I've ever encountered.

Just how lucky we'd been

I picked up Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go because it was described as a dystopian story. The events take place in 1990s England, but it's not quite the place and time that I remember. Kathy narrates the tale. She tells us about her relationship with Tommy and Ruth, her friends at a school called Hailsham.

Uptight women, Chanel suits, fluffy little handbag dogs?

I went to the Free Verse Poetry Book and Magazine Fair in April 2024, looking for options for self-publishing. Meandering through the stalls, I spotted a book with a jacket that looked like the flag of Monaco; red strip at the top, white strip at the bottom. On closer inspection, I discovered it was a novella titled Monaco, by Juliet Jacques. Well, I know a bit about the Principality, so of course I bought the book.