Archive for January, 2008

Posted on January 29, 2008 - by MG

Asere que vola - Habana Abierta

At last Saturday night’s Clave Club I bumped into a long-time salsa aquaintance, Danielle who told me that she’d been reading my blog. It reminded me that it’s been a while since I blogged anything about salsa or Cuba or anything…and there’s a link to my blog from the Cubanisimo regular email newsletter. So maybe it’s time that I did.

My favourite new song from a Cuban band is the brilliant rock/african/funk/salsa fusion track Asere que vola?, by Spain-based Cubans, Habana Abierta.

It’s jazzy, rock and funk, but you sure can dance to it - salsa and reggaeton. ‘Asere que vola?’ translates roughly as ‘Mate, what’s going on?’, but as usual in the translation of colourful street slan, it loses all the sparkle.

The lyrics tell of the news a guy receives from his Cuban mates all over the world - as he asks them via chat, email etc - ‘Asere, que vola?’. It’s cheerful, joyful, ironic, full of wonder at the outside world (I heard that in Denmark it’s brutally cold!) that these lucky young Cubans find themselves in…because most Cubans can only dream of seeing the rest of the world. But as always with Cubans outside Cuba, there’s sorrow and homesickness for the island.

Posted on January 26, 2008 - by MG

Rallying the pals…

So I’ve been shamelessly urging my friends to go buy a copy (or more!) of “The Joshua Files - Invisible City”. Of course! Can’t expect the publishers do do all the leg work…and friends and family have to be the first enthusiasts.

I was particularly touched by my good friend Debbie Simpson and her daughter Ellie (pictured above), who bought a little stack which I signed for them in our local Costa. Debbie told me how she’d watched the whole process - starting with me saying I was going to write a novel when I broke my leg, all the way through to publishers making offers for the title, with increasing amazement.

“I was worried for you at first, because when you broke your leg and decided you were going to try to get a book deal, I was scared that you’d be disappointed…”

Now she tells me!

“…and then I started to see how determined you were…and then last year when you showed me the stuff the publishers gave you when they made their offers…I was so excited, I could feel my heart racing…I thought this is really the start of something…!”

Well I had my doubts on the way too, like all first-time writers. You can never know that you’re going to get your book published. You can only know how far you’re prepared to go to get the deal.

I have to say I was pretty determined; I would have gone on for at least another year - full time. Here’s a secret - I was prepared to write four manuscripts before I gave up.

I really admire people who’ll work even harder than that. They do exist!

Posted on January 22, 2008 - by MG

“The Joshua Files - Invisible City”: on the shelves!

“The Joshua Files - Invisible City” spotted in Oxford city centre WHSmith’s. Face out, eye-level and a nice stack of them, hurray!

A casual stroll through Oxford today resulted in a first-sighting of ‘Invisible City’ in the shops, almost 2 weeks before the official publication. I only went into Waterstones, WHSmith’s in Oxford and The Book House in Summertown but they all had at least one copy - and Smith’s had loads!

Very exciting. And strange, strange feeling of disconnection.

It’s also in stock on Amazon.co.uk.

Go on then, buy it! (please) Read it and post 5-star mega reviews on Amazon (pretty please)!

But remember what our mothers taught us: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Posted on January 19, 2008 - by MG

Now that is book…

According to that repository of urban hipness, The Spectator, New York street lingo for ‘cool’ is now ‘book’. It comes from predictive text of the T9 type, which often offers ‘book’ when you type in 2665 (which also spells ‘cool’).

No, I didn’t believe it either, because, hello, Speccie telling me something about street life as opposed which boutique hotel in Estonia I should be staying at or whether to buy dresses of the Diane Von Furstenberg or ISSA variety, or telling me how to manage the diplomatic fallout caused by an as-yet-unwritten thank you letter for a lunch six months ago…?

But I checked it out on Google and it seems to be true.

Steve Jobs reckons that nobody reads books anymore, or so I heard. But if the word ‘book’ itself is, yanno, book, then that itself is pretty book… innit?

Posted on January 18, 2008 - by MG

“The Joshua Files - Invisible City”: book trailer

Here’s my first attempt at a mashup!

Using photos, videos, Animoto.com’s music/video engine, a song (’Invisible City’ from the album ‘File in Rhythm’) by Minneapolis indie band Beight licensed from MagnaTune Records, all jumbled together using Sony Vegas Movie Studio, here is the book trailer for THE JOSHUA FILES - INVISIBLE CITY.

View it! Comment on it! Spread it!

Posted on January 17, 2008 - by MG

Summertown is getting a Starbucks!

Summertown is getting a Starbucks!Originally uploaded by mgharris

Forgive the excitement but it seems that the charming yet overpriced, much-missed Bakehouse is to be replaced with a Starbucks!!!

M&S food, Costa coffee and starbucks…the anti-glob hand-wringers might get in a tizzy but I predict that like Costa, the place will be full all day from day one.

Summertown has a lot of caffeine-hungry people! There’s all the year 11s and older from Cherwell, the mums-with-babies, the big-haired lads and lasses from Teddy’s, the Oxfam and Oxford Uni employees.

Not to mention the itinerant authors with wayyy too much time on their hands.

I hear that JK Rowling has been spotted writing in cafés again. Good onya, Jo. Get cracking. I don’t see why being a squillionaire should get anyone off the hook, when there’s a hungry audience waiting for the next fix from a creative mind.
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on January 15, 2008 - by MG

“The Joshua Files - Invisible City”: book and Website

Specially for Lukas, who wanted to know what the book looks like without the slipcover.

Ooh it’s dead good how the slipcover glows at the edges. The effect works best in a dimly lit room. A photo just doesn’t do it justice but I’ve tried to capture the effect here:

Don’t the design people at Scholastic totally RULE?

Meanwhile the official Joshua Files Website is now up and running! It’s got a sample chapter and cool desktop wallpapers to download.

My little 6-year old has been talking the book up in her primary school, bless her. And yesterday I told her to go choose a new book to read from her bookshelf, but instead she went and found my one copy of ‘Invisible City’ and presented it to me very shyly. “Are you sure?” I said. “It’s a bit grown-up for you.”

But she was adamant. So I started reading it to her. It’s going to take a while because I have to explain things as we go. But if our neighbour can read ‘Northern Lights’ to her four-year old, then dammit, I’ll really try to help my little daughter to enjoy ‘Invisible City’.

Posted on January 13, 2008 - by MG

In Praise Of Maths and Mr Graham Sadler

Our teenage daughter made me very happy today by telling me that she’s choosing maths as one of her four ‘A’ Levels next year.

Maths is a subject that she’s always found a challenge - and I like to see her push herself, to do a subject that she really doesn’t find easy. This year I’ve had occasion to field phone calls from several annoyed teachers complaining about her not handing in coursework on time - and the maths teacher was one of them. But in the past few weeks her attitude has shifted somewhat. I hope it lasts!

Something similar happened to me - maths was always a subject I grappled with, and yet bizarrely I ended up taking it as an ‘A’ level and even having to sit the Oxford University entrance exam’s ‘maths for scientists’ paper. Crumbs that was scary.

In fact, it’s fair to say that maths was my weakest subject at ‘O’ level. I wasn’t an all As student, far from it. I even failed my maths mock ‘O’ level, which ignited a panic - you needed maths ‘O’ level for most science university degree courses in those days. So my mother found me a tutor - Graham.

Graham was the partner of one of my mother’s best friends. He was vague and eccentric, but a brilliant mathematician and a teacher at Xaverian 6th Form College. An unreformed hippy, Graham was fair-haired and raggedy-bearded with sad blue eyes and a pensive countenance He hardly ever smiled, but told many jokes.

Graham’s Victorian terraced house in Chorlton was a shrine to his interest in music and his travels in India. The walls were draped with rugs, pictures of Hindu deities, old stringed instruments including a sitar. The front room was so crammed with antiques and knick-knacks that you could barely shuffle in between the upright piano and the setees, Ottoman and mahogany coffee table. The air was infused with the smell of marijuana mingled into sandalwood and cloves.

While Graham and I talked quietly about maths in the back room, my mother and her friend would drink tea and talk about German literature in the front room. Graham would look over what I’d done in class that day, explain anything I didn’t understand and sketch out problems on scraps of paper. He’d chain-smoke hand-rolled cigarettes throughout and I’d try not to show that it bothered me. When we’d finished Graham and I would join the others in the front room and we’d eat poppy seed cake or some other home-baked German cake. Graham would play - very badly, a Chopin Nocturne, almost oblivious to our conversation.

It was Graham who persuaded me to do ‘A’ level maths. When I told him I was too thick he just shook his head. “You’re good at maths. You’d be even better if you just believed it.” It was Graham who persuaded me to move away from my beloved high school in the middle of the lower 6th, to Xaverian - a place which would provide the serious hard work and challenge I’d need to have a shot at Oxford.

It was Graham who nodded calmly when I told him in a breathless panic that I…I who couldn’t string two numbers together…would have to take the maths entrance exam paper for Oxford. I was almost choking with fear.

Graham and his then-partner had a child together - Sebastian - named for J.S. Bach. Since he refused to take money for the tutorials, I used to babysit Sebastian a little, until I left for Uni. But nothing like as much as I owed them.

Many years later I asked after Graham of my mother’s friend. Apparently he’d died alone of some gastric complaint and been discovered several days later. A pretty sad way to go and I really felt for his son. Graham wasn’t a good friend and was definitely a difficult man, but he stuck by me that year for no personal gain, just because he believed in me. That’s a REAL teacher.

Anyway…thanks to Graham I got B’s at both ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level maths. And I still hold as one of my personal triumphs that my mark for the maths entrance exam wasn’t my lowest - I got an alpha minus. My tutor at Oxford maybe thought I was some sort of maths genius (biochem candidates notoriously did appallingly on that paper…) - could be that’s what tipped him into awarding me the entrance scholarship.

But honestly it was a stroke of luck; a good paper and the calming influence of Graham Sadler, may he rest in peace.

Posted on January 10, 2008 - by MG

Books for readers aged 5-8: Amelia Bedelia

We have a 6-year old daughter and therefore are engaged in the struggle to find the right books for this age group.

It’s no surprise that it’s difficult. It’s an age where the reader’s appetite for story usually outstrips their ability to read or even understand the material themselves. They love books like “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” or “The Hobbit” but can’t possibly read them alone. But you also have to give them books they might be able to read alone, or else they might be content forever to listen to audiobooks or watch TV and skip the whole reading thing until it becomes unavoidable.

The age at which children learn to read, believe it or not, is the subject of great debate amongst those concerned with primary education. Some blame the UK system, in which children start school aged four, as the reason for lower literacy rates than some European counterparts. It seems that in countries where children don’t start proper structured schooling until age seven, they learn to read much faster and without the angst that some UK primary kids suffer.

Our older daughter, although finally a keen reader aged fifteen, fell into the read-it-to-me camp. Looking through her selection of books for 5-8, I can see why. It’s all classic fairy tales and Narnia, the odd Dr Seuss and several gorgeous picture books (mostly gifted by my lovely friend Dr. Ann Vernallis, whom we refer to affectionately as American-Ann). Very few books that she could hope to read alone, since she wasn’t one of those little Precocias who have a reading age 3 years above their age.

So for Daughter #2 we are making a more concerted effort. I have stacked her shelves with even more Dr Seuss. Another good one is Frog and Toad.

 

The latest triumphant discovery is the wonderful Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish. A Christmas gift from fellow parent Jessica at the primary school, Amelia Bedelia is a brilliant character that our daughter absolutely adored from the first reading. She’s a very literally-minded housekeeper, whose misunderstanding of instructions causes all sorts of trouble. But she is forgiven everything on account of her amazing baking skills.

Well, I never had an upset that I couldn’t resolve by baking the injured party a pie myself, so I know from experience that this woman is on to something. Nor could I remain angry at someone who baked me a yummy pie…sadly I’m the only baker in the family so far.

People think baking is easy. But it’s a love-thing. You have to devote hours and hours to the craft. As a teenager, every Sunday I’d…

But that’s another story. (It’s a good thing I have this blog. If I start a sentence with ‘when I was your age…’ my teenage daughter is out of the door yawning before I reach the end.)

Posted on January 7, 2008 - by MG

Doughnut Time

Doughnut TimeOriginally uploaded by mgharris

No New Year diet for me!

Can you believe we blew off the weekly visit to the pool in favour of a trip to the temple of doughnuts…?

And you know what else? I’m not even going to feel guilty about it.

Because it turns out that I actually lost a couple of pounds over the break. There weren’t all that many bloatation opportunities after all.

I’m in a ridiculously good mood.

My best friend just texted me from Havana, where she’s having a great birthday with her Cuban boyfriend.

And the Waterstone’s website has ‘The Joshua Files: Invisible City’ listed in their ‘Coming Soon’ selection.

The only downer is that the Oxford Krispy Kreme plays non-stop 80s’ music. Well, I didn’t like it much the first time around.

Next to me a crowd of Spanish women are having a grand old gossip. They haven’t worked out that I’m listening to every word. Muahaha.
Emailed from my BlackBerry®