Archive for the ‘nostalgia’ Category

Posted on June 4, 2008 - by MG

One of those rambling posts about the vagaries of life

I am doing blogging all wrong.

I’ve been reading other people’s blogs and I can see that mine is Not Quite Right.

Well I’m going to do a post that’s more typische. Part rant, part rave, part diary, part confessional.

Rant: Where to start? I’m not much of a ranter over things that don’t directly concern me and over which I have zero control. Not saying there’s anything wrong with ranting, in fact I seem to have voluntarily surrounded myself with people who love a rant; my daughter, my husband, my agent to name only three. Maybe that’s why no ranting. Ranters need to be listened to. And that, it seems, is increasingly my role.

However, I did recently get slightly involved in the age-ranging debate about putting labels like 5+, 7+, 11+ on children’s books, although only in the private e-space of a members-only online writers’ club. But actually, meh. The businesswoman in me dislikes the attempt to stop a perfectly legitimate marketing initiative. Last time I looked publishers sell the books and do the deals. Ifnwhen the sales director at my publishers phones me up and asks me to make sales calls to sell my books to the major chains, then maybe I’ll start to feel I have any place telling her how to run the business.

Rave: Now what I AM is a raver. So many things to enthuse over, so little time. Let’s just divide the things that have recently amused or fascinated me into categories.

TV: All the usual suspects for me: Battlestar Galactica continues to swoop, Lost continues to be gloriously daft-yet-compelling, still laughing over Peep Show’s use of a highly literary reference as a euphemism for erm…well I can’t better it so let’s just say ‘doing a Chesil beach’; reruns of Sex And The City. How I love Samantha. She somehow reminds me of Jessica from Pokemon’s Team Rocket.  And a surprise new addition to my highly selective TV viewing is BBC4′s US import Mad Men – set in 1960′s Madison Avenue and the cutting edge world of advertising. The men are urbane, sexist and wear natty suits; the woman are gorgeous, ambitious, under-appreciated, professionally limited and don’t complain when their bottoms get slapped in the office. Everybody smokes and all these macho men wilt the minute one of these supposedly suborbinate women turns her ravenous gaze upon one of them. You can sense the powerplay just waiting to happen. Ah the good-old-days when a pretty secretary could take a powerful man down. Mostly I enjoy the offices though. They remind me so much of my father’s set up at Mexicana de Cobre. Just good ol’ plain nostalgia.

Reading: I’m very busy writing so haven’t read much lately. I bought some books by Cornelia Funke; Inkheart and Inkspell and some books for younger readers that I’ll read to the little ‘un. I have, however, been enjoying reading The Spectator and New Scientist, which I can manage in bite-size chunks. Two Speccie articles made me laugh out loud today, one by Rod Liddle about the Eurovision Song Contest (it wasn’t political; Eastern Europeans just don’t ‘get’ decent 12-bar blues based pop music), one by Deborah Ross, but then she always makes me laugh. Right-wing intellectuals are so much funnier than left-wing ones. And therefore sexier. I’d have PJ O’Rourke over George Monbiot, any day. But then the left does have Naomi Klein. So maybe it’s gender specific?

Geekchic: Loving my Sony Vegas video editing software. Hey I never said I didn’t have some special interests.

Podcasts: The usual trio of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Radio5 movie review show, Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time and the Litopia After Dark podcasts continue to equip me with the knowledge and ideas to do my job.

Music: Performance Channel is screening a Beethoven piano sonata every evening. I caught one while half asleep yesterday. It wasn’t one I knew and being on the verge of sleep was struggling to place it – Brahms? Schubert? Beethoven? It sounded very German and very wonderful. I lay there thinking about Wilhelm Meister and Marienbad and Werther and other ghosts from the past, conversations with my mother.

Diary: Well not much to report here. I have been editing book 2 of Joshua; ICE SHOCK. It’s been hard work but I finally made it through the whole script, having addressed all Editor’s notes. Now I need to write two short new sections and then do a continuity check. But I’ll do a separate post about this. And liasing closely with the publicity department at Scholastic to put things in place for a book tour starting next week. Yay!

Confessional: Well wouldn’t you like to know. I don’t dare to be open about such stuff. Would cause a rare old scandal, no doubt.

Posted on May 22, 2008 - by MG

ManU’s Premiership and Champions League Double – I’m faint with joy

The first time that United won the European Cup was 1968 – when I was too young to appreciate them. By the time I became a fan we were in the Second Division. The dizzing hights of a European Cup win seemed to me, quite unimaginable.

My best friend was a boy called Eoin who lived across the road. One day Eoin’s mum told me about United’s glorious past, and the Munich air crash. Quite clearly I can remember wondering if ever in my lifetime again I’d see a United team of that calibre.

Eoin and I grew up going to United games together – at one stage most home games. When we were 14 Eoin moved to Ireland and I started going to matches with my friend Sally. The best we could hope for in those days was the FA Cup, which we won a very respectable number of times. Sally and I even saw us win once – United 4- Brighton 1 (1983?).

But still the Division One Championship and with it the triumph in Europe – it was always Liverpool or Nottingham Forest, never us.

And then Fergie arrived in town. Eoin sent me a letter once where he lamented that his young daughter should be considered for selection – the team could hardly get worse. Thank goodness in those days they didn’t fire coaches after a couple of poor seasons, and he had a chance to build up the team.

But WHAT drama, what emotion, what an incredible achievement! As I watched the Champions League Final last night I was totally awestruck by the levels of both teams – not that it was the best game of football ever – although it was a fabulous match. But just the levels of fitness, determination, the strength and energy needed to compete at that level; the endurance.

Bad luck Chelsea. Seriously worthy opponents…but it was our night.

Posted on May 5, 2008 - by MG

My one and only Boris Johnson story

Boris as I remember him at Oxford. A million pounds says he doesn’t remember me.

So Boris is finally Mayor of London, eh? Surely a preface to David Cameron taking over as Prime Minister in the next couple of years. Which means that finally, my contemporaries at Oxford will have taken over the country.

I worry about this slightly because I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be much good at running the country; not nearly old enough or wise enough and I know that I’m probably as smart as some of those guys, although possibly not Boris, who really is very clever indeed.

So this is the time to tell my one and only Boris Johnson story. It isn’t very good, I’m warning you. But it’s the only one I’ve got.

Boris was in the year above me at Oxford. Our paths didn’t cross because he was in the Rich Beautiful Ambitious Talented People Who Went To The Right Schools And Will One Day Run The Country set and I was in the Bright Grammar School Kids Who Will End Up Running Universities And Businesses set.

Anyway. My then-boyfriend-now-husband was another grammar school oik like me, and a chemistry student to boot. (The only way to be lower in the social ranking at Oxford would have been to have to study hard to get by, since apparently effortless academic excellence is the only way to distinguish the kind of kids who get top grades at A level anyway.) Boyfriend was a member of the Oxford Union, not a students union but the famous debating society that was the University training ground of many of Britain’s top politicians.

Boyfriend and I very, very occasionally played chess together in the bar at the Union. Once we were playing after a debate. Boris, then the Secretary of the Union – this was the year before he became President of the Oxford Union, and another Union officer came into the bar from the debating room, still resplendent in white tie. They took their drinks and proceeded to watch Boyfriend and I play chess.

Now at this point you need to realise that neither of us can actually play chess. I mean we obviously know the mechanics of the moves, but that’s it. So we are playing. Boris and his prematurely aged fellow Union officer (who was about 22 but seemed around 32) watch with growing interest, starting to comment quietly to each other about our tactics.

We grow tense, aware of their scrutiny. Their interest grows all the more. We study the board furiously. I’m vaguely aware that you have to try to plan some moves ahead. I start to think one or two moves ahead, then three, then four, and my head hurts. Boyfriend keeps his cool a bit longer than me. I crack under the pressure and make a move, any move. Boyfriend does the same. Boris and pal seem surprised, then disappointed. Boris wanders off. Boris’s aged young friend comes over to us and comments that the game had looked extremely exciting, we were both in such very strong positions, we looked like two very strong players…and his voice tails off. We smile enigmatically, saying nothing. What remains politely unsaid is the final part of Young Fogey’s assessment…”but actually you’re both a bit rubbish, aren’t you?”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not cross about this and never was. On the contrary, I was proud to have impressed the already-famous-in-Oxford Boris Johnson even for a few minutes. Even if he was disillusioned. I actually felt sorry to let him down. He had already provided me with hours of entertainment with his amazing oratory and humour at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union. I didn’t always agree with him or even understand what he was saying, being a Scientist Of Very Narrow Focus.

But it was always clear to me that he was brilliant; possibly the most brilliant student I ever came across at Oxford.

Which is saying something because Oxford prides itself on having some smart cookies. Even so the supersmart and brilliant ones stood out a mile.

But can they actually run a country? I guess we’re going to find out…

Posted on April 25, 2008 - by MG

The immune system kicks a**

Antigen presentation – the central tenet of immunology. Didn’t make any sense to me until I saw the crystal structures of MHC I, and the T-Cell receptor.

I emerged into the outside world today full the kind of renewed energy that only a post-viral recovery gives you.

The immune system is an amazing thing. Even moreso when you have some knowledge of how it works. I remember when they published the crystal structure of the Major Histocompatibility Complex I protein bound to a peptide antigen. Luckily for me this was the year that I took biochemistry finals at Oxford. I’d never understood the scientific evidence for molecular immunology properly until I actually saw those molecules interacting.

I’m just not good enough of an abstract thinker. The cellular evidence just befuddled me. I had to see something in 3D before I could catch on.

Immune system, amazing, hence I have made a whole load of antibodies and cytotoxic T-cells and other cell and molecular weapons and totally kicked that viruses ass and cleared it out of my system. And if anything like that comes round again, my B-cells will give it what for…

Oxford was warm and filled with shoppers, students and tourists. I heard some Brazilians speaking Portuguese and it cheered the part of me that still wants to be in Sao Miguel do Gostoso. I dropped into Waterstones and was relieved to see that ‘Invisible City’ survived the recent cull of children’s books on display in the window. Still on display and in the 3-for-2! Lots of books for older readers have been put aside to make way for picture books and other things for younger kiddies. Finally I share a window display with the wonderful Axel Scheffler!

Posted on April 1, 2008 - by MG

With Deep Anger And Resentment

I’ve only once been to a booksigning. My favourite authors hardly ever visit Oxford (two of them, never, what with being deceased). When they do it’s probably as an honoured High Table guest at one of the colleges rather than a humble book signing session.

But once, I did have a chance to meet a literary hero, none other than Douglas Adams, author of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”.

I may have mentioned before what a total fangirl I am and always have been. I was actually a member of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the HHGTTG fan club, once… (John Lloyd, producer of the original radio show and later, via QI.com, a customer of my IT company, gave me a hug when I told him that!). So when I had my chance to have Douglas Adams (or as he’s known to the fan community, ‘Bop Ad’) actually sign his latest book, I of course included some obscure reference to the BBC radio show. And asked him to sign my copy of ‘So Long And Thanks For All The Fish’ with the words:

With deep anger and resentment.

Well, it won a smile from dear old Bop, who was kept busy all afternoon that day in Blackwell’s.