Book Journal

I bought my son a book journal today, so that he can keep a record of the books he reads (or has read to him) and say a little about what he thought of them. This present falls into the 'I wish someone had made me do that when I was a kid' category and as such may come to a grinding halt (as his scrapbook did). We'll see.

But what a fantastic thing it would be: to have a record of everything you had ever read from the age of ten. I can remember some stand-out books from when I was a child. I remember dragging Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea home from the library when I was about nine and being read A Christmas Carol at about the same time. I can remember Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth series and Henry Treece's Road to Miklagard and War Dog. I can remember C S Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and even the mawkish Old Yeller by Fred Gipson. I remember the brilliant Dr Seuss: The Cat in the Hat and One Fish Two Fish and I remember Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories. But as to all the countless other books I read or heard at that age; they are probably gone for good.

And in any case it is different remembering books as an adult and having the evidence there in front of you of what you really thought at the age you read the book. One of the nice things about writing for children is that they are such an appreciative audience. That is not to say they are uncritical. If they do not like something, then they are far more resistant to it than adults. The difference is that they are enthusiasts by temperament and so, if they do enjoy something, each book (or movie, or holiday, or birthday party) will be the 'best yet' or the 'best ever'. There are always caveats with adults.

Anyway - the first two books in my son's journal will be Jack London's The Call of the Wild (another book I can remember reading), which he read to himself and finished yesterday, and Mark Walden's 'Hive 2', which was read to him. He thoroughly enjoyed both, but it will be interesting to read what he has to say about them.

Wordfest

Chris Riddell phoned today. He and Paul Stewart are taking part in the Cambridge Wordfest (and how come I wasn't asked?). They are at the ADC Theatre on Saturday at 4.oo. Hopefully I shall get a chance to catch up with them afterwards.



I also got a copy of Joe Rat by Mark Barratt that I illustrated just before Christmas under the influence of a hideous cold. It is published by Random House/Red Fox and is a good book, I think - quite dark with a real sense of danger and some genuinely nasty characters.

Skyscape

There was a discussion about the merits of the landscape around Cambridge as we walked to Grantchester on Monday. It can seem a bit dull at first glance. The flatness doesn't appeal to everybody, though Judith, who is Swiss, made the point that mountains can be claustrophobic. Judith likes the view. So do I.

I like hills. Despite having a fear of heights, I like hill-walking because of the view it affords. Flatlands like Cambridge (and Norfolk where we lived for over ten years before moving here) are strangely the only places that give a similiar open sense of being able to see all the way to the horizon. You get an amazing view: not of the land, but of the sky. It makes you lift your head up.

And that can't be bad can it?

Billy Wizard

I had a nice surprise this morning: I received a package in the post from Random House. It contained their Young Corgi Library - a set of books in a slipcase that includes my book Billy Wizard. I had no idea this was happening, but it was nice to see Billy Wizard in there. I really like that book but as with so many books for that 7+ age group, it tended to get a little lost after publication in 2005.

What happened next?

A couple of weeks ago my son, out of the blue, asked me what happened to the disciples after the death of Jesus. I took a deep breath and burbled something about Judas supposedly killing himself and Peter going to Rome and then, very quickly, my reservoir of knowledge went horribly dry.

I am amazed at how little I know about the details of the background to the New Testament and of the history of the early church. I would feel horribly ignorant were it not for the fact that hardly anyone else I know has a better grasp of it all.

As chance would have it, there was a documentary about this very subject last night on Channel 4 - who was at the Last Supper and what happened to them. It was called The Secrets of the Twelve Disciples. It was fascinating and at two hours long, pretty detailed. A nice addition to the other documentaries over the Easter period - one about the Lost Gospels and another about the Turn Shroud. It was presented by a theologian - Dr Robert Beckford - and whilst he did not question the Gospels themselves or their authorship, he did question whether Peter really was buried in Rome, whether James went to Spain, whether there were female disciples and introduced (to me anyway) the wonderful notion of Thomas sailing to India to set up a community of Christians there.

Unfortunately it resulted in a rather heated exchange when John Clark who I share a studio with and Judith, his partner, (who took the photograph of me on this page) stopped in after we'd walked to Grantchester. Neither John nor I really knew what we were talking about and so of course we simply became louder and louder until the kitchen started to rattle.

We had a wide-ranging ill-informed theological debate about the veracity of the Gospels, the historical Jesus, religion in schools. Shakespeare popped in at one point. So did Franco and Mussolini. So did the relative merits of football and rugby (John is an ex rugby player). It was that kind of argument.

Snow started falling. . .

I could hear the angels calling.

As Patti Smith once said.

And I love that line of James Joyce from the end of The Dead: His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling. . .

I couldn't hear the angels calling, but I could hear the voices of the choir in King's College Chapel seeping out into the snow and that will do me.

Forgive them for they haven't got a clue

I haven't been watching the BBC's Passion because I read a review saying that it was a more 'realistic' interpretation of the last days of Jesus. That put me off. I suspect the watering down of the story was meant to appeal to sceptics like me. But it didn't.

I actually caught part of it last night. The disciples looked worryingly like a Bee Gees tribute band. And Penelope Wilton as Mary had another chance to do the shouty thing she thinks is a Bafta-winning show of grief, when it is actually a bit rubbish. Terry Jones in drag would have had more gravitas.

I saw Pilate/James Nesbitt asking the crowd who to crucify and I saw Judas hang himself down a well and I saw Jesus crucified. But it was all empty somehow. He looked like a victim of political expediency. He came across as a sad and even deluded figure. The sky didn't darken when he called out in pain. We didn't get the lance in the side for some reason. We got the thieves, but none of the conversation that gives their presence any meaning. The poetry of 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' was reduced to the crass 'Forgive them for they don't know what they've done.' Urrgh. Why would you want a Jack Vetriano crucifixion when you could have a Giotto or a Rembrandt?


Question the truth of the gospels by all means, but do that somewhere else. Even if you see the story as myth, there still seems no reason to reduce the potency of that myth. Jason and the Argonauts without the magic is just a boat trip after all.