For you lover give some time

Richard Hawley's latest has already become a favourite in our house. His Jaques Brel via Scott Walker thing doesn't always work. But For Your Lover Give Some Time is great.

Maybe I will drink a little less
Come home early, not complain about the debts
Bring you flowers from the graveyard now and then
And for my lover make some time. . .

Lovely stuff

I have spoken to both Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart this week. I spoke to Chris on the phone the other day and he was waxing lyrical about Scotland. He and Paul had been on a Highland tour organised by the Scottish Book Trust. Chris was full of praise for the Trust and the country. Chris has had a bit of a Romantic time of it this year, walking in the lakes and wandering the west coast of Scotland. I don't think he knew either area and he seems to have really enjoyed the experience. As well he should.

I had a long email from the lovely Paul Stewart. Despite his reservations about such things, it turns out that he has been reading my blog. He recommended loads of music to me, as usual. He also told me that he had a soft spot for Melanie. Here she is singing Lay Down and it is easy to see why. How does she manage to sing like that sitting down? And how does she work up any enthusiasm when the audience looks like they are attending a funeral. However she does it, it's brilliant.

The beast with five fingers, one of them swollen. . .

My hand has been my enemy for some weeks now. It hurts. It makes writing a pain. I went to the doctors this week to see what she had to say. I had self-diagnosed the problem as being RSI of some kind, but it was getting worse and I had begun to fear it might be something more serious. The middle joint in my forefinger is swollen and I can no longer form a fist.

Not that I'm planning to punch anyone, you understand.

My fears were confirmed when the doctor said it might be osteoarthritis. It is only a might as yet. I went to have my hands x-rayed today to check. The results will be with my doctor tomorrow.

I also spoke to the doctor about by deviated septum. In my nose. The bit of cartilage that separates your nostrils. Well, I have a crooked one. It means one of my nostrils is basically permanently shut, or as good as. This makes me me surprisingly bad at breathing. And yet, ironically, surprisingly good at snoring.

The doctor said that the Ear, Nose and Throat surgeons could do something about that. They would basically break my nose and reset it, so that it was straight. Quite how they break it was left hanging there. Do they have a special surgical hammer?

Or do they just call a porter who has a good right hook?

We are The Glums in this house at the moment. My wife is in constant pain with a frozen shoulder, my son had a brace fitted today and has face ache and I am wincing as I type and looking forward to a surgical head butt. It doesn't seem fair.

Our mood was not helped by viewing a house for the first time in ages. Bidders had already put in offers above the asking price before we even saw it and the tedious business of trying to extract the truth from the spin was as tiresome as ever. The agent described the garden as 'south-ish'-facing. My wife pointed out that it was actually north-facing. The agent then explained that though that was undoubtedly true, if you walked to the bottom of the garden it was in essence south-facing.

If you turned round and faced the house.

Friedrich

I bought a book on Caspar David Friedrich this week. It is one of the excellent little Taschen Basic series books. They are cheap with decent reproductions: small and slim, but big enough to get a feel for someone's work or, as in my case, to serve as a reminder of someone you already admire. They are also pretty readable.

I've always loved Friedrich. When you draw or paint, certain artists seem to have a particular resonance at different stages of your life. One day you will see the work of someone you thought was absolutely fantastic and wonder why on earth you hadn't seen through all his technical shortcomings and empty trickery before. An artist who had previously appeared without any kind of merit will now seem to hold the key to all kinds of possibilities. Actually, that's true of writers too.

But Friedrich has been a constant. Even when my painting output grew increasingly abstract, I still found things to admire in his work. More often than not I am drawn to a painter because of the way he paints. Rather than standing back from the work, like most painters, I make the guards nervous by leaning in. I want to know how it was done.

The strange thing is, this is totally different with Friedrich. This is not to say that there is not much to admire about his painting technique, but it is the imagery that I find so compelling. There are lots of pictures of men and women standing on shorelines and cliff edges or at windows, shown from behind. They pull you into the painting to share the view. I want to tap them on the shoulder.



It is often twilight in Friedrich paintings. Many of the paintings are of sunrise or sunset, or of eerie moonlit nights. He paints snow covered trees and mist drifting across hillsides. He paints ruined abbeys and deserted graveyards. There is an unearthly quality to most of his best work. They seem like notes from a dream.


His work is so evocative and moody that it is often used for book jackets. Here he is on the cover of the Vintage edition of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black.


Friedrich is a quintessential Romantic and his work is often used on the covers of books that deal with Romantic painting or literature. With his paintings of graveyards, mountains, frozen seas and mysterious travellers, almost any Friedrich painting would serve as a very good illustration to Frankenstein, but it his Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist that always seems perfect for that book. It seems to evoke both the doomed, god-like loftiness of Victor Frankenstein and the tragic isolation of his creation.

Kiss me, you bat-winged fool!

As I mentioned the other day, I have been looking at Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonte quite a bit recently. I have also been playing about with acrylics at my studio and, for the first time in a long time, began using them in glazes (having bought some glazing medium). I just wanted to remind myself of the possibilities of this technique and so I borrowed one of Ernst's images and did my own version of it.

It is not really a finished thing, but I quite like it. It feels odd putting work like this up for display, but I think it is like showing a sketchbook - it just gives those of you who might be interested, a little glimpse into my world. I have decided to have a go at doing more of these. I will do another version of this one I think - and I will do three more of the bat-winged characters from the book. The artwork is small - smaller than A4 (so that I can scan it myself) - and is acrylic on paper.

If the others turn out OK, I'll let you have a look.

Mildy diverting monday

After last week's Super Thursday in the publishing industry (with its bonanza of cook books and celebrity biographies), we now have Mildly Diverting Monday, when Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth is officially released onto an unsuspecting public (along with one or two other books). It has been in the shops for a few days now actually, along with the paperback of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship.

October is a great time for the Tales of Terror books to come out. Halloween is approaching and these books are definitely winter books. They need darkness. They need a bit of a chill in the air.

A roaring fire and candlelight would be a bonus.

Bravo Rio

Congratulations to Rio on getting the Olympics. I was there a year ago and it's great to think that the students I met at the British School will have the chance to attend - and maybe even take part, some of them. They will be really excited, I'm sure.

And you'll never find a better place for beach volleyball, let's face it.

Time machine

I was very pleased to see Cambridge's The Haunted Bookshop in the Guardian's top ten list of second-hand bookshops. I have bought many prized items from that shop and there is something magical about hauling yourself up the narrow staircase to the upstairs room and its piles of old children's books. It's a mixture of treasure box and time machine.