New Welsh Review

I am now editor of New Welsh Review .

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All My Love's Laughter

Funny guy and talented screenwriter Owen Wilson is in hospital following a suspected suicide attempt. Reports have it that Wilson has an ongoing problem with the notoriously capricious and cruel 'white lady' - and, of course, the requisite black dog. Wilson has made me laugh more than five times in a row. And that's a record.

Get well soon, Owen.

The Pursuit of Love

So Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and spouse of the future king, Charles ‘Carlo’ Windsor, will now not be attending the memorial service for the late Diana, Princess of Wales. The newspapers are happy. The General Public - whoever they may be - can rest easy. The Duchess herself, who was allegedly and quite appropriately ’dreading the affair’ according to ’close sources’, will now not have to endure this most uniquely awkward of occasions. The Royal Household has sent word down - ‘It’s all arf, the plebs simply whont be harving it.’

But what a blundering mistake. And yet another blow for poor old Camilla. And another own goal for the lavender-smelling, ham-fisted machiavellics of that aforementioned ’Royal Household’. Mainly comprising of men called Robert, gay but resolutely in denial, the cancer that is the Royal Household would make fitting subject for a David Cronenberg feature - think bios waged against zoe. They’ve certainly chalked up an admirable body count of gin-soaked, promiscuous misery over the years: Margaret and Diana perhaps the most iconic.

They used Diana (these days mistaken for a saint as is apt to happen when you’re safely pushing up the daisies) as a prize breeding mare. Of course, they had ample support from her father, too. Then, when they realized that well, actually, Carlo had nothing in common with his much younger bride, they conspired to make things as easy for him as possible, facilitating his affair with Cam. Di cried a lot and eventually took lovers of her own. Some were nice. Some were frankly rotters. Carlo and Di were both very unhappy. Di sat on park benches for the paps looking sad while wearing her gym gear. Carlo told Dimbleby he loved someone else. Di went on Panorama with lashings of Max Factor. Eventually, Carlo asked Di to let him go so he could be with the one he genuinely loved which was Cam. A couple of years later Di was killed. The General Public was very very angry with the Queen and the Media and Everyone. Di’s hypocritical brother Lord Charles ’Champagne Charlie’ Althorp read out a very touching hypocritical speech at her funeral admonishing everyone from McDonalds to the Sun for hounding Di to death. The fact that she wasn’t speaking to him at the time of her death because he refused her sanctuary on his luxury estate in Jo’burg didn’t appear to have troubled him. Di's sister Jane Fellowes wept as she sat beside her husband Sir Robert (of aforementioned Royal Household) who made life a living hell for Di, according to 'close sources'. Then time passed and Di’s boys grew up, and Cam and Carlo, after much double-crossing by the Royal Household who couldn’t seem to decide whether they were for or against the union, got married. Carlo seemed quite happy even though Cam looked her age.

But the memory of Diana is always there, like some perverse Blithe Spirit. With Mother Theresa to her right and Gandhi to her left, how she must have giggled her girlish giggle that charmed everyone from Wayne Sleep to John Travolta at this latest humiliating blow for Camilla. And how, too, she must have pitied her.

La Pente Savonneuse

I've let things slide with this blog recently. Again. Tsk. Tsk. I intend to right this shortly by posting a few more translations of things, along with the usual irreverent chit-chat and out-of-kilter critiques.

It's been a busy summer. I've written a commission for WRU and the Beeb, broken in two pairs of shoes (and finally won), started really focussing on the way forward with two writing projects (play and poetry) and kept my flat clean and tidy to boot.

I caught the Facebook bug as well.

Facebook is self-evidently a tool of the Illuminati to control graduates and the terminally insecure. One friend I know recently lamented that her boyfriend wouldn't join Facebook and 'friend' her. She lives with him, so wtf? For some of us, seeing the 'is this it - middle of life' nebel on the horizon, it satisfies that perversity in wondering whether you're remembered, you mattered and whether your ex has gone royally to seed. Under the veil of cheeriness, it's gripping, stalking, self-obsessive, downright nasty stuff. Particularly the way in which people clock up friends. I've seen people on there with 209+ friends. Do they ever think: if these 209+ people are my 'friends' then perhaps I actually have no friends? Probably not. Unless you're an organisation or you work for the beeb, there's no excuse. I am proud to say that bar two people on Facebook (who are simply passing acquaintances), everyone is someone for whom I would shed a tear if something happened to them. Though I might not lend them money. Not all of them. But I give them the love. If not all of them my money. And some have more tears than others. Et cetera.

An ex of mine - until my husband the obligatory 'love of my life and who features in a few of my poems - is on there. He has a beard. He's still a beaut. I haven't 'friended' him. Some people can't be friended. I shall stalk his passport-sized pic from afar. You know who you are.

Man Gwyn

Well, pardon the longueur. It's been a tough time lately.

Three weeks or so ago, an augur came. Not locusts. Not flies. Not even a blight of the crops. But chickenpox. Again. A spot I willed to be an insect bite and half-managed to convince my childminder was same acquired a brother and a sister and another and another. Thankfully, Eleanor was only mildly affected and relatively untroubled by it all. But, still, cue more time off full-time work to care for my poor, lovely little (for at least two weeks) pariah.

Then, just as I was again reminding myself how marvellous the sisterhood is (something that as a single goodtime gal all those moons ago I had never even stopped to consider) and for the umpteenth time internally debating how work/life/creative balance can/could/might ever be possible: a curve ball. My grandmother was taken to hospital with an inocuous ailment. It all seemed to be Nothing Serious and even comedic when my mother noted that she was calling out bingo numbers in her delirium. And then her kidneys started failing and she developed septicaemia. Within 24 hours, she was fighting for her life. The news had a terrible effect on me. Throughout my childhood and on into adolescence, she had always lived just down the road (and still does - except, well, I am no longer there). She is 84, but hitherto looked at least 15 years younger, and, in any case, I don't think I ever noticed that she was getting older. It was shocking, but when I thought about it was more shocking that I was shocked. Totally unprepared.

I saw her last weekend. It was impossible to get away before then because of the complex obligations you seem to acquire once you're officially a 'Grown-up'. Inevitably, this delay leads to yet more guilt for me to pack into my excess baggage. However, she is somewhat better and seemingly no longer playing chess with you-know-who. Her kidneys have, by some caprice of biology or sheer bloody-mindedness, started to function again. She is taking the odd spoonful of PCT vegetable soup and complaining enough to make me think her odds may be improving.

But she is so frail. And it is a long road ahead. I felt terribly shaken seeing her in the hospital. My grandfather died there after a long, long battle with cancer 18 years ago. It's never really quite left me. Well, clearly, the hurt never does. But it was also the physical things. I still have nightmares about his tracheotomy. And blood. And things. God, do I hate hospitals. Not the smell of bodies not working but the way they have to attempt to cover it up with that pink disinfectant you see here and there abandoned in the corridors in those gargantuan plastic bottles with the handles. And they never quite manage it. Cue more guilt for thinking how I feel about it.

Anyhow, the mood was leavened somewhat by my aunt and my mother debating whether my grandmother looked better with short hair or a bob, each grabbing hold of one side of her parting as they put forward their side of the argument. A typically Welsh way of dealing with all tragedy and pain - realised or in potential. Meanwhile, my grandmother - who in fitter days would have floored the both of them - stared serenely ahead of her. Prepared, I thought.

Normal service will resume shortly. Until then, take care of yourselves - and each other, as Jerry would have it.

Joyeux anniversaire! Charles Aznavour is 83 today

I tried to get You've Let Yourself Go, alas, nada on youtube.

Enjoy instead another classic to touch your heart and mind!

The end is Neigh-bours

That's when good Neighbours become too greedy

BBC axes Neighbours after 22 years of cutting edge social realist drama.

My favourite character? A toss up between Daphne the reformed stripper (since deceased), Kerry Bishop-Mangel, the militant animal rights activist accidently shot on an anti-duck hunting protest, and the bloke who used to take Helen Daniels up to the Blue Mountains to help her indulge in her 'painting' (which was devoid of any discernable talent whatsoever). Does anyone recall her Goya-esque family portrait of the Kennedys? Her Cubist Mrs Mangel?

Ta ra for now! The show will resume on Five.

I've got to pick a sentence or three

If you're worried about the state of our prison system and if you believe in the potential for individual change and reform, please read this , have a little um and ahh and think about it over your coffee

and then

if you agree and the boss isn't looking or you have a minute, please sign this very important petition

I should mention that I never usually post on political matters - well, save for the odd general rant and vent - mainly because I tend towards the position of old Bertolt: personal epiphany, political consciousness etc etc. Besides which, some matters have been exhausted by dinner party tattle and their self-evident folly viz Iraq. It is quite hilarious to read/hear individuals discuss world poverty or lethal foreign policy as if they had just discovered that the earth orbits the sun after all.

Besides which, I don't think I am more qualified than anyone else to tell others what they should think or what they may think or to assume that anyone is interested in what I think. I'll leave that to the insufferable Bob Geldof.

Anyhow, back to the first point, I make an exception because those affected in the justice system don't have the luxury of such a position because they are denied a vote, they are denied a right to any political engagement. And I don't forget that while 'each to his own' is crucial to a just society, so is collective responsibility.

Criminal justice is unfashionable because we'd rather not see it, hear about it or bloody well pay for it. I worked in a prison once. Anyone who has will know that while the good work is out there in prisons (counselling services, creative and literacy initiatives, vocational training - always charitable), the sense of disenfranchisement for both 'screws' and 'cons', the sense of being part of a dirty secret can never quite diminish.

It took me a while to realise that the perimeter wall served a dual purpose. It kept them in, but it also kept us on the outside. And we like it that way.

Of course, there were violent individuals in the prison I worked in (I'd rather not name the nick in question but it is a prominent London 'Local'). It has to be said, however, that almost all had childhoods of abuse in extremis or suffered from acute and chronic mental health problems or addiction. A great deal more were individuals who had been involved in misdemeanors e.g. had not paid council tax or their TV licence or committed an act of fraud or had stolen car stereos. Many received relatively short sentences, which nonetheless clogged the system and endangered the welfare of all in the prison, as the population tipped over into breaking point and prison officers, unable to deal with the stresses of their job and their unbelievably shoddy treatment by HMPS, took long-term sick.

Of the suicides I recall at the time I worked there (4 years) and who didn't have mental health issues, almost all were family men in for minor offences and were clearly not the kind of people who belonged in that environment. They feared how they would go back to a normal life on release. They had not just committed an offence. They had gone to prison. They had officially become untouchables. They thought they were finished. And now they are.

But back to the point:

Community sentencing is important, it has shown to be effective, balanced, restorative and humane and, crucially, it flies in the face of our intemperate tabloid press. It can serve as punishment, it can rehabilitate, it can pay society back and it can break the cycle of prison. Ask yourself how can any of that be a bad thing? And why is the downmarket media dictating terms to us or the Cabinet?

I hope you sign it.

Auch ich in Arkadien

Ok, ok, so it’s another trip down memory lane. The year is – I am pretty definite – 1976. I am sitting on the bottom stairs of (I think) my Uncle Renato and Auntie Kay’s house, between my brother James and my cousin Lisa. Get that carpet! Get my faintly Mogadon stare!

As if some allusion to destiny, I am wearing blue and white gingham check. A real Dorothy in the making.

Sorry for posting this, but my old schoolmate Rich over at boakes.org got me started with his incredible cine films(and he probably remembers me looking like this). Plus, lately, a few people from my past have contacted me – one a most unlikely suspect. So I am starting to really think about who I was.

Anyhow, if you can get past my cheeks, my brother looks incredibly sweet in this (though he will kill me if he ever sees it), though I am sad to note that he has since dispensed with the fabulous eyewear. Lisa looks fantastic and up to the minute in her fun fur. Bless.

I’ll be making quite a few posts shortly of a more, shall we say, universal nature after the recent brief hiatus. Illness and other pressures have interrupted the roll.

Isabella

Extremely sad news that Isabella Blow has died. All too easily dismissed as a 'true original' and a 'real British eccentric' (bywords for 'slightly batty' and 'upper class old gel who's easy to patronise'), she was - and represented - much more than that.

A rich wit, she was a genuine lover of beauty and independence in a fashion world now overrun by the cynical corporate money boys who are more interested in relieving us of our tenners for crude logo covered make-up compacts than they are in art, in couture. Blow made no apology for the aspirational, otherworldly element that was couture. It was way beyond the rest of us mere mortals, maybe. But that was the point.

Blow discovered the unique Stella Tennant and the (initally) unconvential Sophie Dahl. She supported her close friend and milliner par excellence Philip Treacy in his career and launched Alexander McQueen - both did fine credit to her exemplar of individuality and elegance. She was many things to many people: muse, mentor, stylist, editor, assistant (first to the redoutable Nuclear Wintour) and an often ribald commentator.

There still appears to be some confusion over whether she has lost her ongoing battle against ovarian cancer or whether her long-time struggle against the Black Dog (Blow had survived several suicide attempts over the years) had, finally, become too painful to endure any longer.

But, below, a picture which sums up everything that was glorious about her in a Treacy hat. We shall not see her like again.

Magnificat

Storytellers: Will Ferrell is Neil Diamond on Saturday Night Live

Cracklin' Rose!

Voice of the Beehive

Ronnie (sandwiched between Nedra and Estelle)


Wino (tout seul)


Clearly Ronnie has the edge by at least one and a half inches. Case closed.





Ronnie's ex-husband (before)


Ronnie's ex-husband (after)

What Katie did this week? Not a lot

Something went wrong last night. I am not sure what it was but it involved G&T and cava and today I feel like hell.

I have read some so-so ish but intriguing things this week. Grimbert's novel(la) Secret, which has achieved a fair bit of publicity in the Guardian, being the so-so ish bit. On the plus side, I am still wading through Zachary Leader’s fabulous biography of Kingsley Amis. I thought I knew what a bastard he was - Kingsley not Zach - but, well, he really was a total bastard. But the kind, I fear, that these anodyne times will never brook again. Alas. But Leader’s biography is more than a highly amusing depiction of a neurotic, cruel wit who wrote one of the best fiction debuts ever. It’s also an acute study of twentieth century masculinity in crisis. And then, of course, there’s the fabulous anecdotes of the complex relationship with Philip, Amis’s gift for friendship and alienation. It’s pacy, fabulously written and compassionate despite everything. All in all, one of the best biographies I have ever read. It deserves a gong.

Our childminder is on her hols, so this week, his maj and I had to take turns to stay home with Ellie. While she played with her cardboard dress up dolls and intermittently shouted ‘bumface!’ at me, I attempted to watch Three Colours Blue. The trilogy that the world and his wife have seen by now had somehow passed me by. After watching this elliptical, manipulative, fussy piece of filmmaking, I rather wish it had stayed that way. I’ve always seen that excellent clip. You know, the one where Binoche runs her knuckles along the length of a country wall. It’s a great representation of how physical pain can somehow bring relief that we can see as a tangible thing, and promise, of course, a healing. Unfortunately, the film is full of this kind of point hammered into your skull. And monosyllabic conversations that all too often resemble the kind of parodies of French filmmaking that Big Train and even French and Saunders have lampooned. Par exemple:

Random Homme: Quoi?
Random Femme: Rien.

Random Femme: Qui?
Random Homme: Moi

And on it goes until the giggles come. Who talks/acts/processes the world in this bizarre way? They must all live in France.

Binoche is moving, terrific, a tide held back of emotional intensity - that goes without saying. But she’d be that staring into the camera, reciting the Saturday football results. She is like a kind of force of nature. She can bring sexuality and fear to every look - at the same time. And she is one of the most exquisite looking creatures in the world. Here, she does her best to detract from a limp script and a hackneyed plot (bereaved wife discovers that hubbie had an extra-curricular love life which alors means that she can leave the grief behind and move on with her life. Cause after all, he may be dead, but, hell he weren't that great! So that's ok! This has been done to DEATH. Pardon pun.) Nonethless, it’s obvious after the credits roll and you feel the tears prinking away that the whole enterprise is a complete travesty. And watching Binoche’s round-shouldered wimpy would-be and eventual lover sniff around her is enough to make the stomach turn a la day trip to Ilfracombe.

Hell, if this be liberty, give me incarceration any day!

And don’t get me started on the blue glass mobile, the blue sweet wrapper, the blue this, the blue that and all the while all of it filmed with a blue filter! About as subtle as a brick coming through your living room window and crashing through the TV screen when you’re watching Family Fortunes. But I did like the character of Lucille, the peep-show performer, even if she talked complete nonsense most of the time. At least she talked in sentences and, unlike almost everyone else in the film, went through a daily change of clothes (one of the perks of her profession, I suppose). Merde!

To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon

Goodbye Kurt.

Ingeborg

Ingeborg Bachmann (b.1926 Klagenfurt, Austria, d.1973 Rome, Italy)

I first encountered Bachmann's poems when I went to live in Vienna over 10 years ago. I found a battered old selected in the library at the school where I taught and was hooked. Back then - particularly in the tough early days and during an unfortunate episode concerning a viola-playing Basque Separatist that is best forgot - she was a real companion to my new home, even if I was actually without one.

A literary giant in the German speaking world, she's scant known elsewhere. My translation below could never do justice to the complexity, paradoxes, juxtaposition and symbolism that became her trademark, or the wonderful, textured lyricism that drives each stanza (not least because I am most certainly not a literary giant). Nonetheless, I hope the attractive weirdness does come through. At least, I hope.


Dunkles zu sagen

Wie Orpheus spiel ich
auf den Saiten des Lebens den Tod
und in die Schönheit der Erde
und deiner Augen, die den Himmel verwalten,
weiß ich nur Dunkles zu sagen.

Vergiß nicht, daß auch du, plötzlich,
an jenem Morgen, als dein Lager
noch naß war von Tau und die Nelke
an deinem Herzen schlief,
den dunklen Fluß sahst,
der an dir vorbeizog.

Die Saite des Schweigens
gespannt auf die Welle von Blut,
griff ich dein tönendes Herz.
Verwandelt ward deine Locke
ins Schattenhaar der Nacht,
der Finsternis schwarze Flocken
beschneiten dein Antlitz.

Und ich gehör dir nicht zu.
Beide klagen wir nun.

Aber wie Orpheus weiß ich
auf der Seite des Todes das Leben
und mir blaut
dein für immer geschlossenes Aug.

Ingeborg Bachmann


Below, is my translation:


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Loving Laverne and Shirley

Ok, ok...Everybody say Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

The reason for posting this? Only to remind everyone that De Fazio and Feeney were the best goddamn female role models and beer bottlers ever. Fact. I was one of the lucky ones. Who do young girls look to now?

Talking Heads

"Wales going nowhere fast..."