Time Out Track - Bristol

It's a slightly tenuous connection for the clip today, but I'll try and stitch it together.

At the Writers' Workshop festival in York last weekend, the panel on Sunday morning was 'New Opportunities for Writers in the Digital Age'.

Tom Abbott described one of the most innovative and interesting 'products' I've heard of, combining different mediums to create a whole new way of storytelling.

These Pages Fall Like Ash

Two cities, each overlapping the other. 

Two people who can no longer remember each other's existence.

Two books.

Two platforms.

A singular reading experience. 

The physical component is a limited edition book with a wooden cover. Handling it I felt like I was in a rare books section of a library, and naturally nervous that my tired/hungover hands might inflict some damage. It's beautiful. It reminded me of how much I treasure 'real' books, hardbacks, second-hand books and second-hand bookshops.

But then there's the digital element. There are hard drives set around Bristol that transmit digital content, and through this the two stories come together.

Amazing.

Despite a career in change management I'm no early adopter, but this is a great way to get me, and other readers I'm sure, to see and feel the potential for the many many new ways writers and readers can come together.

The circumstance team have an exciting portfolio of other collaborations and ideas - hopefully the plan for 'These Pages...' to travel to other cities isn't too far away.

So I was looking for a soundtrack to this idea, trying to find something that might match mood-wise, which is a little tricky because I've only had a few seconds with the content. To keep it Bristol I was looking at local bands, but figured rock wasn't right and neither Massive Attack nor Portisehead need any more promo. So here's a clip from what I gather is a Bristol(ian?) institution...

From Iceland to Canada

Last week I was in Hannah Kent's Iceland. This week I finished the wonderful collection from D W Wilson, 'Once You Break A Knuckle.'

I started reading it a couple of months ago, and knew straight away that this was something to savour.
The line up of names praising the stories on the cover and for several pages inside is absolutely justified.
As usual I'm not going to try to review the stories, you can find plenty of those, but my experience of reading it was the powerful relationships between men, with friends and sons, and their remote Canadian setting.

His novel, Ballistics, is high on my To Read list.

So while we're in Canada, here's a track I thought matched quite nicely.

Gold & Youth are from British Columbia, and though they tend into a more electronic sound than would naturally match D W Wilson's stories, there's something about this pared back version that fits.

What about the vegan-friendly running snack?

A few weeks ago I started an experiment in eating vegan.

I've been corrected on the terminology - the first time I caught up with a friend and said I'm having a try at being vegan, he nodded whilst clocking my leather shoes and my handbag. You're trying out "eating" vegan he said, a smug hearty carnivore himself.

So I stand corrected, and apologies to anyone with the far more admirable grounds for their lifestyle choice.

It's interesting what you want when you can't have it. Previously I would have eaten pizza maybe once a month, but now? I WANT CHEESE.

And what do you do when you have a hangover? I had a rather decent one the day after I wrote about the experiment. I took the sparkles and the wine, but didn't end up taking the cake with cashew frosting. And I did eat pulled pork, and potato salad lashed in mayonnaise, and pudding. And the next morning I needed eggs. Poached eggs on pesto bagel, my standard weekend brunch. And then I needed pizza. With bacon.

I had it, all, and didn't feel too bad about it because this an experiment. And because I was training for a 10km race, so figured I'd run it all off.

So last Saturday I did the Women's Running London 10km event. I tagged along with the Write This Run crew, who showed their experience by having Prosecco at the finish line and breaking a few PBs.

I'd started the 8 week training programme to make 50mins at week 4, so the time target was probably a little ambitious. The last time I ran a 10km event I clocked just under 60 mins, and that was quite a few years ago.

Anyway, I figured I hadn't had meat or dairy so my body wasn't lugging around all that hard to process stuff - it should all even out.

The course, described as fairly flat on the registration website, had about 200m of flat. There were seven uphills in one lap of the two lap course. I hadn't done any hill running. But I stuck with Lucy, the 50 mins pacer, and at 6km, knowing there was a long hill coming up, raided my stash: jelly babies.

I've always used jelly beans or babies as the hit you need in a run - the sugar goes straight to my legs, and a little to my head, settling the XXX rated inner monologue. But I kept thinking about the tendons, ligaments and bones that had been boiled up to give me my hit. I couldn't think of a vegan substitute, and was too shattered to worry by 7.5km.

So when I came home, and ate a large slice of lentil loaf, I looked for my vegan equivalent.

It's called agar-agar, made by boiling several types of seaweed together. I thought oh yuk, eating boiled seaweed. And then I thought of the hoofs.

I looked for some recipes using this appealing ingredient, BBC Foods came up high in the search list, and I found Ham hock with parsley jelly and pease pudding.

WHAT'S THE POINT!!!!!!  

So the best tip I've found is to substitute gels/jelly bs with shelled sunflower seeds and raisins.

I'll be the one training with tupperware. 

At least, like the beans/babies, they'll get stuck in my teeth and give me something to focus on other than pain, fatigue, sitting in my reading chair with a book.

If you have any alternative ideas for keeping the energy levels up on a long run (not including kale chips, roasted chickpeas or Mary's Gone Crackers), I'm really keen to find something I can put in my mini-pocket in my running shorts.

Help greatly appreciated. The experiment continues...with a few minor deviations.

Oh and I made it in 50:59. Should have taken those seeds.

Time out track - Saturday Sun

"...And Saturday's sun has turned to Sunday's rain. So Sunday sat in the Saturday sun and wept for a good day gone by." Nick Drake.

Taking the title of a Nick Drake song for a band name is ambitious, and when I saw these guys I was expecting a driving to surf pop song. Instead, a gorgeous voice, gentle guitars and drum brushing. I don't want to parallel, but they certainly sound worthy of association with the lovely Nick Drake.

EP sold out, new album coming soon. And there's also a hidden track.

Time out track: immersed in Iceland

Following last night's Icelandic evening in Chelsea, I wanted to share some more magic from that country. My music knowledge was limited to Björk, Emilíana Torrini and Sigur Rós, and though I do like all of them, and their very different sounds, I wanted to discover something new.

Last year, at the age of 20, Ásgeir Trausti set the record for the most copies sold by a domestic artist in Iceland.

So perhaps you've already heard of him? But in case you haven't, well here's a track in Icelandic, and one in English that seemed to fit the Icelandic evening.

And if you're interested in more Icelandic music discoveries, there's a fascinating range - including Icelandic reggae - here.

An Icelandic evening. In Chelsea.

I'd forgotten how aggressive lycra cyclists can be, so it was a relief to turn onto Fulham Road behind a woman in a red dress and high wedges. At Daunt Books I pulled up behind a woman with a crisp bob sitting very upright on a basket-front bike. I wasn't alone riding in a dress, but felt conspicuous wearing a helmet.

Beside the bike stands was a group of almost thirties smoking and comparing stories of their Trans-Siberian railway adventures.

Chelsea.

I'd spent the afternoon in my sunny courtyard (in a different seven letter suburb beginning with 'C') reading the last 100 pages of Burial Rites. Another strong contrast - last London summer heat and the last days of Agnes in northern Iceland's January dark.

The Icelandic evening was a discussion between debut author Hannah Kent and novelist, travel writer and academic, Sarah Moss. Both women went to Iceland at a young age, and it had left a powerful impression that clearly hasn't faded.

When she was 19, Sarah was awarded a scholarship to "contemplate natural beauty", and caught a ferry from Aberdeen to Iceland where she and a friend spent six weeks of summer travelling around. It was just a beginning for her, and always wanting to go back the opportunity came up for her and her family to spend 2009-10 in Reykjavik.


Hannah finished school knowing she wanted to be a writer, but unsure of what else she should pursue to supplement this tenuous career choice. She applied for a Rotary exchange, nominating Switzerland, Sweden and Iceland as her countries of choice.
At 17, she had never seen snow.

Though their Icelandic experiences were very different, there was obviously a challenging settling-in time. Sarah, with her husband and two sons, working in a city, depended on strangers to help with the simplest things, like buying a bus ticket. Hannah left Adelaide's 40 degree summer to arrive in a remote village in northern Iceland, trapped by snow and at the mercy of the weather. Where Sarah felt anonymous in a crowd, everyone knew who Hannah was, and the spectacle of being a stranger was disconcerting at first.

I haven't read Names for the Sea, but was interested that she used the form of a novel to get away from  the rigour of thorough truth to fact. She enjoyed the freedom of fiction.

Hannah's "subjective non-fiction" novel is the product of extensive research and the desire to reflect the story of the last executions in Iceland with respect for the people and place.

The synergy between these women's stories is the power of the landscape. Both take on a sort of reverence describing walks in the unending summer light, the bizarreness of volcanic gullies, the mountains, the isolation of an island where weather dictates what you can do each day.

It's as moving listening to the writers speak as it is to read the story of Agnes Magnusdottir.

The May release of Burial Rites was so highly anticipated in Melbourne when I was there in February, that I was desperate to get my hands on it when it was released in the UK. And in the spate of fabulous books I've read lately - I mean it had to follow Stoner - it easily gets 5 stars from me.

And Hannah's next book? Well I didn't get much time to talk to her about that as there was a long queue for signings, but it's set in Ireland, based on a story she's heard about superstition. I'd get ready for another evocative tale.

And if you're looking for a review of Burial Rites, rather than a response to it, Isabelle Costello has literally just posted a wonderful one here.

Even If We Try

You know when you read a book or see a movie or a painting or or or we all have our things that just stop us. Dead halt awe.

And you read over passages or rewind or circle round again, and it stays with you, well, forever.

You never forget that feeling, how your life feels now. Now that you have this as well.

For me it's not quite "filling a void you never knew you had". It's almost enough to make me want to stop what I'm trying to create, because how can the world need my work when THIS exists. But then it starts to encourage me as well.

Anyway, I'm talking this up a bit much, but as soon as I heard the vocals on the album 'Country Sleep' by Night Beds, I had to stop.

I hope some of you might feel something like that, and come back to it when you need to feel it again.

And I'd love to know what book, song, painting, movie, sculpture, wine...does the same for you.



nb this isn't my favourite song on the album, but I couldn't find an official video for the opener, Faithful Heights.

But they are touring across Europe over the coming months. I'll be at Scala (London) on December 3rd.