An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Boundless Sea

After getting bogged down in Dante (see this blog 29 March 2021), I decided to take a break and head for the open sea with David Abulafia.

Should one judge a book by its cover? This one quotes Peter Frankopan in The Sunday Times as saying the contents are "breathtaking"; Dominic Sandbrook, also from The Sunday Times: "dazzling"; and Simon Sebag Montefiore in The Daily Telegraph: "intense and thrilling".

All of which leads me to wonder if any of them have read it from the beginning...

Admittedly, I'm only 200 pages in – and it may get a bit livelier in the next 700 pages – but to me it feels like sitting in a history lesson where so many facts are being fired off at you that you're torn between trying to catch every word... and nodding off.

It may be about the story of humans and their vast watery planet – but it feels, well, so far rather dry...

A Matter Of Death And Death

I only ever had one conversation with AA Gill – the recently deceased Sunday Times journalist – and, considering his ascerbic, and sometimes downright nasty, style of writing, he seemed remarkably pleasant and polite.

But there's no getting away from the fact that this was someone who admitted he shot a baboon to find out what it felt like to kill someone. And then wrote about it. Made it into another deliberately provocative article.

Some deaths you can mourn. Some you can't.

Workin' Man Blues

Another day, another gig has come in. A music gig, that is. On the writing front, there isn't much coming in at the moment. After an endless run of commissions since leaving The Sunday Times four weeks ago, I'm on my last writing gig for a while. A big job, it will take me into next week and then... it's wait and see.

There is work to do on re-writing the book, Like A Flower, before it goes to an agent, and work to do on my new website, too. So there's no possibility of being idle.

As with music, you can despair of ever having another booking and then suddenly the diary is so full you don't know how to fit everything in.

They say you should play every gig like it's your last... but at this stage of the game, you never know when it might be just that.

The Last Farewell

I've now lost count of the number of farewell parties in recent weeks for people leaving The Times and The Sunday Times as a result of redundancies, voluntary or enforced. The amazing thing is that these events always seem to have a great atmosphere, with people being upbeat, positive and happy.

Journalists not only seem capable of great optimism, but they also, even now, long after the demise of Fleet Street, still have a tremendous camaraderie that is stronger than any barriers or competition between different newspapers.

In the old days, rival newspaper offices were situated side by side or just a street or two away from each other. Their journalists met and mixed in the local pubs, and created a real feeling of community. Most of that was destroyed by the moves out of Fleet Street to soulless office blocks. Farewell parties have revived that community spirit with colleagues old and new gathering to honour their friends. But what happens after the last farewell party?