Collateral Detritus

Those readers that return here week by week to keep up with the Rabelaisian roller-coaster story of me and my books might be wondering about the collateral detritus that accumulates as books keep becoming a higher priority than the last. At present that process is reminding me of the production of Patrick Marber's Closer I saw many years ago in which the furniture from previous scenes was simply pushed to the bag of the stage. I sagely commented to the lady sitting next to me that it seemed to symbolize the increasing emotional baggage that the characters were building up. She must have been grateful for the insight.

Still on the floor by the settee is the highly detailed and academic Rembrandt study that was stood down when something more pressing and easy-going arrived. Stored up on the top shelf are the two remaining Kundera novels that I read years ago but acquired for completeness but weren't quite got around to when the next priority showed up. They are piled below Vasari's Lives of the Artists which is great but now held over after finishing the life of Brunelleschi and the remarkable story of the dome of Florence Cathedral and that now has Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper and Me, Again, which was otherwise 'uncollected' stories and other pieces which would be awaiting me finishing the biography by Frances Spalding were that not now being read, to great contrasting effect, alongside Katya Hoyer's Beyond the Wall, a history of the German Democratic Republic. The library made that available sooner than I'd expected and with them expecting to get it back and it being 423 pages, I'd better press on. The deadline won't be a problem, it is brilliant. Come back soon for a report on that and, I dare say, some thoughts on Stevie.

None of those books are by any means abandoned and will be returned to, even hopefully the Rembrandt. At the very bottom of that pile, though, is a biography of Delmore Schwartz that's been there for years and that might be there for as long as there is such a pile of items in waiting.

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On a rich and varied Autumn programme, in among the local concert-going, there is now poetry, an actual poetry reading, here,

Hammersmith 13/10 

as well as the welcome return to turf action at Fontwell and maybe Sandown in the hope that horse racing will get back to being interesting, and profitable, with obstacles from them to negotiate. The obstacles for me to negotiate are all those destined not to win listed among those to choose between. It will be back to that there London, the exquisite Wigmore Hall, for Errollyn Wallen and I'll hope to get to Petersfield early on a Sunday to join the Edward Thomas Fellowship walk.

So, not being a commercial station, like DGBooks Radio and Wireless necessarily are, we don't have adverts here but, like Radio 3, we do have trailers in the hope you'll be encouraged to come back for one item or another.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I'm 'bewildered', as one of our recent Prime Ministers once said he was, to find that GB News have suspended two presenters for inappropriate things they've said on air.

I thought everything that was ever said on GB News was designed to be inappropriate and that was their point. But that's only what they allow to be broadcast and a couple of things that they can't help themselves with.

What is it that they really think, one dreads to ask.