Irish Writer Pardoned For Stealing Pig

 "The pig is rightfully MINE, Sir Terence!" (Photo by Sophie Gough Fives.) Actually, to contradict the caption, (which, on reflection, I realise is more Sherlock Holmes than Bertie Wooster) - I hope Sir Terry Pratchett wins. THIS time...

Well, well, well. My new novel, Jude in London, has been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Older readers will understand why I am so surprised (as well as, of course, delighted); younger readers will have it explained to them shortly. It involves dark literary doings, and the theft of livestock. Stick around.

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction is the one where they give you the prize at the Hay Festival, name a pig after your book, and take your photo with the pig. A great, idiosyncratic prize, with a good track record. The Wodehouse judges discovered Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, they chose Vernon God Little before it won the Booker, and last year they gave the prize to Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story.

This year, it's a very strong shortlist: the other four are Terry Pratchett (for Snuff), Sue Townsend (of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole fame, for The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year), John O'Farrell (for The Man Who Forgot His Wife), and John Lanchester (for his sprawling financial comedy of London life, Capital). Normally, natural humility would cause any author surprise at being on such a splendid shortlist. However, as regular readers of my work will know, I do not suffer from humility. My surprise at being on the shortlist comes from the fact that, last time I was on it, I disgraced myself so thoroughly that I'd assumed the judges were more likely to put me on a blacklist than a second shortlist.

Back in 2008, the first novel in my Jude trilogy - Jude in Ireland - was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, alongside Alan Bennett, Will Self, Garrison Keillor (of Lake Wobegon Days fame), and Joe Dunthorne. I swelled with pride, chiefly in the region of the head. I blogged about my joy. But... well, at this point I may as well quote from a slightly later blog entry:

"You can imagine then my dismay when I discovered, shortly afterwards, buried in the small print of the Hay-on-Wye festival programme, the odd phrase "Will Self, winner of the 2008  Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize." Winner? WINNER?!?!?!

As the festival program had gone to print before the shortlist was announced, this meant that the prize committee had picked the winner before they had announced, or perhaps even picked, the shortlist. It was a stitch-up. But worse, I had been denied my rightful month of anticipation, tingling, hiccups and giddy excitement.

Also I'd put serious money on Alan Bennett to win. His The Uncommon Reader is a little masterpiece. Something had to be done.

I thought long and hard. The prize is named after that comic god, P. G. Wodehouse, inventor of Jeeves and Wooster. What, I thought would Wodehouse have done, faced with such provocation? Sat in his room and written another comic novel, probably. That's how he reacted to everything, including World War 2. As I was already sitting in a room writing a comic novel this wasn't much help. Action was called for, dash it. So I asked myself, what would P. G. Wodehouse's greatest creation Bertie Wooster do, nobly backed by the genius of his manservant Jeeves?

And the answer came to me as in a vision - as though the ghost of Wodehouse himself whispered in my ear - he would steal the pig.

For if there is one constant in the work of P. G. Wodehouse, from Pigs Have Wings to Pig Hooey, it is that God put pigs on this good green earth to be kidnapped. Not a chapter goes by without somebody chloroforming Lord Emsworth's favourite sow, The Empress of Blandings.

And thus I made my way to the Welsh borders and, with the assistant of my trusty gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves (not his real name, but he would like to remain anonymous for some reason), I stole Will Self's pig.

I sent the organisers this, ah, pignapping video, containing my ransom demands. Tense negotiations continued up until the last minute. They, understandably, did not wish to give the prize to the man who had stolen their pig. I offered, as a very reasonable compromise, to deliver the pig to Alan Bennett's door in London if they would re-award the prize to him. They baulked - Will Self was in the program - his angry fans, denied, might rampage, torching tents, incinerating Gore Vidal in his invalid chair... The intervention of a bishop almost led to a compromise candidate (Joe Dunthorne), but we ran out of time..."

The full story is here. And in this story in The Mail. And in various pieces by Hugo Rifkind, now stuck behind The Times paywall... And The New York Times' arts blog... And in India's Sunday Tribune... I know, I know. And not a thought for my long-suffering mother.

OK, basically, I got a bit carried away. It's always a bad idea for comic writers to leave their padded cells and attempt to do things in a real world for which they are so ill prepared. Still, one learns valuable lessons, which can be fed back into the fiction. I learnt that stealing pigs, for instance, is considerably harder and more complicated in real life than in books. The paperwork for the transfer of livestock across EU borders is shockingly complex. I strongly suspect that PG Wodehouse never stole a pig in his life...

Anyway, it all turned out OK; Will Self kept the title, but I made my point, and I got a pig out of it, which, once converted into wurst and salty bacon, got me through the long Berlin winter.

The only downside, I thought, was that I'd thoroughly burnt all my bridges to the only prize in these islands for comic fiction - pretty much the prize I most wanted.

And thus my surprise at being shortlisted again this week. I think it reflects very well on the people who run the Prize. They have shown true Christian - or Wodehousian - charity. Moral of the story (if there is one): There is greater rejoicing in the literary world over the pig thief who repents, than over the author who never steals a pig at all.

(For those not put off Jude in London by the moral depravity of its author... the free Trust Edition is available from Ben, my publisher, here. You may download it and read it for nothing. If you like it, you can pay whatever you think it was worth. More orthodox editions of the book are available here...)

Comedy, Tragedy, and Radio 3.

I will be blithering about comedy this weekend, as part of BBC 3's Free Thinking Festival, if that’s the kind of thing that scratches your scrotum or tickles your cervix. There's lots of good stuff in the festival, but my event will be a gory battle to the death between Tragedy and Comedy, that will take place live in The Sage, Gateshead (near Newcastle), and be broadcast on BBC 3's Nightwaves some time later (not sure when). Wearing the black hat and jackboots of tragedy, Professor of English Carol Rutter and comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes. Wearing the white hat and extremely long floppy shoes of comedy, passionate comedian Janey Godley and me. It's ticketed, but free.

More details on that, including how to get free tickets, here.

The problem of comedy has certainly furrowed my mighty brow this month. “Reality Is A Bananaskin On Which We Must Step” addresses that very subject, in the latest issue of A Public Space. For those of you too lazy to click through to the whole thing, I’ll sum it up for you in a line:

The relationship of a rock to its mountain will never be funny, because the rock does not believe it is the centre of the universe.

Meanwhile, let me recommend a book, or at least 50% of a book: I am halfway through Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford, and so far it’s the most enjoyable thing I’ve read all year. A splendid novel about Soviet economics in the 1950s, it reads like the satirical science fiction of the wonderful Strugatsky brothers. (They wrote the charming Roadside Picnic, which Andrei Tarkovsky filmed, in far bleaker form, as Stalker.) But it’s all true. A superb novel of ideas, deeply researched, deeply felt, deeply enjoyable, if it stays this good to the end it will be my novel of the year… I‘ll post a final verdict when I’m done.



I'm in London this weekend, for the Battle of Ideas

Almost forgot to mention... I'll be chatting about writers and cities at the Battle of Ideas in London on Saturday.

There's going to be a short film, Kolkata City of Literature, directed by Soumyak Kanti De Biswas and Tanaji Dasgupta, followed by a discussion with Professor Swapan Chakravorty, Gerry Feehily, and me.

The chat (or battle)  is called Text and the City: what is a city of literature?, and will be chaired by Tiffany Jenkins. For more on exactly what it is, where it is, and when we kick off, click here.

Dig the Shoes

 

The really rather terrifically wonderful Susie Maguire just sent me a nice picture of me sitting down in Dubrovnik. I won't explain what the heck I am doing, or why I appear to have a tinted monocle.

A chap needs to maintain an air of mystery.

My shoes are definitely the stars of this photo. They look like they're celebrating getting their own TV series. 

Croatia

 

I'm back from Croatia, and suffering an immense emotional hangover. That was one of the most intense, action-packed and enjoyable weeks I've ever had. I feel as though, since June 1st, I've lived an entire short, vivid life at high speed.

I was there for the International Festival of the Short Story, which took place this year in Zagreb and Dubrovnik. I cannot praise the festival highly enough. Best festival I've ever taken part in. And of course, as always, the quality comes down to the people. Charismatic organisers, magnificent volunteers, excellent translators, and great rattling crates full of terrific writers.

I'll post again on this, but right now I'm still too full of sights and sounds and memories I haven't processed.

Also, I can feel a lot of what happened in Zagreb and Dubrovnik already beginning the mysterious alchemical transformation into fiction. (Examples - I wrote a poem I really like, in the quarantine buildings outside the walls of Dubrovnik, and  got the entire plot for a damn good film while walking through the Square of the Loggia. And there's more on the way, I can tell by the tingle... It's extraordinary to think that in 1991, the year I was enjoying a hit single in Ireland with Toasted Heretic, this city was being hit by artillery shells and guided missiles.)

So, anyway, I can't really blog about the most intense or interesting stuff, because it would interfere with the fermentation process.

 But damn, I laughed, I cried, I swam, I ran, I nearly died.

On The Run In Croatia

I am currently on the run in Croatia, after an unfortunate pignapping incident got slightly out of hand...  I'll post properly soon, if possible, but I hear footsteps on the stairs... got to go now...

Don't worry, Will Self's pig is safe and happy, though jetlagged, and perhaps a little hungover...

Stealing Will Self's Pig

It is not often an author is driven by circumstances to steal another author's pig, but recent scandalous events forced my hand.

 Some of you will recall my glee when I was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize a few weeks ago, alongside such old and new stars as Alan Bennett, Will Self, Garrison Keillor and Joe Dunthorne.

A noble prize, previously won by books such as Vernon God Little, and A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, the winner is showered in champagne and given a pig at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales, just over the border from England. (You don't get to keep the pig, but they name it after your book, and take your photo with it, to the great amusement of future generations).

You can imagine then my dismay when I discovered, shortly afterwards, buried in the small print of the Hay-on-Wye festival programme, the odd phrase "Will Self, winner of the 2008  Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize." Winner? WINNER?!?!?!

As the festival program had gone to print before the shortlist was announced, this meant that the prize committee had picked the winner before they had announced, or perhaps even picked, the shortlist. It was a stitch-up. But worse, I had been denied my rightful month of anticipation, tingling, hiccups and giddy excitement.

Also I'd put serious money on Alan Bennett to win. His The Uncommon Reader is a little masterpiece. Something had to be done.

I thought long and hard. The prize is named after that comic god, P. G. Wodehouse, inventor of Jeeves and Wooster. What, I thought would Wodehouse have done, faced with such provocation? Sat in his room and written another comic novel, probably. That's how he reacted to everything, including World War 2. As I was already sitting in a room writing a comic novel this wasn't much help. Action was called for, dash it. So I asked myself, what would P. G. Wodehouse's greatest creation Bertie Wooster do, nobly backed by the genius of his manservant Jeeves?

And the answer came to me as in a vision - as though the ghost of Wodehouse himself whispered in my ear - he would steal the pig.

 

For if there is one constant in the work of P. G. Wodehouse, from Pigs Have Wings to Pig Hooey, it is that God put pigs on this good green earth to be kidnapped. Not a chapter goes by without somebody chloroforming Lord Emsworth's favourite sow, The Empress of Blandings.

And thus I made my way to the Welsh borders and, with the assistant of my trusty gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves (not his real name, but he would like to remain anonymous for some reason), I stole Will Self's pig.

I sent the organisers this, ah, pignapping video, containing my ransom demands. Tense negotiations continued up until the last minute. They, understandably, did not wish to give the prize to the man who had stolen their pig. I offered, as a very reasonable compromise, to deliver the pig to Alan Bennett's door in London if they would re-award the prize to him. They baulked - Will Self was in the program - his angry fans, denied, might rampage, torching tents, incinerating Gore Vidal in his invalid chair... The intervention of a bishop almost led to a compromise candidate (Joe Dunthorne), but we ran out of time.

This, of course, left them one pig short for the prize ceremony. And thus it was that, as you may have read in the Guardian and Bookseller over the weekend, Will Self was not awarded his pig. I was wondering how they would get over this, and so I attended the ceremony in disguise. The organisers, rather anticlimactically, pretended an outbreak of pig disease had kept the pig away, and they showed a video of a pig instead.

And so the situation rests.  The pig is in a safe place, and receiving the best of care.  For now.

It is to be hoped that the organisers of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize will give in to my very reasonable demands and re-award the Wodehouse Prize to Alan Bennett. Otherwise, I'm afraid they will get their pig back sausage by sausage.

Harsh, I know, but when you mess with the affections of six comic novelists, somebody's going to get hurt. 

Listowel Writers' Week

I'm going to be reading at Listowel Writers' Week, on Friday 30th of May 2008, at 2pm, in the Arms Hotel. It's a programme packed with some pretty heavy Irish names - Seamus Heaney, Anne Enright, John Banville, and my favourite Irish economist, David McWilliams - as well as the occasional top-quality foreigner, such as Lloyd Jones (author of Mister Pip).

There's also some good films showing in their Film Club. May I most heartily recommend Todd Haynes' astonishing, poetic, jittery, thrilling dream life of Bob Dylan, I'm Not There. In particular, Cate Blanchett's performance is as good as acting can get. It is more alive and true than most of our own lived moments. See it.

If you see me wandering down Church Street, don't be afraid to give me a shout.

Listowel rocks.

Senile Dementia versus Penile Dementia - the Queen and Jude battle it out for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

Well, it seems I have been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, alongside Alan Bennett (he wrote The Madness of King George!), Will Self (he wrote Great Apes!), Garrison Keillor (he wrote Lake Wobegon Days!), John Walsh (he once wrote in the Independent that I looked like a member of the Proclaimers!), and Joe Dunthorne (he wrote the extremely acclaimed first novel Submarine, and is only eight years old!)

Very very exciting. Previous winners include DBC Pierre, for Vernon God Little, Jonathan Coe, for The Rotters' Club, Jasper Fforde, for The Well of Lost Plots, and Marina Lewycka, for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

 They do not insult you with money, either. Bollinger give you a shitload of champagne, Everyman give you sixty volumes of PG Wodehouse in hardback, and the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival names a large pig after your book. What a year you could have, reading Wodehouse, drinking Bollinger, and... er... whatever it is that you do with pigs.

Unsurprisingly, for it is marvellous, I had picked Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader as one of my Books of 2007. I even bought my mother a copy for Christmas. Now he and I rub shoulders on a shortlist. My mother is delighted. I can only hope that none of the others bought their mothers a copy of my book for Christmas, considering how filthy it is. Personally, I hope Alan Bennett wins. His book is far more suitable for the nation's impressionable youth.

I have always argued that comedy is superior to tragedy, and this excellent shortlist proves my point. The tragic is a rather narrow genre, the comic is infinite. What other prize would place a story about a refined elderly lady reading books, in competition with the adventures of a Tipperary orphan with two penises who urinates on a politician while a mob of fifty thousand enraged farmers burn down his orphanage? Now, that's what the people want to see in a literary prize - senile dementia versus penile dementia.

May the best book win. Or, failing that, my one.


Indeed, I do believe that Jude: Level 1 is the first book featuring a hero with two penises to be nominated for a major UK literary award. Of course, it merely follows the American success of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize with a hero who had both a penis and a vagina.

In the everevolving literary world, are two sets of genitals the new one set of genitals? Will the next Booker winner be a realistic, psychologically nuanced, slightly depressed novel featuring a funeral at which a dark family secret is finally revealed and it turns out to be sex abuse yet again, but with two penises?

We shall see. 

I'm reading at Bookslam, in London, on Thursday, February 28th 2008

I'm reading at Bookslam, in London, on Thursday, February 28th, this year of our lord 2008. (That is, later this week). Please do come if you can. Or tell any of your London friends you think might enjoy it. I will not only read from, but also sign, copies of Jude: Level 1, while flirting with your disapproving partner. And I fully intend to end the night by disgracing myself thoroughly in a new and entertaining fashion.

 

 I am operating on 2 hours sleep, so if this ends abruptly, it's because I've fallen asleep and my forehead, as it sinks gently to the keyboard, has posted an unfinished message.

I will awake in a few hours, with much of the alphabet embossed in small squares on my forehead, like a man punished by the Puritans for writing fiction.

(That's three paragraphs in a row that start with "I". A sin I wouldn't commit, even in a blog, were I sufficiently rested.)

Bookslam, for those of you too lazy to click on the hyper-link, is a kick-ass literary night out in London, with live music, a DJ, a poet and, on this particularly marvellous Thursday, me.

It's on in the west-end club now known as Neighbourhood, at No. 12 Acklam Road, London, W10 5QZ.

(Back when I were but a lad wearing nowt but clogs and a loincloth, No. 12 Acklam Road was better known as  Subterania, and hosted everyone from My Bloody Valentine to We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It.)

 On Thursday, the culture will be provided by NOT ONLY Julian Gough BUT ALSO:

Zubz (known to his mum as Ndabaningi Mabuye), the Zambian-born, Zimbabwe-raised, South Africa-based MC, flying in, fresh as a daisy, from Johannesberg, with a feather in his flat but sexy cap.

 James Yuill, the hippy zippy folk bloke who's not afraid of electricity. (Not to be confused with the recently deceased Scottish road haulage industry legend).

 And Salena Saliva Godden, the writer and poet and musician and assassin and astronaut and...

(THUD) 

 

Read Norman Mailer. Or Get A New Tailor.

That quote is from (as many of you will know, and many more won't) the 1984 hit single "Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken", by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. (Lloyd Cole, back when he found it impossibly easy, before he realised it's impossibly hard.) It was good advice. As a very young man, I read Norman Mailer. I even, years later, got a new tailor. (Chris, of  Favourbrook, Jermyn Street.)

Well, Norman Mailer, Great American Novelist, died last week, and a generation of pop lyricists who were as influenced by novels as songs are looking even more thoughtful than usual. There's a lot to think about. Norman Mailer cannot be solved. Norman Mailer cannot be neatly summed up. His vices were his virtues and his virtues were his vices and his bark was worse than his bite but his bite was worse than his bark and his love was hateful and his hate was lovely, and oh didn't you just want to punch him and kiss him, Lloyd?

He was incredibly famous for a very long time, but he isn't really, now. (He will be again, after the traditional post-death, decade-long dip. And when he is famous again, it will be for radically different things, dug out of his most forgotten books.)

I saw him read in Amsterdam a few years ago, at the Crossing Border Festival, where I was also reading. He was great. Frail, slightly deaf, tiny, walking slowly with two sticks, white hair standing up all over his electric head. He read a self-deprecating piece from  Advertisements For Myself, and answered questions with wit and charm.

When goaded to (verbally) attack Tom Wolfe (who'd recently (verbally) savaged him), Mailer refused. "I think I'm the greatest writer in America. And there's maybe twenty more think the same. Novelists are an endangered species now, and when there's only twenty elk left in the world, they mustn't start trying to knock off each other's horns." (That quote is half from memory, and half from a Guardian interview of around the same time where he said almost the same thing in almost the same words... you can't do as much promotional work as Mailer did and not recycle some of the best lines.)

I wanted to go up to him onstage afterwards, and tell him something. But he was immediately surrounded by dozens of admirers from the audience, his tiny figure vanishing behind the seven-foot tall Dutch, and the seven-foot wide Americans. And I thought, he's got enough to deal with. And I'd be doing it mainly for me, not for him. Doing it to have my Mailer story. And he must have heard all this stuff so often... No, just because it's important to me doesn't mean I've the right to inflict it on him. So I didn't go up.

But if I had gone up I would have said something like...

When I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, I was reading The Naked and the Dead, in Tipperary. And I got to a scene where one of the American soldiers on patrol finds the corpse of a Japanese soldier lying in the sun, and stares at the body. And as I read the scene, and reread it, I realised that I was going to die. That my death was inevitable, and unavoidable. The knowledge was immense, direct, entirely untheoretical. It wasn't intellectual knowledge, it was physical. (I'd known before, obviously, that I would one day die, but I hadn't felt it, it wasn't real knowledge.)

And I put the book down. And for the next couple of weeks I thought about nothing else, I hardly spoke. I examined this new knowledge from every angle, I thought about the implications, I tried to work out how I should live, now that I knew that I was going to die. I was very depressed for most of that couple of weeks. And then I came to terms with it, and worked my way past it, and incorporated the knowledge into my life, and decided how I would try to live. And how I lived was better than how I'd lived before. More satisfying. More my own. And I was pretty happy, pretty much permanently, ever after.

Something like that. 

So, Norman Mailer gave me death. And I will always be grateful.

Well, this time, although I'm still saying it mainly for me, at least I'm not bothering him...

Thanks, Norman. And goodbye.

France, Berlin, Plymouth

I've been in France for the past couple of days, working on a really interesting potential stage version of Jude: Level 1. More on that, er, next year probably. It's far, far too early to talk about it now. (But shag it, I'm all excited...)

And after touching down briefly in Berlin, I'll be off to sunny Plymouth, where I read on Tuesday, November 13th (2007), as part of the launch of Short Fiction, a handsome new book/magazine/thing published by Plymouth University Press, and edited by Anthony Caleshu. I've a couple of very, very short pieces in it, one called "Latin Lover" that comes in  at a brisk 100 words exactly, and another called "Three Monkeys", which sprawls over an expansive three hundred words.  More on that launch and reading here...

If you're in the area (that's Plymouth, England, down the left-hand edge of Europe...), it's free, and I gather I'll be reading with Kevin Barry, author of the splendid There Are Little Kingdoms, which just carried off the Rooney Prize. (I hope he reads the one set in the amusement arcade.) Come one, come all.

So I'll try and tell more tales of Berlin porn, answer questions about the Irish language, recommend great books for teenaged boys, and catch up on all the other things I need to do around the website late next week... Enjoy your weekend...

Pornography and Literature

(OK, this one is going to be as short and snappy as a stepped-on daschund...)

I finally finished editing my porn film at seven o'clock this morning, having worked on it all night without a break. Which was great, except the deadline for delivery of the finished edit had been midnight...

But hey, this is a Berlin  porn festival! Transgression is where it is at. BREAK that rule. SPANK that buttock. OK,  DON'T spank that buttock...Deadline? What deadline? It turned out several other film-makers had missed it too.  A couple of phonecalls, and a drop had been arranged. All was well. Then, just trying to output a finished edit took all day (looooong technical story), and I missed two more deadlines. A new record! I am the champion! I finally handed the tape over to Gaia outside Kotbusser Tor U-Bahn station, near midnight, in a scene gloriously reminiscent of any spy film you've ever seen set in Berlin. There had been a lot of urgent phonecalls, changing trains, running up steps, searching the darkness for someone in a specific outfit... then the hurried handover, and away she rushed to put tomorrow's programme together...

So my little film will be shown tomorrow (well, later today...), Friday 26th of October, around 6.15pm, in the Kant Kino 1, on Kant Strasse, as part of Cum2Cut's Kurtzfilmprogramm. It's called The Last Porn Film, it's five minutes long, and I'll tell you more later. All part of the big Berlin Porn Film Festival.

I am stunned and gutted that I'll miss the screening, but it coincides with my reading in Loughrea at the Baffle festival. I console myself with the thought that missing the Berlin festival screening of my porn debut because I'm in Ireland reading from Jude: Level 1 at a distinguished and eccentric literary festival at least shows that I'm wasting my days in interesting ways.

Is that the time? Bed... 

Off to Baffle in Loughrea (and shoot porn in Berlin).

On Friday, October 26th, 2007, I'll be reading at the Baffle literary festival in Loughrea, Co. Galway, Ireland. Baffle (BOWES' ACADEMIC FELLOWSHIP AND FRATERNITY OF LITERARY ESOTERICS) was formed in Bowes-Kennedy pub in Loughrea, back in 1984. The pub is no more, but Baffle, like the universe, continues to expand.

The annual festival is an offshoot of Baffle's regular, year-round, pub-based poetry slam, which has generated five books of poetry.

I'm greatly looking forward to it, and will be wearing a clean shirt especially for the occasion.

Meanwhile, I went out last night, to Club Velvet on Warschauer Strasse. As my friends all know, I hate going out, and never, ever do, because if you go out you have adventures, and things happen, and you don't get any writing done for a week, and I'M BUSY, and I have to wash my hair, and where would world literature be if Shakespeare went out every night, eh?

Sure enough, after about ten minutes I found myself talking to the delightful Tatiana Bazzichelli and the utterly charming Gaia Novati of cum2cut, and next thing I knew, I was signing up to direct an amateur porn film. Bloody typical.

I have four days to shoot and edit a five minute film, and if I do get it done in time, it'll be shown as part of the second Porn Film Festival Berlin. The festival is a very Berlin mixture of art, film, dancing, theory, furrow-browed lectures and dirty sex.

As of now, though I have a camera, I've no cast, no crew, no script, no time, and I can't remember how to use Final Cut Pro. I have, however, shot some deeply erotic footage of the little finger on a woman's right hand. You've got to start somewhere. (Thanks, Anca, for signing the release form!).

Meanwhile, if anyone has any friends in Berlin who want to be kinky indie film stars, or can edit on Final Cut Pro, tell them to mail me in the next three days...

I've had some ideas for it, but the safest thing to say is that it is unlikely to be a normal porn film.

I'll keep you informed.

Author returns, alive, from the Dromineer Literary Festival!

Well, I'm back in Berlin after six days in Ireland. Verrrrrry tired... But happy.

The excuse for the trip was an invitation to read at the Dromineer Literary Festival, on the shore of Lough Derg, in  the heart of Tipperary, and therefore Ireland, and thus the universe. The festival was great, though at several points I wasn't sure if I'd survive it. I spent a good chunk of my childhood only a few miles away from Dromineer, and "The Orphan and the Mob", which I planned to read, is set just up the road and (with its pissed-off priests, pissed-on politicians, rampaging farmers, murderous orphans and burning orphanages) does not perhaps project the image of Tipperary of which Fáilte Ireland approves.

It turned out I was reading alongside Andrew Nugent, a white-haired monk of the order of St Benedict, and Prior at Glenstal Abbey.I wasn't quite sure how a seventy-something senior monk would react to the brutal deaths by coat-hook, boiling lead etc, of the Brothers of Jesus Christ Almighty. But it turned out he had been a trial lawyer before he was a monk, and he writes murder mysteries full of savage killings, so he was fine about it.

We read to over a hundred people (they had to get the emergency chairs out of storage, and wipe the dust off them, always a good sign). I read "The Orphan and the Mob", and it went down... No, I shan't drag out the suspense. It went down REALLY well. The audience got all the jokes and local references, and laughed even more than the audience at Charleston (in distant Sussex, far from the centre of the universe) the previous weekend. It was an advantage that most of those listening in Dromineer were familiar with, say,  Ardcroney, and had sampled its many wonders and delights. So a mention of it wasn't just a name; it summonsed in them beatific visions of the petrol station, the graveyard, the grass growing on the roof of Mick Reddan's house, and that huge rough cylindrical stone that cows scratch against (in the field at the bottom of the hill on the Nenagh side of Ardcrony)...

Great Q&A session afterwards too. Energetic, slightly terrifying, and thus enjoyable. It got off to a fine start when a man in a tweed jacket stood up and said that, as a Cloughjordan farmer, he felt he had to ask what I had against Cloughjordan farmers. I said I'd nothing against them, and that I thought they came out of the story particularly well. Didn't I describe them as sophisticated, and into Radiohead? It was hardly my fault they were beaten to death by orphans.

(Later, in the bar, a woman leaned over and whispered "Sure, that man isn't a Cloughjordan farmer at all. He's a Borrisokane farmer." )

 
 
Afterwards, I signed a reassuringly large number of books. One of the last to come up was a giant red-faced priest, who introduced himself by saying "I am a great admirer, a GREAT admirer, of Eamonn DeValera... and I am the  Priest for Puckane Parish... and I must say..." He leaned in closer, till our noses were nearly touching... "I enjoyed myself enormously! That was marvellous stuff! We're proud of you! Keep it up!"

I signed Father Slattery's book with a trembling hand. A mighty man. His brother, Martin "Speedy" Slattery used to teach me (though what subject I cannot now recall, as I was paying no attention at the time). Education was a simpler business back then. He would hit me with a hurley, and I would threaten to take him to the European Court of Human Rights. Ah, those were the days.