WHEN I'M WEARY...

Always go back to DH Lawrence. There was a mind who knew his own mind. And what a wonderful writer. There is so much trash around these days that you start to smell disgusting just by reading it. That's the moment when you ought to return to the Classics. I forgot that this was the way I read from childhood onwards. An Agatha Christie, whom I adored, followed by a Lawrence, then another Agatha, followed by a Dostoyevsky, another Agatha, followed by a Greene and so on and so on. I've been reorganising the books, to get some out of the way and others into a safer place, when I came across Rebecca. Now Daphne du Maurier was a friend of friends of mine. Indeed, Manderley was based on the Cornish home of one of my core group of close friends. His dad, Eton-educated, became a country and western singer and then, with horrible physical ailments, died by jumping in front of a London train. Do you need to know this? Probably not. We all went to a gathering in London to support my friend. I had known for a long time the connection with du Maurier. It was only today, in sorting my books, that I started to read Rebecca once again. WOW. Give me that first chapter any day. Not a single wasted word. No repetition. Any noun is described with a sentence/action/reason for being there. If you read certain modern literary gods you will know how they love to repeat a phrase...i mean, just love to repeat a phrase, a phrase to be repeated just like love in repeating the phrase. NOT SO WITH DAPHNE. What a beautiful writer. Thought I'd share this with you. As all writing experts will tell you: READ, READ AND READ AGAIN. But please read the classics. Daphne, I salute you.

NON-SMOKING ADDENDUM

It appears the non-smoking brigade have been out in force. A local licensee telephones me with the information that his pub has been full of them. There's only one problem: they drink one soft drink and are BORING. I forgot that the smells might not be the worst thing about this new anti-terror legislation.

ON HARRY

Pre-sales up 17%. I wonder how many small bookshops have ordered from Amazon in order to fill their shelves from now until autumn, while being careful to order a reasonable number from Bloomsbury so that suspicions are not aroused? I don't blame them -- sadly, if there are several out there doing this they'll have to keep quiet about it. My experience of watching Potter fans buying in supermarkets is that they came, they bought one book, they departed. Maybe a few more carrots and tinned tomatoes got sold but nothing that would not have passed through the stores in the first place. It's not a loss leader as such. What it does do, and believe me there are people out there who still don't know this, is demonstrate, through miles of column inches and years of broadcast hours, that the stores also sell books. I'm afraid the old-fashioned local bookshop is doomed in the same way that the old-fashioned record shop died. It should be pretty bloody obvious by now that the entire industry is geared to MASS sales. Twas ever thus. We live in a commercial world. However, the problem with this approach is the appalling standard of books on sale. They're all so similar that the next author/agent/publisher to come up with a well-written story departing from these simplistic genres is going to clean up. I also foresee a time when an e-book browsing store will open, allowing customers to view millions of books - not on the same day, of course - and either have it printed off there and then or ordered from an Amazon-style warehouse for delivery the following day. To sum up, the appetite for reading has not diminished just the point-of-sale is going through a period of painful change. And by way of being even more boring than normal, let me repeat that Potter sells because it's got LOTS of characters and LOTS of story. In fact, it's the opposite of yer usual supermarket top seller. Go read.

ANTI-SMOKING BRIGADE

The anti-smoking brigade have won. I must admit the three pubs I visited, for one pint in each over two days - unit counting again - were cleaner and much more pleasant. The smokers were content to sit with their fag packets in front of them and walk outside into the cold air under a non-protective gazebo. One landlady told me with surprise in her voice that it had taken her only half an hour to clean that morning, against the usual two hours. Also, she had lost £200 in trade for a normal Sunday. So, it's here to stay. Best get used to it. But where's the food crowd? Is it the weather? They stayed away in droves on the first two days they could eat in clean air. Why?

BOMBS IN BRITAIN

Seems like the War on Terror came back to haunt us with a vengeance. So far we have been incredibly lucky. However, is this a one-off by some disaffected people or is it the start of a far more serious concerted campaign? Let's hope it's the former. This is a wonderful country to live in. Sure, it has its faults. Sure, our politicians take us to places we ordinary citizens don't always want to go to. But this is a democracy and the next time round we might, just might, vote them out if someone comes along with a new and better bunch of ideas. The victims in this War are the innocent. This is true with all similar violence. We in Britain rather felt that the violence on the streets of Baghdad would not be exported here. If this is happening we are incredibly vulnerable. A lot of what I fear is that -- rather like in Iraq -- should this be the case there's precious little either the public or the authorities can do to protect us. As regular readers of this blog will know, I specialise in stories about the future. There's been a lot of talk recently about Oil running out and Global Warming destroying our planet. The worst case scenarios have us being plunged back into the Stone Age. There is a third possibility: that we'll be plunged back rather sooner than expected thanks to this darned War on Terror. Modern Society is -- and cannot avoid being -- incredibly vulnerable to attacks of this nature. The road hauliers strike nearly ten years ago reminded us that our oil and food supplies can be destroyed within three days. The way we live now makes us far more likely to starve, riot, fight, die of disease than was ever thus even during the darkest days of World War Two. It's ironic that you could switch off London more easily now than you could in the days when my dear old mum was a ward sister there at the height of The Blitz when the Germans bombed day and night for the best part of a year. Londoners shrugged it off. Thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of the RAF, along with many others, both soldiers and civilians, we survived. Now we don't even know who are enemy is. If it's Osama bin Laden then where is he? I find it unbelievable that the combined resources of the world's top security agencies cannot identify where he is. Not a happy morning, I'm afraid. Enjoy your day my readers and may your lives be happy and peaceful.

JULY

New month - new energy - new drive - mega sales. That's the motto for this month. I spent yesterday trawling through some of the unfinished work and cursing myself for failing to try hard enough to sell it. One story in particular drew my attention. It's nearly halfway there and it's a shame to leave it as it is. Maybe finish and self-publish. At least there'll be a book to send to a publisher. I sympathise with them having to cast their eye over mountains of slush pile scripts. Maybe a pretty looking book with decent pages and an eye-catching cover will do the trick.