Saturday: Sad news. I hear from Gerry O’Boyle that Rachael Dean has died from cancer. Barely a year or so older than me. I’d bump into her from time to time in Highgate and Crouch End, and she and her sister Emily hired me to DJ at a particularly fun party in 2007. Emily wrote about the night in her column for Boyz magazine, with a photo of the three of us, Rachael on the left (PDF file).

Spend the afternoon showing the newly-Camden-based Simon K around what I suppose is my ‘manor’: the Boogaloo (with its rather fun vintage clothes and cake market), and Parkland Walk. Then to the Boogaloo once more for impromptu drinks with Kirsten M. Discover that 5pm to 8pm is the perfect time there for meeting friends – not too crowded, jukebox available. Lots of Monkees being played (Davy Jones died this week).

Both chats are fairly serious. Chats about getting older (we’re all 35-40), of knowing that one never knows how long one has got left, of remaining plans and ambitions. Kirsten and I talk about the film Dreams Of  A Life, about a London party girl who fell off her social radar so completely that no one noticed when she died (a film I recommend to everyone). But more optimistically, these chats bring a renewed sense of knowing how important it is to stay in touch with friends and meet from time to time, just to talk about life. And also, a vivid sense that however trite the expression, life really is too short.

For my part, I’m pleased I’m doing the course I’m doing (some students in my class have dropped out). I definitely want –  need - to earn a modest living from writing, to publish a few books between now and the grave, and to be of use while not doing something I don’t want to do. That’s pretty much my ‘plans’.

To Piccadilly to meet Mum for lunch, then we both visit the massive David Hockney exhibition of Yorkshire landscapes at the RA. The place is packed, but the paintings are so big that it doesn’t matter – one really has to stand back to properly appreciate them. His sheer productivity and variety of materials is impressive alone – oil on canvas, charcoals, crayons, watercolours, video art, as well as the much-trumpeted use of iPads and computer printing. One wall has five iPads mounted on it.

At the RA shop, the Hockney merchandise includes special iPad covers and a cigarette lighter. Given his public rants against the smoking ban, I like to think the latter was very much his idea.

There’s one surprise tucked away, with the exhibition’s multi-camera film installation. After the expected shots of country lanes and trees, there’s footage of what looks like Hockney’s studio, with assistants milling around and cute dogs fed by aloof young men draped on sofas. The studio is then cleared, and there’s a little scene of ballet dancing, with tap dancing to ‘Tea For Two’. The colourfully-dressed dancers are young and clearly professionals, and one of them is an older man – presumably the choreographer. I wonder if it’s Wayne Sleep, and later find out that, yes, it is:

Interview with Wayne Sleep about the Hockey film

It’s so good that Hockney still has this camp side, experimental yet playful, sharing territory with Derek Jarman, Gilbert & George and Warhol. What’s more unexpected is the way he can find room for an arty little ballet film alongside more profound and mainstream statements about looking at the English countryside – and that it all works.

Overheard at the Hockney, by someone on Twitter: “Isn’t it nice that they got Alan Bennett to do the audio guide?”

Then on to Cecil Sharp House to see the Hockney soundalike (and slight lookalike) himself. Despite the venue, Mr Bennett doesn’t do any folk dancing or singing, though there is a raffle halfway through the evening, sponsored of the local health centre, with the winner getting ten free pilates classes. Second prize is something called ‘gyrotonic’ classes. It’s not clear whether these classes are with Alan Bennett or not.

Even though it’s a benefit for Primrose Hill library, he doesn’t read his recent essay on libraries (there’s already a video of him doing so online). Instead does his usual ‘An Evening With…’ format of diary selections (updated to include his visit to the Occupy London camp), then a Q&A, and then the ‘mantelpiece’ speech from Enjoy. 

Someone asks him about his memories of Peter Cook’s Establishment club in the early 1960s. AB says he saw Lenny Bruce there, doing a set about taking drugs. As the druggier period of the Sixties was still to come, Bruce’s set wasn’t so much rebellious or shocking, just baffling.

Managed to get up at 9am this time, though I think I spent most of the morning reading things on the internet, which is still no good.

For some reason, much of today was reading about male writers who moved to different countries. I stumbled on the blog of Karl Webster this morning. He pretended to be that ‘Ugly Man’ blogger a few years ago (I do find confessions of internet fakery fascinating). Right now, though, he is having adventures living with cats in a French forest.  Or at least he says he is.

(I don’t think anyone’s accused me of making up my own persona to write this blog. As it is, I already look like a fictional character in real life. Even my hairdresser said my too-long hair was like a bad wig…)

I also started reading Geoff Dyer’s Out Of Sheer Rage, and found myself laughing aloud on the Tube as a result. It’s his account of trying to write a book about DH Lawrence, and failing, and details all the procrastination and dithering and hindrances that occur along the way. At the start, he has the chance to move house to write the book, and can’t make up his mind where to go. Not just which area, but which country. This makes him sound quite privileged and fortunate, but his experiences are far from blissful. Early on he goes from Paris (too pricey) to Rome (too hot) and then spends six weeks on a beautiful Greek island, only to discover that after the first few days all the beauty puts him off writing, or doing anything at all. Apart from killing wasps. It’s very funny, and the procrastination thought-processes feel very familiar (Of course, I’m reading this book instead of getting on with my own writing).

I also read a Paris Review interview with the Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell, another British writer who’s lived in different countries: Japan and Ireland in particular.

So naturally I found myself thinking about how I’ve only ever lived in the UK (Suffolk, Bristol, London) and wondering whether I could or should give living abroad a go. I don’t have the immediate financial means to do so, but that never seems to stop people I know. Once determination takes over, they just find the money and get the sort of work which can be done on a laptop anywhere, or they take an English teaching job in the country they want to live in.

I don’t think I could do it alone. It would have to be through some external opportunity – such as the decisions of a partner (Dyer’s girlfriend in the book is an American with a flat in Rome). But I’m not the partner sort of person… (and if this were a film, the great relationship of my life would start in the next scene).

Tangier is one place I’ve thought about a lot, having gone there three times and being an ardent fan of its bohemian history. The summers would be difficult, though, given my aversion to heat – I even find London too hot in the summer. Stockholm is another favourite city which I’ve had some happy times in. So if we’re talking sheer fantasy, I’d quite like to try ‘dividing my time’ as they say on book jackets, between Stockholm and Tangier.

But who am I kidding? I’m such a Londoner. One thing I love about London is how I can suddenly decide to see a recent-ish film in a proper cinema and know it will be playing somewhere. Today I fancied seeing Midnight In Paris, the Woody Allen film. It’s been released on DVD now, but there was still one cinema showing it this evening – the Odeon Panton Street. About 50% full, too.

Quite apt to see it so soon after The Artist, given it’s another love letter to the 1920s. The Owen Wilson character is a  gushing fan of Paris during the Jazz Age, with its writers and artists – much like I am with the Tangier of the 50s and 60s. Through a bit of handy time-travelling, he gets to meet all the great names of the era before deciding which timezone – and which woman – he truly belongs to. Pure wish fulfilment (and the story is not entirely unlike the premise of the TV sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart), but a lot of fun. The actor playing the young Ernest Hemingway is particularly good, and in his brief scenes he threatens to steal the film.

Any film that expects its audience to get the following joke is fine by me:

“Wow, was that Djuna Barnes I was dancing with? No wonder she wanted to lead!”

Overslept for most of the morning – again. Possibly because I didn’t put the heater on before sleeping, thinking it was getting mild enough not to. I think my body goes into a kind of hibernation mode when it’s cold under the duvet – as if it says to itself, ‘go back to sleep until it’s warmer’.

Regardless, I forget it’s not good enough to just fall asleep. You have to plan your sleep. First alarm set, 2nd alarm set, maybe a post-it note by the bed shouting at me not to go back to bed after I’ve gotten out to turn the alarm off. I need all these things and more.

I’ve heard interviews with people talking about having rewarding jobs. The phrase they use is ‘it’s what gets you out of bed in the morning’.

I think the only time I’ve had that feeling is when I know I’m going on a trip the next day, particularly abroad. That gets me up. Otherwise, well, my college classes are in the evening, which doesn’t help.

I’m actually having special ‘study skills’ sessions about this, aimed purely at people with dyspraxia. In my case, it’s about getting me anchored in my own sense of time, rather than just drifting through the days.

Another modern phrase – often used to describe unemployed young people – is ‘having no stake in society’. I go further than that. I feel like I have no stake in time. But I know I’m best suited to living alone and working alone, so I have to shackle myself with ‘chains of one’s own making’, as Quentin Crisp put it.

***

Class tonight was on London Assurance, the Victorian comedy. Then I went straight to the Muswell Hill Odeon to see The Artist. Aside from the novelty of being a silent film in black and white, the plot is so simple that the film should really be a lot more lightweight than it really is. But the charisma of the two leads is mesmerising – you never tire of their faces. And there’s a few scenes which are particularly inventive and unexpected, such as a dream sequence. A perfect film, really.

Cost of cinema ticket: £7.50.

At college, I’m constantly having to stop myself over-researching, getting swamped by the flood of books and articles there are on each essay subject. For the literary theory module, I’m thinking of choosing the question on ‘how is literature gendered‘. And of course there’s just no end to the amount of materials one can consult  - from Virginia Woolf through to Judith Butler and all points in between. I often stand in the college library and stare at the many shelves full of books about Woolf alone, and just think: there’s so much work that’s been done. Other people are so productive. I compare this to feeling too tired when I wake, to feeling too tired when I get back from class. It seems so wrong to feel tired full stop when made aware of the work of others – such a sin not to spend every waking moment making new stuff.

Watched a BBC documentary on David Hockney’s new show, which I’m going to later this week. His constant trying out of new ideas and new technology is inspiring – painting with an iPad, experimenting with multi-camera films. He even builds a doll’s house model of the Royal Academy in order to hang his latest show.

Another old timer, Woody Allen, quietly won the best Original Screenplay Oscar this week, for Midnight In Paris. Again, he just carries on doing new work, one film every year, and sometimes it’s not so great and sometimes it wins an Oscar.

In music, I was thinking one prolific grafter who just carries on would have to be Mark E Smith, with The Fall. But I’ve just realised that even his 29 albums are nothing compared to Billy Childish’s various incarnations – 140 albums and counting.

There’s so much to read, to watch, to see. In London, more so. The sheer choice of culture, versus the limited time and energy one has to spend on it, makes one weigh up all kinds of variables when deciding what to do with one’s consumption time. Isn’t it about time I had a go at Proust? But I still haven’t seen The Artist!

(What is it I like again? Everything! No – nothing! Oh, I always get those two confused…)

I actually find myself pleased when some live attractions turn out to be unavailable or just too expensive. Concerts, for instance. It seems the more people expect music to be free on the internet, the more they crave the physical experience of concerts, perhaps in a kind of analogue off-set. And once they feel the urge to go to an event, they have to work out how much they’re prepared to pay for it.

There’s been a documentary and ensuing furore about the way ticket agencies rip-off customers with ludicrously elevated prices. Here’s an interesting blog post on the subject:

http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/blogs/secondary-ticket-agencies-the-great-rock-n-roll-swindle/

It made me wonder if some people were really prepared to pay over £600 to see Pulp. The Viagogo agency seems to think so.

In my case, I was lucky enough to see Pulp several times in the 90s, along with Blur, Oasis, Suede, MBV, and the Pixies. But the box-ticking aspect aside, my urge to go to big concerts has dwindled regardless. Because I’m usually by myself, I find it hard to connect with the crowd experience. I’m too acutely aware of being by myself, or being my age, wondering if this night out was a good idea after all, or I just can’t stop thinking about the act of being in the audience, and what that means. Either that, or my taste has just changed (it’s probably more to do with that).

But there are still things I want to go to. One event I was quite excited to hear about this week was of Alan Bennett doing a talk at Cecil Sharp House. I managed to get a ticket online before they sold out.

Ticket price: £10. Plus 50p postage. And it includes a glass of wine.

Admittedly, the evening will be less of a visual spectacle than, say, a Take That gig. And with rather fewer dance routines. Though one never knows.

Have been forcing myself to get up at 7 and get to the college library or computer rooms for regular ‘homework’ sessions at 9. My body doesn’t like early mornings, but my mind does – I seem to think more clearly first thing.

Today: Spent a final three hours on the Finisterre essay before submitting the thing for good (deadline was today). Must have been about my tenth draft.

On top of the unfortunate penalty fare incident the other week, I had another piece of essay-related bad luck on Sunday night. I left the memory stick – which had my essay on – in one of the college computers. Even though I rushed back the next morning – getting there at 8am – the stick had gone. Thankfully I’d printed the latest draft out, so it just meant having to type it into a new Word file from the printout. Took me a morning, but it meant I could revise it as I went.

Kind people on Twitter recommended I scanned it by OCR, and used Dropbox but, being on a deadline, I really wasn’t in the best mood for learning how to use new software for the first time. And I’d covered the printout with yet more revisions in pen, so an OCR scan would have been tricky. Typing it up then just sending the file to my Gmail was actually quicker, as I knew what I was doing. I generally do things faster when I know what I’m doing.

But a lesson was learned. I’m not the sort of person that can remember a memory stick.

Someone told me a ‘computer proverb’ regarding this: ‘If it doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t exist.’

***

Also today: read the latest set text for the London module – the play London Assurance (1841) by Dion Boucicault  - and attended a lecture on it. A kind of Victorian take on Restoration comedies, but with the kind of inverted witticisms that would influence Wilde.

Also attended yet another study skills workshop on essay writing – can’t have too many. A fairly college-heavy day, then.

I’m far too good at hibernation, especially in freezing weather. Today I woke up at about 1pm, even though I’d fallen asleep at a reasonable time during the night. To my horror, the whole morning was gone. And I don’t even feel better for the extra sleep physically – I’ve found that sleeping too much makes you feel ill too – you get a kind of sickly headache. I really must make sure I get up properly tomorrow morning, however cold it is.

Managed to get some things done, however, including finally working out how to scan my article for the Sunday Express, on letter writing. The paper is too large for my A4 scanner, and it took me forever to work out how to join two image files and make a new one. As you can see, I still haven’t done it very well, but it’s readable:

It was published two months ago, but I wanted to put off mentioning it here until I was paid, which happened last week (I was told it would take that long). This was, after all, my first proper freelance paid writing job. As in paid decently.  Because my bedsit-renting outgoings are meagre compared to the average person, if I could get just two such writing gigs a month I’d be able to call myself a Working Writer – just about. Three such articles a month and I’d have an income from a job I’d actually be happy with, and could even afford to save. So I need to pitch for this sort of work more often.

Writers often talk about the day their first cheque from a publisher or newspaper arrived – that heart-lifting moment of a dream fulfilled, of a future laid out. I certainly felt very good about the article being published, particularly because they gave me a byline photo.

***

Sadly, today I had to spend £25 of my proud earnings on a transport penalty fare.

I went to the Museum Of London Docklands this evening in order to attend a screening of Paul Kelly’s films made with Saint Etienne, Finisterre and What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day? This meant a rare trip on the Docklands Light Railway from Bank to West India Quay station. On the way back, I didn’t realise I had to ‘touch in’ my Oyster card at one of those voluntary scanning pads you have to look for, rather than at a barrier, which I’m used to. In fact, I found the station confusing enough as it was. I had to run up and down the same steps twice to find the right platform, as there’s two branches of the DLR going through it. The thought of touching in my Oyster card didn’t occur to me – I was too preoccupied with working out where the hell I was meant to be.

On the train there was a TFL ticket guard, to whom I presented my card with confidence. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d done something wrong. Or rather, not done something right.  He scanned my card, told me I hadn’t touched in at the station, and said that this meant I had to pay a penalty fare of £25.

I was pretty upset and angry about this. Particularly as I was clearly – visibly-  an easily confused visitor who had unwittingly made a mistake rather than a knowing fare dodger who had been caught. Fare dodgers don’t present their ticket to a guard confidently.

Plus my Oyster card history would prove I’m someone that doesn’t use the DLR regularly. Plus I’m medically forgetful these days, what with the dyspraxia diagnosis. My brain isn’t as connected up as most people’s.

But the guard’s sympathy only ran to not charging me the full £50 – and he said I was lucky he didn’t do this. I paid on the spot, not wanting to create a scene.

Still, the penalty fare slip has details of how to write an appeal letter to try and claim the money back, and that’s what I’ll do. I’ve poured so many thousands of pounds into TFL over the  years, so I do hope they can let me off for making this one very human mistake.

***

Apart from that little unhappy epilogue, I otherwise had a lovely evening at the Paul Kelly screening. Mervyn Day is a portrait of the Lea Valley just before the Olympic Park bulldozers moved in, filmed in a very 1970s Children’s Film Foundation sort of way. One the best bits is the voice of an old Hackney Wick bloke saying “There should be signs for dogs”. As in for them to read.

I chatted to Paul Kelly himself on the train home. He was a witness to my run-in with the TFL guard, and very kindly stood up in my defence.

***

Some happier news. This week I had two further marks back from my BA English degree course. One was 70, the other was 71. That’s two Firsts – just. It’s proof that despite the dyspraxia, I can clearly do good work.  I feel a lot less stupid and useless. Even if I do forget to touch in my Oyster card sometimes, I can be relied upon to write a decent essay about Coleridge.

“Decide to be happy” can never be said enough.

***

Things to share:

Seaneen M’s 2010 article for the Guardian, more topical than ever: ‘Benefits helped me turn my life around‘

Dedalus Books has a brand new website, and there’s a recent tribute to Dedalus on the Workshy Fop blog.

***

London is currently hitting sub zero temperatures, and my room is too draughty to be heated effectively (plus I can’t afford to have my electric radiator on all day as it is). It’s at times like this that I’m particularly grateful for living in a city full of heated public spaces. This winter is my first as a member of Birkbeck College Library, which has warmth, plenty of comfortable desks, areas with computers, areas for pen and paper only, and best of all the opening hours are 8am to quarter to midnight every day. Even Sundays.

Today: treated myself to the latest issue of the comic Locke & Key (so ingeniously written, so beautifully drawn). Plus Susannah Clapp’s A Card From Angela Carter (a pocket-sized lovingly-designed & illustrated tribute to Carter), and Rhodri Marsden’s highly amusing (and painful) collection of Tweet-sized anecdotes, Crap Dates. 

***

Read half of The London Nobody Knows (1962) by Geoffrey Fletcher. It inspired the 60s documentary with James Mason, as well as Finisterre, which I’m writing my first big London essay about. Didn’t realise that Fletcher was an illustrator too – about a quarter of the book is his drawings of early 60s London nooks & crannies.  Much of it is his personal hymn to the city’s Victorian remnants – music halls, gas lamps, iron lavatories – and his vocabulary is often Victorian too: “a Teutonic thought occurred to me”, “Limehouse Chinamen”, and “turning a stone, one starts a wing”.

On further research, it turns out the latter is a reference to the Francis Thompson poem ‘The Kingdom Of God’ (1913). Which is also the source of the phrase ‘many-splendoured thing’:

The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. 

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

Tuesday last: to Birkbeck’s own Cinema to see David Lean’s Oliver Twist (1948). My first time in the cinema, and the first time I’ve seen – gotten around to, rather – the film.

(after a certain age, there’s an awful lot of getting around to things in one’s life… Have to remember that life is more than just a long To Do list – that implies one knows exactly what one wants from life, which is never true…)

The Birkbeck Cinema is really a 70-seat screening room used by various film societies, rather than a popcorn or arthouse venue with a regular daily programme (the smallest single-screen cinema in Central London proper is the Aubin, Shoreditch, as I found out last year). But a lot of the Birkbeck screenings are open to the public – and free, too. Currently there’s a programme of Dickens On Screen, hence the Lean Oliver Twist this week. Others in the programme are listed here, including a 1913 silent version of David Copperfield. 

The cinema is tucked inside Birkbeck’s Gordon Square campus, a row of knocked-through houses that were once home to Virginia Woolf and co. But what’s unexpected is that the architecture around the cinema suddenly transforms from nondescript white Victorian corridors into a riot of multi-coloured 21st century geometrical shapes:

A little research reveals that the cinema was designed by Surface Architects, opened in 2007, and won a RIBA award.

The highlight of the David Lean Oliver Twist for me is the opening five minutes. The film opens on a desolate moor at night, with the horizon framed at a sharp geometric angle (much like the Birkbeck Cinema decor). Nothing for a few seconds, then a figure appears in the distance. Close up – it’s a pregnant young woman, alone, possibly lost, walking uncertainly along a muddy track. She sees a light in a building far off, smiles in relief and walks more quickly. Then a terrifying thunderstorm breaks, she’s caught in the rain, clings to a tree, and her face is contorted in pain as the lightning flashes:

But she struggles on towards the light, makes it to the building’s front gate and is let in by someone from inside, carrying a lantern. As she disappears within, the camera pans up the building to reveal a sign in the wrought iron… “PARISH WORKHOUSE”.

It’s such a perfect opening. And this whole sequence is entirely wordless. It’s not in the novel, strictly speaking, based instead on a suggestion by Lean’s wife Kay Welsh (who plays Nancy in the film). But Dickens would surely approve. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was writing a story that would become not just a classic, but a myth, so a big mythical opening is called for. In fact, any version of Oliver Twist that begins with Oliver’s mother-to-be staggering to get to safety is taking its cue from Lean. It also has echoes of Yeats’s line about something ‘slouching toward Bethlehem to be born’.

(Actually, the beginning of the 2009 Star Trek movie has Captain Kirk’s mother in a similar situation, except in space…)

Much fun had, Saturday night last, when I was Dj-ing at How Does It Feel To Be Loved.

Here’s what I played. With a few added YouTube links.

Kiss And Make Up – Saint Etienne (single version with Donna Savage)
Initials BB – Serge Gainsbourg
Lo Boob Oscillator  - Stereolab (cutting off the coda)
Sister I’m A Poet – Morrissey
Heavenly Pop Hit – The Chills
I Feel The Earth Move – Carole King
Substitute – The Who
Tainted Love – Gloria Jones
Sweeping The Nation – Spearmint
Ping Pong – Stereolab (a request)
Give Me Just A Little More Time – Chairmen Of The Board
Women’s Realm – Belle And Sebastian
Plan B – Dexys Midnight Runners
Doing It Right – The Go Team
Stoned Love – The Supremes
Ask – The Smiths
French Navy – Camera Obscura
Give Him A Great Big Kiss – Shangri-Las
These Boots Are Made For Walking – Nancy Sinatra
Poor Old Soul – Orange Juice
You Get What You Deserve – The Siddeleys
Oblivious – Aztec Camera
Roadrunner – Modern Lovers
Dreaming – Blondie
My Boyfriend’s Back – The Angels
Carbrain – The Wake
Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow - Felt (album version)
Nothing To Be Done – Pastels (love Stephen Pastel’s audible sniff at the beginning)
Spinning Wheel – Shirley Bassey
Raspberry Beret – Prince
Thinking Of You – Sister Sledge 

Simon K met me there, my old friend from the Bristol Era (1990-3), last seen in Amsterdam when I played there with Spearmint, 1999 or 2000. In Bristol we used to go to indie clubs that played HDIF style music – a lot of the same songs  in fact – so it made sense for us to meet there. He even danced. Great to see him again.

Also met with Ella L and her friend Rob. After 1am or so Ella – who lives near me – called a licensed cab. Impressively, she used an iPhone app to contact the taxi company Addison Lee, typed in the destination, and got us a quoted fee then and there. Much more civilised than a night bus. Every penny I’ve spent on taxis has always been worth it.

Monday classes: 16th century poetry (Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare) followed by 20th century literary theory (Barthes). The lecturer on Roland Barthes compared him to David Bowie, in terms of his frequent re-invention. Still feeling wary about the literary theory side of an English degree, but it’s all a good work-out for the brain.

***

Still wasting a lot of time on silly things. Today I heard the announcer on Radio 3′s Composer Of The Week imply that Paul Bowles was married to Carson McCullers. I’m ashamed to admit I waited until the show was on the BBC’s Listen Again iPlayer so I could check what he said:

“Britten and Pears spent some time in New York, where they opted to take a flat with W.H. Auden and his American lover Chester Kallman in Brooklyn Heights. It was a bohemian, arty, communal arrangement and this very fluid and remarkable menage included the writers Paul Bowles and his wife Carson McCullers…”

Ms McCullers was indeed one of the tenants, but Bowles’s wife was – obviously –  the writer Jane Bowles. All three of them shared the house with Auden, Britten et al, albeit not for very long. It’s all in the fascinating book February House, as reviewed here.

It was only a minor error in a programme that was really about Britten, though. I think I need to just let these things go.

***

A  message on Twitter:

“Thank you for replying! I’m from Argentina. Never had the chance to listen to Orlando but loved you in interviews. ;)”