Mark Haddon's Blog, page 6

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bmj, curious & vd

this is wonderful. not just the exchange about sherlock holmes and silver blaze but the wholly coincidetnal inclusion of the letter about "VD on the TV" (thanks to the ever-wonderful sunetra gupta for this -  http://www.sunetragupta.com/ ).

notebooks 1

i was leafing through derek jarman's rather lovely sketchbooks the other day (the published version not the actual sketchbooks - good gallery here), thinking what lovely objects they were and, as is my wont, nursing a depressed, childish jealousy on account not having produced anything of a similar kind. which inspired me to dig around in some old bookshelves and gather together some of the notebooks i had made over the years. 

I've always been slightly embarrassed by my own scribbles and notes and writings-off-the-cuff (i think of myself as a good editor of bad first drafts) so i'd never done this before. What i found was a very happy discovery indeed.

take-off drawings

... en route to copenhagen from london heathrow (to see the danish opening of curious at the betty nanset theatre). i'm obviously relaxing a little (see 'take-off drawings' below). i still needed the valium, but i'm getting there:

the landing wasn't bad either:

on the way home from copenhagen simon stephens distracted me so well with entertaining conversation that i needed neither pencil, loud music or tetris. i recommend him highly.

science-fiction

and yet... terrified as i am of flying, i look out the window and see dawn coming up over the rim of the world and think... is this not the most jaw-dropping sight imaginable? we're 37,000 ft up. in a flying machine. that is the curve of the planet out there. we are living in a science fiction movie. right now. we are living in an actual science fiction movie. and we're probably complaining about the crappiness of the inflight meal...

take-off drawings

i hate flying (a subject about which i go on at some length here) ideally during take-off i'd have a general anaesthetic. Since that isn't usually available i'd like to play Tetris or some other moronically simple and addictive computer game but, as they point out, any electronic device used by a passenger during take-off or landing will cause the plane to veer sideways, burst into flames and and plunge into the ground at several hundred miles an hour killing everyone on board. so, the only thing i'm able to do during take-off is to doodle (see turbulence drawings below). i think i did pretty well taking off from heathrow en route to addis ababa last week - the longest flight i've ever taken.

i seem to have been a little less relaxed - or perhaps a little under-valiumed - on the way home.

 

 

dirty surfaces

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one leg

    'But you say she has only got one leg!'

    'She is as full of mischief as tho' she had ten'.

            Lady De Courcy and Mrs Proudie discussing La Signora, Barchester Towers. 

mouse

only after i posted that last photograph ('nothing') did i realise that it was here, one evening in 1920,  that 'mouse', the son of kenneth grahame, died under by a train, aged 19. suicide almost certainly. mouse was the monstrous, beloved and over-pampered model for toad in the wind in the willows.

 

 

nowhere

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