Will Self's Blog, page 34

Is patriotism the last refuge of the scoundrel?

Listen to Will Self’s latest A Point of View from Radio 4 here. Or read it here.

Shark events and autumn/winter appearances

25 July: Urban Psychosis, An evening with Will Self, Manchester.

12 August: Edinburgh Book Festival, 8pm, Charlotte Square Gardens, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, EH2 4DR.

9 September: City Books, 7pm, Ropetackle Arts Centre, Little High Street, Shoreham-by-Sea BN43 5EG. Tickets £8 available from Ropetackle or City Books.

10 September: Topping and Company Booksellers, The Paragon, Bath, Somerset BA1 5LS.

17-19 September: Annual Conference and Social Housing Exhibition, ICC, Birmingham.

23 September:...

On location: Dublin

Standing on a patch of induced greenery, I stared first at the vast and glassy curvilinear buttocks of Dublin Airport’s newish Terminal Two, then at the shiny cars being shat out from between them along the approach road. I turned and saw the entire sweep of Dublin Bay open out before me: I could see the Wicklow Mountains to the south; the city centre with its hugger-mugger of recent building; the Brobdingnagian bodkin spearing up from O’Connell Street and the triangular roofs of the assembla...

Madness of crowds: Male changing rooms

A fine smir of testosteronewavered about the bobbing heads of the jogging boys – or at least, that’s as I remember it. Oh! Where are the changing rooms of yesteryear? Where are the gracile bodies, the downy pelts, the helium squeaks of larynxes tossed hither and thither by the hormonal flux? We come to consciousness of our sexuality among the naked forms of our peers – and no doubt once this painful awareness has finally ebbed away we’ll find ourselves once more: bare, forked things, laid out...

On Dubliners

Watch Will Self and John Banville in conversation with Carlo Gébler dissecting the ins and outs of James Joyce’s Dubliners here.

Real meals: Pulled pork

It was one of those incomparable early June days you get in the far north: bright sunlight drenched the heathery Orcadian hillsides and the choppy blue waters of the Wide Firth. Driving at speed along the road from Kirkwall to Finstown, I kept taking sidelong glances at the island of Gairsay to the north. Twenty years ago when I lived in Orkney I was friendly with a local builder, Simon, who told me that a single family occupied the old farmhouse on Gairsay: a paterfamilias, a matriarch, and...

On location: Becontree housing estate

Waiting for the District Line Tube out to Becontree, I gazed at the poster curving up the sooty wall. “Wake up to the Wild”, a slogan daubed on a stylised piece of driftwood read, and beneath it, hovering over an illustration of a rocky, sandy beach, was this come-hither: “With one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, Guernsey’s coastlineoffers a new experience each visit.”

This I didn’t doubt – I’ve been to Guernsey and walked its entire coastline (not difficult: it takes a long morning)...

On Stonehenge’s new visitor centre

Read Will Self’s take on the new visitor centre at Stonehenge from the Guardian Review here.

Live: Death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lE0uT5Kyt4

Watch Will Self talking about death at an RSA event tonight at 6.30pm.

RTÉ Radio 1 Book Show

Listen to Will Self talking about psychogeography and London on the RTÉ Radio 1 Book Show.