The Swipe Volume 1 Chapter 31
At what point, when you know a holiday is coming up, do you crack and get the cases down from the loft? At what point do you find yourself slowing down at work, losing focus on the task in front of you in anticipation the pleasures which await a little ways down the road? A couple of days? A week?
Oh, Readership, I am in that agreeable state. The back room is a mess of half-sorted packing. The day job is nothing but an irritation, each shift a ticking clock, a countdown, one more cross on the calendar. I swear, I might pitch up to the office on Friday in shorts and shades. I set the auto-response on email on Wednesday.
I have no idea what you’re getting next week. If it’s just a bunch of holiday snaps, I apologise in advance.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The pre-holiday Swipe.
Rob is reading…
The Green Eagle Score, another Parker novel by Richard Stark. Mid-table for me. Some nice moments but the action is strangely muted and a major antagonist comes out of nowhere at the end of the second act. I mean, it’s Parker, so still worth a read and I gulped it in a couple of days.
Rob is watching…
The making of the pool scene in ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.’ So many familiar faces if you grew up in the mid-80s.
Rob is listening…
to Royal Blood. The boys from Brighton have had a torrid year—sneered at for their grumbling at teens at the Radio One Big Weekend in Dundee, an underwhelming Glastonbury set. But the new album is a stonkah, and Mike Kerr has snagged his own signature bass from Fender, so something’s going right. Anyway, I like em a lot. Royal Blood wear their hearts on their sleeve and they’re adorably goofy.
Rob is eating…
A tuna melt. Something between the two versions Matty Matheson offers in this video. Both of which look, frankly, revolting. I am cheerfully confident that my sandwich will fit the melt-sized hole in your soul.
Good canned tuna, finely diced celery, capers, a julienned spring onion. Hellman’s mayo. 4/1 protein to binder. Decent white bread, none of your milk or Wonder Bread foolishness. Think tiger bloomer as the acceptable low end. And please, pretty please with lemon, sugar and a cherry on top, not burger cheese. I’d go with Gruyère but I am a foodie ponce. A mild cheddar is fine. Red Leicester is better. Melty is key, the clue’s in the name, but the fattiness of American cheese is just too much here.
Also, finally and most importantly—a tuna melt is not open face.
Triggered? Me? Perhaps a little.
Rob’s Low-Key Obsession Of The Week…
It’s been one of those ‘haunted by a lyric’ sort of weeks. This time around, it’s the hanger for Joe Ely’s ‘Fingernails’, which goes:
I wear my fingernails long so they click when I play the piano.
I have questions. This seems like a very strange thing to enjoy. But then, the idea of typists with super-flex manicures is a weird-out for me. It’s a great song—Ely channeling Jerry Lee Lewis to splendid effect. Nevertheless, slightly freaked out and curse my twisted brainmeats for putting the song on constant replay on Rob’s Head Stereo, 275/285 on the medium wave.
Let us begin with beginnings. The pilots of some very well-known comedy classics which didn’t quite catch fire on the first offering. There’s a reason you can’t find this stuff anywhere…
One of those wonderful moments when a four-panel cartoon and a determinedly belligerent author generate a long, irate and hilarious reaction. See also Gail Simone, comic writer and epic Xwitter troll par excellence. One of those few occasions where it’s advisable to read the comments.
As a cheerful solo drinker, I can confirm there’s no real formula as to how a pub with a welcoming glow is grown. You can’t generate vibe. It just shows up, subject to rules no-one has yet managed to quantify.
There is something about an American pharmacy which has always felt a little—off. You go in for some toothpaste and come out hours later feeling a little woozy, a little druggy, clutching a bag full of stuff you don’t quite remember buying. I still have a bottle of Aqua Velva in my bathroom cabinet which I bought in our trip to Colorado in 2018. It smells like fear, nostalgia and toxic masculinity. Not really my flavour. Maybe I was lured into buying it through subliminal suggestion.
A cook needs a sharp knife. Inevitably, the quest for such an item in the overheated atmosphere of the professional kitchen has led to gamification and overcompensation. Which is not to say I’m not interested in a blade an atom thick at the cutting edge. I’m just not sure I’d fancy the time I’d spend in A&E getting my fingers sewn back on after a mishap with veg prep. I’ve chopped off the top of my thumb with a Y-shaped vegetable peeler before. How much damage could I do with a serious implement?
The word you’re looking for is ESCAPE.
Essential advice from Alex Loveless which, if you know me at all, I am taking very strongly to heart.
The most striking photographic images ever taken and the cameras used to take them. Note that most of them are simple, straightforward devices. Always worth mentioning, the best camera is the one you have with you. It’s about the moment and the mind behind the viewfinder. The hardware is secondary.
Last orders. No apologies for dumping the big read at the end of the chapter. This is big, deep, dense and chewy, the literary equivalent of malt loaf. Adam Roberts digs into Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange And Mr. Norrell and, somewhat unsurprisingly, gets lost in a maze of mirrors. This is a great read on narrative, history, fantasy and how we define and ringfence genre. It’s not for everyone. I, naturally, wallowed around in it like a rhino in a swamp. Feel free to take that image with you.
Strange, Norrell, Magic and Modernity
After that, let’s Outro in simpler, purer fashion. I’m drawn to soul and country music because they’re, at heart, based on good storytelling. More than that, a good country or soul record is tight, economical and, when done right, a brutally targeted missile strike to the heart. Take Outfit, written by Jason Isbell, performed here by Drive-By Truckers.
A song which actively sideswiped me into tears as I was doing the compile on this week’s chapter for no goddam good reason. And, coincidentally, made me wanna call my dad.
See you in seven, true believers. Don’t call what you’re wearing an outfit. Don’t give it away.
