The Swipe Volume 2 Chapter 30
Slightly twitchy, slightly nervous. Today I am presenting a seminar on horror as part of Reading Writers’ 2024 Writers Day. Yes, I know I am amongst friends, in a safe space, talking on a subject i know intimately.
Even so, I know when I stand up there will be a rock on my chest and a bone in my throat. I know I’ll rush it, there will be a weird quaver in my voice throughout. I will be breathless and at some point halfway through I will have to give myself an abrupt mental warning to clam the heck down. Why do I put myself through this? Because, ultimately, it’s good for you. Talking in front of people teaches you, if you’re as terrible at extemporisation as I am, to prepare as well as you possibly can.
People keep telling me I’m good at this. Boy, they have no idea. Come tomorrow afternoon, the Negroni Of Victory will be very well deserved.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
Rob is reading…
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron. The novel is touted on the cover blurb as a standalone story from his Slough Housiverse. It really isn’t. Put it like this: it’s that moment when your favourite band are playing live and they start noodling around on an intro you don’t recognise, and suddenly add a couple of chords or change the key and a song you really love jumps out.
The Secret Hours starts off as one thing, starts dropping characters you recognise into the mix, and suddenly pulls a handbrake turn halfway through which makes the informed reader go ‘ah, I know where we are now,’ and feel instantly comforted. Herron is too good a writer to make even a side-quest (or possibly an origin story) feel anything but compelling, but this is not the place to start if you want to get into the oeuvre. One for the fans.
Rob is watching…
Agatha After All. I think we can all agree the blush is off the rose on the Marvel Moving Picture FranchiseVerse, but it’s good to see there’s still room for some humour and inventiveness in the TV side of things. Based loosely on the Scarlett Witch stories written by James Robinson (Prime Reading is, as previously mentioned, your source to get some great comics as part of your Amazon subscription), the focus shifts cheekily onto Agatha Harkness, wrenching her way free of the trap Wanda Maximoff snared her in at the end of WandaVision. Some nice nods to the metatextuality of that show. And look. It’s Kathryn Hahn bouncing off Aubrey Plaza in every sense of the word. I’m hooked on the promise of the casting.
Rob is listening…
to Jon Anderson And The Band Geeks. Writing pal Nigel extolled the virtues of this new venture for the former Yes frontman and—oh, yeah, OK. I’m in. True is very much an album for the faithful, ringing in hooks and nods from decades of progtastic history, but somehow this feels truer, brighter, more honest than the recent David Gilmore album. Again, one for the fans but I count myself amongst that number and I’m very happy. The album cover is terrible, though. Was Roger Dean not available?
Rob is eating…
Potentially carbonara. That is, I have eggs and Parmesan and, courtesy of a trip to a well-appointed farm shop, a fist-sized lump of guanciale which is according to my sources, the key ingredient. I just need to pluck up the courage to apply myself to a dish which has no wiggle room for error…
Rob’s Low-Key Obsession Of The Week…
Nick Cave celebrated the 300th edition of his Red Hand Files newsletter by asking the readership to define joy. They responded in their hundreds. He published the lot. Bask in this, it’s lovely.
It seems possible that the world of pliable truth and untruth we live in now, where we’re never sure what the real story is, was birthed from the psy-op operations carried out in the 60s by American military intelligence. Manipulation, induced paranoia, a sense of loss of control—any of this sound familiar? Let’s talk a little about McGruder’s Principle…
Living Under McGruder’s Principle
A fascinating look at temporary structures, designed to look after hundreds of thousands of people for a short period of time and then disappear. Think of the arenas that pop up in major cities during the Olympics. Think of Glastonbury.
The light is changing, the air is cooling. The change of the seasons is upon us. So, alongside the warm sweaters and solid boots, let’s dig this beloved possession out of the back of the wardrobe and give it a moment to shine.
Moves are afoot, or at least conversations have started to be had, about losing the last stubborn holdover from the era of imperial measurements—the pint of beer. The focus seems to be on offering a two-thirds measure. I’m in agreement with the chief of the Metric society, who wrote recently in the Guardian that surely the logical move would be to offer half-litre measures instead, shrinking the volume of liquid by a whole 68ml. 500ml is entirely familiar to the British public as the standard measure of a big bottle of beer. I’d have no problem with that. Let’s not forget that a lot of the craft brewers only offer their stronger ales in two-thirds serves already. I think the drinking public is more ready for the change than you might think.
This is utterly inspired. Very pleased to see the visuals are from one of my favourite episodes of the original series.
I have raved in the past about the Locked Tomb novels of Tamsin Muir, whose exemplary blend of goth space opera horniness hooked me in from the first sentence of her first book, Harrow The Ninth. In an interview with This American Life, she talks about her background, the online communities where she found a home and a voice—and how, tragically but fittingly, she can never go back there again.
I’ve seen a lot of clips recently (I guess due to The Bear’s recent Emmy success) of the Season 2 episode Forks, Cousin Richie’s redemption story. It’s probably my favourite one of the show, showing how learning to take pride in a job well done can bring rewards you’re not expecting. This thoughtful Thread from Fred Chung Rutherford explains why I found the episode so affecting.
Headline of the week. You get no more context than that.
Lastly, a treatise on creativity for its own sake. I identified very strongly with this. There is no fame or money in making the newsletter every week. I do it because it’s fun and it makes me happy. What other reason could I need?
Be Your Own Artist-In-Residence
There is a new Cure song. There is a new Cure album out bang slap in the middle of Spooky Season. The goth and the prog fan in me is celebrating very hard this week.
See you in seven, fellow travellers.
