'People are never shocked by an expression of feeling'

Amidst the wholly inept animations (artistic license aside, I truly think Allen Ginsberg would have been mortified to see such a one dimensional interpretation of his work) and the beauty of James Franco, the thing that has kept my cogs whirring post Howl is this solitary line.

People are never shocked by an expression of feeling.

I still can’t decide what to make of it.

Context aside, maybe we are never shocked by the feeling that is iterated, but the act of iteration itself. I think shock is important though. Yes, it can be horrifying but it’s also linked to spontaneity. And without that, the world would be a very dull place. 

Thank you very much Ginsberg, or the smart alec script writer who decided that would be a suitable line to slip into the film’s mismatch of genres. 

'We were just gathering little bits of disconnected prettiness'

I love how Jonathan Franzen continues to make me stop and read his lines over and over again. In the middle of an unassuming paragraph, he drops in tiny little snippets of imagery, completely capturing a moment. 

An emotion you never thought was true until it was phrased that way. 

The moments are so fleeting he allows you to skim over them, processing the narrative until you are ready to dwell on his subtext. And if that moment doesn't strike you or tickle your fancy, well, there'll be another one just around the corner.

I think I'd like to write like him when I grow up, please.

Sunday stupor

This is what Sundays are for. Radiohead-aided birthday recuperation. Add a cup of tea that never runs out, and bingo...

A ballad to a Brockley yummy mummy

So, before I worked writing copy for at home magazine, I worked in a cafe. An up market one, thank you very much. The kind of place frequented by hordes of mothers with nothing better to do than nurse lattes, and chatter away to other mothers with time to kill. The kind of mothers who think that their kids would love nothing more than a scone. At three years old, what child would ask for a scone with jam and clotted cream? A clever parental ploy to gobble down the whole thing solo, in an ecstasy of afternoon greed. The child, meanwhile, is given the excess currants as a form of ample entertainment for them, and a hideous cleaning task for the staff. 

If I sound bitter, that's because I was. Back then. But anyway, this little ditty is what came out of my frustrated head after a typically mundane day in the cafe, all those months ago.

Toast man came in today.  Toast man, followed by yummy mummies one, four, five and seven.  The 4x4 powerhouse buggy marauding as the ultimate super mum symbol.  For the skinny latte brigade, I imagine the mission to the caffeine vendor parallels that of a Charlie’s Angels quest.  Each wife pram pushing side-by-side, navigating pavements and swerving lamp posts.  Until that overpriced tank fails to glide through the doorframe.  Latte to go then, is it? 

Three o’clock shows yummy mummies four and six.  Decaf this time.  A strand of housewife politics to discuss and deal with, no doubt.  Each mother must prep her engine for a tea-time dual on the park; the only rational explanation for those oversized child-bearing vehicles. 

‘I just laaaarve this café culture’, soup man swoons.  What ‘culture’ would that be then?  Soup and a tap water, day in day out.  Wireless internet on a table with a menu, rather than at home.  Squeal after squeal.  Crumb after crumb.  The inventor of the boiled egg as a child’s favourite breakfast treat can now only be, in my eyes, some sardonic wise crack, who envisaged the effect that teaspoons would have on already cracked shells.  And I now know how many currants were in that teacake that you ordered, before you decided against those squidgy pellets.  But 29 equate to zero pence in the tip jar. Even as you watched me wield that dustpan on my hands and knees.  And your Samuel ran around me, embedding each morsel further into the floor.  Excuse me for degrading myself, further, to kitchen sink level where the soap suds don’t have the nerve to ask for a no foam, wet latte.

Maybe, it's because I could never quite manage the pretty patterns on top of the coffee foam, that I begrudged those mothers. I'm sure they were just trying to escape the monotony of housewifery in a cosy, not too costly, establishment. I promise that I am a suitably well-behaved cafe dweller, am partial to a coffee myself, and was actually very pleasant to the customers of said caffeine vendor. 

Future posts will not be so scathing of women and children.

‘An age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire’

Perhaps it's because I regret not having Sky Atlantic, and am unable to fall for the unashamed glamour of Boardwalk Empire, like all the wealthy telly box owners out there, but the nineteen twenties are playing on my mind at the moment. 

This 1920s preoccupation could also be because I was privileged to sup on a couple of handsome cocktails in a moodily-lit London parlor this week. 1920 saw Harry Craddock leave a Prohibition ridden America and seek solace behind The Savoy's 'American Bar'. He embarked on a cocktail mission, based on the premise that it was a 'great necessity of the age' to develop some kind of 'anti-fogmatic, eye opener, bracer, corpse reviver or morning glory.' Well, a couple of gin induced anti-fogmatics in The Hawksmoor, and I quite fancied myself as a twenties urbanite.  

Harry Craddock's whimsical gravitation typifies the American twenties. F. Scott Fitzgerald, himself, described America as, ‘going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history and there was going to be plenty to tell about it.  The whole golden boom was in the air – its splendid generosities, its outrageous corruptions and the tortuous death struggle of the old America in Prohibition.  All the stories in my head had a touch of disaster in them.’ The Beautiful and the Damned, supposedly, mirrors his own bout of expensive frivolity with Zelda, his wife.

What I love about Fitzgerald's portrayal of the twenties in The Great Gatsby is the extravagant intangibility of all the characters. Nick Carraway describes the guests at Gatsby’s parties as behaving according to the rules of behaviour associated with an amusement park. They came ‘with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission’, rubbed champagne into their host’s hair and disappeared into the night. Their movements were fluid, matching the liquor they consumed and the careless wave of opportunism they besieged the country in. In the aftermath of the First World War, who can blame them?

Film adaptations of the novel have failed time and time again because it’s impossible to capture this incorruptible dream-like trance the nation was in. In a letter to John Peale Bishop, 9 August 1925, Fitzgerald wrote, ‘You are right about Gatsby being blurred and patchy.  I never at any one time saw him clear myself.’ If this is the case, then how does Baz Luhrmann suppose Leonardo DiCaprio will fit the bill?

I know we should be welcoming a time of creative interpretation, but for a man whose films are gaudily grotesque in appearance, I approach his adaptation of one of my favourite books with great trepidation. The fact Luhrmann has ‘workshopped’ his ideas for the film in 3D suggests he’s got the wrong end of the stick already. What part of a nation built on glitzy, flimsy facades does he expect to make burst out at the audience? If the film turns out anything like this monster, flapper fans get ready to fight.

For now though, let’s continue to sip Harry Craddock concoctions, and pretend they're made of Gatsby’s ‘incomparable milk of wonder.’ Best way darling, best way.

Ok. Alright. Let's Go.

After the bitter realisation that 'new kids on the blog' had been snapped up by eager bloggers many a blogging moon ago, I settled - after a couple of sulks, a few suggestions and many a tube-time daydream - on a name that would encompass my own name, and my penchant for pondering. If this blog is a 'wonderblog' then at least I can pretend it's a fancy of fiction, and escape the self-indulgent aspect I fear most about the blogging world.

I also wanted to be 'bloggamomma' but feared I would fail to live up to the connotations of such a big name. Plus, it was my Dad's suggestion.

I suppose the reason I have never blogged before - amongst the fear of what would come out of a diary-like outlet - was the responsibility. A blog is like a pet or a plant. It needs care and attention. I'm the girl in the office who still enjoys the cheap thrill of the swivel chair. And I didn't even take my Valentine's flowers out of the packaging.

But diligent I will be. And as far as the narcissistic side of blogging goes, looking back at my first post, I see I have made it all about myself and the overdramatic plight of choosing a blog name. Marvellous.