. The Story of Ronny Stickytrousers

Story by Anthony Hodgson
Illustration by Sophie Kenton

. Book of the Month

Best book I've read in years.

. Book of the Month

Haruki Murakami's critically acclaimed international best-seller 1Q84 is a long book, but it feels longer.  Characters repeat themselves over and over and over and over until you want to throw them through a window.  And when they're not repeating themselves they're repeating each other.  The phrase, "In other words…" is used about a million times, although nothing any of them have to say is interesting to read even once.

The plot is the same as in all Murakami books - a man and a woman with some kind of mystical connection end up in a strange alternate universe and something appears to be happening but then bugger-all does.

None of the characters seem very real, but the female characters are particularly unbelievable.  They are all obsessed with breasts, their own or each others.  I imagined Murakami getting his rocks off writing about women obsessing about boobs, like a sci-fi sit-com where a male character finds himself inhabiting a female body and all he can think to do is feel himself up.

The main male character in the novel is a writer of novels.  How original.

The book deals with love, domestic violence, murder, religious cults, memory, history, and little leprechaun people who crawl out of the mouth of a dead goat and do NOTHING!!!!  When it finally arrives, the ending is anticlimactic and totally unrewarding.  Most of the characters just disappear, and most of the story lines are left unresolved. 

Rubbish.

Next month we will be reading the Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood.

. Book of the Month

This month’s Book of the Month was supposed to be Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.  But that book turned out to be three books and it’s taking a while to get through, so in the meantime I read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

It’s about a family of annoying Americans who go around being annoying to each other and to everyone else.  They go to college, they have affairs, they drone on and on about politics, and they are colossally annoying.

Give it a miss.

. Book of the Month

This book falls into my current favourite genre of fiction - sad old men recounting their childhoods and realising they can never go back. 

Last month's version focused on how modern life is rubbish. 

This month's is more about how the act of remembering is rubbish, how memory is a scam, and history is bullshit.

The main character vacillates between pompous arse and timid, self-doubting creep.  I didn't like him much.  I think he reminded me too much of me.  Maybe that was the point.

But the thing that bugged me most was the character of Veronica, who symbolises the "mystery" of women by never giving a straight answer to anything ever.  I grew very tired very quickly of her, "You just don't get it and you never will," responses.  It's a short book, but it would have been a damn sight shorter if she hadn't been so bloody "enigmatic."

And now, for the first time ever in Book of the Month history, someone else's opinion.

Mark says:

"i loved it.  it was at times eerie as I felt the author was reading over my own journal from my shoulder.  no, i never wrote a hate letter but the shared introspect at certain times and authors' relating to me was uncanny, at times comforting.

[spoiler alert] 

"at the end of the book, like everyone else, you wonder about the kid.  I, too thought it might be Tony's but remembered they never went "all the way."  I read one posting on it and I share the wish that I read this in book form and not audible as I would have liked to go back and read those few pages of ending the cliff hanger.  it was confusing as to what really happened and the only hint of the name of the kid being the same but not Veronica's was not enough for me to "get it."  When I reviewed it, it was a "duh" moment and only wished I had gotten it on first impact and not review. 

"the unfinished line of "if tony" I also imagined being "if tony was the father...." maybe that was also implied.

[end of spoiler alert]

"I recommend this book as I loved it.  But I think I may pick up a hard copy and read the last chapters.

"For me, it was two things.  The story and the author's stream of consciousness about life.  To me, that was the book!"

Next month we will be reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.

. Book of the Month

George Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984 and this book Coming Up for Air that you've never heard of. 

It's about a fat man in his 40's having a mid-life-crisis while he recalls events from his life and worries about the impending Second World War.   There's a lot about "progress" and how things keep getting worse and how you can never go back to the way things were, and how there's never time to go fishing.

It's told in the first person in a casual but not entirely convincing voice that's like a 1930s version of Michael Caine in Alfie. 

I liked it all except for one weird, incidental character right at the end who's ridiculous and annoying.  But other than that I think it's great and you should read it.

Next month we will be reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

. Book of the Month

I have only read half of this book and I'm thinking of giving up.  The language is nice - the way all the words fit together like good prose probably should.  But the content is just not my cup of tea.  It is page after page of facts about the English countryside, and I'm finding it hard to give a crap.  It reminds me of the struggle I had getting through the annoying Tom Bombadil chapters in Lord of the Rings.  That guy had nothing to say and would not shut up about it.  Even Tolkien admitted he was a bit of a bore.

Deakin doesn't give much away about himself, other than that he likes nature and knows all the names of everything in it.  I think I might have found it more interesting if he had known a little less.  

Or at least if he had a friend who knew less, like Bill Bryson's bumbling sidekick Stephen Katz in A Walk in the Woods.  Robert Redford was going to make a movie of A Walk in the Woods.  He was going to play Bryson, and Paul Newman was going to play Katz.   But Newman died in 2008, so that's not going to happen.

Maybe the second half of Wildwood is scintilating, but I really can't be arsed to find out.

Next month we will be reading Coming Up for Air by George Orwell.

. Book of the Month

Flannery O'Conner was born in 1925, and grew up on a farm in Georgia, which is the chicken capital of the world.

"When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax."

In the '40s O'Conner escaped to New York, but in 1951 she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease Lupus and was forced to return home, where she raised peacocks and wrote all these stories.  She died in 1964 at the age of 39.

Most of her stories are about pious and intolerant people who act like jerks and get what's coming to them. 

In "Good Country People" Joy Hopewell (who is joyless, hopeless and unwell) has a PhD and is dismissive of everyone, especially her own mother.  "Sometimes she went for walks, but she didn't like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men.  She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity."  And so a nice young man is her undoing.

O'Conner was a Catholic, but most of her characters are not Catholics, or not very good ones.  They are religious hypocrites, or even worse - secular liberals.  Many undergo transformations that bring them closer to a Catholic mindset. Others receive sudden and violent divine retribution. 

In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" a selfish and manipulative old woman tries to convince a famous killer (The Misfit) to pray for salvation.  He shoots her three times through the chest.  "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

O'Conner writes in a spare, no-nonsense kind of way that I like a lot.  It's from a Catholic perspective, but not preachy.  The characters are always interesting (for ignorant bigots) and the whole book is chock full of irony and sardonic humour.

I was hoping for more peacocks, but other than that I thought it was brilliant.

Next month we will be reading Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin.

. Book of the Month

It's back!  The internet's least popular book group.  Join today!  I didn't read a damn thing last year, so to stop me being such a useless lump of worthlessness I'm bringing back the Book of the Month.  This month we are reading The Complete Flannery O'Conner.  It's quite cheap, so there's that.

. Book of the Month

This will be the last Book of the Month, as it was the world's most unpopular book group (no one else joined). I will be continuing to read books, just not boring you with the details.

That said, here are this month's boring details.


Oliver Postgate wrote, directed, narrated and animated 12 wonderful children's television shows, including Ivor the Engine, the Clangers, and Bagpuss.

I read his autobiography in the hope of finding out how he managed to be so very good. From what I can tell he was using a clever combination of wild imagination, independent spirit, relentless inquisitiveness, and bull-headed practicality. Plus he had the loveliest voice in all of history. As Stephen Fry writes in the book's Forward: "During bouts of childhood theism, I always supposed that if God had a voice it would be that of Oliver Postgate, the same matchless blend of authority, kindliness and humour."

Postgate's parents were well-off lefties. He went to a private "progressive" school where you could do whatever you wanted. He was a conscientious objector to the second world war and went to prison. He tried acting for a while. And farm work.

Throughout his life he was inventing and building machines, from electric pencil erasers to solar powered houses. He almost went into manufacturing, but feared that a lifetime spent in the pursuit of "Personal success, wealth, dignity..." would be like "Spending one's life decorating one's tomb."

He then spent some time making props for television shows, noticed how most television for children was pretty poor, decided he could do better, and did.















Postgate founded Smallfims with Peter Firmin. They operated out of a cow-shed, with the later addition of four converted pigsties. Commissions for television shows flooded in, and Smallfilms became successful in their own modest way. When America called and offered them the big time, they politely declined.




Towards the end of the book Postgate seems to turn into a bit of a grumpy old man, although probably less grumpy than most of us. His wife died and his own health failed. His passion for nuclear disarmament disturbed people on both sides of the argument. And the television companies were no longer interested in his shows.

He was particularly unimpressed by those concerned with the "art" of film-making. He describes the students he met at the RCA Animation School (where I went to college) as "manic pretentious pseudo-artists."




In 1999 Bagpuss was voted the most popular British children's television show of all time.

Oliver Postgate died in December 2008. The rights to several Smallfilms properties were bought by Coolabi for $625,000. Coolabi specialises in "The ownership, development, creative management and exploitation of high quality children's and family intellectual property assets."

They are apparently working with Peter Firmin on new episodes of Bagpuss.



Oh dear.

. Book of the Month

Did you finish yet? I know it's early in the month, but it's a very slim book. And next month's is a fatty, so let's get this one over with.

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel is about a writer who talks to another writer about some writing he has written. You can't get much more self-referential than that. It deals with the Holocaust via symbolism and metaphor. A lot of it is a fable about a donkey and a monkey who sit and talk in long-winded allegory, like a Beckett play.

I enjoyed reading it, but I preferred his previous book - Life of Pi. This one seemed too contrived to me. I think I only got to the end of it because it is so short.

If you have no intention of reading this book or you don't care about spoilers, here is a fantastic drawing of the final scene.


Next month we will be reading Seeing Things by the lovely Oliver Postgate.

. Favourite Beer of the Week part 2

Previously on Favourite Beer of the Week - I made a pie and the oven declined to cook it, so I drank a beer instead.

This week the oven persisted with it's belligerence, so we had it taken care of.




Sasha loves the new oven very much.




So I was finally able to cook the pie




and it was the perfect pie at 1 o' clock in the morning when we got home from the Megamind wrap party in need of a tasty snack to soak up the whiskey while we watched the last two episodes of "Ivor the Engine."




Do you remember "Ivor the Engine"? It's still great. So much better than that "Thomas the Tank Engine."



Look at him. What an idiot. Not even the magic voice of Ringo Starr could make him cool.

"Ivor the Engine" was written and narrated by Oliver Postgate, who had the nicest voice in the world in all of history ever.




He created about 2 minutes of animation a day.




I do a little less than a second a day. In 3D.




Postgate and Firmin then made "Noggin the Nog"



"Pingwings"



"Pogles Wood"


"Clangers"


and "Bagpuss."



We watched all of Bagpuss this year. I like it even more now than I did as a kid, because now it's all covered in nostalgia.

This bottle of Sam Smith's Yorkshire Stingo looks like it was designed for the nostalgic.




It's like Granny Gravesclothes' Tea -

...There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea
To taste old age...


The Stingo tasted of old age to me - a bit sour.

"Nostalgia" is the yearning for an idealized past. It was originally described as a medical condition. Fortunately the cure is pretty cheap - "The Complete Ivor the Engine" on DVD - only £3.93 + international shipping.



If you fancy a non-nostalgic beer, I recommend the G Schneider & Sohn Weizenbock on tap at Monks Kettle. Except they don't have it right now because I drank the end of the barrel last Saturday.

Oliver Postgate's memoir "Seeing Things" will be December's Book of the Month. Order yours today!