Porto Alegre bookfair

Is this the oldest book fair in the world? It's certainly one of the biggest. It goes on to about six weeks, as long as the Hay on Wye festival, but unlike the latter, and unlike any other book fair I have ever seen, it is entirely free -- no doubt the factor that ensures its vitality and survival.



The fact that it's supported by the authorities in this way means that everybody can attend any event, including the poorest. Many of the events are for children and schools though by no means the majority of them.

Most authors represented here South American and especially Brazilian. I was the only author from the UK, but as this that is the year of the French there were several from that country, and I found myself leaving the hotel showing the taxi with a French professor specialising in the study of urban areas. For there is a strong academic element at the book fair.

Much of the fair is also outside, despite the humidity. About half of it takes place in a couple of urban squares ringed with thronging bookstalls from distributors, publishers and other retailers. The juvenile area is on the old dock front, and venues include the old warehouses, and the opulent interiors of former Portuguese offices and halls that line the downtown avenues.



Some of these restored mansions, reminding you of the old glory when the city was founded, provided a striking contrast to dilapidated more recent 20th-century buildings adjacent to them. The town is in decline but struggling to reassert its new identity as a cultural magnet.

From the dock you can take a boat tour up the river Guaiba, actually almost a lake, a delta, and the journey takes you around islands that are protected as conservation areas - very unusual in Brazil so near to an industrial area. The Brazilian name for the body of water means 'lake of ducks', and there is much birdlife in evidence, though not much else. Some areas are less protected than others, and there houses come down to the waterfront.


The river flows swiftly but it still has 200 km left to get to the Atlantic Ocean. Porto Alegre was constructed by the Portuguese on the west side of a long isthmus, so that he could defend the river from the Spanish, so it was never an Atlantic port.

The bookfair doesn't start till around lunchtime and then in the afternoon the place is absolutely packed. Everywhere are authors signing books and street performers entertaining children.



I am introduced to the director of the book fair, and have lunch with the chief press officer, Ricardo, a wonderful, indefatigable man, who has suffered from polio since the age of nine months, and who also like me has two sons, about the same age. Unlike me he has married again and now has a nine-month-old!

I am also introduced to many other authors and illustrators, including the talented André, and Barroso and Marta Lagarta.

My session, held in a small room next to the children's library, goes well, and I use a couple of PowerPoint slideshows to illustrate my talk that I have been using at the British schools where I was two weeks before.

They precipitate a discussion on the nature of science fiction, how Star Trek and Star Wars represent the imperialist dreams of America but how dystopian fiction has sadly proved more prescient as a way of predicting or describing the reality of a least parts of the world.

And how it is the duty of writers now to provide hope to the children who will be tomorrow's adults, because it is we, the older generations, who have fucked things up so badly for them.


Afterwards, Ricardo writes it up, and this is the result:

http://www.feiradolivro-poa.com.br/noticias_det.php?noticia=722

Pretty poor but just about understandable Google translation:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.feiradolivro-poa.com.br%2Fnoticias_det.php%3Fnoticia%3D722&sl=auto&tl=en

I am currently in Curitiba exploring its environmental credentials, staying in the eco-hostel which is very nice, an oasis in an urban desert, and will write about this shortly.

I am feeling that I have been here over two weeks and not seen the real Brazil -- I have been in one city after another and many of them are strikingly similar to European cities. Somehow in the remaining time I would like to see some of the countryside, wildlife or forest, but I don't quite know yet how to do this.

I go back to São Paulo on Thursday morning when I have to visit DCL's offices in the afternoon and to give a talk in the evening at the University, but from Friday morning until Monday morning I am free and may go to Rio. I leave to go back to the UK on the Wednesday, and am saving Monday and Tuesday for possible more meetings with Otacilia.

Porto Alegre and the art Biennale

Of course I was only there for the weekend, flying in at 1030 in the morning, taxi to the hotel, leaving again the same way the Sunday evening. But of all the towns in all the world that I have visited it reminds me of none more than Newcastle-on-Tyne - Geordie-land.


Both are struggling to recover from a period of decline and scarred by areas of neglect. Several buildings had been gutted by fire and left like that apparently for some time. Many others were empty and covered in graffiti.

Both towns are trying to use culture in order to attract outside interest to the downtown areas. Newcastle has its brilliant Baltic art gallery, while Porto Alegre has its Biennale, a large art exhibition that takes place in several venues every two years, reminiscent of the one in Venice. In fact the best venue for the exhibition is line of disused dock warehouses on the waterfront, that is strikingly similar to the Armoury area in Venice.

The exhibition showcases Brazilian and South American artists, unlike the Biennales in Río and São Paulo, which also provide much space for European and North American artists.

It is very interesting to see how these artists are interpreting and mixing Western traditions with their own. I saw a portable beach holiday (complete with campervan full of sand with a palm tree growing out of the roof), a football match made entirely out of wood (football is of course a matter of life and death here), not to mention a campervan also made entirely a wood.

The latter reminded me of Heather and Ivan Morisson's post-apocalyptic garden shed on wheels that is a mobile library of dystopian literature - including a copy of Hybrids!

Campervans are ubiquitous here, and are used by people wanting to start businesses in another town but not yet able to rent their own space. They symbolise the magnetism the city, the promise of affluence, the energy of growth.

Another fascinating piece - I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to note the names of the artists - was an almost life-size reconstruction of the Parthenon made of scaffolding from which were hung thousands and thousands of books each wrapped in polythene bags. The public was then invited to help themselves, and videos and magazine and newspaper articles document people gladly ripping down the books and throwing them to the crowds below, who ran off hungrily with them.

Because of my interest in Dadaism it was astonishing to discover a Brazilian version, inaugurated 45 years after the original, but aesthetically and insensibility strikingly similar, called Nadaism -- or nothing-ism! I love it.

Another piece celebrates popular graffiti on concrete Modernist architecture, of which there is too much in abundance in the cities.

There is a spirit of enquiry and invention in the art here, a celebration of what it means to be Brazilian. 25 years after the end of the dictatorship, and 20 years after the CIA mostly lost interest in South America with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Brazil is becoming more and more confident, and debating positively its new identity.

Brazil - a Celtic island

I was given a fascinating book on the history of Brazil by the first editor of the Brazilian edition of Hybrids, Camile Mendrot. I met her in São Paulo one evening when we went to an excellent jazz club/bar where a trio of drums, electric bass and electric guitar were crammed into a small corner with us crammed at a table next to them.

She works for a publisher called Callis now, and made me a present of several books, most of them for young children and excellently produced, in English, but this one is by Eduardo Bueno entitled 'Brazil: a Brief History'. Amongst the many fascinating facts I've picked up so far is a connection between the name of the country and Celtic mythology - especially of interest to me since I live in Wales.

Apparently in Celtic the word "bresail" means "blessed land". It refers to a mythical island called Hy Brazil which is the setting for the Celtic legend of Brandon, an Irish saint, who in the year 562 took to the seas to evangelise, arriving at the island some years later, and where he died, allegedly 181 years old. The book says that "from 1351 until at least 1721, the name Hy Brazil could be seen on maps and globes and up until 1624 -" (Brazil was discovered in 1500) "- there was still extinct expeditions looking for it" - rather like Atlantis!

According to "Brazil in Legend and Ancient Cartography", by Gustavo Barroso published in 1941, "the literate men of the 16th century had no doubt that the name Brazil came from the legendary island", rather than the name of the tree, Brazilwood, which the Portuguese and other Europeans systematically exploited and almost eradicated for its reddish dye, and which the simple sailors assumed gave the country's name.

There are others who might prefer the name the original inhabitants of the land had for it - Pindorama.

Porto Alegre bookfair

David Thorpe has found a review of his gig at the Porto Alegre bookfair. They called me a hybrid!
http://www.feiradolivro-poa.com.br/noticias_det.php?noticia=722

Pretty poor but just about understandable Google translation:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.feiradolivro-poa.com.br%2Fnoticias_det.php%3Fnoticia%3D722&sl=auto&tl=en

Rich pickings

Going home time from St Paul's School, Sao Paulo

You can tell the nannies because they wear a uniform of white slacks and tops and contain a high proportion of indigenous Indian or African slave-descendant genes. The mothers breeze by in designer jewellery and the overall atmosphere is tense. One of them, clad in a flowing leopardskin print robe slit high up to the thigh and of fairly mature years, totters by on her high heels having presumably already partaken of several caipirinhas this afternoon. This is the national drink, consisting of fermented cane sugar juice mixed with mashed lemon and more sugar and crushed ice - rocket fuel, broadly indistinguishable from the fermented cane sugar bio ethanol they put into their cars. In my bag is a kit for making it, a leaving present from the school.

You would expect mothers collecting children from school to be overall a pleasant experience. Half the people here have their ears glued to mobile phones. Most of them seem stressed. They are watched by men in black suits and shades standing arms crossed on the sidelines. All of them have memories of kidnappings. A kiosk run by another man with darker skin sells popcorn, pop drinks and ice lollies on the sidewalk while the nannies or mothers tow kids towards a never-ending parade of chauffeur-driven 4x4's or land cruisers, all obeying Henry Ford's mantra: any shade as long as it's grey, silver or black, and the windows are smoked.

The queue of vehicles is maybe half a mile along and conducted through a parody of suburbia in the shadow of walls topped with razor wire and electrified fences, bristling with security cameras, the sidewalks dotted every 200 metres with kiosks populated by security guards, paid by a collective of all residents and operating a secret code of whistles; which they displayed last night when I walked through the estate back from the town centre, inadvertently straying into this area. The whistles transmit down the line the nature of this unusual pedestrian, a rare species of invader, this time quite harmless.

It's warm and muggy and to this northerner it seems an incongruous time to be seeing Santa Claus, fairy lights and snowmen materialising on the streets as Christmas approaches.

This is my final day in São Paulo, at least until later next week and I have finished work. Later, I sip a beer outside a bar on Rua Joao Cachoeira. On the other side of the road the same migrant family in the same disused shop front that was there a week ago when I watched some official taking their details. More darker skinned people, mostly children, ignored by the thronging crowds on the streets. One of the boys changes his shirt from a wheelie suitcase. Their clothes at least seem quite new.

Smokers are few, and so are the smiles. I'm glad I'm leaving tomorrow.

My talk at Porto Alegre bookfair - this Saturday evening

I will be giving a talk at Porto Alegre bookfair:

Place: Ducha das Letras - Armazém A do Cais do Porto - Av. Mauá, 1050, Porto Alegre, 90010-110, Brazil; (0xx)51 3211-5022

Time: Saturday 14th November, 18.00 hrs.

Topic: The Limitations of 'Literature' and the value of 'science fiction'. A plea for other genres to be taken seriously as 'literature' as a way of confronting the world's problems. Hopefully there will be a discussion afterwards.

I am staying at Hotel Grande Hotel Master, R. Riachuelo, 1070 - Centro Porto Alegre - RS, 90010-270. Tel. (0xx)51 3287-4411

Meeting Diego

Tonight I met one of my Brazilian fans, Diego Remus, at the place where he works, The Hub, which coincidentally is right near the restaurant where we were the previous night during the power cut.

When we met he first took me to a bookshop on Avenida Paulista and surprised me by finding on the shelves a copy of my book Hybrids in English as well as Portuguese and made me stand there while he took a photograph.

I'm getting kind of used to this while I'm here. in

Diego is a specialist in social networking and electronic media, a consultant to start-ups and interested in applying sustainability theory as well as communication theory to new models of business enterprise. He set up a Portuguese language fan club for Hybrids.

He works also for Startupi, which is a pun, because the Tupi is an old indigenous culture.

We especially talked about industrial symbiosis, resource efficiency and the potential of the sustainable economy new business model to benefit Brazilian businesses. He's going to arrange for me to give a talk at The Hub on the subject at the end of next week when I'm back in town from Porto Alegri and Curitiba.

See also Blackout in Brazil

Oh yes, I did finally get my laundry back last night, and find that there is tea to drink at St Paul's British School, but really, I think the UK must get the best pick of the tea leaf crop. This grey concoction is a pale shadow of what my constitution is used to!

Hanging out in Sao Paulo

It rained last night and today is much cooler and overcast. A relief from the last week. People here in São Paulo work very hard and long hours and I have found that an arrangement to meet is liable to be cancelled at the last minute for one reason or another.

Mind you, it's not as hard as trying to get a cup of tea which is in fact impossible. And of course I'm dying for a cup of tea.

At a restaurant yesterday with my DCL editor Oticilia in the Museum of Modern Art I asked for tea. I was brought a cabinet containing perhaps 30 different kinds - but I searched through them in vain - they were all fruit teas. No cafe or restaurant will serve tea! Arghh!


Today in a supermarket I finally found a packet of English breakfast tea. Heaven! However the price - five pounds for a small packet - made me think well, perhaps the Brazilians are right to drink so much coffee after all. And they do drink a lot of it -- many small cups of super-concentrated espresso.

Another thing you can't get is an up-to-date English language newspaper - or the American and English ones when they finally arrived two or three days out of date. Why do they bother in the age of the Internet?

Otacilia had cancelled two possible appointments before we met yesterday. But we had a beautiful day going to the Botanical Gardens Parque Ibirapuera and drinking coconut milk from the green fruit through a straw. I encountered for the first time a lates tree, its huge dripping roots like Rasta dreadlocks. The gallery had an excellent exhibition of non-Brazilian artists influenced by Brazilian art, including a Welsh artist, Wyn Evans. I particularly liked Mateo Lopez' lace-like map cut-outs, Simon Evans, Marjetica Potrc and Franz Ackermann.










In the early evening yesterday I found myself at an opening party for a new venue for a school for comics artists, Impacto Quadrinhos (Quadrinhos is Portuguese for comics). Luke Ross, a local (he anglicised his name for the sake of his career) who is successful illustrating many marvel comics, was giving a workshop. He is an old friend of the artist I am working with, Felipe Cunha, who introduced me to him.

He seemed very happy with the way Marvel were treating him. Me, I'm still waiting for a copy of the compilation of Captain Britain stories, containing my work, which was published in the summer. This is the second compilation - I never got the first either. Nor have I been paid a penny.

The owner of Impacto Quadrinhos, Klebs Junior, used to work for Marvel himself and still does occasionally. He told me he lamented the fact that Brazil still doesn't have a market that can accept home-grown comics with a Brazilian theme and all of the artists that he represents as an agent have to sell their work in North America or possibly Japan.

It was somebody's birthday so we went to a bar off Avenida Paulista, the commercial centre of São Paulo. We stayed there for several hours drinking iced beer and eating polenta chips. Felipe had told me the other night that it might be possible to sell a 12 page story to Heavy Metal magazine. I had sent him on Friday a story set in the story world of Hybrids, but with Major Winter of the Jean Police as the central character. All of the characters from Hybrids appear in this story which could be the first of a series and is aimed at a more adult audience. At the bar we discussed this and Felipe really likes it. Now I have to add some dialogue.

It's great that I finally have time to write fiction and have started work on my next novel The Drowning, by starting to write out the scene cards. Quite frankly I'd rather sit in the hotel and do this then go out and exploring São Paulo, traffic filled street after street after street after street of charmless buildings. It feels more like a cosmopolitan European city rather than a developing country.

My laundry has got lost. Eleanor, from St Paul's School where I am teaching from tomorrow, said she would do my laundry for me as it would cost a fortune to let the hotel do it. I had to take it to the school yesterday but she wasn't there and Rita, the woman who met us at the airport, stashed it in an office. Eleanor came over today to the hotel to see Katy and I. Katy Moran is the other author from Britain who is teaching in the School's. She didn't know anything about the laundry being left there. I only hope I can get it back, clean, before tomorrow!

São Paulo - city with a future

The chocolate is melting and so am I. It is 34° and I am sitting beside a small pool on the roof of the 27th floor of my hotel. As far as I can see in almost every direction are buildings: a crenellation of 10s of thousands of high-rises. Their rooftops map an archipelago of suntrapping eyries, many of them inviting landing spots for helicopters.

São Paulo is a city with a future, confident of its ability to be the capitalist Mecca of the South American continent. Its infrastructure creaks under the strain of its 10s of millions of inhabitants, but its optimism propels it to meet and exceed expectations during the 2016 Olympics when the world's eyes will be on Brazil.

As we crawl along its sclerotic arteries driven by taxi drivers who can't read maps and rely on us, strangers, to give directions in their own city we witness a bank robbery, street urchins and rubbish recyclers pushing their carts alongside splendid temples to the banking system.

Brazil knows crises and thrives on them so, unaffected by the recession gripping the rest of the world, its burgeoning young population demanded the baubles that have satiated and bored the dwindling young population of the North.

At Frankfurt, my lovely Brazilian editor Otaclia - of the Brazilian edition of Hybrids - reports that she was was doing more deals than anyone from a northern publisher. The children of the huge middle class of Brazil need literature, and if publishers can't buy it from Europe or America they will buy it from India and China. The balance of power in the publishing houses of the world has shifted. American comics publishers seek Brazilian artists for their energy and hard work. Brought up on a diet of both Japanese manga and Marvel, they look both ways. There are more Japanese people in São Paulo than there are in the whole of Japan I was told. Can this be true? It's big enough.

The children are astonishing. St Nicholas British school in Sao Paolo has to be one of the best schools I have ever been to. English is a second language, but at all ages they are highly motivated and must be among the brightest kids on the planet for their age.

They ought to be - the school is well resourced and costs £1000 a month to attend. These sons and daughters of bankers and multinational executives are of many nationalities - Europeans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Jewish, South African, Brazilian, with a few Indian, Muslim and the odd descendant of African slaves. The small campus crawls with security guards and technical staff who in radio contact with each other, shepherding students across the public road and into buses and cars.

The threat of kidnap and ransoming is high.

Greater Sao Paolo is reputedly the third largest city in the world: 30,000 sq km of buildings, with about 10% of the 20 million population living in makeshift favelas. But this area is one of gated communities, choked by jams of the latest models of cars, stress-fueled horns blaring in rush-hour.

I am running workshops on story-telling, journalism, and my own work, and when I give them exercises the students all complete them perfectly in good time - show me this in a UK schools, apart from the odd academy school.

Looking at their work books I notice immediately that teachers correct their English - grammar and spelling - in every case; something considered discouraging in UK education, but which I consider vitally important. If children are not taught these things how can they be equipped to be fully articulate? Is the language not the blood of a culture? Infected by misuse can it flow smoothly?

Next week I am in another school - St Paul's. This will be larger, and I look forward to seeing how different it will be. Otacilia promises to take me to a 'normal' school for comparison. The wonderful Otaclia promises me many things: guided tours, a party, introductions to environmentalists trying to make the world a better place, art galleries, and a publishing deal. In a couple of weeks we go to a bookfair together in Porto Alegre, where I am to give a talk on science fiction and surrealism. This is very exciting.

Having collaborated by e-mail for 18 months, I meet penciller/inker Felipe Cunha and his colourist George at my hotel for the first time. It's as if we have known each other for years. Over iced beers we discuss the challenge of surviving and succeeding in a city so huge you are less than nothing. Felipe lives two hours outside the city -- he came by bus, Metro and bus. Where his parents moved to 20 years ago was then trees. Now a favela has sprung up just five minutes away -- the rural desperate pursuing their own dreams to find themselves trapped in the double net of poverty and prejudice.

Over an excellent Italian meal the three of us plan escapades and promise to meet again on Friday night at a party at the city's best comics store, thankful, as everyone is, for whoever invented air-conditioning.

Environmental Homemaking - and Sao Paolo here I come!

I have just (Oct 29) sent off the manuscript to Environmental Home Refurbishment: The Earhscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency, which will be published by Earthscan in June 2010. It will be published in hardback and is expected to cost £34.95. The draft cover design is right. Thanks to everyone who helped put it together!

I'm now preparing to go to Sao Paulo to deliver creative writing workshops in two schools, meet my Brazilian editor, Otacilia, for the first time, and Felipe, the comics artist I've been working with for over a year! Otacilia has promised parties, good food, fascinating peopple and a trip to talk and sign at the Porto Alegre bookfair on November 13. I feel very lucky!

I've also been working in October with Film 15 and animator Mikey Ford on the Animation Tank, with local primary school kids. They now know how important stories are - and have some great ones to turn into films in the next few months!

Take the time

Take the time

How often are you able to take the time

Take

The time

Take

The time

How often are you able to notice

The blinking first star of the inking evening

The criss-crossery of branches cracking the sky

The blown sand twisting like long blond hair

Take the time

To be there

Intelligent witness

Unpressured I.



Take

The time

Take

Your time

Don't fill it

Let it fill itself

Take hold of moments

Mark them off

How often can you abscond

With minimum cost

And watch

The pink pregnancy of cumulus at dusk

The pheasant ducking under the bent hawthorn

The dug dykes draining the golfing green



It forces you to realise

Your tiredness

Why you need to

Take the time

Instead of it taking you.

Update

I've been so busy I haven't blogged in a long time.

I have spent the last few months writing a book on sustainable refurbishment of domestic properties for the publisher Earthscan. I am blowing away a few misconceptions about what works and what doesn't work - things like roof-mounted wind power and air source heat pumps.

I am desperate to involve myself again with creative work. I have to finish that book by mid October, then I am doing some teaching work with kids to do with scriptwriting.

In November I am so lucky to be invited to Brazil where for two weeks I am doing some writing workshops and appearing at a bookfair in Santo Alegre. Then off to Curitiba and back to São Paulo.

I still haven't started on the fiction book for kids, The Drowning, that I got the grant to do, and that's what I really itching to get down to, and hope to start work on while I'm away. It's becoming less and less worthily about global warming, although it does figure, and more about mystery, intrigue and Welsh mythology coming alive in the future.

When I come back however, Earthscan want me to start work on a book about solar technology, but I am currently holding out for a better contract and because I want to do the Drowning.

I am taking the - gulp - daring and risky leap of selling my web design company in order to concentrate full-time on writing. If anyone wants a job let me know!

This all sounds like I am raking it in. In reality this writing business barely pays the bills. But it sure beats working for the man.

Interviews published and grant for new novel

Writing Magazine features an interview with me in its June 09 issue. Download a pdf of Anita Rowe's interview with David. Also, the current issue of Judge Dredd Megazine (286) carries a long article on the development of the Marvel character Captain Britain, including part of an interview with me on my stint on the comic.


I have also won grant to write a new novel. The Drowning will be a novel about two sworn enemies - young teen boys - thrust together to survive in the wild when climate change makes them homeless. I'll be blogging about the process of writing it, and the research results. The £6,326.90 grant is from 'cyfle i greu' - 'chance to create' a scheme run by Powys Arts Forum under the Wales Assembly Government.


First, though, I need to finish the book I'm writing for Earthscan called: 'Environmental Home Refurbishment:
The Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency'. This has to be done by October and is supposed to be a definitive book on the subject!

Remembering JG Ballard

In a way it is appropriate that JG Ballard should die at the point of which so many of his dystopian forecasts seem to be coming true. Only this week I was listening to Radio 4 where some middle-class talksmiths were discussing a pronouncement that the credit crunch could generate middle-class riots. As one of them said, "bring it on!"

Ballard laid bare the violence that lurks beneath the thin veneer of so-called civilisation. Many times he has documented how he was witness to this when growing up in Shanghai during the war, but it took several decades for him to synthesise the various threads in his thinking, from his earlier accounts of the effects of extremes of nature on humankind, such as The Wind From Nowhere and The Drowned World, through his numerous short stories and his more experimental work that was serialised in the excellent New Worlds magazine, to Crash, and The Atrocity Exhibition, and then to High Rise and Cocaine Nights and following three novels. His mainstream work Empire of the Sun may have bought him a larger audience, but is untypical.

The contrast between his mild manner and the ability of his work to shock middle-class sensibilities was striking. As with William Burroughs, who always dressed like a banker, he seemed to be a man in disguise sent, like de Sade - who wouldn't shut up even when put in an asylum - to remind us of the dark currents beneath the surface of the social world. I can't help thinking that Crash and The Atrocity at Exhibition weren't written firmly with his tongue in his cheek. It is their ambiguity which unsettles. Just as Waiting for Godot or Endgame can be performed as deadpan comedies or as tragedies, it seems that this devoted family man took refuge in imagining the extreme in order to feel comfort in his conventional environment. Or perhaps it was the other way round.

I feel compelled to mention de Sade again, because what really shocked his contemporaries wasn't what he did, but that he wrote about it. Let's face it, all the aristocracy were screwing the hired help anyway they could. As far as we know, Ballard himself lived a clean life, but his reflections of the sides of our existence that we preferred not to reflect upon, bear comparison in that society likes to draw a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable, but often what is deemed "acceptable" actively encourages the "unacceptable", and it is this effect that fascinated Ballard.

It seems strange that much of his work is characterised as science fiction since it has very little in common with spaceships. A well-known fan of Surrealism and Salvador Dali, Ballard claimed that science fiction of the form he knew it, which imagined tendencies of the present, and psychological reality, as the future, was the dominant and most useful literary form of the 20th century. Both Surrealism and science fiction, though themselves not popular labels, have spawned a vast territory of our collective unconscious, thousands of dynamic icons and terms of reference through every conceivable media.

The sexual aspect of car crashes as a subject for writing seemed absurd and offensive, but its metaphorical resonance is felt in every single advertisement for automobiles. Man's fetishism of the car bears a large responsibility for global warming. We are human-automobile hybrids. Our clutches engage with metal and flesh. And it is no coincidence that the car industry is one of the major casualties of the banking crash, which we watch ourselves with horrified fascination.
My own work lies partly on the territory which Ballard and Burroughs laid out, and I remain eternally indebted as a writer to Ballard's advice: "follow your obsession". Bring on the middle-class riots. Thank you James Graham Ballard.

London Book Fair 2009

The Fair was quieter than previous ones. Not surprising really.

I went to a few seminars on: writing for teens, including one with Patrick Ness, who was very polished; Julia Donaldson, Graham Marks; and on the new websites for teen readers, Penguin's www.spinebreakers.co.uk, and one upcoming from the Reading Agency [this will be good].

What Teens Really Want featured real teens and they said they don't want to be patronised, they don't need genres, they want cheaper books and they decide to read them on peer recommendation and the cover, most of all.

Remixing reading for teenagers - intelligence from The Reading Agency was about their web based social network site for readers and HeadSpace, the initiative to make library facilities cool and accessible for teens and disadvantaged readers. They need authors to help out and connect with readers - contact claire.styles@readingagency.org.uk, or ruth.harrison@readingagency.org.uk.

I met the Publishing Director of HarperCollins and their Head of Content Licensing, and had a really positive response. I also reconnected with my old agent, Julian Friedmann, and had several meetings with the publisher of my non-fiction book on eco-refurbishment, Earthscan.

I've won a grant to write a new novel!

I've won grant to write a new novel. The Drowning will be a novel about two sworn enemies - young teen boys - thrust together to survive in the wild when climate change makes them homeless.

I'll be blogging about the process of writing it, and the research results, as I write it. The work will begin in the summer, after I've finished my current book (which I'm just starting), a non-fiction title for Earthscan about eco-refurbishment of existing homes.

The £6,326.90 grant is from 'cyfle i greu' - 'chance to create' a scheme run by Powys Arts Forum under the Wales Assembly Government.

SCBWI Wales second gathering

At yesterday's crit group gathering of the Welsh Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators were Bear Tyler, Derek Webb, Gordon Jones, Hedley England and Tomos Morgan - and myself. We discussed work by each of us, including in detail, Hedley's Sniffers, my Moebius Trip and Tomos' wonderful witch story written in Welsh and English. Tomos is an illustrator working for the publisher Y Llolfa. We met at the Orangerie, Aberystwyth.

Books for children written in Welsh are submitted to the Welsh Books Council for readers report. If this is favourable, a publisher receives a grant to publish the book.

This was SCBWI Wales' second gathering. Currently we are organising a programme of events for the future, to involve talks and presentations by Welsh publishers, illustrators, editors, Academi and the Welsh Books Council. Watch this space.

Monty Python came to Machynlleth!

Last Monday was the day of the screening I organised of Life of Brian, which featured live on stage to answer the audience's questions: Terry Jones - Star & Director! and Sue Jones-Davies - Star & Aberystwyth Mayor!

It was a charity event at the Machynlleth Tabernacl in aid of Fadeco, a grassroots development agency in Tanzania, which I am on the organising committee of.



It went extremely well. Congratulations to the audience, many of whom dressed up as members of the Popular Front of Judea, or maybe it was the Judaean Popular Front! there were women with beards, people carrying sandals, and shepherds! Terry Jones was knocked out, as was Sue.

Sue is my former yoga teacher, and now the mayor of Aberystwyth, which, as was pointed out by Terry, just goes to show how appropriate was her casting as the political Judith Iscariot in the film!

I was privileged to be on stage interviewing the actors, and amongst the things they revealed were that Sue got the part because she had the same agent as John Cleese, and was told about the auditions. She went along and the Pythons were so knocked out by her passion and conviction they gave her the part.

Terry revealed many interesting aspects of the production, in Tunisia, including how Spike Milligan walked off set in the middle of shooting his scene because he got bored, and how he is still friends with most of the Pythons. Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam live not far from him in Hampstead above the heath, but he says finds John Cleese a little too critical and judgemental. John and Eric Idle now live on the west coast of America.

Terry also recounted how he is a local boy. He was brought up until the age of four in Colwyn Bay, then the family moved to a street off Camberwell Grove, Grove Park in South London. But he has a hideaway old stone cottage in Pennant, near Staylittle, which is about 8 miles up in the hills to the east of Machynlleth. This was in his wife's family and he used to come here from the mid-'60s onwards to write.

With Sue was her son, Sion, who with my son, Dion, were members of the INCA film/music project from 2005 to 2007. Sion is a lovely young man, and talked about his desire to study architecture.

Terry also talked about his new project, Adam and Eve, an animation, and the argument he is having with his producer, who changed the script he had written without consulting him (so, it doesn't matter how famous you are, this still happens). He marvelled at how self-contradictory the book of Genesis is, and how it is rich in humour. One of the animators working on the development has also worked on The Simpsons.

Discussing whether you could make a film like the Life of Brian today, he said that there was a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the film itself. He did not consider it antireligious, but about the credulity of people. "In many ways everything, Brian, Graham Chapman, says in the film is common sense: how we should get on with each other and think for ourselves. This," he said, "is pretty much what Jesus himself said." Jesus of course figures in the film so the film does not dispute the existence of Jesus. What he does complain about is how people subsequently twisted and misinterpreted what Jesus said. He also got the most animated when he attacked people like Malcolm Muggeridge and other critics at the time who attacked the film for being antireligious without even having seen it, or in one case missing the first half-hour. "How dare these people judge a film without having seen it!" he ranted.

In 1985 I interviewed Graham Chapman because he had just broadcast an Opinion piece on Channel 4 which voiced libertarian, anti-authoritarian views. These were not 1,000,000 miles from the views preached by Brian in the film, so I asked Terry if Graham had written his own dialogue. After all, he says "don't listen to me, think for yourself!" at which point the entire crowd shouts as one "yes, we will think for ourselves!". Terry responded that basically everything Brian said they all worked on together, and it's common sense. Well, that's a matter of opinion!

He also discussed another animation project based on an opera which he wrote the libretto for, and directed, Evil Machines, staged in Lisbon last year, which features singing washing machines, vacuum cleaners and parking meters, not 1,000,000 miles in concept form my own Hybrids. He is currently seeking funding for the project.

The event was a great success, both Terry and Sue agreed to be patrons of Friends of Fadeco, and we raised over £2000. Profuse thanks to both of them, and everyone who helped on the night.

Writers and illustrators of children's books gather in Wales!

I have started the Welsh branch of The Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI). British SCBWI's website is: http://britishscbwi.jimdo.com/.

The benefits of being a member are - a fantastic membership pack stuffed with contacts, advice and invaluable help; access to crit groups, seminars, training, the conferences, daily support, a profile on the website, access to the mailing list and much more. I joined a year ago and have received huge benefits, made good friends and not regretted a moment.

There were 12 attendees, shown in the picture, clockwise from bottom left:
• David Thorpe (writer - Hybrids)
• Wendy Artiss (illustrator - unpublished)
• Mr & Anita Rowe (writer - Green Fingers & Grit, Stepsisters, A Chance to Dream, regular monthly contributor on 'writing for children' to Writers' News and Writing Magazine)
• Sophie Lording (Hay Childrens' Literature Festival organiser)
• Bethan Gwanas (editor, and writer of 20 children's books in Welsh, inc. the Blodwen Jones trilogy, and Ramboy, an English adaptation of Pen Dafad)
• Gordon Jones (librarian, editor for various Welsh publishers)
• Bear Tyler (writer, unpublished)
• Hedley England (writer - unpublished, director)
• Graham Gardner (writer - Inventing Elliot)
• Brian Lux (writer - Court of Foxes)
• Jenny Fell (illustrator - Second Thoughts, I Can Move the Sea).
In addition, 22 other people expressed interest but were unable to attend. A list of these is below.

After the introductions and a sampling of the free wine supplied by the director of the Arts Centre - for which thank you very much, we discussed the benefits of joining SCBWI, because none of the attendees were members, and how it differed from other writers' organisations.

We learnt about the National Association of Writers in Education (www.nawe.co.uk), and the American Children's Writing Resource Centre (www.write4kids.com).

Sophie Lording and Bethan Gwanas reminded those of us who had forgotten, of the existence of the Writing Squads in Wales, which will pay writers £200 a day to tutor on Saturdays promising young writers whom their teachers put forward to come to these squads, although typically the writing is done in Welsh. These are organised by Academi - see www.academi.org/squads.

Gordon Jones explained how the editors working for Welsh publishers typically combine many of her the roles of a publisher -- which can include proofreading, copy editing, art direction and marketing as well as editing! A book is considered to do well in Welsh if it sells 1200 copies. The most successful book ever published in Welsh, not a children's book, sold 10,000 copies.

We discussed how membership of a national organisation with a strong networking component like SCBWI could benefit Welsh writers from wider exposure, since they are frequently unknown outside of the principality.

Sophie Lording explained that she is looking for ideas from writers to help her work with the Hay festival. This work includes going into schools, exhibition stands and so on. The programme for this May's festival is 90% booked, but there is room for anybody who wishes to propose an exhibition. Could SCWBI have a stand there?

Academi Is the Welsh organisation which supports writers, and we decided that we if we spoke together as a group we would have a stronger voice in Academi for children's writing.

We discussed the value of Readers Days, and how we should get involved. See for example: www.readingagency.org.uk.

in terms of what we want to do in the future, the following ideas were floated: inviting Welsh editors, English editors and agents to come in from London, librarians, and illustrators agents.

Gordon Jones offered to organise a panel involving Welsh editors. I offered to continue with fund raising and coordination.

The next gathering will be a critique discussion group, on Saturday, 4 April at 1.30pm, venue to be decided.

Apologies from: Sue Moules, Jenny Fell, Brian Lux, Graham Gardner, Jane Moran, Maria Hayes, Henni Tremlett, Nicola/Paul Burgess, Derek Webb, Femke van gent, Liz Whittaker, Katrina Michael, JIm Bowen, Phil Thomas, Herbert Williams, Frances Thomas, Wynford Ellis Owen, Alan H, Dahlian Kirby , Tomos Morgan, Eleanor Burnham, Penny, Jenny Sullivan, Mererid Hopwood

I like playing games - but not the Blame Game [poem]

Don't talk to me about climate change
It's coming out of my ears
I'm feeling uneasy that my low carbon diet
Is cooked on an oil-fired range.
I don't dare fly 'cos I'll be sent to Coventry
By the greener than thou eco-tocracy
I'll be sent by bike
Doesn't matter what I like.
My oil's peaked too soon - I need eco-Viagra.

I've got eco-phobia - A fear of greenies.
They're worse than an attack of the Blue Meanies.
When I see a wooly jumper coming down the street
I'll cross over so as not to meet.
Green meanies point and say
"You're not wearing hemp - which is Green Heaven sent
To solve all evils it has the ability."
My Lycra two-piece is a liability.

I want Tesco's - it's all about choice,
Everywhere else's got it so hear my voice.
"But choice is bad. We should do what we're told.
Burning carbon's like hoarding gold.
Learn to do without, don't live in the past."
But I want to enjoy it while it lasts.

In the Gospel according to George Monbiot
Satan's sat at the wheel of a Ford Mondeo
He has Jeremy Clarkson's hideous face
And Richard Branson's plan to conquer outer space.
The boot's full of tins of greenwash
And vocabularies of total tosh.
But just because I want to have my cake and eat it
Shouldn't mean I have to beat it
When the Green Police come calling
To check my electricity bill is falling,
Leaving their filthy carbon footprints
All over my pearly chintz.

'Cos we know they've got their ipods,
Their PCs, their digi-gods
Their mobile phones with low carbon ring-tones
Homes full of green bling from the Natural Collection
A selection of fair trade organic confections
An oil-guzzling jalopy to take them shopping
From their so-called self-sufficient hill-billy small-holding
Well to paraphrase David Byrne I wouldn't live there
If you paid me in shares in a holding company.

I want all my lights on
I want the tv always on
I work hard, I've a right
To throw away half my food if I'm in the mood.
I care about polar bears and receding glaciers
But my life's also precarious and I'm not nefarious.
I didn't make the mess we're in
I'm a victim of 21st century capitalism.
I didn't ask to be addicted to oil
Jail the pushers don't roil me.
Who made you judge and jury?
I'll resent you for making me feel ashamed
Take the plank from your own eye -
I've been framed.