When I was on holiday recently I managed to read a few books; not as many as I would have managed in the past (my record remaining unchallenged at 16 in Seville in 2000), but still a modest haul, and all thoroughly enjoyable. They were: A Game of Thrones - George R R Martin; The Confession - John Grisham; Judgment Day - Sheldon Siegel; and Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James.
A Game of Thrones is at the opposite end of the street to what I would normally read. Fantasy is not a genre I understand, far less appreciate. I loved The Lord of the Rings as movies but found the books turgid and obscure. Others who love them can discourse wisely on their hidden depths, their allegorical profundity and their exquisite writing. My own theory is that I read them too late, in my mid 30s, well past the tipping point where enjoyment turns to adoration. Anyway, Martin is quite a different writer; he doesn't appear to do hidden depths. However, for an outlandish medieval tale, with gripping characters and stories, it was hard to beat. I was moderately pleased when it ended as I wanted to spend my holiday not just in the company of kings, barons, damsels, dragons and midgets. So I turned to the company of lawyers.
Grisham's latest perhaps suffers from faint praise. It's nothing like as bad as his last five. He found a way to tell the whole story rather than coming up with a good first chapter and then unfailingly spinning out the anticlimax for the remainder of the book. This was much better, with a sharper and more satisfying ending than many of his "thrillers".
I then moved on to the Siegel. I love Sheldon Siegel. He's a San Francisco attorney who writes about a priest turned lawyer called Mike Daley. He's a much wittier writer than Grisham, who labours rather worthily to point out the ills of the legal system, and he tells a much punchier story. That was a great relief, and I've stored another of his Daley books on my kindle for future consumption.
Then I moved to Unreliable Memoirs. Have you read this book? It says on the front cover of the paperback: Do not read this book in public. You will risk severe internal injuries from trying to suppress your laughter.
Well. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis came in a version which promised me the funniest book in English literature. I smiled once. A total letdown. So when I read this I was suspicious.
I've now read it several times and every single time I have cried with laughter. Great heaving speechless draughts of laughter which have left me helpless and struggling for breath. I'd like to try reading it on the bus and, when asked what was rendering me in such a state, say something like "Crime and Punishment".
It made me realise that, aside from Wodehouse, Clive James is the funniest writer of comic prose. Precision and timing. Making people laugh from the page is an art mastered by fewer than think they have it.
Here's a short sample which always starts me up, taken from his chapter entitled The Flash of Lightning, relating how, as a boy, he started a gang with a mask and a cape, calling himself The Flash of Lightning. "Generally the Flash of Lightning was a success. Other boys started appearing in masks and capes. Moments after the sun dropped they would come swooping towards me like fruit bats. Obviously everything was up to me. Standing around in mysterious attire, surrogates of the Flash of Lightning awaited their instructions. Meanwhile they announced their names. There was a Green Flash, a Black Flash and a Red Flash. Graham Truscott wanted to call himself the Flash of Thunder."
He goes on to tell how they threw gravel on Mrs Branthwaite's roof, which must have been agony for her but was endlessly amusing for her. "Films of Kristallnacht never fail to make me think of those brilliantly staged raids by the Flash of Lightning, in which a dozen handfuls of gravel would all land on Mrs Branthwaite's tiles only seconds before the perpetrators, magically divested of capes and masks, were back at home sitting around the Kosi stove and helping their parents listen to Pick a Box. The difference between mischief and murder is no greater than what the law will allow."
And finally, in the same chapter, a sentence of piercing brilliance: "It is remarkable how much damage a group of small boys can do to a building site if it is left unguarded". Its brilliance may not be immediately apparent to the casual reader. To me, my brother John and our friend Tom Smith, it is a dagger to the heart of an otherwise pure childhood conscience. We found ourselves one sunny afternoon with time hanging heavy on our hands on the site of the half-built Tarka Controls factory just up the road from our house, and for three nice boys we created utter mayhem. We were, we imagined, unseen and of unchallenged innocence by the time we got home. Not half an hour later, the doorbell rang and a representative of the local constabulary, a force we had always considered to have the perceptivity and deductive skills of Constable Oates, had fingered us and delivered a ringing warning against repeating such despicable acts.
Even now, I quake at the thought of crossing authority so brazenly. As I recall, it was fairly low grade hoodlumism, involving minor breakages and some high jinks with a length of hose and a cold tap. What I still can't work out is how the police knew it was us, and where we lived. Perhaps I have repressed that part of the story where we were caught in the act and, as our collars were being felt, gave up names, addresses, ranks and serial numbers. It would be good to say that like Glasgow urchins we tore a strip off the policeman with a few well chosen criticisms of his personal appearance and apparent intelligence, but it would also be a lie.
Tom Smith's finest hour lay in the future, anyway. A gold-toothed fellow with a broad grin, he proved his superiority among all the neighbourhood boys by throwing a substantial lump of concrete over a wall thought to be at least 12 feet high. His pleasure at seeing the rock disappear was suddenly tempered by evidence that it had landed on the greenhouse of Mr McBain, who had an eyepatch and a nasty daschund. I still feel bad about that. The years have placed me largely on the side of Mr McBain in that exchange.
The reference to the Flash of Thunder came to mind as I was cycling over LIberton Drive last night on a short but explosive - well, relatively explosive - training ride. It's remarkable what goes through your mind when you're cycling, and the thought of travelling at speed reminded me that for a short time I was known as the Greased Ferret. I once - or possibly more than once, never being a believer in having too much of a good thing - wrote to my friend Phil Cullen in Belfast to tell him about an innings in which I had scored few runs but had upped the tempo of the innings by running a number of suicidal singles to take advantage of the shoddy fielding provided by the opposition. I said I was up and down the wicket faster than a greased ferret. That stuck for a while, but obviously my current bearing is too dignified for me to be referred to by such a title.
I have never had a nickname among my family or close friends, or at least not one of which I was aware. For a time my team mates called me the Reverend, for want of a better monicker, but that was used in match reports rather than to my face. I was briefly referred to at YMCA camp, when 13, as Murd the Mouth, a name I found frankly baffling. But I couldn't bring myself to suggest anything else, remembering the mockery to which Charlie Brown was subjected when Lucy found out that he wanted to be known as Flash.
I like Charlie Brown.
