Mea culpa

I will restart this blog properly at some point, it's one of my New Year resolutions.

It is particularly irritating of me, because I am blogging elsewhere - just not on my own blog.

You can read me blogging here for example.

See you soon, I hope.

Merry Christmas

everybody

Alas Caledonia

It was never a freekick.

No more hardbacks?

Interesting piece in Guardian about Picador's plans to release novels straight away in paperback. It is kind of anti the move that Faber made a while back on their poetry collections, where they now routinely release them in hardback first.

But then poetry doesn't really have a normal economy, or an economy at all. Faber can afford to do that with the Heaneys and Muldoons of this world. Few other poetry publishers would dare.

As for novels, I suspect Andrew Kidd (who was nice about my first manuscript) is correct on this one. The hardback novel may well be sailing into the sunset.

Hey ho

I've been most remiss in blogging, as work has been busy.

I was on the Today programme, as well as a few other BBC breakfast shows including FiveLive yesterday. Story with some quotes from yours truly here.

Will probably continue to blog lightly for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully will be able to pick up a bit more in December.

R.I.P.

Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans.

Aspiration, aspiration, aspiration

The Queen's Speech is fairly so-so, which is probably what Gordon wanted after his brief reputation for being a 'steady hand at the tiller' was rocked by the non-election fiasco.

One interesting piece of cross-dressing though. One of the key words used by David Cameron in speeches is 'aspiration'. 'Aspiration' has been to Cameron what 'opportunity' was to Blair.

Note the word from the Speech that Peter Riddell finds most telling in his reaction on timesonline.

Farewell

A fond farewell to the TV Controller blog, which is adopting radio silence for the time being.

Note the telling mention of Hamish Mykura in the curtain call interview with the TVC.

Jerry speaks

Profile of Jerry Seinfeld in today's Guardian, as he promotes his new animated film Bee Movie.

Heather Mills...

...we salute you.