Christmas shopping in London without tears

Wrapping Christmas Presents

Right, so here’s what you do. You make a list the night before, and you think about which of the nice little shops you know, or have been meaning to visit for ages, are most likely to have what you want. You take a day off work, mid-week. Then you head out, looking forwards to a day of chatting to friendly assistants, browsing among things you won’t see elsewhere, and stopping for lunch somewhere civilised. Under no circumstances enter a department store – they sap the soul.

This was my itinerary on Thursday:

1: Books. I wanted a couple of nicely presented, classic books for some very stylish friends. Normally I make a beeline for Hatchards or London Review Bookshop, but I’ve been meaning to check out the new independent bookshop Belgravia Books in Ebury Street, which opened in September. Belgravia Books is the retail wing of the publisher Gallic Books, which specialises in translations from contemporary French fiction and non-fiction. They’re the house behind the quirky hit The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. I was immediately greeted by the friendly staff, who helped me find exactly the right presents, including a beautiful hardback of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Jazz Age, which I’m very tempted to keep myself. The shop has a great range of titles, intelligently chosen and lovely to look at. The manager is also my old school chum Alison, so I had the pleasure of catching up on the gossip while I made my choices. A good start to the day.

2: Sweets, chocolates and stocking-fillers. I knew Hope and Greenwood from their East Dulwich shop, but hadn’t had the pleasure of a browse around the Covent Garden branch. It was still relatively quiet, so I had plenty of space to pick up a selection of striped candy canes, chocolate lady birds and sports cars, boxes of marzipan fruits and chocolate truffles, all beautifully-wrapped and mouth-watering. The great thing about Hope and Greenwood is the balance between luxury, quality and prices that start at pocket-money levels. I piled my purchases on the counter for wrapping by the chatty assistants, and was thrilled to be given an extra ‘chocolate pudding bar’ as a reward. I even splashed out on a quarter of licorice for myself.

3: Tea towels, kitch and kitchenware. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of the whole Cath Kidson thing myself. All those florals bring me out in a bit of a rash, and I have an intolerance to cup-cake domesticity. (What are cupcakes, anyway? They were fairy cakes when I was little, and about a quarter of the size). However, the range clearly has a following as several people on my Christmas list had made specific requests. The store was busy, but the staff helpful and attentive. I was in and out, minus what felt like quite a lot of cash for some oven gloves and tea towels.

4: Toys, jokes, more stocking-fillers. I usually avoid Covent Garden Piazza, but it does contain the delightful Pollock’s Toy Shop, and you can’t get much more Dickensian and Christmassy than that. Card tricks, masks, glove puppets, all perfect for making up a parcel and sending off to friends overseas, with some of those Hope and Greenwood sweeties.  Best of all, it means you don’t have to go anywhere near the hell that is Hamleys.

5: Lunch. I’d been eyeing up the delicatessen-come-restaurant Machievelli, on Long Acre, as I cycled past in the mornings on my way to work. A restaurant’s response to a request for a table for one is a good marker of their attitude to customer service – and I was swiftly installed in a nice little table in the window, with a glass of ginger beer and a menu. I chose the soup and a salad of roast squash, both of which did the job nicely. But I’m still raving about the coffee, which was quite the best cup I’ve had for an age, richly tasty and flavoursome. The stuff you get at the chain outlets bears no relation at all to the coffee I had here, which sent me smiling out into the Covent Garden crowds, step re-sprung.

6: Menswear. An exciting new find, this – albeit one that’s been around since the 18th century. Wolsey, supplier of polar expedition clothing to Antarctic explorers including Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton, has opened a temporary store (alright, a pop-up) on Monmouth Street, one of my favourite streets for shopping. The company makes very decent knitwear, shirts, casual trousers, jackets and coats, all aimed at the sort of chap who would rather be trekking across the polar wastes than down Oxford Street. A chap, that is, like the Gentleman Caller, who is to be kitted out, gradually, from head to toe in their practical yet undeniably sexy clothing. A palpable hit. (And they plan to open a proper shop in Soho shortly)

7: Biscuits, preserves, caviar and other essentials. Alright, Fortnum and Mason is a department store. But, to paraphrase Jo in Little Women, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Fortnum’s Lucifer Ginger and Chilli Biscuits, even if just for the fun of passing one to an unsuspecting relative. And while I was there, I picked up a few other little luxuries to make sure the festive season goes with a swing.

And that was it! A successful day’s shopping, few crowds, no bad temper, and if there was a department store, at least it was Fortnum’s.

Image: From Rennings photostream on Flickr, with CCL.

A world in a grain of sand

British Museum

The British Museum is a peculiarly London institution. The collections, rather like the visitors, are gathered from every corner of the globe, brought there by some kind of centrifugal force comprised of curiosity, adventure and money. Even the name of the museum is double-edged. Most of the artefacts are not, of course, British. But the knowledge-seeking, empire-building, sea-faring spirit that gathered them here most certainly is.

Working close to the British Museum allows for the most amazing lunchtimes, contemplating the Parthenon Marbles, for instance, or the exquisite simplicity of 17th century Chinese porcelain. Why travel, when you can nip from ancient Egypt to classical Greece in a 10-minute stroll? The entire world, it feels, is encompassed within Robert Smirke’s neoclassical edifice.

And now the museum includes a whole new world, within the current temporary exhibition, Grayson Perry’s Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. I’ve rarely experienced such pure delight in an exhibition, drawn into Perry’s imaginary world, where his own lovingly-created artefacts sit with dignity and grace – and not a little humour – next to borrowings from the British Museum’s own collections.

The richness of Perry’s pieces, replete with visual detail, reflect the emotional completeness of his artistic vision. This is not your one-note conceptual art, grudgingly sharing a blank, minimal flicker of thought with a cynical and jaded artistic elite. This is an entire world, crafted and revised from childhood, full of meaning, with the patina of myth and fable.

Perry borrows the language of older, more rooted cultures, but never as pastiche. His juxtapositions are charming and apposite; his choices of BM artefacts clearly made with love and admiration, a tribute paid by one craftsman to another. Themes include the power of magic that can be invested in objects; pilgrimage (he sees the modern pilgrimages to art galleries and museums as an extension of the older religious pilgrimage); shrines and above all, craftmanship.

The show is intended to delight, intrigue and engage – and it does so, with wholehearted good humour. It is quite simply impossible to stand back and view this exhibition through the cynical filter that much contemporary art seems to invite. It’s a very disarming show, not least because the artist makes himself so vulnerable that to meet him on anything other than his own terms would be churlish in the extreme.

I love Perry’s work because he gives us so much. At a basic level, there is simply so much to look at in a Grayson Perry pot, so many thoughts and images, all creating a mellifluous whole. They are lovely objects, full of meaning, and I could sit and look at them for hours. But his generosity is not just aesthetic. He has created a whole world of wonders, exposing his own private deities and mythologies, and welcomed not just visitors, but the creations of artists and craftsmen down the centuries – millenia, even, to be venerated. This exhibition is the work of a profoundly generous man.

And so I wasn’t so very surprised to spot Grayson Perry sitting quietly at the back of the lecture hall on Monday night, listening to Sarah Waters read from and talk about her most recent novel, The Little Stranger. Sarah Waters is one of my favourite writers, not least for her ability to conjure a whole world and invite us in to be entertained.

Both these artists are deservedly popular; both have made mincemeat of the trend for minimalism, restraint, cynicism and world-weariness. Like Grayson Perry, Sarah Waters was funny, engaging and honest, answering questions and staying behind to sign books after the talk, despite the efforts of the organiser to whisk her away.

Blake talked of artists ‘seeing a world in a grain of sand’. Some artists seem to have misinterpreted that as meaning they can just show us the grain of sand, and we’ll get the reference. Grayson Perry and Sarah Waters take the grain of sand and paint the world on it. Long may they, and their art, prosper.

Season of reading lists

Oxford. A long way from Salford.

Autumn in Bloomsbury means the squares and pavements are filled with bright young people, from all over the world, arriving to take up their places at University College London. There’s a quickening in the air, a new purpose after the meandering summer, a sense of pencils being sharpened and eager minds turning to study.

Maybe it’s romantic, but I rather love this time of year, even though my own university days were sadly played out among the ivory tower blocks of Salford, where elegant quads and dreaming spires were in short supply (an unfortunate turn of events entirely down to messing up my A-levels). As the leaves turn and the air freshens, I feel the need to pull up socks, knuckle down, make a fresh start.

I’ve enrolled on a new course, Novel Writing 1, at Birkbeck College. I’ve read the first term’s ‘set text’ – Anne Tyler’s Patchwork Planet, much recommended – and done my first piece of homework. But what I really need is a reading list.

Oh, my reading is all over the place at the moment! Anne Tyler aside, I’ve been hopping from one random book to another, enjoying myself very much, but without any strategy or purpose. I spent half a paralysed hour in Hatchard’s on Sunday, and came out with nothing. Not because I couldn’t find anything I wanted, but because there was so much. Should I read the Booker shortlist? Or wait till later tonight and just read the winner? Should I fill in some of my missing classics; finally tackle the great Russians novelists? What about re-reading a few Dickens novels, to gear up for the bicentenary? Maybe travel writing – I’ve never read Jan Morris on Venice - or what about the Jessica Mitford memoir, Hons and Rebels? So many books, so little time.

I remember when I finished my English degree, back in the depths of time. (They did teach us perfectly adequately at Salford, even if the surroundings weren’t pretty). I floundered around, trying  to read Virginia Woolf for pleasure, turning to George Orwell for light relief, trying to remember with bewilderment which of the Victorian novels on my shelves I had actually read, and which I’d just filleted for an essay.

Jilly Cooper came to my rescue, with her enormous, fat, bouncing novels of sex and horses (not, please note, sex with horses), full of groan-worthy puns and improbable fallings-in-love. Phew, I remembered, you could read novels for fun as well as self-improvement.

But right now, I’m ready for a bit of self-improvement. I’ll alternate – a Booker shortlistee, a classic I’ve not read yet, a history or biography, and a dark, exciting thriller. Now, which shall they be? Some recommendations, please, and I’ll let you know what I think.

Image: my own. I’ve been there, you know.

Update: thanks to those who sent suggestions. I’m re-reading David Copperfield (and loving the detail, like young David peeking in the mirror after his mother’s death, to see how sad he looks); with Booker winner Julian Barnes’  The Sense of an Ending lined up next as a short novel to counteract Dickens’ great tome. I went for Alexandra Harris’ new biography of Virginia Woolf for my biography, because I’m turning over the idea of a Bloomsbury setting for my next novel. I’m still in the market for a cracking, dark thriller, so please do carry one with the recommendations, in comments or on Twitter to @bloomsburyblue.

Victorian murder, digital books

As readers will know, I’m a book-obsessive. I’m also pretty hot on bookshops, happily shelling out for the pleasure of a browse among the stacks of paper, breathing in that scent of combined wisdom and mildew that inhabits any half-decent book trader. Use them or lose them, as One Book On the Shelf rightly observes.

So it’s with some embarrassment that I admit to being on first-name terms with Amazon, that bookstore-devouring monolith. But – hear me out! – it does offer a route to books that I’d be unlikely to pick up browsing the shelves. It’s one of the oddities of modern life that digital culture enables those of us with one foot in the past to find each other.

Over on Twitter, I’ve become a fan of Lee Jackson, keeper of The Cat’s Meat Shop blog, and curator of all obscure knowledge about Victorian London. His blog is a delightful lucky-dip of photos, facts, mini-essays and mind-boggling extracts from contemporary sources. (A recent favourite being a guide to office etiquette, 1909, deploring the existence of ‘slangy girls’ who ‘prink’ in the office.)

No-one who follows Lee Jackson can miss his, um, diligent approach to publicising his publications on Twitter. Which is why, on unexpectedly becoming the curator of an i-Pad, his Victorian murder mystery, The Diary of a Murder, was one of my first digital down-loads via Amazon’s Kindle app. It’s a romp of a book, rich with period detail and rooted firmly in place and time. He takes us unfailingly through the streets of Islington, the City, and into the East End, in his story of a hapless Victorian clerk struggling with ne’er-do-well father, overbearing mother-in-law and delicate ‘wifey’.

It would be criminal to even hint at the decently-unexpected ending, which had me checking back through the pages to make sure he hadn’t ‘cheated’. It was, though, an unexpected pleasure, an introduction to an author I’d probably never have discovered without Twitter, digital readers and the like.

Now that I’ve completed the first draft of my own novel, I’m contemplating my publication options while working on the first edit. Carol Blake, agent and author of From Pitch to Publication, warned against electronic self-publishing in her talk at the Soho Literary Festival. In the latest issue of Mslexia, one author exults in the control that ‘doing it herself’ gave her.

So should I take the plunge and publish myself, or go down the conventional route? I’ve yet to decide. And anyway, there’s an awful lot more editing to do yet. Any advice welcome!

Bloomsbury Tales

More than 2 years ago, I went for a walk that would change my life.

I’d been re-reading my favourite sections of The Canterbury Tales, and took it into my head to recreate the journey, over the Easter weekend, walking from Southwark to Canterbury, stopping off en route in Dartford and Sittingbourne.

It was a fascinating walk, from the bustle of London Bridge out through the wilds of south east London, into the bleak Medway flatlands of north west Kent and finally the picturesque hills and orchards around Canterbury itself. It left me with two legacies – an injured achilles tendon, still giving me trouble, and more positively, an idea for a story.

The story worried away at me, inspired by the literary heritage of the route. I had expected to find signs of Chaucer, but I kept coming across the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, who lived everywhere in London before settling in Rochester, Kent, and the 16th century playwright Christopher Marlowe, born in Canterbury and buried in Deptford.

Two and a half years later, the story has become a first draft of a novel, whose action unwinds along the London to Canterbury route. Last Friday I was anxiously working on how to end the final chapter. Inspiration came back where I started – with Geoffrey Chaucer.

The British Museum was hosting an evening event, Chaucer and the Medieval Pilgrimage, organised with the charity Poet in the City. The event complements the Treasures of Heaven exhibition, which looks at sacred art and relics from the Middle Ages.

The hugely enjoyable event encompassed readings from the Canterbury Tales, in both modern and Middle English; lectures by three academic experts on Chaucer, pilgrimage and the development of language in England at the time, plus some wonderful new poetry by poet Patience Agbabe, inspired by the Tales.

Stories, I suddenly realised, are time travel. Listening to vivid readings of original Chaucer, I felt tugged back in time, to a world where almost everything was different, except the ability of words to hold us spellbound, listening to a story. And Patience’s gripping, thrilling poetry drew on those same sources, that same impulsion to share an experience, make us feel and taste and see it. All the writers in our history, piling words upon words, a lexographic archeology for us to uncover.

Without wanting to give anything away, that’s where I found the ending for my own pilgrimage, the walk that turned into a story, that turned into a novel. In the words of every X Factor contestant, it’s been quite a journey.

When I am old I will be marvellous

I never much fancied purple. Sunshine yellow, yes, and apple green, and navy blue with white stripes. Shocking pink, even, or a nice scarlet cashmere jumper. But I applaud the sentiment of Jenny Joseph’s poem, and I too have wild fantasies about the old lady I will become. I’ve observed that just continuing to do the things you always did is greeted with amazement, once you’re over 70. So, here’s the plan:

• I will become one of those hardy old ladies you see in swimming costumes on the beach on Christmas Day, pickled into good health by year-round sea-bathing.
• I will continue to ride my bicycle. I will not get a sit-up one with a basket. I may go for something more racy, with drop handlebars.
• I will have my hair cut in chic geometric shapes, and when it gets grey I will wear it grey. I will never have a perm.
• I will live in a flat, preferably across the street from the British Museum, which will feature taxidermy and modern art. Nothing will be topped with a doily.
• I will become a regular, much-loved member of voluntary groups and charities, preferably ones with lots of young people. They will say ‘Isn’t she marvellous?’ about me, just because I’m old and sentient.
• I will continue to write, pumping my opinions, thoughts and fictions into the world, whether the world wants them or not.

As Jenny Joseph said, you have been warned.

A good ending

I spent the weekend mapping out the last four chapters of my novel. After two years of writing, not writing, despairing and then ploughing on, the end is clearly in sight. (For context, I’m on chapter 26 and I anticipate a 30-chapter novel).

But what makes a good ending? So many of my favourite novels seem to fall away towards the end, as if the writer was unable to live up to the promise of the opening and the thrill of the exploration that draws us deep into the world. Once we’re out of fairy stories, happily ever after doesn’t cut it any more. ‘Reader, I married him,’ resonates down the ages, but I believe it’s a rarity.

Consider the opening lines of Pride and Prejudice, universally acknowledged to be the most quoted in the history of novel-writing. Can you remember the closing lines? No, me neither. There’s  a wedding, certainly, but the picture in my head comes from the television adaptation, with smiling faces under bonnets and Colin Firth finally ceasing to scowl.  There’s no gently ironic, elegantly phrased line running through my mind.

More recent ‘literary’ novels would blush to end with a wedding. The good ending happily and the bad unhappily – too much of a cliche for our sophisticated modern times.  Snatch away that happy ending, undercut it with tragedy. Overturn our whole understanding of the story, at the risk of annoying the reader immensely. Wind down into uncertainty, leaving the reader contemplating the intrinsic un-knowability of life.

Here are three of my favourite novel endings. So go on, inspire me with some novels with terrific endings, to fire my resolve to end my novel with a bang and not a whimper. (Spoiler alert – I give away endings below. Stop reading now if you find that sort of thing upsetting).

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbon. Everyone settled on their nice new lives, and Flora flying off into the sunset with her pilot vicar. Most satisfactory.

The Unnamed, Joshua Ferris. If you want to know what death might be like, read the last page. Oddly comforting.

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger. Actually, the ending was what sold me on the book. Unbearable, to leave her imprisoned in never-ending waiting. I’d have thought sod it, I’m off out.

Back to Bloomsbury

Gosh, well, right. Sorry, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Almost a year since I (sob) moved from Bloomsbury to the wilds of south London. So, what with one thing and another, this blog has been left fallow. I’m amazed anyone is still reading, but – hey! – you are. How lovely.

British Museum

The thing is, I’m still Bloomsbury at heart. I still work in Bloomsbury, at the lovely BMA House in Tavistock Square. I still study in Bloomsbury, thanks to the marvellous Birkbeck College. Hell, I still shop, eat, drink, read, cycle, swim and generally hang out in Bloomsbury. The British Museum retains its charm.

So here’s the idea. I’ll keep my workaday professional blog, annasayburn.com, for work stuff. And I’ll pop over here when I want to talk about books, bunting, food and – most of all – writing. I’m about 7/8ths through writing my literary detective thriller novel, which has been nurtured by classes at Faber Academy and Birkbeck. I’m dizzy with the thought I might actually finish it soon – maybe even in time to enter it for the Mslexia Novel competition.

I’ll be posting updates about progress, ponderings, inspiration and ideas. Please chip in and let me know what you think. It’s lovely to be back.

Photo: my own.

My unrequited love for the BT Tower

Dammit, I didn’t get a ticket. This weekend, the BT Tower is open as part of London’s Open House programme. The tower, and the magical revolving restaurant at the top, has been a mild obsession of mine since childhood.

It’s got that space-age look, the very slenderness of the tower emphasising the dizzying height. It’s always struck me as a very glamorous building, and when the restaurant was still open (sadly when I was far too young to go) I could think of nothing more sophisticated than sitting at a table, drinking a glass of wine and watching the lights of London revolve slowly beneath me.

The nearest I’d been to it as a child was, well, quite a long way away, from the 6th floor Crystal Palace flat where my uncle and auntie lived. Visiting them was always a treat – a combination of Auntie Nora’s fabulous cooking, and the best view of London I’d seen at the time. If you looked out the kitchen window, and craned your neck a bit, you could see the BT Tower, sparkling in the distance, representing London proper.

By the time I was old enough to be contemplating booking a table at a revolving restaurant, the tower had long since shut down. I’ve been intermittently titillated by rumours that the restaurant is to re-open, but apparently there are no plans at present. When I moved into my Bloomsbury flat, I was thrilled to have a view of the tower, a bit closer than it was from Crystal Palace (but still only visible if I stepped out onto the balcony and craned my neck).

So I’ll just have to take lucky Kieran Long’s word for it about the views, and the different perspective of London offered. Read his piece in the Evening Standard, and glow green with envy.

The Standard also has a list of their top 10 Open House attractions. I’ve compiled my own, although the chances of getting to all of them are pretty slim. Here goes:
The 1901 Arts Club, 7 Exton Street SE1 8UE
55 Broadway (London Underground Head Office), 55 Broadway SW1H 0BD
99 Free Trade Wharf, 340 The Highway E1W 3ET
All Souls Church, Langham Place W1B 3DA
BBC Bush House, Aldwych WC2B 4PH
Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square EC4A 3DE
Freemasons’ Hall, 60 Great Queen Street WC2B 5AZ
Goodenough College, London House, Mecklenburgh Square WC1N 2AB
Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road W14 8LZ
120 Fleet Street (ex Daily Express), 120 Fleet Street EC4A 2BB

Image: from fishyfish photostream on Flickr, with CCL.

Tales from the river bank and beyond

I’ve written before about Bugged, the mass-eavesdropping in the name of art project, designed to prompt flowerings of fiction from overheard snatches of conversation.

On Bugging day, I was afloat on the Kennet and Avon canal. So what did I overhear, and was I inspired? Much of the day was peaceful and lovely. We were making our way from Bath up to Bradford on Avon, through some lovely countryside. We saw plenty of wildlife, prompting this mini-fictional musing, Still.

But first, there was the Bath lock flight, and the associated social shenanigans.

Something I noticed on my trip, with no little sorrow, was that most boats are driven by men. Women, therefore, get the heavy work of shifting the lock gates around, while the men stand around on the boats criticising. HMS Bluestocking, naturally, was an equal-opportunities narrowboat, but during my turns on the locks, I noticed more than a little friction between couples.

An exchange on the Bath deep lock, where a very boat-proud chap yelled at his wife for letting someone else wind the paddles for her, too fast for his liking, inspired the following short story, They Mate For Life, Don’t They?

At the end of our holiday, the Gentleman Caller and I couldn’t settle back on dry land. We decided to have a final day out, before going back to work on Monday. We chose Rochester Castle, where I was convulsed by a little boy giving his dad the run-around, while the father tried in vain to bribe him to leave. So Rochester Castle, a foray into poetry is my final piece.

It was a fun project to take part in, and prompted a few pieces that I’d not have written otherwise. Why not go over to the Bugged website and see what others did with their overhearings?