A book about Chalk

Paul Cornell’s recent novel Chalk is about abuse and folklore and the magic of pop-music. It’s the sort of book that burrows deep into my obsessions (one of its reference points is the Long Man of Wilmington). There’s a lot I can say about this book, and the conversations I’d have in person are very different to what I’d write in a blog post. It’s a book of complicated thoughts and feels.

I heard of the book through an interview with John Scalzi. It proved as shocking as Cornell warned – the incident at the start of the book, which triggers what follows, is very hard to read.

The book contains powerful chains of symbols – chalk outlines, downlands, pre-Roman Britain. There are the tarot suits scattered throughout the story – are the snooker cues wands, the knife a sword? Chalk turns up in different forms, not least on the snooker clues.

Cornell described the book as being about narrative, and the character of Angie has her own form of magic, very different to the narrator’s. The idea of pop music as magic seem familiar from Kieron Gillen’s Phonogram universe, but Cornell’s take on the idea is fresh. It’s a magic of lyrics, where the record at number one tells you what is coming in the future. Bananarama becomes a sort of triple goddess of young one, serious one and leader, but “They’re missing someone. There should really be a secret fourth member, or one we only hear about later”. Reference books listing British pop charts provide birth charts.

One thing I particularly liked was the headmaster’s announcement “[School] is a microcosm of the world. We prepare you for your place in it. History has set out a path for you. We lead you along it” – the school here is a world where the narratives compete. The distortions to this world are grounded while having the scale of cosmic horror, again reminiscent of Pratchett – there is a danger of something breaking through.

I’ve spoken mostly about the mythic aspects of the book. There’s also some very good, very raw writing about the effects of bullying and abuse, about the way in which these things persist in the world. The ending is the right one, true to the book, but it’s far from the one I wanted. But that’s the sort of discussion that works better in person than in books.

Louise said there was chalk in every room now.

The Limestone Way

I spent last weekend walking the Limestone Way. I had a spare couple of days before some work in Derbyshire, so wanted to find a nearby trail. 45 miles was a little longer than was sensible for two days – but I thought I’d do it anyway.

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It was a very different trail to the ones I’m used to, with the ground quite difficult in the first stages. Dad only made a short distance, and it was a good thing I was wearing new walking boots. The weather was also ropy for the first stage but by the afternoon was pretty sunny.

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One thing I’ve noticed is how long trails changes as they cross administrative boundaries. The first part of the Limestone Way was fairly well signposted, although there were a few games of hunt-the-stile. After crossing the River Dove I entered Staffordshire where the signage went to shit. They didn’t even bother marking the trail, just used regular footpath markers. At the end, the route fizzled out even worse than the Downs Link, with no indication it was done. It was almost as if Staffordshire was ashamed of the Way or had a vendetta against walkers. If I’d researched better, I’d have seen the Rambling Man’s account of this issue.

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The stunning scenery made up for all the hassles, my favourite moment being the River Dove valley. Just so much space and green! I’m due to do the start of the Pennine Way next month and I’m very excited about that now.

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This stile was stood on its own in the middle of a field. I have no idea why, but it looked… dangerous. I went around it.

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The first day was about 25 miles, with a couple of miles added on for misdirection. I found the bench shown below just when I needed it most. I stopped, lay down, read for a bit and ate a cookie. I was very grateful for Hilary, in whose name the bench was donated.

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I’m not a big fan of squeeze stiles, which seem to be designed for people with tiny, tiny legs.

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The River Dove valley below. The sort of view that deserves a round of applause.

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This is the trail end. Nothing to mark it, just a post with a single direction marked on it, rather than the two one normally finds on a trail.

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A long weekend

My original plan for this weekend was to attend the Super Weird Happening in Liverpool. But when organising that was proving too complicated I started looking for other things to do. Which led to me spending this weekend walking the Limestone Way.

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The path is 46 miles and the brochure suggests it can be walked in four to five days. As I only had a weekend I decided to walk it in two. The walk was a mix of stunning scenery and appalling signposting. It also would have been better done over three or more days,

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So, I walked 110,000 steps this weekend, and broke the 50 mile barrier thanks to appalling signposting. It was a stupid thing to try, but I learned a lot of lessons – after all, pushing things past their limits shows where they might break. The remaining walks for this year will be much easier.

Facebook and postcards

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I’m not a Facebook-hater. I know its interests aren’t perfectly aligned with mine; but as long as I don’t give it too much time, it’s fine. And I love that it’s kept some friendships going, long after distance or time might have had them dying away.

But Facebook will never be as great as the real world. It’s the same as how downloading an e-book isn’t the same as an Amazon order dropping through your letterbox. A postcard is always more fun than a tweet, whatever new updates Twitter roll out.

I love the postal system. I still like to write letters (and am massively overdue for my next one to Louise Halvardsson). One of the main texts for my (abandoned) PhD was Jacques Derrida’s Post Card. My pretend publishing company is called Postal Press. I await silent Tristero’s Empire. There’s something magic about the mail.

While I love the way Facebook keeps people in touch, it’s a rather passive communication – like a stream of round-robin letters. You can follow someone without really engaging with them. There are even a few people on my friends list that I can’t remember where I know them from. So I thought I would try sending postcards to as many people on my friends list as I can.

(I currently have 573 people on that friends list. This may take some time. And a lot of stamps.)

It will be good to get in touch with old friends. I suspect this will also be an interesting experiment. There’s something transgressive about blurring the online/offline boundaries. I imagine there are people who are happy to be friends on Facebook and don’t want to share their postal address. And, like all experiments, there is the possibility of something unexpected. (But, don’t worry, I’m not planning anything too real, like the woman who tried to visit all her Factbook friends).

Well, I’d best get started. Who wants a postcard?