To paraphrase Oscar: “Some people come to resemble their pets, that is their tragedy some people don’t come to resemble their pets, that is theirs.” I think in this context of the German woman I have met twice now walking her Leonbergers down the road near Clapham Junction where the boys and I wait to get the bus on the way back from school. The woman is frowsty with a leonine head of pink, dyed hair, thick round the middle – she’s only 5ft 2in, or thereabouts, and must weigh getting on for 10 stone – and as for the dogs… well, they’re not called Leonbergers for nothing. This is the nearest thing you get to lion that’s still canine. Their dotty owner – who snapped “Leonberger!” at me, when I asked what breed they were (as if it were entirely obvious) – must have to go out with a shovel to pick up their dung.
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Outtakes from The Word
Further to an interview with Will in the May edition of The Word magazine, here are some extra bits
The Butt review
Michael Bywater reviews The Butt in The Independent.
Boomtown stats
Last time I was in Dublin, Vivian drove me round in a big black Merc; this time it’s a still bigger and blacker Chrysler. “I should’ve bought a cement truck,” he observes, as we ooze past the Point, a massive new shopping-cum-entertainment complex that’s sprouting a small forest of large cranes. “I’d be coining it now.” Last time I was in Dublin, the old city seemed teetering on the edge of being metropolitan – now it’s fallen over. Last time I was in Dublin, the joke was the group of three pyramidical office blocks on the bank of the Liffey that were known locally as “Canary Dwarf”; now it’s them that have been dwarfed – or, at any rate, flanked by acre upon acre of plate glass and steel.
Guardian ‘Why I write’
An interview from May 9 2007
An Amazon reader review
of The Butt can be found here
The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of Aids by Elizabeth Pisani
Back in 1985 I was an inpatient at a drug rehab in the West Country and had genital warts that required regular and painful treatments.
Each week I went to the STD clinic at the nearby hospital, where a middle-aged consultant applied an acidic preparation to the glans of my penis. One day, while he was actually holding the afflicted portion, he remarked — quite casually — that the best way to rid the country of HIV/Aids would be to “castrate all you junkies — and the queers, too”.
Olympic hurdles
Read Will’s latest Psychogeography column here
10.05.08
Book panel with Simon Mayo
To listen to Will talking about The Butt on Simon Mayo’s Radio 5 Live programme on April 24 2008, sign up to the podcast.