Will Self: Journalism

The madness of crowds: Shops

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The latest Madness of Crowds column:

My kids as a rule don’t say the cutest things, but the weirdest. As a result, I’ve learned to strip-mine ruthlessly their inchoate brains for ideas – which is why, presumably, they can’t wait to leave home. My youngest is still only ten, so he can’t get away, and I’m glad of that because he’s proved especially helpful in furnishing topics for this column. Yesterday morning, on our way to his school, as the bus grumbled along the Wandsworth Road, I asked him if he could come up with anything for this week’s Madness of Crowds. He thought for a second or so, then said: “What about all those shops that open knowing that they’re going to have to close down again?”   More...

Robert Lockhart 1959-2012

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“Robert Lockhart, who has died aged 52 after a heart attack, was a musician to the tips of his nimble – and invariably heavily nicotine-stained – fingers. A piano virtuoso, he retired from concert performance early in his career to concentrate on composition, and became both an eclectic and effective composer for theatre, film and television, as well as creating freestanding works for ensembles ranging from the string quartet to the brass band.

“An unashamedly ‘pre-sampling’ composer, Lockhart savoured working with musicians above all else, and his flair for arranging and conducting in the studio ensured him a steady stream of commissions which, although often requiring only workmanlike undertones, his often deeply personal music frequently managed to soar high above.   More...

Real meals: Domino’s pizza

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The latest Real meals column:

For those of us not so much bitterly disappointed by the Obama presidency as predictably disillusioned (I knew he’d gone to the dark side when he snuggled up big-time to the lokshen soup lobby), the GOP primaries present a somewhat ambivalent spectacle. On the we-like side there’s the spectacle of one clown after another performing political pratfalls, but on the we-no-like recto is inscribed the saddening truth that to win against any of the current contenders – Gingrich included – would be like beating a dolphin at table tennis: it’ll say nothing whatsoever about the incumbent’s record except that he can, at least, hold a bat.   More...

Death in the suburbs

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The latest Madness of Crowds column:

To Mortlake Cemetery for the funeral of an elderly acquaintance – it was only my second funeral in the past year or so and I was struck by the sparse turnout compared with the previous one, which had been for a considerably younger person. But then it’s difficult to reach a ripe old age without the windfalls having rotted away already, while the funerals of the young have at least this small compensation: they’re mostly pretty well attended, unless the deceased was especially loathsome.   More...

Why I hate Trafalgar Square

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“Without a shadow of doubt Trafalgar Square has to be one of the most crap urban public spaces in the world. The fact that massed divisions of tourists feel compelled to ritually promenade across its pigeon-shat-upon York stone and head-banging granite is perverse in the extreme, because it’s not so much a place to hang out as somewhere you feel constantly in danger of being hung for treason, such is the discourse of power enshrined in its leonine and general-studded plinths and its admiral-spiked column.”

Read the rest of the article in Guardian Travel here.

Willpower review

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“From time to time, as if heaven-sent to annoy, someone will ask me if I’m self-disciplined when it comes to my work. I usually look witheringly at them and snarl, ‘What do you think? I mean, how do you imagine anyone writes a quarter of a million words a year for publication?’ The hapless fools then mutter about inspiration or some such rot before turning tail and fleeing. Good riddance. The life of the professional writer – like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist – is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn’t be any remuneration, period.   More...

Slow Life

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Men’s Health magazine have selected eight of Will Self’s columns written for the magazine to be showcased under the title Slow Life – several have been mentioned here previously. Follow the link to read all eight columns in full online.

Real Meals: Christmas dinner

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Here’s the latest Real Meals column in the New Statesman:

Well, here we all are – this is the last Real Meals of 2011 and I for one would like to go out with a bang, rather than a whimper. My charming editor at the Statesman suggested that I might like to write something “Christmassy” but why would I want to do that? I made my feelings about Christmas dinner perfectly clear in this column at about this time two years ago and they haven’t changed one jot during the intervening months. Frankly, I’m about as likely to set out on the highways and byways of Albion as a sannyasin as I am to begin at the age of 50 rhapsodising about a meal I’ve never ever enjoyed or even seen the point of.   More...

My cheeserimage or How I fell in love with cabrales

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A bulky parcel arrives at the door of my house in south London, and as I tear open the wrapping – first thick transparent plastic, then a padded envelope, then bubble wrap – the courier looks on uneasily: What is this, his expression says, some as yet respectable-looking crackhead who’s heading way on down – and fast? Sensing his mounting opprobrium, I scribble with the stylus on the hideous little grey screen of his hideous little handheld computer and gesture him away. Alone, I head for the kitchen … and the knives.   More...