A friend gave me a subscription to this publication. I was most pleased. It suits all my pretensions.  As I am fond of saying, my parents paid good money for these pretensions and I don’t see why I shouldn’t use them. The first copy arrived last week and it is very hard. Long, long book reviews.  Not bad in parts though (there’s damned with faint praise). We’re not going to throw it out when we’ve finished it, we’re going to pile old copies up in the spare room so that when my sister-in-law the publishing exec comes she can be impressed.
Am not sure that this is what the editors intended but the small ads are the best bit. I mean, you may think I’m pretentious (think of the ballet lessons, the elocution classes), but what kind of person puts in the following:
“Am I the only one here writing personal ads to his imaginary childhood friend? For the last time: are you a fourteen foot high Stegosaurus-Bagpuss cross breed with the voice of Ed Bishop, an ability to vaporise Sunday school martinets and turn cod liver oil into Vimto? If you are out there Basil de Bumps, please answer. Spoilt commitment-hungry only child, 38 (the sort who took his library books back before running away) needs help from therapeutic London F, more Jenny Hanley than Angela Carter.”
Note the use of the colon. And they’re all like this. Extraordinary. By the by, if any 20sixers want to get back to this man you can reply to Box No 06/10. I think I might make an extract from the LRB small ads a regular feature of this section. What do you reckon? And does anyone know what Vimto is?
By the by am reading “The Dante Club” following rave reviews and finding it bitterly disappointing so far. Will update in due course.
on 03 April 2004 at 16:51
on 04 April 2004 at 18:36
Hmm. Thanks for enlightenment. Do you think I’d have to go to the UK to get some or do they sell it in the Delhaize? 
