Before I Forget...

A library day. I was at Carlton this afternoon for a spot of overtime. “Oh, we’re both out and about today!” said Beck as she set off for her early train to Birmingham. Hmm, Carlton. Mind you, it felt like a bit of a journey to get there as the bus was unfeasibly and annoyingly delayed  - due to ‘roadworks at Doctor Park’s Corner,’ apparently – and I had no time to wander round and get an outdoors blip of one of Carlton’s many highlights. Hence this. I was going to indulge in a bit of subtle Ortonesque subversion and change the title page to imply that it was a book by Gedling District and James Mason before I sent it back to the basement at Central Library but reason prevailed. Fancy JM doing cartoons for his autobiography, though – you don’t get that kind of effort in these new ghost-written celebrity moneyspinners. And they’re good cartoons, too.  There’s no cartoons in Mark E. Smith’s book, ‘Renegade’, but it is full of little nuggets like this:

“You can’t imagine how hard it was to get hold of Stooges LPs in those days. I’d harass every record shop in town when I was nineteen to get The Stooges. I’d keep going in every week, take a day off work, post of for it – anything. I used to get all this shit from Virgin Records: ‘No, we haven’t got any Stooges LPs but why don’t you try this, Tubular Bells, it’s on special offer.’


I picked it up a while back and decided it was nonsense but I’m reading it now and suspect it might actually be genius – how’s that for a recommendation…?