Author: jenniferhodgson

Writer, editor, researcher

News from Nowhere

By-the-by we left Norwich. Sad, of course, but muted by tussles with spiders, black mould, the silverfish that fed on our books’ bindings and – worse, more wriggly and grotesque – lettings agencies.


I’m now in Hull, taking a fortnights holiday in being eighteen years old. Last night, I went to the Adelphi (which is, strangely, alongside the English Department of the University of East Anglia, one of the places I feel most at home) to see Han’s band The Rocky Nest. With the sudden departure of a guitarist and a drummer, they were reluctantly forced to perform as a trio acoustic-style.


Han is channelling Francoise Hardy a little at the moment, I think.

Norwich’s Greatest Hits

Here’s an entry from the Top Ten: the Plantation Garden, tucked down a driveway off Earlham Road near the Roman Catholic Cathedral.

Although a beautiful and lovely place in its own right, it made it into my Countdown as the location of fondly-remembered late night/early morning pastoral-style hi-jinks a couple of years ago.


I have it pegged as the Most Dewy Place on Earth. And as admission is by Honesty Box, payment is optional but the right thing to do.

Infilling / Something Good


We’re winding down our last days in Norwich. With a week and a half to go, my Boo is holed up in the Graduate Resource Centre putting his PhD to bed whilst I potter around, feeling about as a “chill” as I ever have, making wrinkle-nose gross faces at our flat’s mould infestation, tinkering with my new swank camera, taking day trips, mentally compiling Norwich’s Greatest Hits, toying with a PhD proposal.

In Every Tourer Caravan a Portatoilet: The Roxy Music Story

On Saturday I watched More Than This: The Roxy Music Story. I’m certain the BBC only have the one narrative arc for these rockumentaries, interspersing the talking heads with stock footage of Thatcher, the Miner’s Strike, football hooligans or the generalised white dog shit Britain of the 1970s, as chronologically appropriate. The social realist rags to outrageous riches yarn is British pop music’s favourite bedtime story and Bryan Ferry’s is pretty outré, “escaping” Tyne and Wear for art college, then London, Jerry Hall, Bel Air, Miss World, Marks and Spencer &c &c &c.

However, what interested me wasn’t so much the fabulously strange records of Roxy’s early career – Ladytron, Virginia Plain, In Every Dream Home a Heartache and Do the Strand – but their other lineage, the one that held vast appeal for the core 35 – 44 audience of medium wave radio stations specialising in smooth, contemporary classics. During my early nineties childhood, grotesqueries like Dance Away, Avalon and More Than This were still in heavy rotation on Yorkshire Coast Radio. As the hiss n’ crackle soundtrack to summers spent in a tourer caravan on the coast of Filey, those records, along with Weather With You by Crowded House, Spandau Ballet’s True, Hazard by Richard Marx and Save the Best for Last by Vanessa Williams, still smell of car sick, soft furnishings and boredom. And I’ll never be able to associate them my Dad’s copy of Virginia Plain on lilac 7”, which was the mainstay of our front room discos on nights that mum was at work.

Watch here.

Countdown

Appleby Horse Fair, Dave Thomas

… and hello from my desk, a corner of our front room that’s currently pretending to my office, and where I can be found – intermittently – ploughing through research assignments, attempting to summon a PhD proposal from the depths of my psyche and half-heartedly making peace with the city of Norwich (Fine City, I love you, but you’re bringing me down) as my final days here rattle through at a pace that’s something like fast-slow-fast-fast-fast-slow.

Appleby Horse Fair, Dave Thomas

I’m peering above the parapet to direct you to photographer Simon Robert’s response to my look at his work-in-progress We English. That is, if you’re interested in two Englishness pervs hashing out the finer points of the concept of nostalgia. And to urge you to look at the archive of Northeastern film and photography collective Amber who are pretty much too wonderful to write about (although I’ll give it a go in the next few days, no doubt). Go look!

Scheming

So, regular readers (scratch that, regular IRL listeners to my one glass of wine fantasy-ramblings) will know that in a matter of mere weeks myself and J will be transplanting the J&J Roadshow from dearest Norwich to Budapest, Hungary! As a subscriber to the fail-safe strategy of “talk about it enough and you’ll have to do it” I’ve not been able to shut up about it. In fact, if you’ve been within a five metre radius of me these past six months, you won’t have missed:

  • Optimistic proclamations of the relative cost of living, UK vs. Hungary (it’s half! I’ve calculated! Well, sort of…)
  • Incoherent plans to become an internet millionaire/professional photographer/all-round good guy/actual grown-up before our projected lift-off date of late (very late) October
  • Rapturous descriptions of the elegant balconnied, high-ceilinged, two-bedroomed apartment that will (hypothetically) be Chez Jenny come aforementioned date
  • Foot-in-mouth attempts at transcultural understanding
  • Graphic descriptions of the dental work I need before I go
  • Tedious and unrealistic in-depth budgetary calculations

And, of course, its been a hive of careful preparation this end. J has the small matter of a PhD to put to bed, of course, whilst I’ve been scouting down the back of every available sofa for money to put into the emigrating kitty. On Friday, I passed my first leaving town landmark: I left the job where I’ve been reluctantly shilling my “general office skills” for the past six months, and as of today I’m fully freelance and fancy-free.

Oh, go and read a book or, not quite the Amherst Method

The Creative Writing Jamboree gathers pace: now with free acrostics and Moleskines (legendary notebook of Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline!!!!!!!!!)
R.E.S.P.E.C.T or How to Tell a Story Without Telling Your Readers What to Think
When do you need to tell a story and when do you let it tell itself?How far can you trust your readers to understand what is left unspoken?What is gained – and what is lost – by describing characters in the flesh?

Set over four days in the charming upstairs library of the legendary Left Bank Paris bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, Tobias Hill gives the inaugural Faber Academy course, an in-depth workshop for those beginning or in the process of writing a novel. In addition, the course will contain a unique two-part seminar on the importance of authenticity and voice in fiction by multi prize-winning novelist, Jeanette Winterson (more).
Participants will each receive a complimentary Moleskine Paris City Notebook.

Tobias! Winterson! Regular coffee breaks! Free notebooks! Internet discounts! Free glass of wine! What fresh hell is this.