Hum of Men

He speaks in metaphors and wears braces with collarless shirts and has the most lovely kind voice you could ever hope to hear in your whole life. You would believe him if he told you Everything Is Going To Be OK. I always end up staring at his silver wedding ring. He writes of my father (according to my mother).

Andrew Motion listened to a four hour reading of In Memoriam in a freezing cold church and was moved to tears. It is two hundred years since Hallam's death, so Motion and Hollinghurst organised the reading. I am reading Hollinghurst now - The Swimming Pool Library - and so far it's all cocks in beautiful prose.


I love the faces in this photo. And how it says JAMES BROWN really big behind us. Tufnell Park rock bar. I miss those tufnell trees that breathed through their spectacles.