Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (NYRB Classics 1977)

"I am unarmed," said Lorque. "I want to talk to you. Listen here, I don't deserve to die. What have I done except follow the natural impulses of the human race? And even that is saying a lot. We are choirboys compared with our ancestors. Does the sack of Cartagena ring any bells with you? Some of Bléville's bold seafarers were there. I'm not talking about the first sack of Cartagena, that was Sir Francis Drake, but the second, when the French did the sacking. What I've done is nothing alongside the sack of Cartagena. Okay, so I worked a bit on the Atlantic Wall, I had to keep a low profile in South America for a while, then I came back and I've been giving employment to workers and making land productive. I've made my pile in the usual way. Just tell me one outrageous thing, one truly criminal thing, in what I've done, in what the baron had in his files, just name one!"

"I haven't read the baron's files," said Aimée. Lorque tensed and listened hard, apparently striving to determine the precise source of the young woman's voice. "I couldn't care less," Aimée observed. "Do you really imagine I'm interested in your crimes and misdemeanors? You must be joking!"

Young Adult (2011)

In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran by John Taylor (with Tom Sykes) (Dutton 2012)

Steve Jones is open about the influence Thunders's playing style had on him. In the documentary The Filth and the Fury, there is a hilarious sequence where film of the two guitarists is intercut, showing quite clearly just how much of Thunders's attitude Steve knocked off.

Something similar could be done with me. I would learn to take Thunders's signature slurs and guitar runs and transpose them to bass, along with the accompanying sneers. The first time I saw the Thunders's magic was on-stage at Birmingham  University. The opening act was a band I had not heard  of before, The Police. At that time I would sneak a cassette recorder into every gig I went to, and I set the machine to record when they began to play, even though I had no idea who they were. It was quite possible a band you had never heard of yesterday could become your favourite band tomorrow.

The singer with The Police also played bass, which struck me as quite clever and quite "un-punk." After the second number, he struck up a rapport with the audience of mostly students. A little too familiar, I remember thinking at the time, not knowing then that Sting had been a teacher and spoke "student" way better than he would ever speak "punk."

Sting: We've got the Heartbreakers coming on next.
(Cheer from me and one or two others)
Sting: They can't play, you know.
Me: Fuck off!
Sting: Who said "Fuck off'?
Me: I did. (all of this going down onto the cassette tape)
Sting: It's true. They're great guys but they can't play.
Me: Fuck off, you wanker!
Sting: You'll see. This next song is called "Fall Out"! 1 2 3 4 . . .

He was wrong about the Heartbreakers. They were awesome that night. At the BBC in 1993, filming "Ordinary World" for Top of the Pops, I was standing next to Sting watching a playback of our performance on a monitor. I thought to myself, I've got to tell him about that night, but before I opened my mouth he half-turned to me and said, "I wish I'd written that song."

Let's leave it at that then, I thought.

Put another bird on the log fire

I'd be a bit less humbug about Christmas if my secondhand paperbacks from Thriftbooks were delivered to me by the Hipster Portland Santa. Do the East Coast, Portland Santa. I implore you!

The Hipster Williamsburg Santa refuses to travel this far south in Brooklyn after that incident in 2009 on the B Train at Beverley Road. 

Black Death (2010)

The Good Son by Russel D. McLean (Minotaur Books 2008)

Nearly a week before the night I found myself ready to kill a man in cold blood, I was angling for the security of a job that paid up front.

Which is why I was grateful for the business of any client. Especially the man who huffed his way into the offices of McNee Investigations.

James Robertson stuffed himself into the sixties-style recliner I'd picked up a few weeks earlier at the Salvation Army store on West Marketgait. He was sweating, even though it was a cool day. As if he'd swum across the Tay rather than taking the bridge. The handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket of his suit jacket looked damp.

I offered my hand. His was slick and threatened to slip from my grasp. 

It wasn't his size, even if he was a large man. No, the sweat came from agitation. Robertson was tense, his muscles practically humming they were stretched so taut.

FourFourTwo's Top 50 football books

I've got a soft spot for FourFourTwo footie magazine, subscribing to it when it was first launched back in '94, so their 2008 list of the Top 50 football books caught my eye recently when I was doing in-depth research into the man and myth that was Jimmy Sirrell.

As I'm going through a football book reading kick at the moment, I thought I'd use it as a meme booklist for the blog. The usual ritual; if it's scored out, I've read it.

(50) The Fashion Of Football by Paolo Hewitt and Mark Baxter (2004)

(49) Out Of His Skin: The John Barnes Phenomenon by Dave Hill (1989)

(48) Steaming In by Colin Ward (1989)

(47) The Beautiful Game: A Journey Through Latin American Football by Chris Taylor (1998)

(46) Steak... Diana Ross: Diary Of A Football Nobody by David McVay (2003)

(45) Back Home: The Story Of England In The 1970 World Cup by Jeff Dawson (2001)

(44) The Way It Was by Stanley Matthews (2000)

(43) Barça: A People’s Passion by Jimmy Burns (1999)

(42) The Billy The Fish Football Yearbook Viz Comics (1999)

(41) Left Foot Forward by Garry Nelson (1995)

(40) Walking On Water by Brian Clough (2002)

(39) The Mavericks by Rob Steen (1994)

(38) The Story Of The World Cup by Brian Glanville (1980)

(37) Ajax Barcelona Cruyff: The ABC Of An Obstinate Maestro by Frits Barend and Henk Van Dorp (1999)

(36) The Football Grounds of England and Wales by Simon Inglis (1983)

(35) Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football by Phil Ball (2001)

(34) England v Argentina: World Cups and Other Small Wars by David Downing (2003)

(33) Kicking And Screaming by Rogan Taylor and Andrew Ward (1995)

(32) The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw: The Robin Friday Story by Paolo Hewitt and Paul McGuigan (1998)

(31) El Macca: Four Years With Real Madrid by Steve McManaman and Sarah Edworthy (2004)

(30) Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos (2002)

(29) Managing My Life by Alex Ferguson (1999)

(28) White Angels by Jon Carlin (2004)

(27) Ajax, The Dutch, The War by Simon Kuper (2003)

(26) Keane by Roy Keane and Eamonn Dunphy (2002)

(25) Tackling My Demons by Stan Collymore (2004)

(24) A Season With Verona by Tim Parks (2002)

(23) Passovotchka: Moscow Dynamo in Britain 1945 by David Downing (1999)

(22) Those Feet: A Sensual History of English Football by David Winner (2005)

(21) The Football Man by Arthur Hopcraft (1968)

(20) Dynamo: Defending the Honour of Kiev by Andy Dougan (2001)

(19) Football: The Golden Age by John Tennent (2001)

(18) Addicted by Tony Adams (1998)

(17) The Far Corner: A Mazy Dribble through North-East Football by Harry Pearson (1994)

(16) The Beautiful Game? Searching for the Soul of Football by David Conn (2004)

(15) The Boss: The Many Sides Of Alex Ferguson by Michael Crick (2002)

(14) Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy (1976)

(13) Niall Quinn: The Autobiography by Niall Quinn & Tom Humphries (2002)

(12) The Miracle Of Castel Di Sangro by Joe McGinniss (1999)

(11) The Glory Game by Hunter Davies (1973)

(10) Puskas on Puskas: the life and times of a footballing legend by Rogan Taylor & Klara Jamrich (1998)

(9) Football In Sun And Shadow by Eduardo Galeano (1997)

(8) Tor! by Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger (2003)

(7) Full Time by Tony Cascarino & Paul Kimmage (2000)

(6) Keeper Of Dreams by Ronald Reng (2003)

(5) A Strange Kind Of Glory by Eamon Dunphy (1974)

(4) Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius Of Dutch Football by David Winner (2000)

(3) All Played Out: Full Story Of Italia 90 by Pete Davies (1990)

(2) Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (1993)

(1) Football Against The Enemy by Simon Kuper (1994)

Only 12/50? This was one book meme where I thought I would be in the high twenties at least. I guess it's only me that holds the 1979 Shoot in such high esteem. I know I'm making a rod for my own back but by this time next year, that total will be at least 26/50. I set myself a target . . . and I fall short. Just like Celtic in the league this year.

PS - Where the hell is Gary Imlach's 2005 classic 'My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes'? That should be on everyone's list.

Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery (NYRB Classics 1955)

All this wasn't serious. El Kordi would have liked a people who measured up to him: sad and animated by vengeful passions. But where to find them? 

His young blood boiling with impatience, he dreamed of being a man of action. This ridiculous job, which he did for starvation wages, wasn't designed to quench his thirst for social justice. He was so disgusted by it that most of the time he farmed it out to his more unfortunate colleagues - married men and fathers of numerous children - for a moderate payment. Thus, at the end of each month a paradoxical spectacle took place: the colleagues who had done some work for El Kordi came to collect their meager fees in a line before his desk. At such moments, El Kordi assumed the irritated air of a boss paying his workers. All the same, with the little money left over, he managed to survive. He led a life of extreme poverty, but decent and, he thought, very dignified. Keeping up appearances was his constant worry. For example, when he was obliged to live on boiled beans, he would tell his grocer that he was sick of eating chicken and that a common dish would surely excite his jaded appetite. The grocer wasn't fooled, but honor was saved.

Taft 2012 by Jason Heller (Quirk Books 2012)

CLASSIFIED

Secret Service Incidence Report

WHG20111107.027

Agent Ira Kowalczyk

At approximately 1042, an oversized mammalian figure covered in mud appeared behind the White House South Lawn Fountain, approaching the press conference in progress on the lawn. It was unclear to me for several seconds whether the intruder was a man or a large animal as it lurched toward the crowd while moaning loudly. As the closest perimeter guard, I drew my firearm and ordered the intruder to halt while the executive guard secured POTUS. The intruder bellowed louder and attempted to proceed past the South Lawn Fountain in the direction of POTUS and the press corps. I discharged my weapon once, striking the intruder in the leg, and he collapsed against the fountain. I approached and saw that the water from the fountain, along with the morning drizzle, was washing the mud from the intruder’s body. He was a very large man, over 6 feet tall, probably 300 pounds, wearing a formal tweed suit. He had white hair and a handlebar mustache. My first thought was that he looked like some sort of deranged presidential history buff dressed up as William Howard Taft.

From Taft: A Tremendous Man, by Susan Weschler:

I’ll never forget the moment I first saw him on the television screen. Not a picture—him. There was no mistaking him. I’d been studying the history of the man who owned that plump, jowled, puffy-eyed face my entire professional life:

Taft.

William Howard Taft. Twenty-seventh president of the United States. Weighed in at 335 pounds. Worked with unceasing devotion to the job for four years—but was so honest a politician, he ended up infuriating every single interest group that had ever supported him. Lost his 1912 reelection bid in a miserable, crushing defeat. And then just disappeared the morning of March 5, 1913, the day his successor, Woodrow Wilson, was inaugurated. Taft was never seen or heard from again; his last known words, spoken right outside the White House just hours before Wilson took the oath of office, were: “I’ll be glad to be going. This is the loneliest place in the world.” After that sad utterance, Taft never showed up for the ceremony. Or anything else. Ever.

Which meant the chaotic footage they kept replaying on CNN couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be him. How could he be here now, a century later, stumbling mud-covered into the midst of an unsuspecting White House press conference?

And yet that was clearly no fake girth, no Halloween mask. It was either the oddest terrorist attack in history, the stupidest reality-show prank imaginable … or it was Taft.

The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend (Penguin 2012)

Eva was surprised but pleased that Alexander was here. She said, ‘Cutest?’ That’s not a word you use.’

‘But they are cute, Mum. And they’re so clever! They know reams of poetry and all the capital cities of the world. Alex is so proud of them. And I love his name —Alexander. He really is Alexander the Great, isn’t he, Mum?’

Eva agreed. ‘Yes — but Alexander is forty-nine years of age, Brianne.’

‘Forty-nine? That’s the new thirty!’

‘You once ranted that nobody over twenty-five should be allowed to wear jeans, or dance in public.’

‘But Alex looks so good in jeans, and he did A level maths, Mum! He understands nonhomogeneous equations!’

‘I can tell you’re fond of him,’ said Eva.

‘Fond?’ said Brianne. ‘I’m fond of Grandma Ruby, I’m fond of whiskers on kittens and bright copper kettles, but I’m passionately in fucking love with Alex Tate!’

Eva said, ‘Please! Don’t swear.’

‘You’re such a fucking hypocrite!’ yelled Brianne. ‘You swear! And you’re trying to spoil my relationship with Alex!’

‘There’s nothing to spoil. You’re not Juliet. This is not a Montague and Capulet situation. Does Alex even know you love him?’

Brianne said, defiantly, ‘Yes, he does.’

‘And?’

Brianne lowered her eyes. ‘He doesn’t love me, of course. He hasn’t had time to get to know me. But when I saw him struggling with that bookcase in Leeds, I knew immediately that he was the person I’ve been waiting for since I was a kid. I always wondered who it would be. Then he knocked on my door.’

Eva tried to hold Brianne’s hand, but she pulled it away and put it behind her back.

Eva asked, ‘And he was kind to you?’

‘I rang him three times on his mobile when he was on the motorway. He told me to go out more and meet people of my own age.’

Eva said, gently, ‘He is right, Brianne. His hair is grey. He has more in common with me than with you. We’ve both got Morrissey’s second solo album.’

Brianne said, ‘I know that. I know everything there is to know about him. I know his wife died in a car crash and that he was driving. I know that Tate was his family’s slave name. I know how much he earned in the noughties. And I know how much tax he paid. And which school his children go to, and what their grades are. I know his previous romantic history. I know he’s overdrawn by £77.15 and that he doesn’t have an agreed overdraft facility.’

‘And he told you all this?’

‘No, I’ve hardly spoken to him. I doxed him.’

What’s “doxed”?’

‘It’s like talking to Neanderthal woman! I’ve read every document about him. If there’s info I want, I can find it on the net. I’ve mapped the story of his life, and one day I’ll be part of it.’