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I find myself reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, for the second time.

The odd thing, given the book's subject-matter, is that on both occasions, I have been to some extent displaced. The first time, I read most of it one weekend when I locked myself out of my flat, and clarisinda and papaspoof were kind enough to put me up. Given that Neverwhere is about "people who have fallen through the cracks", it added an extra dimension to a deeply unsettling exepereince.

This time the displacement is less severe, in that I am merely out of the stream, of working life, sitting on my own little eyot as it flashes past me. It is still a strange feeling to be at liberty udirng the week, when you aren't used to it, and thus to read about a man who simply ceases to exist in his own life as another life he never knew existed engulfs me, is quite interesting.

It helps, of course, that Neverwhere is such a splendid read (although, I am led to believe, an indifferent TV series).

Now, to do some more writing of my own. We're on about 13,000 words since Monday, which isn't quite as much as I'd aimed for, but perhaps the original plan of 5,000 words a day was stretching the atrophied creative muscles a bit far...

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One of the foodstuffs in my freezer (a microwave curry, I'm afraid - I'm a single bloke living on his own, so I do have certain standards to keep down) has a competition on it, whose tagline is:

"IS THERE A REAL £5 NOTE IN THIS PACK?"

I had a sudden thought of the ultimate in cruel promotions by unscrupulous big business. Each pack contians a fiver, of which 1 in 20 are genuine, and the others will be carried by hapless losers until presented at a shop or bank, at which point a meaty hand will descend onto their shoudlers, and they will be frogmarched off to face forgery charges...

Two good things

1) neverwhere. I read the whole of this today - there is a good feeling that comes from reading a decent-length book in a day, because you can really get involved in it, especially when it's something as involving as Neverwhere. And yes, I know there are plenty of you out there who can coccoon yourselves and read three books in a day, but I'm not like that, and when I was working, I was lucky to have the concentration to get through a book in a week.
neverwhere really speaks to me - quite apart from the fact it's funny, well characterised, and simply full of wonderfully observed detail about London and Londoners, it also says something about keeping magic in our lives. [And yes, I know I'm being a contrary old bastard, given my normal stance of "this is life - deal with it", but I don't care] I have no idea how I would react were I in Richard Mayhew's shoes - run around in small circles flapping my arms, quite probably - but more than any other book, it explains to me why it is important to me not to let the reassuringly straight and boring world of accountancy and being middle-class get to me completely. I couldn't live without some eccentricity in my life, even if beside much of it I look stultifyingly normal.
[Last year, when she was looking particularly stressed with life, I bought a fellow manager a copy of "Stardust" by Gaiman for her birthday, and told her to read it and remember there are wider skies than these. I never heard a word of it, and assume that it is now in a box somewhere, along with all the other things she would be slightly embarrassed to throw away - if pressed, she would probably tell me that "books aren't her thing". But to think occasionally of a crystal rose that tinkles in the darkness, or to hear the distant singing of Yvaine to her sisters from the highest tower of the Stronghold - it is these things that make the grind of normal life bearable. I am half-tempted to swend said manager a copy of Neverwhere, and tell her that if they find me unquantifiable (suggest: weird), they should read this book and mayeb they might have a clue]

ii) QI. I don't watch a lot of things regularly at the moment on TV, but I wouldn't be without QI. What I love about it, when it's at its best, is that it is like the perfect pub conversation, a gently flowing river in which swirl anecdotes, banter and unusual facts, and over which hangs constantly the sound of laughter, loud and long. Even when QI isn't at its best, it's still eminently watchable - when it's particularly good, it's utter bliss.