Flash of inspiration

Lately I've been concerned about shirking my duties and not paying you the attention you so rightly deserve. I've been plying you with excuses that I'm not really ignoring you, but rather chipping away at some beautiful creations that have to remain a secret until I'm ready to reveal them in all their glory. And when that day comes you will be amazed! Wowed! Delighted! Overwhelmed!

That day is finally upon us.

That day is the launch of Flash Mob, a writing competition and literary salon that myself and fellow founders of the so-called #beatoff generation Benjamin Judge, Fat Roland, Tom Mason and David Hartley have been busily giving up our free time to shape and hone for your delight and delectation.


The competition is now open, and all the details of how to enter and who the devil those handsome judges are can be found on our funky little website here. You can follow us on Twitter @FMWComp here.

It all takes place as part of this year's Chorlton Arts Festival, and will be the first-ever flash fiction contest in the ten-year history of the multi-arts showcase. We're looking for the best 500-words-or-less story, which we'll be celebrating (along with our own work, naturally) in a glittering event set for Thursday 26 May. Put it in your diary, won't you. It's going to be fabulous, and fun, and maybe I'll buy a new frock for the occasion because that too begins with "f". It also gives me a plausible excuse if I let the blogging slip again, doesn't it. Doesn't it?

PS: Dave's also written about it on his rabbit-obsessed Do A Barrel Roll.

Science friction

Unbelievably, Sci-Fi Book Club has been on the boil for a year. Unbelievably, after a year, Sci-Fi Book Club appears to have gone somewhat off the boil. My spy rocked up to last night's meet, and was only one among four, which a lesser, more lazy commentator might take as indicative of the failure of society as a whole.

Or perhaps they could blame it on post-Christmas depression, the cold and dark, or folk being skint. But! - I would argue - the group's first-ever get-together was a snow-bound 5 January 2010 (as described on this very blog here), so I don't buy it.

Maybe it was down to this month's reading material, the rather-more-fantasy-than-sci-fi Swiftly by Adam Roberts (it sounded shit, which put me off, and the author sounded like he was obsessed with shit, which I don't suppose helped anyone else much either). But! - I would say - the reading list is decided by the members, so how can they vote on a book then turn their back on it in such a way?


Now, I like Sci-Fi Book Club. It has a hashtag (#mcrsf), a Google Group and a logo (above); it's free and it has forged links with the city's library service and orders in the books so you don't even have to buy any books; it takes place within the relaxing environs of the inimitable Madlab. You can even bring beer, dammit, and the collected troops order in some scrummy pizza to keep those energy levels up. I like Sci-Fi Book Club. I have read some of the novels and joined in some of the discussions. I have met some interesting people as a result of being a Sci-Fi Book Clubber; I have even made some new friends.

I don't want Sci-Fi Book Club to go by the wayside, so this is a rallying call! Sci-Fi Book Clubbers past, present and future - where are you all? Go to the next meet-up (Tuesday 15 February, 7pm); decide on a new bunch of books to read - books that people who read sci-fi actually want to read! I don't know, how about Isaac Asimov, Philip K Dick, Greg Bear, even John Wyndham...

Come on, guys, let's mobilise!

Generation #

My fifteen-year-old self would be proud: I am finally part of a scene. It might have been totally made up in a tongue-in-cheek manner after the consumption of a certain amount of alcohol on a loud evening in Common last Friday, but it's still a scene. A literary movement, if you will, which is handy as I have that as a blog label, and it doesn't get used half as much as I'd like. The scene is called the Beatoff Generation, a nod to various previous scenes and a tidy attempt at "blue" humour, and it even has a Twitter hashtag. Plenty has already been written about the scene, and you can read various other #beatoff members go on about it so I don't have to.


There's Fat Roland On Electronica with the snappily entitled "The Beatoff Generation: Our Future Books Shall Bleed From Your Shelves Like A Hardback Elixir Reddened From An Embarrassment Of Grammatical Riches", complete with a whole ton of comments. Then there's "#beatoff - Generation Hashtag" by Sam Bail, editor of B&N Magazine. Adrian Slatcher cottoned onto the excitement, writing "The scene that celebrates itself" on The Art Of Fiction, while Who The Fudge Is Benjamin Judge? gave us "...and then I Made Fridge Magnets". And he did too, and handed them out to the great and the good gathered last night at the launch bash of Bad Language's Scattered Reds anthology, which features one of our very own (Dave "@lonlonranch" Hartley, the brains behind the all-new Screen150 site). Here are the fridge magnets. As @FatRoland said: "Did Kerouac have fridge magnets? No he bloody did not." Well, quite.


So in the spirit of the Beatoff Generation - which is all about writing, reading, collaborating and quaffing - a core number from the group, a critical mass, took part in the open mic slot (after first taking some Dutch courage). All were short short stories; a nod, perhaps, to National Short Story Week. Fat Roland, introduced by lovely Dan Carpenter as "one of the founding members of the Beatoff Generation", was ultra cool and confident in his first-ever short story presentation (the brilliantly leftfield Sandra Sue). Tom Mason (who discusses the evening's proceedings on Audioboo: #beatoff and Bad Language) brought us Lions Not Yet Available, his fabulously inventive tale of umbrella-taming in the Rainy City and his latest offering on the 330 Words writers site he curates. I was announced as "another #beatoff writer" and gave the crowd Glasshouses, a new piece of flash fiction that will shortly be appearing on the revamped relaunched Roy Keane's Lucky Scarf, a collection overseen by magnet-maker extraordinaire and my Ask Ben & Clare colleague Ben (who joined in the drinking, but didn't read because he's stressed and self-loathing about his current novel-writing shenanigans).

Wanna be in our gang? We'll be at Waterstone's Unannounced on Saturday, 6-9pm - join us.

The lady doth protest...

The People's History Museum reopened at the weekend, after closing in 2007 for a top-to-toe overhaul and the addition of a completely new structure to the old building. The juxtaposition is intriguing: inside, the red brick, steel girders and green and yellowy tiles, a bit like those lining the walls at the Victoria Baths, contrast pleasingly with the white walls, brushed silver metal detailing and fancy big plate glass windows looking over to the funky new filing cabinet courts. Outside, the oddly bulbous rusted cladding is a strange addition to the original two storeys, but it tones in somehow and at least it's something different in these days of homogeneous architecture.

Unfortunately, the displays themselves are a little less impressive than the place in which they're housed. Despite the bespoke space, the objects on show and information boards seem a bit crammed in and it's also so dark I found myself modelling an unattractive squint most of the time. Nonetheless, downstairs in the Changing Exhibition Gallery, the current show Carried Away is an interesting collection of black and white photographs taken at demos in the 70s and 80s; the Greenham Common protesters held my attention for a while there.

Battlestar Helvetica

Today, we're revisiting the Helvetica typeface; it seems to be quite the de rigueur topic.

Some background to the font, learnt this morning. Helvetica was developed by the Haas Type Foundry in Switzerland in the 1950s, under the leadership of Edouard Hoffmann. (The Basle foundry had dominated Swiss typography since around 1580 and became the Haas Type Foundry after the punchcutter Johann Wilhelm Haas joined the company in 1718.)

Freelance graphic designer and type designer Mark Simonson has written an article called The Scourge Of Arial (Arial isn't very popular among purists, it turns out), in which he reveals:

An icon of the Swiss school of typography, Helvetica swept through the design world in the ’60s and became synonymous with modern, progressive, cosmopolitan attitudes. With its friendly, cheerful appearance and clean lines, it was universally embraced for a time by both the corporate and design worlds as a nearly perfect typeface to be used for anything and everything. “When in doubt, use Helvetica” was a common rule.

I found all this out as a consequence of checking out the quiz So You Think You Can Tell Arial From Helvetica?, on photographer David Friedman's blog, Ironic Sans. This, in turn, was brought to my attention by my favourite author and Twitterer, Douglas Coupland, whose latest novel, Generation A, features Helvetica on the cover (the G and the C are dead giveaways).


So there we go. Arial v Helvetica: let the battle commence!

Keep on trucking

Alphabet Truck is the photographic work of Eric Tabuchi. He has done plenty more interesting stuff, including Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations, French Countryside Skateparks and Road Signs. See here. I used to have a postcard of one of his images, I now realise, but it fell down the back of the fireplace, dammit.

I've put this up for your delectation, because words are made up of letters so by default Words & Fixtures likes letters as well as words.


(Thanks to @MancLibraries, BTW, for flagging this up on Twitter.)