Nicholas Royle vs Nicholas Royle (like Kramer vs Kramer, but with less crying)

The exposed brickwork of the Engine House at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation is becoming a familiar fixture in my life. Last Thursday, I was once again gazing upon its redness, at the meeting of the two Nicholas Royles.

Both writers, the pair have known each other since first being confused when new writing magazine Sunk Island Review rejected a short story by each but sent the rejection letter for both to just one. (Are you keeping up?) The recipient was Nicholas Royle, Professor of English at the University of Sussex and author of various non-fiction "academic" works including the appropriately entitled The Uncanny, and pictured below on the right. He forwarded the rejection, both stories and a covering note to Nicholas Royle, Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of various fiction "non-academic" works including Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut and Antwerp, and pictured below on the left.


Royle Manchester (as University Challenge would have it) explained, "Our interest in doubles predated being aware of each other", and it's this shared curiosity along with the shared moniker that led the two to arrange to get together, at a lecture in London some years ago. They have since continued to meet up socially, have toyed with the idea of collaborating on a project called "Double Take" (watch this space - you never know!) and are still intrigued by the coincidences caused by the crossover of name and profession.

Royle Manchester: "[There have been] a number of things where we've been confused one from the other, and from the start we've found that entertaining and interesting..."
Royle Sussex: "And also irritating, weird..."
Royle Manchester: "Uncanny?"
Royle Sussex: "Yes, uncanny."

As well as chatting and fielding questions from the floor, the two Nicholas Royles also read their work. Royle Manchester treated the 50 or so audience members to his number-strewn short story The Maths Tower ("at, where we at MMU like to call, The Place Down The Road") along with the first half of the new weird but wonderful The Other Man. Can't wait for the full version when it's finished. Royle Sussex, meanwhile, gave us two extracts from his richly descriptive first novel Quilt, described by The Guardian as "an intense study of grief and mental disintegration, a lexical celebration and a psychological conundrum". Can't believe either of them would have their work rejected. Just goes to show, eh?

Photo, ahem, "borrowed" from Rob Spence's Topsyturvydom blog, taken by Matthew Frost of Manchester University Press, who whet the whistles with their whiskey (try saying that when you're pished). Hope Rob and Matthew don't mind!

Hanging with the literati

Wednesday evening, I eagerly take up my personal invitation to the relaunch, at Waterstone's Deansgate, of Elizabeth Baines' first novel, The Birth Machine. I've mentioned the Zedster (as Benjamin Judge deferentially nicknamed her during his Literary World Cup Final, which she won) on a few occasions over the last 12 months as she's pretty prolific on the reading scene round our way (Didsbury Arts Festival; Chorlton Arts Festival; Oxfam Bookfest Didsbury; Chorlton Book Festival). I've also just read her most recent novel, Too Many Magpies, so I was keen to hear extracts from this rerelease. (I'll admit it: I also wanted to try before I buy; the cover, although amazingly creative and rather different, is also quite shocking and a little offputting.)

I'm not disappointed. Elizabeth is incredibly warm and welcoming to everyone in the audience, many of whom she knows personally; many of whom form part of the Manchester literati. She begins by explaining the reasons behind the relaunch on 1 October - partly because the book, which was on a number of university reading lists at one point, went out of print; partly to reinstate its original, intended structure (feminist publishers The Women's Press moved chapter four to the start and changed its tense from past to present for "political" reasons). This time last year, Elizabeth (aka Helen; glad to see other people have schizophrenic names) was at the Northern Salt event held at the Whitworth as part of Manchester Literature Festival, when Jen from Salt (her new publisher) broached the subject of reissuing The Birth Machine. And to to cut a long story short - here we are!

Elizabeth presents three extracts, in the original storytelling order that builds up to the disorientating, slightly creepy fourth chapter. Similar to Magpies, TBM fuses reality with fairytale, and as Mrs Zelda Harris undergoes an induced labour and becomes confused, so her memories and myths become fused. The descriptive narrative and natural conversation I've come to anticipate with Elizabeth's work is all present and correct, and descriptions and images produce a couple of involuntary squeaks of laughter. (See, it's not all "literary misery"; a phrase coined the other day at MLF event Is There A Novelist In The House?.) You can read more from EB about the back story to the launch here and more about the the novel itself here. I'm really intrigued by the story, but we'll have to wait for payday before any more new books pass my way. Sigh.

EXTRA EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT! Check out EB's own blog for more from the event!

Fast food notion

At the risk of sounding obsessed with takeout, I'm sharing this T-shirt with you. It's on Threadless, a cool Chicago-based site where you get the chance to submit tee and hoody design ideas, which the "community" then votes on to decide which ones get made up! Anyway, fast food and fonts is a winning combination, I'm sure you'll agree, and Burgervetica, designed by David Schwen (who is also modelling it), got through to the production stage. Tasty!

Beware: loose chippings

Appropriately, the end of National Chip Week has fallen on a Friday. The latest in a long list of dates dedicated to random everyday things, National Chip Week has its own website (thanks to the magic of PR) and even a "Chip-tionary" (inward groan) of terminology from around the sceptred isle.


Modern English Language Professor Clive Upton is quoted as saying: “It’s interesting that the word ‘chip’ is almost universal across the country, except where it’s been Americanised as fries, but it is in the language surrounding the chip’s accompaniments and serving methods that regional phrases appear. For example, what they call a chip butty in the south of England will be known as a chip cob in the Midlands and a chip barm in Manchester.”

There used to be a splendid chip shop in Chorlton that had a side room where you could dig in to your supper while enjoying the tropical fish, Coronation Street on loop, Stella on tap and choice of optics for "un petit digestif". Sadly, it's now a fancy antiques shop, but Beech Road Chippy still does a nice line in mushy peas while the newly opened Atlantic Fish Bar on the main drag has haddock the size of whales. My favourite chipshop name has to be The Codfather, out on the other side of Stretford. I also like the moniker Chippery, which I've only ever seen in Lancashire's Longridge.

Freaky Friday

I've been farting about with fonts a lot lately. I'm working on an exciting new project that the team is currently building a brand for, and fonts have been at the forefront of our thoughts. I used to know lots and lots and lots about fonts, but I've been noticing a surge in new offerings recently, perhaps due to developments in DTP. I remember when everyone ran screaming from Quark a couple of years ago someone mentioning InDesign has more scope for creativity with this kinda thang.

Anyway, I thought I'd share my current favourite: Mental Freak. It has a great name, and I really dig the hand-drawn cartoony feel. I'm also quite liking Action Jackson (another fab moniker) and 3D Blocky.


Illustration © Rodrigo German, contact: rodrigo_comics@hotmail.com

Emergency exit

It's February already, so only a month before culture is booted out of the glossy glassy Urbis building by football. It's definitely not worth crying over spilt milk - the petitions have been signed, the letters have been written and even the obligatory Facebook group has been joined - but when I popped into Urbis on Friday, I'm afraid I just wasn't sad enough to shed a tear for anything much.


Maybe it was a nagging headache that made me disinterested in the hip-hop show (even listening to a bit of Ruthless Rap Assassins for old time's sake was dampened by the fact that the footage wasn't in synch with the music). Perhaps it was the slight back-slapping feeling to Urbis Has Left The Building (still a great title, though). Even the Ghosts of Winter Hill did little to exorcise my bad mood, such was the overwhelming sensation that all Mancunian TV amounts to is Coronation Street and what looks more and more like an enforced, bitter relocation of certain BBC departments to a blustery campus stuck out at a tram terminus in Salford Quays. I did like the mock-ups of front rooms through the decades, however, and a wonderfully named episode of World In Action about the Crescents called No Place Like Hulme. See, it's not all negative.

And I have seen plenty of good stuff at Urbis in the past; from potting sheds about sustainable urban gardening to fabulous Matthew Williamson frocks. It's just a shame Urbis is leaving the building seemingly by the back door, but then I suppose being sent off early is never going to be the glamorous way out.

What a load of pony

Oh dear, it's not just bankers and journos who are feeling the cut and thrust of the recession; now fashion designers are wobbling to the wall on their ultra-high heels, too. First up: English eccentric Luella Bartley, who announced yesterday that her ready-to-wear label Luella was for the chop.

This is a surprise: Bartley was crowned British Designer Of The Year in 2008 and she's been at the top of the fashionistas' cool pile for a while now. Ready-to-wear is usually where the money is made, so I suppose that's pretty much that. Shame. She put out some fun stuff - loads of quirky prints and ditzy florals, and plenty of overblown bows, sweet hearts and, if I remember rightly, Mickey Mouse ears - and one of her collections was called Daddy I Want A Pony. Now, that's a name for a show.

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!

Literati, glitterati, Twitterati

Today marks the start of the fourth annual Manchester Literature Festival, which sees a number of literary events taking place every day until 25 October at various venues around the rainy city. A success already was the Trailblazer event with Margaret Atwood
back in September and, earlier this week, the first of two festival "Bookends". This initial one brought the University Of Manchester's Professor Of Creative Writing Martin Amis together with fellow novelist Will Self for a heated discussion about sex (apparently largely in the context of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita). I say!



Other famous faces on the ten-day programme include Joan Bakewell (who is presiding over afternoon tea at the Midland Hotel as we speak), Eoin Colfer (author du jour thanks to his Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy follow-up And Another Thing..., which just so happens to be this week's Book At Bedtime on Radio 4), feminist novelist Fay Weldon, historical author Kate Mosse, TV writer Jimmy McGovern, poet Michael Schmidt, local scribe Robert Graham (who led the fab creative writing workshop I recently took part in and seems to live down the road), Manchester-based MJ Hyland, Catherine O'Flynn and Jeff Noon... there's just loads. Check out the who, the what, the where, the why and the when (maybe even the how) here.

There are talks, discussions, readings, recitals, launches, awards, workshops, walks. And there are novelists, poets, short story authors, screenwriters, essayists, performers, broadcasters, journalists, editors, cartoonists, dramatists and bloggers. Talking of blogging, bob over to the official Manchester Literature Festival Blog here and follow events as they unfold (you may even see my name pop up). Follow the fun on Twitter via @McrLitFest and go hashtag happy using #MLF09. See you soon, bookworms.

Charting your life

Here's something nice to have a shufty at on a dull and drizzly late September Monday morning.

http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

Simply enter your first and last name in the box provided, click return and you will be "characterized" (Mr Aaron Zinman, the student and member of the Sociable Media Group who created this crazy package, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, hence the "z". He has also devised something called Blogger Disco and likes to spin French house records; quel mec extraordinaire!) using the magic of internet searches.

The results are presented in a very pretty bar chart you might like to print out and pin to the side of your pod to cheer you up on a dull and drizzly late September Monday afternoon.

Crawling along

The light-hearted topic on this morning's Today programme
(that's on Radio 4, for any philistines among you) was the origins
of pub names, and very interesting it was too.
Lucky old author Albert Jack has the joyous job of examining and explaining such titles as The Pickled Parson, The Bucket of Blood
and The Swan With Two Necks.
Here's a link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8230000/8230024.stm

This is a rundown of the pubs in my, if you like, home town.
If you know where that is, do share, but don't be expecting
a prize or anything.

Bear's Paw
Bellemonte, The
Bull's Head
Cheshire Cheese
Cholomondeley Arms
Golden Lion (known locally as The Cornerhouse,
but nothing like the place of the same name in Manchester)
Helter Skelter (which used to be The Gaping Gander, and painted pink,
from what I remember)
Netherton Arms (formerly, I think, The Whalebone,
which is far more intriguing)
Queen's Head
Red Lion
Ring of Bells
Traveller's Rest
(I have not included Kydd's Bar, as it is just too awful, or The Aston Arms, which I believe these days may be trendy flats or some such.)

More on names, and lists, soon.