Monthly Archive for March, 2002

Finished He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott last night – which, considering I started it pretty late the night before, isn’t bad going. For once the “a book that you can’t put down” blurb on the front was spot on. And just as interesting were reading the author’s comments on Amazon and in The Guardian this morning.

It’s loosely another crime novel (yeah, I keep telling myself I’m gonna read something different – want to dip into some M John Harrison, but right now it feels too rich – a bit like the chocolate cake I plan on making tomorrow – every sentence is so laden with beauty that I’d be hard pressed to read a whole page at a time). It has a slight feel of Ellroy about it – the spiralling narrative told from the perspective of 3 characters, newspaper clippings to telescope parts of the story (though not with such annoying frequency as Ellroy) and even a Dudley Smith-style bent uber-copper in the person of freemason George Mooney. The 3 (or even 4) character thing is interesting, in that 2 are written in the first person and the others in third person – the kind of thing I never normally notice in a novel but here it worked really well and even contributed to the plot.

Anyway, the whole thing, as the title implies, centres around a cop killing. Later on in the novel the killer’s name becomes a chant at football games and later anarchist demos used to antagonise the police, and I thought immediately of the Chumbawamba song Happiness Is Just A Chant Away featuring the Krsna-like “Harry Roberts, Harry Roberts, Roberts Roberts, Harry Harry” (wish I knew what happened to my copy of Shhh). As I found out afterwards, the book was based upon the real story of the Travis Bickle-like Harry Roberts (strange, almost all of the search results I got for Harry Roberts were actually reviews of He Kills Coppers), and there was indeed a Roberts chant matching the one in the book not the Chumbawamba version (the chant inspired the title – sung to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down: “Harry Roberts is our friend, is our friend, is our friend, Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers”).

And the documentary side of the book goes much further: I was unsure how “genuine” the bits set in the 60s and early 70s were – they certainly rang true to me, but then I was never around in 1966 and was only 2 in 1971. But the mix of ingredients was intoxicating, as colourful and shiny as a London bus from a 1960s film: the police, sometimes bent, shot through with a masonic streak, but basically a lot more human than today’s bunch (the subplot of the entire story is the transformation of the police force from Z-Cars style local bobbies to tactical political units led by theoreticians). The Flying Squad and the SPG. The London gangs and their manors – Maltese-run clip joints in Soho. The hippies in Ladbroke Grove and the start of the alternative press. The World Cup (of course). Pinball-playing mods. Early 70s skinhead football violence, Clockwork Orange bowler-hatted Chelsea fan inciting a riot.

Moving forward to 1985 the book entered a world I knew well, and I can’t fault any of the detail there. It was like a trip down memory lane for me – CND holding hands around missile bases (I was there!), Class War anarchists and their tabloid view of life from the other side (the bit about the Page 3 Hospitalised Copper fuelled old memories: “BRIXTON PC BASIL BASTARD BASHED ON THE BONCE BY A BOULDER IN THE BLOODY BATTLE OF THE BARRIER BLOCK”). South London squats, anti-everythingism, sinks full of washing up. Stonehenge and the Battle of the Beanfield. It’s incredible that Arnott managed to squeeze in so many iconic historical references without them feeling forced or unnecessary. Always makes a book more fun, being able to place yourself somewhere on the periphery of the action.

I’m sure there was lots more I intended to say. Bottom line: fucking excellent book. A slight feel of something lacking, a bit of hollowness, but that’s not really a handicap; if anything it makes the book easier to read, a breeze. Not sure what it is that’s missing though: the history, as I mentioned, is gripping (though as always with semi-fiction I spend more time than I should wondering how much is real and how much invented). The characters are complex and believable (at least the main characters – others can be a bit 2-dimensional, but again I found that stopped me from getting bogged down in detail). And the plot is awesome. Buy it!

Throw open the windows! Spring is truly here! Time to end every sentence with an exclamation mark! Or two if you can get away with it!!

Throughout the Northern hemisphere (well, the Sheffield bit of it anyway) plants are breathing out a collective sigh of relief, respite is in sight, and the smell of their exhalations is wonderful. Sod food, I want to go out and eat some air.

Currently listening to: Splatter Trio by The Splatter Trio – gutsy, bluesy, splattery, lovely avant-jazz… but sometimes sounds like it needs a few more instruments.

Oh, and speaking of food, and desserts in particular, and also in the spirit of good time wasting… my sister Hannah came to stay for the weekend, accompanied by her 6-month-old bump (baby’s due early July). Fairly chilled weekend – stayed at home most of the time, did the tour of the local parks and museums. But Saturday night, we decided to do some cooking together. I rustled up a few experiments for the main course, nothing worth writing home about (or indeed writing to the net about) although the steamed broccolli, tossed in a bit of shallot, wild garlic leaf and butter-toasted cashews was quite nice. But Hannah’s dessert…. mmmmmmMMMM! Well, we went to Beanies for the shopping, and as with every trip to Beanies recently, I left with a big bunch of rhubarb. I still haven’t worked my way through Nigella’s many, many rhubarb recipes, so we got the 2 books out and flicked through – and found something in How To Eat that sounded promising, a recipe for apple butterscotch tart which could be easily adapted for rhubarb. Simple as hell stuff – a pie crust, filled with slices of raw rhubarb, and then topped with a gloopy mixture of double cream, sugar, flour and eggs. Stick it in the over for 10 minutes on hot and then another 20 slightly cooler, and the results are awesome (OK, so it looked kinda… brown and uninspiring, but who cares about first impressions). The sweet butterscotch cosied itself around the sour rhubarb and just matched perfectly – I mean, rhubarb crumble is great stuff, but somehow the rhubarb usually seems a bit too bitter, unless you smother it in sugar and then the whole thing becomes far too icky. But this was…. mmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Was just sitting at my computer with the TV talking to itself in the background, when I noticed some holiday program was sending Graham Le Saux and his family to Sardinia. A little voice in me said "wonder if they go for a meal and get offered Mirto", but I thought it unlikely. Still, I couldn’t help watching. And they didn’t go for a meal – they went self-catering. But then… his wife, shopping around for things to go with the evening meal, there was a brief shot of her pulling a bottle off a shelf and saying “apparently this is a very popular local liqueur”. I’d recognise that label anywhere, even if the bottle did look a little different. I love it when things suddenly start coming into your life like that, and I can’t help wondering about it… was I exposed to references to Mirto de Sardegna on a weekly basis before, and I just plain didn’t notice any of them, or has it suddenly decided to make its presence felt in my life. And if the former of the two… how many millions of things am I missing out on every day just because I haven’t yet been “introduced” to them. I’ll just have to pay more attention in future.

Also while searching for info on Mirto (which is fairly thin on the ground, certainly stuff in English), I found these tasting notes (written on my 29th birthday too!) which vindicated my “cough medicine” claims (so there Guy ) (and, hey, whoever wrote this can’t spell liqueur either! Nightmare kind of a word):

Zedda-Piras Mirto di Sardegna NV: A Sardinian liquer made with mytrle berries macerated in alcohol with sugar syrup added: Strong complex piney/ rosemary alcoholic nose; complex rosemary/pungent/piney sweet flavor; very interesting stuff not unlike some cough syrups.

(meanwhile, this site says that it “smells and tastes of Mediterranean scrub land” – not sure whether I’d take that as a compliment)