The Solitary Review

Belphegor!

Now available for Kindle -

Belphegor: Chantecoq and the Phantom of the Louvre

There's a ghost in the Louvre! Reporter Jacques Bellegarde isn’t convinced. What kind of ghost murders a guard and sends threatening notes signed “Belphegor”? An ancient mystery surfaces in Jazz Age Paris.
Another thrilling case for Chantecoq. King of detectives, master of disguise.

A new translation of Bernede's classic novel of strangeness and crime. A tale of cunning disguise, narrow escapes, skullduggery, terrible poetry, and dogs.

Buy "Belphegor" at Amazon

Why It Is Harder For Men Than Women To Become Sober

I don't know that it is, but given a recent article claiming the other way about, I shall attempt to provide some reasons on 'my' side.

1. Nobody thinks it's a problem

It's very much part of 'male culture' to go down the pub with the lads and drink bevvies and watch the footy. How could it ever be a bad thing? The result is that nobody understands why anyone - at least anyone who isn't losing their job and family because they're on a bottle of vodka a day - would want to stop. Peer pressure among the uncomprehending is huge.

2. There are very few alternatives

If you don't want to buy into that culture any more what are you going to do? Social isolation especially of older men is bad enough and if you don't want to sink pints with the others it becomes more intense. Women have alternative ways to get together but it doesn't seem like men do and if they do try to participate in mixed social environments they are often treated with suspicion.

3. Nobody gives a shit about men('s issues)

People are generally not supportive towards men. Their emotional state is not cared about. Attempts at self-improvement are met with derision. We live in a society where concern for the environment and for one's health and diet are coded female. They aren't things men 'do'. Whereas there are plenty of female-oriented sites regarding alcohol recovery, for men it seems to be just about damage mitigation - making sure homeless alcoholics don't actually die, and so on.

AA’s rules are not so much ‘for men’ as attempt to pull men down where they actually need support.

Trying to talk about men's issues is met with sarcasm and hostility from all, and blank incomprehension from other men - e.g. trying to explain why the word 'loser' sucks because it suggests that not having conventional success means you are a bad person. Suppose it is also a men's issue that alcohol consumption is deeply ingrained into our culture?

On Being where You Are

This originally appeared in my "36 square metres" blog back in 2012.

On being where you are

I had a few dates with a woman I met via an online dating service. But simply being of a similar age and in the same part of town doesn't mean we have anything in common. Anyone who's fairly self-reliant is simply going to ask themselves “does this add anything?” and the answer is very often going to be 'no'. I first asked myself this during a one-off date with a nice enough single mum in Hampton, a year ago. I'm not looking for validation and certainly don't need to force myself into a couple in order to find it. One woman I corresponded with via that dating service wondered what I was doing there as my life seemed involved enough anyway.

It seems to me that a lot of men still look to be 'validated' by women at a time when those women have successfully established that they don't need to be 'validated' by men.

I've twice had close male friends of mine, within the same little group who've known each other for decades since we were fellow-teachers, describe the three of us as 'pathetic' and 'l***rs' because none of us were in a steady sexual relationship with a woman at the time. But I don't measure self-realisation that way, and we men do ourselves (and women) a disservice by trying to. Nor do we help ourselves by using words like 'sad' to describe single men. There is a perception that while single women have plenty of connections and a life that doesn't involve coupledom, single men are exactly that – on our own.

One of the things I've done recently is join a choir. A very much fun thing to do, being one of those local choirs that doesn't need auditions or the ability to read music. But the membership is predominantly female, and several of the men attending were spouses or other family members of the women. Why? Do all those men who would otherwise join, work such long hours that they can't take part? I doubt it. I'll reiterate: choirs are fun and a good thing to be in.

This gender imbalance is the opposite of that in the real ale movement – which at least in the CAMRA branch I was in was predominantly male. Almost all the female members were partners of a man in the branch (although in many cases the couple may have got together via a shared love of real ale), and there were no women on the committee for much of the time I was involved with it. This feeds into a CAMRA stereotype which I've seen expressed as 'men with no women in their lives' although most of the guys I knew there had wives or girlfriends, who didn't participate in CAMRA activities. Besides, does anyone say of women who take part in mostly-female activities like choirs or Zumba that they have 'no men in their lives'? I doubt it and anyone saying that would come across as sexist at least. And this doesn't hold for every branch – some branches seem like a stereotype full of middle-aged bearded men while others attract younger people and women, which is perhaps not surprising as real ale or craft beer (which need not be in a barrel) no longer has so much of its 'old man's drink' image. The diehard lager drinkers who originally sneered at 'ale' in that way are now in their 40s, victims of their own drink-related ageism, and finding that the next generation is not necessarily following in their footsteps but is going for the kind of beer they actually like, which very often means small-producer bottled or cask ales.

So if they aren't 'validated' by women, then what does, or should, validate single men? Who seem, if you read the press, to spend their entire time bewailing their single state or berating other single men for same. But at least if you're single you 're (probably) not in an abusive relationship, which is a topic for another piece some time.

But I feel one important step is,

Be where you are.

This includes making your home the kind of place you want to live – and not feeling that it's just somewhere to be for now until you get somewhere better or you get coupled-up (again or for the first time). If you want purple and orange walls, do so.

It also includes making use of the area you live in. The six years I lived in an outer London borough were not my most creative – indeed I felt like I was doing nothing but the day job, and going to pubs, and going to music gigs. (then I lost the day job; what then?) Even the stories I did have published were ones I'd written before I moved. But there were possibilities ever opening. Quite likely I should have got involved with the theatre which opened in the centre of town during those six years. Even just turning up and saying “can I help in any way?” would have been useful. I did however participate locally including teaching older people to use computers at the Age Concern centre; bought into the organic vegetable box scheme set up by a neighbourhood food co-op; joined a community choir (see above) and a handful of other things. And if it's more women than men doing these things, big deal. Women have contended with predominantly-male situations for years. Then again there are many people who participate in things that are more of a non-local community: science fiction fandom, cycling, etc. In my suburban life I took part in local bike rides until I got fed up with that particular group's habit of going offroad, even with road bikes. A cycling injury in the local park when a trail turned out to be steeper than I thought made me even less impressed with that kind of behaviour.

Now that I'm living in Birmingham I'm trying to do just that: writers groups, participation in the local food scene, etc. Doesn't this validate us sufficiently – being part of the community around us? I would respectfully suggest that it does. There are many ways to be part of a community, with or without a family, as part of a couple or not, and nobody is suggesting that anyone has to throw themselves into it 24/7 if they don't want to – once again, make your home your own, retreat to that if it is the time to do so. Go on retreat weekends. Start a blog! Be where you are.

Thunderbird

The sunset sky had led thousands of painters, good and bad and indifferent, to paint it, and given its colours to the clothes and jewelery of the native people who now lived in trailers and on the edges of officially-sanctioned space. The weird shapes of the horizon were stark black against the orange and scarlet and cinnamon splashes of that darkening sky which even now was growing more purple. Night itself would fall like a blanket across the outlands. But none of this occurred to Jed Richmond, who was propping up the bar in the Dead Horse Saloon. A pianist was playing something forgettable, and by the sound of it he’d forgotten some of it too.
Jed was on his third whiskey when the out-of-towners came in. A thin man in a grey suit and glasses and a sandy-haired woman who was probably his wife. He’d heard about these two; they’d been staying at the hotel for a day now but as Jed divided his time between his workshop, his rooms above it, and the saloon, he hadn’t run into them so far.
“Howdy,” said Jed, as they came to the bar.
“Hello,” said the man. He had a Down Easter accent.
“I’m Jed,” Jed said. “What brings you to town?”
“I’m Sam,” said the man, “and this is my wife Rebecca. Pleased to meet you, Jed. We’re looking for birds.”
“Birds?” said Jed. “Well, lemme see, we get vultures and hawks and the occasional eagle.”
“Eagles, eh?” said Rebecca. “How often do you see those?”
“Only after sundown,” Jed said. “Maybe if I’ve had a few of these.” He hefted his empty glass.
“Allow me,” said Sam.
“Very neighbourly,” Jed said, as the barman poured.
The conversation flowed like whisky. After a few minutes Rebecca said,
“Do people ever speak of more, well, unusual things?”
“Such as?” Jed said kindly.
Rebecca frowned.
“You mean the thunderbird,” Jed said, putting her out of her misery. He knew this had been building, knew it as surely as the thunderclouds rose over Dead Cat Mountain. The thunderbird. The ole Indians told stories about it, but most of the Indians were long gone. Something Jed remembered from his childhood, fifty years ago or more.
Rebecca’s eyes glinted and her husband leaned forward.
“No,” Jed said. “Never been seen. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh,” Sam said. “But might anyone else ...”
“Fella,” Jed said, “I was born here, lived all my life here, and I know everyone. I’m the carpenter. I make cradles for their babies and coffins for their dead. People talk to me the way they won’t even talk to the preacher. If anyone had seen it I’d know. Sorry to disappoint. Enjoy your stay. Thanks for the drink.”

The out-of-town couple had gone. Jed Richmond walked his weary whisky-fogged way back to his rooms. Sitting in his small living room, with its solid homemade furniture, he leafed through his old photograph album.

There were the pictures of his grandma and grandpa, outwardly stern but with eyes twinkling with mischief; his pa as a small boy with the driver of a train holding him on the footplate; pictures dad had taken in the war, doomed young men with rifles and knapsacks.
And the centre piece of the collection.
A sepia picture. Four men standing outside a barn, spade-bearded in the late 19th-century style, two of them holding old guns of the type still used by hillbillies.
And behind them, pinned against the wall of the barn, the outspread wings and lifeless body of a bird. The wings must have had a span of thirty feet. The head was twisted back in death, its hooked beak like a condor’s, designed to feed on already dead flesh; the eyes closed. The plumage was dark, and the photograph was clear enough to make out each of the great long wing feathers.
Jed smiled. He reached into a drawer and took out a feather; iridescent purple and black and green, he drew it softly across the back of his hand.
Sometimes at night he could hear them calling.

(c) Chris Amies 2013

Coffeeology W6 - Cafe Review

Coffeeology W6

Clearly an old house, likely mid-Victorian with its high ceilings and wooden floors, though this is every inch a cafe there is of the quirky pub about it, the nice and modern sort of pub where you have beers called things like “You Made that One Up.” Several sections – brisk tables in the front with the bar, low couches behind. On one of those couches I sat and had cortado and courgette cake and drowsed as though I had been in one of those pubs, but this is 2019 and instead we have coffee and people come in to work on That Novel in the back room with its animal pictures on the walls.

And further back another room with its own coffee bar. And beyond that back room a garden.

Who lives in a house like this? Well I do, sort of, having exiled myself from the fabulous beast where I used to live, and which felt more like an long-unseen old relative than a place when I wandered past it on my way here towards Great Church Lane and Broadway.

Coffeeology’s website (https://coffeeology.me.uk/pages/coffeeology-london-locations) informs us it’s in Chiswick but long years of wandering informed me that Chiswick doesn’t start till you’re at, or past, the Ritz Cafe (there since 1983 at least) to its west.

Cortado and courgette cake £5.80. Very palatable. Hot dogs and vegan treats and prosciutto, and salmon salads on the menu. The Pink Crush sounds epic (although the name sounds like a drink, it’s really an eat).

Would I return? My dreaming self informs me that it still lives in West Kensington, and it is no walk up King Street to Kings Court and little Coffeeology kindly beneath its wing. My waking self is nearer Richmond and they have another premises in that town.

 

Coffeeology

308 King Street
W6 0RR

Website

Jack Sprat

Jack Sprat was a cat who lived with one of my friends. He sadly passed away recently aged about 15 (we're not sure). This painting is from a photograph taken in April 2017.

Acrylic on canvas panel, 30 x 23 cm

Swallows, Tienshan Mountains

For a birthday card, June 2019. Acrylic, liner pen, coloured pencil. 15 x 10 cm

I seem to like this kind of scenery for cards. 

Great Yarmouth Beach

Great Yarmouth Beach

Acrylic, 40 x 50 cm, June 2019

Done partly in evening light but I am trying to up the colour values anyway as my pictures have not had sufficient contrast until now.

I wrote this in 1988 or so. So sorry I seem to have invented online troll threats ...

19. The Violent Threats To Mervyn J Chang Company Of Bunkum, Nebraska
The Violent Threats to Mervyn J Chang Company was founded in the little town of Bunkum, Nebraska (population 12) by Melvyn Barf, an unemployed 32-year-old car mechanic. Armed only with a PC, a modem, and a warped imagination, Barf set out on his crusade to bring down one of the USA’s finest academic minds.
On Sunday 11 November 1990 (Veterans’ Day), he sent the following message to Dr Chang’s Email address:

to: mchang@nysu.edu
from: anon@erisia.com
X-ref: anon@anon.penet.fi
Dear Merve the Perve,
It is with great pleasure that the Violent Threats To Mervyn J Chang Company announces its five-year mission, to make violent and savage threats to yourself, Doctor Mervyn J Chang of New York State University. I am sure that you will be quaking and shitting yourself with astonishment as I, Melvyn Q Barf, announce the range of hideous and sadistic things that I am threatening to do to you.
Don’t you love threats, Doctor? Don’t you just love the feeling of mortal and hideous terror that comes over you when somebody posts you an Email message saying, I am going to cut your daughter’s head off and send it to you by Federal Express from Norfolk, Virginia? Then consider the feeling of abject fear when you are informed that the battery of your 1986 Chevrolet Caprice is wired to a 20kg pack of Semtex explosive, and that when you turn the ignition switch it will blow you to bits.

The New York Police Department decided that this was not a nut, kook, or otherwise person who did not have an identical mindset to that of a New York policeman or of a jamfilled donut (the two are largely indistinguishable), because of the reasonable nature of the letter and also the fact that at no time did Mr Barf express any admiration, longing, or feelings of an otherwise sexual nature for the good Doctor. When this precise statement was made in court, Mr Yail Bloor, prosecuring, stood up and blasted a hole in defending counsel Myrna Loy Beachpolluter, and declared, “You goddam daughter of a hawg. There’s only one good Doctor and that’s the Doctor.” It was later decided that he had to have been referring to Dr Hunter S Thompson, journalist, painter, reincarnation of Hawaiian king Lono, and the most famous denizen of the town of Woody Creek, Colorado. The hunt for the perpetrator then switched to the Family Arsenal of the Worldwide Church of Gonzo, a shadowy organisation devoted to net hacking, weapons, beer, and acts of frightening sadism. The game was afoot.
The Family Arsenal, situated in an old nuclear weapons dump outside Bunkum, Nebraska, was put under siege by two hundred FBI agents armed with bazookas, laser cannon, rocket launchers, miniguns and copies of “The Blue Lagoon” which they played repeatedly on fifty-foot high video screens placed around the arsenal. After forty of the FBI agents had gone bananas and committed such acts as cutting a dog’s head off and fucking the neck hole, holding a competition to throw grandmothers over an electric fence, and ravaged the nearby forest with an intent to kill not only every female animal but also every female plant in the area, this strategy was discontinued. On the 21st day Melvyn Barf gave himself up. The FBI shot him and then decided it wasn’t him they were after. Members of the Gonzo cult would appear standing on the wall, naked and daubed with red and green paint. Their charismatic leader, Marlon Skunkshagger, granted an audience to FBI agent Bernice Thrush on 6 December 1990. She was in there for days. She was even in there for weeks. On Christmas eve the Gonzies arranged giant loudspeakers on the walls and played a selection of songs by Harry Connick Jr and the Doors, terminating with a rendition of “The End” punctuated by the screams of obviously tortured men and women. This was followed by a ten-second silence and then Skunkshagger himself appeared on the wall, naked, arms akimbo, head shaved and painted green. He stood there while the speakers launched into, predictably, the “Ride of the Valkyrie”. As the music grew louder and louder, blood began to trickle from Skunkshagger’s nose and ears. Finally he threw himself off the wall and impacted a hundred feet down. The FBI were all drunk or deafened or both by this point and when the Gonzies burst from the gates of their encampment, armed with machetes and warclubs, the G-men were in no condition to offer resistance. The Gonzies slaughtered every one of them before sunrise.
Then they trooped back inside, congregated in the Great Hall, formerly a hangar for nuclear bombers, and standing in lines, each unwrapped and swallowed a cyanide pill. Several hours later State Troopers broke in and found 453 bodies. There were no survivors; or, as the Gonzies would have put it, there were no failures.
Dr Chang ignored the threats and went down to his car. He sat behind the wheel, turned the ignition, and the resulting explosion took out half a city block.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/affect-dysregulation-and-c-ptsd/

Clattern Bridge

Clattern Bridge, Kingston. Acrylic on canvas, 21 x 15 cm. I am practicing for doing larger canvases but this is a small one for now.

The Clattern Bridge (so called for the 'clattering' of horses' hooves across it back in the day) is the oldest in-service bridge in London. It crosses the Hogsmill near its confluence with the Thames in Kingston, and it dates from the 13th century - a new brick superstructure was added in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the arches are the original. It is in everyday use as it forms part of Kingston High Street.