Day 2: Blackheath

GREENWICH

Blackheath Library

7:00 pm
10.8 km from Covent Garden

Day 2 saw me heading, once again, south (or more accurately sarf) of the river to the great maritime borough of Greenwich. There, at the Blackheath Library, I was greeted with coffee, cake and enthusiasm - which is just what a writer wants when he has to talk. Plus the Librarians had manfully attempted to get all the punters tipsy which also helps.

Look Librarians....

And an audience!

Up next: The great Covent Garden Peter Grant Giveaway!

Day 1: Canada Water

SOUTHWARK

Canada Water Library
7.00pm
5.4 km from Covent Garden

Uncle Owen! This droid has a bad motivator.

Amply supplied with coffee and cake I was ushered into a rather nice custom built space where I faced my 1st audience - and very friendly they were too.

It's always much easier to address an audience if they've been warmed up first and in this I was lucky because Mark Rodenhurst had kicked things off with a reading from Rivers of London accompanied by slides and live music from Luke Evans.

Then I was interviewed by Literary Development Officer (what a title) Sandra Agard before another reading, a Q&A and a signing.

So I'd like to thank Mike Hall and everyone else at Canada Water for easing me into a month of glorious exploration.

Tomorrow - Blackheath!

Peter and Guleed in Fast Paced Action Scene

Ah the adrenalin pumping excitement of police work!

Currently Reading

I seem to be on a bit of a fantasy jag at the moment...

Half a King/Half the World by Joe Abercrombie
Jo Abercrombie introduces you to his characters, makes you care and then tortures you for the next 200 pages - the swine.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
A hugely enjoyable tale of palace intrigue.

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
I've only just started this but already the language has sucked me in a way that I haven't felt since I first picked up a Wizard of Earthsea all those years ago...

Body Work - Beverley and Peter!

Even More More Useful Stuff

Even More More Useful Stuff

Traction Engine

Essentially steam locomotives that run without rails, that used to be used for heavy agricultural work and by showmen to both transport their rides from site to site and to power them when they got there.

A showman's road locomotive, as they were known, would be brightly painted and decorated with gilt and lights and emblazoned with the name of the family who operated it.

Many of these engines lived a long and eventful life being traded amongst families, modified, rebuilt and renamed all while travelling the length and breadth of the nation. Many drivers will swear that each engine has its own distinct pesonality - many drivers caught behind one on a narrow road merely swear.

Gastropub

Once there were just pubs and what kind of pubs they were was determined by a sort unspoken agreement between the landlord (or lady) and those that drank there. It could be a rough pub, a cosy local, an expatriate hang out or just the nearest place to your home where they sold booze and fags. Now all that has changed and pubs are now branded and breweries have marketting strategies(1).

A Gastropub is a pub that serves food of a much higher quality and price than a normal pub. This is particularly prevalent in Herefordshire where a village local might have a tapas night and a roadside inn a MIchellin star rating. This is a fine thing but sometimes you really just want a plate of chips.

(1) This is an exageration of course the breweries have always imposed their ideas on their tenants and no amount of branding is goung to save you if the local Millwall supporters decide that your place is where they want to congregate before a game.

BODY WORK - Page One In Colour!

Here's a little something to whet your appitite.

Artist: Lee Sullivan
Colourist: Luis Gerrero
Publisher: Titan Comics

Even More Useful Stuff

Even More Useful Stuff

Dogging

Some people like to have sex in the open air, some people like to watch other people having sex in the open air, fortunately some people like to have people watch them while they have sex in the open air. The term used to describe these activities in the UK is 'dogging' as in "I was out dogging last night."  There are websites and other forms of social networking to allow people to arrange hook ups but for many this lacks the exciting randomness of just turning up at a dogging location and seeing what happens.

Ford Asbo
Is Peter's nickname for his, currently second, Ford Focus ST - the term originates with Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson's review of the Focus ST which can be found here.

Fry Up

Otherwise known as the traditional English Breakfast and the opposite of a Continental Breakfast(1). It usually involves a combination of three or more of the following - eggs (fried, scrambled or omelet), bacon, sausage, baked beans, black pudding(2), liver, bubble and squeak(3), onions, mushrooms, chips(4), toast or fried slice(5).

The full expression of this culinary cornucopia can usually be found in two locations, mid-level hotels or a traditional greasy spoon cafe. A proper English person upon moving into a new area will always seek to locate a suitable greasy spoon for those mornings when you just got to eat right no matter what your partner, dietitian or cardiologist says.

(1) Hotels would love to switch to offering just a continental breakfast because it's much easier to arrange a couple of croissants, some fruit and a selection of jams than the wonderful artery clogging panoply of the traditional breakfast,

(2) A blood sausage made from oatmeal and pork blood.

(3) Are you sure you want to know? Okay it's basically a dish designed to recycle leftover vegetables from a big roast beef dinner. So you get yesterday's potatoes, brussel sprouts, cabbages, peas and anything else you might have lying around - and then you fry them until they're a nice crispy brown on both sides. It was big during the dark days of rationing but now it's mostly made from fresh ingredients.

(4) French Fries.

(5) A Fried Slice of bread. Oh god now I'm hungry.

More Useful Stuff

More Useful Stuff


Herefordshire

Is an English County in the West Midlands. It is part of the borderland that once sheltered the rest of the English from the rapacious and warlike Welsh - or possibly it was the other way round? No matter it as rural a County as it's possible to get in England without running into a Northerner or a distressed celt.

Some statistics...
Population: 183,000 and change...
Population Density: 84 people per km2 (3rd lowest in England)
Ethnicity: 97.1% White, 1.2% Asian, 0.8% Mixed, 0.4% Black, 0.3% Other and 0.2% Fae(1)

Herefordshire is famous for potholes, top quality beef, cider, being the inspiration to Edward Elgar(2) and, in a spurious attempt to link the place back to Rivers of London/Midnight Riot, the birthplace of actor David Garrick.

(1) Or possibly Aliens...
(2) Amongst other things he wrote Pomp and Circumstances which is known the UK as Land of Hope And Glory and thus causes British people to burst out laughing at American High School graduations(3)
(3) Some British people anyway.

The Glorious Twelfth

The 12th of August when grouse come into season and thousands of people tramp around the countryside banging away with shotguns. Unlike foxhunting you're supposed to eat what you kill and it's supposed to be enormous fun - although not, presumably, for the grouse.

Vernacular
vəˈnakjʊlə/

noun: the vernacular

1. the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a country or region. "he wrote in the vernacular to reach a larger audience"
synonyms: everyday language, spoken language, colloquial speech, native speech, conversational language, common parlance, non-standard language, jargon, -speak, cant, slang, idiom, argot, patois, dialect; regional language, local tongue, regionalism, localism, provincialism;
informallingo, local lingo, patter, geekspeak; rareidiolect
 "he wrote in the vernacular and adopted a non-academic style accessible to the public"

2. architecture concerned with domestic and functional rather than public or monumental buildings.
"buildings in which Gothic merged into farmhouse vernacular"

 3. what Ben Aaronovitch writes the Rivers of London books in...

Raymond Erith

Raymond Erith

Iconoclassicist

For better or for worse the dominant mode of architecture in the period following World War Two was 'modernism', buildings were square, roofs were flat and the comfort of the occupant a low priority compared to the expression of form and volume. If you want to know why this was the case then you can't do worse then read Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House although some have pointed out that modernism has since been superseded by post-modernism(1).

Herefordshire Folly 1961

Raymond Charles Erith RA FRIBA (that's Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects to you peasant) was having none of that. 

While his contemporaries excited themselves with the patterns wooden forms made in concrete and dreamed of vast depersonalised plazas, walkways and swathes of plate glass Erith drew on the classical tradition to build homes and public buildings that evoked the past without slavishly copying it.

There is about his work a joie de vivre so noticeably lacking from the work of his peers. I dare you to look upon his Herefordshire Folly, with it's copper awnings and it's rooftop viewing platform, without at least a hint of a grin.

That said he shared many of the foibles of his more 'modern' contemporaries, a strange disregard for kitchens for one and a love for spiral staircases that can only be kindled in the heart of someone who's never had to manhandle a wardrobe up one of the bloody things.

(1) Which is like modernism but with sloping walls and curvey bits added.

Useful Notes

Some Useful Stuff


British Floor Conventions
Are very simple - what the Americans call the First Floor is in fact the Ground Floor. The floor above that is the First Floor (which is the Second Floor in American). Above that floors are  numbered sequentially.

Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
An organisation founded in 1967 to provide practical help for immigrants to the UK and to campaign for reform of the UK's immigration  policy.

'Nick'
General slang for Police Stations, sometimes on it's own 'Let's get back to the Nick' or used to identify a specific station - 'Let's get back to Leominster Nick.'

UKIP (UK Independence Party)
A political party founded in 1993 to campaign for the immediate withdrawl of the UK from the European Union. Beyond their central policy concern they also favour carvorting druids, death by stoning and dung for dinner(1)

 (1) Well maybe not although you never know...

Foxglove Summer: 7 Days to US Release

Foxglove Summer

Now in travel size for your convenience!

Available in the US of A in 7 days!

When two young girls go missing in rural Herefordshire, police constable and wizard-in-training Peter Grant is sent out of London to check that nothing supernatural is involved.

It’s purely routine—Nightingale, Peter’s superior, thinks he’ll be done in less than a day. But Peter’s never been one to walk away from someone in trouble, so when nothing overtly magical turns up he volunteers his services to the local police, who need all the help they can get. But because the universe likes a joke as much as the next sadistic megalomaniac, Peter soon comes to realize that dark secrets underlie the picturesque fields and villages of the countryside and there might just be work for Britain’s most junior wizard after all.

Soon Peter’s in a vicious race against time, in a world where the boundaries between reality and fairy have never been less clear….

Coming Soon - Now Updated

November - UPDATED!

Friday 7th
7.30 pm Criminal Masterminds, St Albans Lit Festival

Sunday 9th
2-3pm Wimborne Literary Festival

Monday 10th

1 - 2pm Forbidden Planet, London


6.30pm Waterstones Trafalger Square Talk with Kobna Holdbrook Smith

Tuesday 11th


1- 2pm Hatchards St Pancras Signing

And then obviously I get hustled straight onto a train.

7pm Nottingham Bridle Waterstones Solo Talk
1-5 Bridlesmith Gate, Nottingham, NG1 2GR

And also I'll be packing my toothbrush because...

Wednesday 12th 

1pm Leeds Waterstone signin
93-97 Albion Street, Leeds LS1 5JS

6.30pm Manchester Waterstones Solo Talk
91 Deansgate, Manchester M3 2BW

Thursday 13th

1pm Liverpool Waterstones signing
12 College Lane, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 3DL

And people say that being a writer isn't glamorous!

7.30pm Birmingham High Street Waterstones Solo Talk
 24-26 High Street, Birmingham, B2 4DB

Friday 14th  

Into the wild west midlands!

7pm Ledbury Books Solo Talk
Burgage Hall, Church Lane, Ledbury HR8 1DW

Saturday 15th

NO LONGER SCHEDULED (ALAS)
1 - 2pm Toppings Bath Solo Talk 

Sunday 30th November

2 - 3pm Reading and Signing at the London Museum of Water and Steam

 DECEMBER

Sunday 7th December

2 - 4pm, Solo Talk and Signing at Kingston Waterstones

 

Something For The Weekend!

Ben Aaronovitch will be appearing this weekend in not one but, count 'em, two events.

First!
The St Albans Literary Festival.
Details are here!

Where?
Dagnall Street Baptist Church
1 Cross Street
St Albans
Herts
AL3 5EE

When?
At 7:30 PM on Friday the 7th of November 2014

Who?
Me, James 'Grantchester' Runcie and Leigh 'People's Book Prize' Russell


Why?
Because it's a no holds barred three way cage match between the subgenres, fantasy vs historical vs contemporary grimdark. The literary establishment only has room for one cross over genre in it's tiny little mind - so who shall it be!


Second!
The Wimborne Literary Festival
Details are here! 


Where?
Waterside Suite, Allendale Centre, Wimborne

When?
Sunday the 9th November 2014 2:00 to 3:30pm

Who?
Me, Mitch Benn, Susanne McLeod and Sarah Pinborough

Why?
To see which one of us will break into profanity first, Mitch does it professionally, Ben does it on the radio, Sarah does it to shatter stereotypes and Susanne does it because the rest of us wont shut up!

My Ego Has Become Co-Terminous With The Known Universe

Rivers of London Selected as book for Cityread London 2015

Author's Ego Inflates to Size of Universe!

October 31st; in a shock Halloween announcement Cityread London have admitted that the novel Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch as their Cityread London book 2015. Neighbours were shocked when what they thought was an unexepected total eclipse turned out to be the author's ego obscuring the sun.

'We thought it was Ming the Merciless,' said Dora Reportersister (36) of Darlington. 'But it was just this huge ego.'

A UKIP spokesman said that this was exactly what happens when you allow unrestricted emigration from the Baltic states. "The first Aaronovitch's arrived in 1900 from Lithuania," said Chumley Throatwarbler UKIP's spokesman for random statements, "and they have been taking literary and intellectual jobs from British public schoolboys ever since."