Worse for wear on Margueritas (Day 29)

I’m on the tube home from a meeting at the great media cliche that is the Groucho Club. Synchronicity in that on the way there I was reading The Origin of Virtue by Matt Ridley about the scientific basis of altruism in our species and it mentioned Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin in the section I was reading. … Actually I’ve just checked back – make that Karl rather than Groucho (easy mistake 😉 ) I’ve ended the Writing Day with a few Margueritas. It’s not the first post I’ve written under the influence. One that springs to mind was on the way home from the V&A after an amusing encounter with Janet Street Porter.

Anyway just had a meeting with a charming art collector and he confirmed Jeremy Deller as an ideal for the Art case study being “the most generous person I’ve ever met – one of the anointed”.

The rest of the day has been way more sober but nonetheless productive, mainly carrying on with the Paul Arden chapter. I read the opening of it to my Other Half and she liked it but helped me simplify it. The first unread-back draft had phrases like “a propos of nothing ” and “en famille” which really needed a good kicking. It made me aware of how important and impactful that second pass can be.

I took a lunch-break at a local cafe (the wonderful Amici, domain of Maurizio) to meet two French specialists in multiplatform production who want to involve me in their Paris conference next summer. Chatting about comic books and 60s French movies and translation and Asterix and Lyons (and multiplatform) and all manner of inherently interesting stuff was great fuel for a solid afternoon of writing.

Tomorrow I’m doing a speaking gig in Manchester with Bea Campbell (who inspired my wife’s university final film about miners’ wives in Ayrshire during the Miners Strike – connection to Deller and Channel 4 through The Battle of Orgreave) and Rod Liddle with a bit of input from Boris Johnson via video. I’ll get 3 hours each way on the train to write.