I’ve spent the last few days in Kirriemuir, east Scotland, birthplace of J. M. Barrie, whose cricketing exploits I have chronicled in my book Peter Pan’s First XI. Kirriemuir was celebrating the 150th anniversary of Barrie’s birth with a number of events.

I gave a brief, impromtu talk to the Strathmore Speaker’s Club at North Muir Hall, whose members seemed such good storytellers that I wondered whether Barrie was as extraordinary as I had previously thought, or whether he was in fact just the most famous and spectacularly successful incarnation of his home town’s talent for weaving narratives.

I did a talk and signing at Kirriemuir library, two signings at Whatley’s Books, one at the camera obscura and cricket pavillion that Barrie bequeathed to the town in 1930, and one at Barrie’s birthplace, where I sat at Barrie’s old desk. I also did a reading from my book and shared a stage with three poets: Douglas Lipton, Tim (not-Brooke!) Taylor and Robert Ramsay. It was a busy few days.

And I somehow found time to get up to the hills where I did a walk from Glen Clova up to Loch Brandy and around, where snow still lay, most spectacularly in a gully that had a long white streak of snow cut into three parts, stretching down toward the dark waters of the loch (picture below). I hitched a lift back with a ranger who worked up in the hills who offered me my first taste of small-town fame - ‘I stopped because I saw your picture in the paper’, he said. On Saturday night, around midnight, as I stood at the bar in a pub in ordering a pair of drinks another man stood next to me and also told me that he too had seen my picture in the paper. ‘You looked bulimic’, he said to me, somewhat enigmatically, like a line from a Pinter play. ‘But I think your book sounds interesting.’ He got his drink and took a sip and looked at me, very stony-faced. ‘You looked like you were about to vomit.’

Storytelling was not limited to the speakers’ club. One man attempted to relate to me the entire story of Homer’s Odyssey in the bar of the Thrums Hotel. Dave Torrie, an ex-editor of the Dandy comic and a keen cricketer who played for Kirriemuir for many years, told me the story of Ian Hamilton’s heist of the stone of destiny from Westminster Abbey, as well as many other funny stories.

I’d like to thank everyone who helped to make my visit to Kirriemuir a success, and in particular John and Kay Dorward, Lis Hill and Sandra and David Affleck.

And finally I also recommend the great cafe called 88 degrees in Kirriemuir, run by Philip and Johanna, that serves some of the best and most reasonably-priced food of its kind that I’ve eaten anywhere.

Back in London I was surprised to be greeted by queues of people in my living room waiting for a signed copy (see picture). What a welcome home!

I’m heading to Kirriemuir on Wednesday, May 12, the town where J. M. Barrie was born on May 9, 150 years ago, in 1860. It seems like the most fitting place to be for the official publication of my book Peter Pan’s First XI, the story of J. M. Barrie’s curious cricket team the Allahakbarries.

I’m very excited about the trip. I will be participating in a number of events, a programme of which you can view here, and will be attending others such as “Speaking of Barrie”, an evening of talks, readings and fun at the Strathmore Speakers Club.

So far it’s been a decent week, helped by a good review in The Sunday Times written by Andrew Holgate, which made Monday morning all the more bearable. Today I signed books at Hatchard’s Bookshop in Piccadilly, helped, appropriately enough, by a lovely chap called Barry.

I’ll be blogging again from Kirriemuir to provide updates on what has been happening in a small town between the North Sea and the mighty Cairngorms over the next few days. I’ve been told that there may even be some cricket . . .  I’m packing my gloves.

I noticed a very interesting article today on how ‘two-thirds of the water used to make UK imports is used outside [the UK's] borders’.

A report by Engineering the Future argues that this is an unsustainable approach to water usage.

This piece was in The Sunday Times yesterday:

A very enjoyable little ditty about the Daily Mail:

I discovered the future of democracy hiding in a strange crevice in my brain today. The answer, instead of a ‘leadership debate’, is ‘election big brother’. This gives some idea of what it might be like:

ELECTION BIG BROTHER

[Roll Big Brother theme music]

[Camera zooms in from high and far away in the distance, onto Davina Mccall, walking quickly towards camera with intent expression on her face, microphone in hand]

DAVINA: You’ve seen Big Brother, you’ve seen Celebrity Big Brother, you’ve seen Big Brother’s Little Brother, but this is something completely different: Election Big Brother.

Instead of a debate where these snivelling excuses for human beings that we call politicians can hide behind their well-rehearsed mendaciousness, we’ve given you the opportunity to see what they’re really like for a whole week — warts and all. Ha!

[voice drops to excited whisper]

Inside the house right now, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, David Cameron and some other assorted busybodies representing no-hoper political factions from the xenophobic far-right fascists to the frankly bonkers socialists with the puritan greens somewhere in the middle of the two are busy struggling with life without their wives, make-up artists, PR men, spin doctors and advisors. Phew — what a mouthful!

At the end of the week you get to vote who you want into Downing Street. Beats having an election, after all. Calls cost a pound a minute and will go towards paying off the national debt. Let’s see how they’ve been getting on over the last 24 hours, shall we?

GEORDIE VOICEOVER GUY (GVG) [SOUNDING PARTICULARLY ABJECT]: seven fifteen pee emm. The contestants are gathered in the kitchen. What a bleeding shower.

DAVID CAMERON: I do hope that your socks don’t smell, Gordon. Osbourne told me that he stood too close to you once and thought you’d hidden an over-ripe camembert in your shoes. Ha ha.

GORDON BROWN: You don’t amuse me Cameron and you won’t be smirking by the time you leave this house, believe me.

UNNAMED BUT RECOGNISABLE FASCIST: At least we’re all white!

CAROLINE LUCAS (GREEN PARTY): And all men. I wish I wasn’t the only woman. Please put the toilet seat up when you go the loo — and you don’t need to flush it every time you do a number one, either. We need to save water. And turn the light off when you’re finished.

MAN FROM LITTLE ENGLAND PARTY: If you had it your way you’d make that EU legislation and I’d get fined by some puffed-up, over-paid, pompous Brussels bureaucrat for not turning out the light in MY OWN BATHROOM.

GVG: seven forty five pee emm. David Cameron is in the diary room.

DC: Quite frankly, big brother, I find Gordon wholly impossible to live with. The man’s a terrible bully. He’s already taken on a most threatening air that I don’t care for at all. He’s a brute.

BIG BROTHER: What would you like to do about it, David?

DC: Well, I simply think it’s my duty to inform the electorate what this man is like.

BB: Even if you do come across as a pathetic little schoolboy?

DC: Errmm . . .

GVG: eight thirty pee emm. Nick Clegg is playing table tennis with the fascist.

NICK CLEGG: I’m only playing you so that I can beat you. I disagree with everything you stand for and I don’t think you should have been allowed on this show.

FASCIST: Well what kind of liberal are you, man? The kind of liberal that likes to suppress freedom of expression? Don’t you think that makes you a bit of a hypocrite?

[NC SMASHES BALL PAST FASCIST]

NC: Maybe, but at least I’m going to thrash you at ping-pong, you snivelling xenophobe.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: etc. etc.

There was a piece on the Allahakbarries and my book Peter Pan’s First XI in the Scotland on Sunday yesterday.

Read it here.

I have been invited to play at Broadway in the Cotswolds for a team captained by artist Jeremy Houghton in a re-enactment of the series of test matches that took place between 1897 and 1899 between J. M. Barrie’s amateur team the Allahakbarries and a Broadway XI.

For the ’sentamentalist for the simple life’ such as I am (see previous blog post), this sounds like a great day out.

The match is on June 20. Further reports on the latest developments will follow soon.

The Carbon Footprint Fetish: Architecture and Climate Change

It would be disingenuous of me to say that I went along to this talk in Clerkenwell last night with a completely open mind: I clearly have a position in terms of architecture responding to the environment. But the convener of this debate: the irreverent, provocative, pseudo-iconoclastic (I’ll come back to this later) Austin Williams (pictured) had certainly intrigued me with his commentary on the so-called green building movement. Williams, the director of the Future Cities Project, has a talent for stinging invective, and touches on many of the unappealing aspects of environmental architecture. He describes the green movement in general as ‘misanthropic’ and ‘non-aspirational’; he challenges the puritanism, lack of humour, self-righteous smugness, herd mentality, anti-intellectualism and bureaucratic social control that he sees as being implicit in all efforts at sustainability. And in fact, he seems to view that word – sustainability – as the cancer that is devouring architecture in general.

I enjoyed his sparky banter –- for about ten minutes –- but ultimately left feeling that Williams had defeated his own paordy of an argument far better than had any of the panel, which consisted of Mayer Hillman, Ken Yeang, Craig White and Charlie Peel (all firmly against Williams’ views).

It was an evening of some emotion. Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman, director of the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities, shouted from the back that she thought the whole event was ‘disgusting’ and walked out, followed by another New Zealander who shouted at Williams that ‘you’ve got a very weak style of argument’ as he left. A guy on the front row said that Mayer Hillman was speaking ‘Malthusian bollocks’. Hillman said that he ‘wished I hadn’t had such a middle class background as I wouldn’t have to be so polite.’

Read the rest of this entry »

J. M. Barrie would have been 150 years old on May 9 this year had he not died in 1937 and it seems a happy coincidence that my book on his cricket team PETER PAN’S FIRST XI is being published just a few days after this anniversary on May 13.

In honour of this anniversary there are a number of events taking place in Kirriemuir, Scotland, the town where Barrie was born in 1860. These are mainly being organised by the Kirriemuir Heritage Trust — take a look at their events calender if you are interested in attending. I would particularly love to see Andrew Birkin, the author of J. M. BARRIE AND THE LOST BOYS, deliver his lecture on Barrie on May 9, but don’t yet know whether I’ll be able to make it.

There is also talk of a cricket match being organised in Kirriemuir though a date for this has not yet been arranged.

One cricket match that definitely is taking place, however, is at what was another special place to Barrie — Broadway in the Cotswolds. As part of the Broadway Arts Festival a cricket match has been arranged for Sunday, June 20, which will be in the spirit of the encounters between the Allahakbarries and Broadway: an annual fixture in 1897, 1898 and 1899. The key figure for the Broadway side in those original encounters was the famous Shakespearean actress Mary de Navarro. She did not play but was nonetheless important enough for Barrie to refer to her as ‘The dear enemy of the Allahakbarries’. I had lunch with her grandson Michael de Navarro yesterday, who still lives in the same house that his grandmother lived in at the same time as those matches were being played, more than a century ago.

I will definitely be going to this cricket match and hope that I might even find a way to play. More news on that as soon as I have it.