Things once common, now extinct. No. 6: Wire coat hangers

This is quite scary. It can't be much more than a year ago that I was saying something about the breeding habits of wire coat hangers, and how if you put two of them together in a dark and confined space - a wardrobe for example - then the next time you opened the door there would be twenty of them.

And now they've gone. The entire species has been wiped out. I've been over the whole estate with the ghillie, and there isn't a single wire coat hanger to be found. I can only think that some terrible plague has descended upon the poor creatures when we weren't looking. Iron pyrites - is that a disease? Tin-worm is, for sure. I've owned several cars that were stricken with tin-worm, and it can be very nasty. But even tin-worm isn't that rapacious - I mean you don't get whole fleets of cars disappearing overnight because of it. (Though I must say I haven't noticed many Hertz adverts lately.)

I'm wondering if maybe the demise of the wire coat hanger isn't due to over-culling. They're easy game after all, very trusting, and every bit of them can be put to good use. Broken lavatory cistern? Wire coat-hanger. Makeshift hook for your Black and Decker hedge trimmer? Wire coat hanger.

Indoor TV aerial...haloes for the Nativity Play...blocked U bend....sculpture armature...Glastonbury bracelets...the wire coat hanger is the solution every time. Or rather it used to be. We've hunted them to extinction it seems, and now we must live with the consequences. Our own fault, as usual.

An alternative explanation, I suppose, is simply that the ubiquitous plastic coat hanger has driven our native species from its natural habitat. Maybe there's still an isolated colony of them on Brownsea Island, or somewhere. If anyone should happen to know of a breeding pair, I'd be grateful. I've got a loose exhaust pipe that needs wiring up. Also, I'm still not quite finished with Mr. Tibbs, our giraffe-necked cat.

Scotland

I'm driving up to Scotland next week, to Aberdeen and then Edinburgh, in order to give a series of talks and workshops. I think of myself as living in the 'north' already, and so was amazed to see from the map of Britain that I'm barely in the middle. In fact it's actually further from here to Aberdeen than it is to Cornwall. More of this later...


...which it now is. Yes, I'm off to Aberdeen Unversity for the run-up to the Word festival on Wed 7th and Thurs 8th May. I shall be holding two paper-engineering workshops for younger children, and offering my usual cast-iron guarantee that every child's little pop-up card, made by themselves, will work perfectly! Never had a failure yet. I shall also be giving a talk to older children about The Touchstone Trilogy. The festival proper doesn't begin until the weekend (9th May).

On the evening of Thursday 8th I shall be in Edinburgh, visiting Fidra Books.

Fidra Books, if you haven't already heard about it, is both an independent children's bookshop, and an independent publisher. Fidra is under the management of Vanessa Robertson, protector and promoter of all that's worthwhile and wonderful in children's publishing. (And scourge of all that is not, I suspect). For those interested in writing for children, I shall be giving a talk on the subject, advising on how best to get your work in front of an agent or publisher. 7.30 kick off. Don't be late.

Fidra Books

UPDATE.

Back from those cities of granite and light, Aberdeen and Edinburgh respectively. Not enough time to do much more than scratch the surface of what each has to offer, but a successful trip nevertheless. Thanks to all for looking after me - Karen and Fiona and Kay in Aberdeen, and Malcolm and Vanessa in Edinburgh. I'll be back, or so they tell me, and that can't be bad.

Detail

Here's a detail from the cover illustration for my new book. Or at least I'm hoping that's what it'll be. I haven't yet heard back from my editor regarding the story, so I might be jumping the gun rather. And of course there's no guarantee that I'd get the job of doing the cover illustration in any case. Have to give it a go, though.

Circles of Hell. No.1 (in a series of seven): Other people's music.

In the first circle of hell, we have other people's music forced upon us. How come other people have such appalling taste? Are they deaf? Whenever somebody pulls up next to me at traffic lights, with their sound system going DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH, I feel as though I'm under some dreadful viral attack. Have I got any antidote handy? No. Only an old Oscar Peterson cassette in the glove compartment. I wonder if maybe the adjacent driver is off on some secret and dangerous mission, whereby he'll be brutally tortured if caught and that this is his way of hardening himself up in advance. Like a cattle prod up the bum is going to be a stroll in the park after an hour or two of listening to this.

I suspect that in many cases DUH-DUH music comes ready-installed with the car. Or perhaps you buy it from a motor accessories shop.

"Hallo. I want a tin of T-Cut, a RipCurl bumper sticker, and oh yeah...some of that performance stuff that you put in the sound system. You know - it makes a big noise, makes the car go faster, whatever."

"Certainly Sir. Techno-pump. We've got an uprated version. Try this: Now That's What I Call Music For People Who Don't Like Music! '68.

"Sounds great."

No, it sounds crap, actually. And everyone knows it but you, don't they?

New book

Last night, at around 1 am, I sent off the manuscript for my new novel.

Always a strange and anxious moment, to see so many months of intense work go shooting off into the ether, but this time it's even more nerve-racking than usual. I have a new editor for this book, and neither she nor anyone else has seen the work in progress. She has no idea of what to expect. What will she think of it? Will she even like it? I'm saying nothing publicly about the story until I've at least had an initial reaction from her.

What I can say, though, is 'sorry' to all those readers and collectors who are STILL waiting for their signed copies of Winter Wood, ordered yonks ago. I think that I've now emailed all individually, to say that I shall be dealing with the backlog this week. If I've missed you out, then please speak up.

Heimkehr ins Elfenreich!

A reader posted in 'Winter Wood updated info' today, informing me that the German translated version is now available. (Thanks, Regina.)

'Heimkehr ins Elfenreich' is here, folks! Or rather there. I haven't seen an actual copy yet, but here's a pic of the cover.

Simple

I think that OXO is probably my favourite product name and logo of all time. Look at it how you will - horizontally, vertically, upside down, in a mirror - it works. In its original form it had a quality that was almost mystical, simultaneously reminiscent of hieroglyphs and numerals, football pools, games of hopscotch and noughts and crosses, hugs and kisses at the end of a letter or text message...quite magical.

And as a product name what could be more succinct or direct? It's an ox in a box. Oxo. I love the way that early advertisers thought it sufficient to simply stick an 'o' on the end of a word that evoked the product. Brasso, Silvo, Rinso, Draino. They all do the job, and you can pretty well guess what that job is. Esso seems a bit obscure, until you remember that petrol used to be known as essence. Not sure about Omo...



So the OXO logo is design perfection. Or rather it used to be, because of course they had to go and mess with it. The two circles became egg-shaped, with offset centres, and the cross a bit curvy and long-legged. They made it so that you could only look at it the one way up, and so now it pains me to look at it at all. I wonder if they ever really knew what it was that they had.




Here's another lovely piece of design. Oban whisky. I was looking at a row of malt whisky bottles on a shelf not so long ago (I suppose I might have been in a bar at the time) and considering their various merits. Each bottle seemed to be trying to give out the same message: 'I am an aged and very special single malt, from a one-goat Hebridean island that you've never heard of. My provenance is impeccable, and my peatiness undeniable. And look, they've given me this fancy bottle to attract your attention. Try pronouncing my name and watch the barman sneer. You probably couldn't afford me anyway.'

And it's true. Some of those bottles were very fancy indeed - high shouldered ones, dumpy ones, dimpled and medallioned ones, bottles bedizened in jewels and gold netting. And some of the names, well, you'd need to take a pretty good run up to stand any chance of clearing them.

But a few of them had gone the other way, the simple-is-classy route of plain black and white labels, and decently proportioned bottles. That doesn't fool me either, quiet understatement being just as much an advertising ploy as bawling through a megaphone. Laphroaig and Talisker were pretty good in this department, though, and not far behind what was for me the leader: Oban.

Look at that label. The brand name, OBAN, just four letters, rendered in capitals for a sturdy symmetry. The paragraphs of type, neatly justified, the copy no doubt attempting to justify the ruinous effects of the contents on your liver and pocket. The whole underlaid with a pretty illustration of sea birds (we're on an island don't forget) and the number 14 to indicate just how many years this stuff has been waiting for you to show up. Beautiful.




The general feel is vaguely pharmaceutical. It smacks of the apothecary, gives you the sense that it might be just what the doctor ordered.

At first glance the bottle also seems perfect, straight sides and long neck, as unpretentious as an everyday table wine. But the sides are actually very slightly tapered, and the neck a little bulbous - more complicated than it need be, as though the designers had lost the confidence to make it completely featureless. Pity about that.




I saw this third example of simplicity in design on the site of dovegreyreader (see left somewhere) and was immediately struck by it. Personal taste will always be a factor, and I happen to be interested in scraperboard and woodcut illustration, so this one's off to a good start with me if only for that reason. But I think it works in so many ways. Competition is intense, shelves are crowded, and bookjackets have to work hard to attract the attention of the potential customer. One way of succeeding is to define a target readership, and then reach out and grab it by the cravat. And this design does exactly that.

The subject of Justine Picardie's book is Daphne du Maurier. Anyone who has read du Maurier will have read Rebecca, her gothic novel centring on the stately home of Manderley, and so the illustration of a whacking great house coupled with the title Daphne will have immediate resonance with those readers. The strong thirties feel to the design, lent by the typeface, colour, and classic illustration technique, is also totally appropriate to the subject. This is the equivalent of advertising Stannah stairlifts in The Lady. Your readers may not be in the immediate market for one, but by God they'll know where you're coming from. Dovegreyreader makes the astute comment that the colour of this bookjacket is 'pure Farrow and Ball' - a reference that will be well understood by the likely demographic. I love it. A job well done.

So here are three great examples of simplicity in design. Will I be buying any of these beautiful objects? Probably not. I rarely use Oxo cubes, don't drink whisky, and would be more likely to read a book by Daphne du Maurier than one about her.

I appreciate the effort, though.