Black Swan Green: David Mitchell

Black Swan Green: Why would a long-established English village be called that? Black swans are native to Australia. 

Mitchell is a short story writer. He strings short stories together and calls them novels. (Kipling did something similar.)

Mitchell is famous for doing voices. (Look I'm Kingsley Amis; look I'm Eric Fenby.) Here he's attempting to voice himself- or someone like himself (as a thirteen year old)- but he's still seeing life through genres- the sit-com, the ghost story, the school story. This is his most deeply felt book, but not his best. 

All Mitchell's fiction is about man being a wolf to man. The awfulness is punctuated by odd, gratuitous acts of kindness. A hardnut (one of many) recommends the hero takes a bowie knife to the bully who is picking on him." I'd get sent to borstal," he protests. "Well, wakey fucking wakey," says the hardnut, "Life's a borstal!"

No More Processions

The Oldham Carnival used to feature a procession of floats and marching bands which wound through the town centre and passed by the end of our street (where I would sometimes stand to wave and cheer) on its way to Alexandra Park. It isn't happening this year and apparently didn't happen last year either. (Shame on me for not noticing!)  In its place there will be a mini-parade of dance troupes inside the Park- which doesn't sound nearly as much fun.  According to the carnival website the reasons for this change are (a) flatbed trucks (to put floats on) are becoming hard to get hold of and (b) they're nasty polluting things anyway. 

The town's November 5th Bonfire and Firework Display was discontinued several years ago.  Now the Carnival Procession has gone too. These big, old-fashioned expressions of civic pride and togetherness did us good, I think. I wonder what we're going to replace them with.