My first lock-in

I was fortunate enough to be invited along to an after-hours tour of the Saatchi Gallery, courtesy of Jonathan Cape, set up to promote the series of books they publish to coincide with each major show. The current exhibition is New Chinese Art and even the more expert booksellers amongst the party found it quite eye-opening to have our tour conducted by the Gallery's Senior Curator, who took us from room to room, picking out one piece from each for a commentary.

The restrictions on political expression in China offer pitfalls for an artist with a remotely radical agenda, so I was surprised to learn about the subversive ideas symbolically secreted in so many artworks. Political mandarins, so steeped are they in dogma, tend not to be well versed in contemporary art, I was told, and so these subtle interpretations are beyond them.

This got me thinking about the language of artistic criticism in China. Words give up their meanings rather more easily, so I came to the conclusion that there must be some sort of artistic argot or metalanguage with which these ideas are discussed. Chinese languages, being pictogrammatically based, are full of loosely defined words which are given more precise meaning through their context. No wonder east and west sometimes struggle to reconcile their cultural differences; the basis of communication is structured in fundamentally different ways.

Fascinating though our little tour was, halfway round it occurred to me to wander off on my own for a bit. To stand alone, in silence, in the open space of such a gallery, contemplating exhibits without distraction, is a profound thing to do. When I returned to the fold, I mentioned this to our guide, who confessed that she rather likes being able to do just this herself.

Maybe it has something to do with being a booklover, in my case at least. Reading is a solitary activity and, while discussing books with others who have also read them is an important part of the experience, that initial time alone is essential in letting their ideas and images coalesce.

I suspect one of the reasons that I don't 'get' graphic novels, aside from my usual glib comment that it seems like a lot of effort for very few words, is that I want my mental image of the world in which I am immersing myself to form spontaneously, without prompts and clues.

One new book which confronts this dichotomy of the verbal and the visual is a debut novel due in May, The Selected Works of T S Spivet by Reif Larsen. It is illustrated throughout with the purported diagrams and designs of 12 year-old boy, whose maps mark him out as quite the prodigy. Though he lives on a working farm in Montana, his mother is an entomologist, from whom T S (Tecumseh Sparrow, for reasons which I suggest you read the book to discover) apparently inherits his instincts for meticulous cataloguing.

Recognition of a series of his works leads to his being awarded a prestigious title by the Smithsonian, who are unaware of his youth, but he accepts the accolade and elects to travel alone hobo-style on trains to receive his due.

Most of his maps represent scientific observations, but usually of the things which might preoccupy a boy of his age and it is this juvenile dalliance in an adult world which seems to have encouraged the book's publisher, Harvill Secker, to compare it to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Such comparisons always make me wary. Every time a catalogue suggests a book might be the next Kite Runner or Captain Corelli or Secret History, I, and I suspect many other booksellers, begin to suspect that the book in question lacks the imagination or quality to stand alone. Comparisons with other works can be useful, but far too often they are made with reference to books which have freakishly outsold all expectations. The circumstances of such a success are almost always too obscurely unique that to claim to be able to repeat them is always preposterous.

All of which is a protracted way of saying that comparing Larsen with Haddon is pointless; and in this case, its entirely erroneous. This is an adult novel in ways that Haddon's simply isn't, endearing though they both might be.

This bubbles with ideas, gives its characters complex depths beneath their raw emotions and makes the the minutiae of T S's adventure into as engrossingly a part of his grand journey. Harvill Secker know they have a special book on their hands and it will be interesting to see whether they can convey its originality in their marketing of it at the same time as making it a very commercial prospect.

Living in the past

Until Never Let Me Go in 2005, I had never read anything by Kazuo Ishiguro and, finding that book unremarkable, might have tried nothing further if it were not for a friend of discerning taste whose favourite author he is. I've since accumulated a selection of his backlist, but had still only read his very first published novel, A Pale View of Hills, which is a model of understatement, perfectly depicting the Japanese dichotomy of public stoicism and inner turmoil. (Andrew Miller's One Morning Like A Bird manages the same.)

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (due in May) is a collection which plants itself between themed collections of short stories and more interwoven multiple narratives within one novel. Like balloons caught on the wind, soaring until they drift from sight, each of these stories leaves an emotive impression but is lost from view before we can make any firm assessment of its destiny. The opening tale of a Venetian cafe guitarist hired by a once famous crooner to help him serenade his wife beneath their hotel balcony is full of romance laid bare: its nerves, its uncertainties, its despair. A man drifting through his life visits friends from university unaware how they have moved on, resulting in bittersweet farce.

Ishiguro's particular gift is to give us an intimacy with his characters, using the the first person to depict that alternation between impulse and deliberation common to us all. When observing other characters, this results in a selectivity which neither forces us to see them as the protagonist does nor which leaves them too amorphously defined. Like a painting beneath whitewash slowly revealed through time, they are revealed indiscriminately, so that it takes time both to make out details and reckon their importance.

Given the constant conjuration of music's fragile power, it was fitting that there was a song which kept coming fragmentally to mind as I read. On My Life Is a Succession of People Saying Goodbye, which was a B-side to something from You Are the Quarry, Morrissey sings plaintively "Once my life stretched before me, but it now stretches behind" to the accompaniment of the tumbling trills of a harp, a song of regret whose despair lies not in loss but in the acknowledgment that a life's opportunities have been spurned.

Anne Michaels is also a writer with a gift for evocation and The Winter Vault, her wilfully curious story of a marriage thrown off kilter by tragedy, is steeped intensely time and place. The first half sees an engineer responsible for the transfer of the temples of Abu Simbel to higher ground when the Nasser valley was flooded by the creation of the Aswan Dam. (Remember that from geography lessons?) Humbly observing the massive displacement of communities in the name of progress, he and his wife suffer their own loss and return to Canada, where they decide to recuperate apart.

In perhaps more contrasting tones than Ishiguro, Michaels pits the innocence of hope against the naked brutality of fate, as the couple try to find new purpose in their lives. It's an intense read, requiring slow deliberation, so rich in metaphor and poetry. This does lead, perhaps inevitably in such a thoroughly scripted account, to the occasional stumble: a slightly po-faced note, perhaps, or a tangent roughly pulled back into line.

When this does happen, it's a little like opening up a sleek and elegant machine, all gleaming metal and sinuous curves, to discover the greasy nest of pistons and gears within, all whirring and thrusting frantically. Or possibly seeing a duck from beneath, although ducks are hardly the most graceful of birds airside... the banality of that simile's always bothered me.

But Michaels is clearly a born writer, alive to the charge of language, who undoubtedly scratches away in a garret in the light of a guttering candle until dawn finds her fallen asleep across her manuscript. It would be terribly disillusioning if not, anyway.

Switching inelegantly from the ethereal to the mundane, the book trade has an interest in Liverpool One, a new 'shopping and restaurant complex'. I wonder if it's as ghastly as Westfield over in Shepherd's Bush, to which I made a recent visit under the misguided apprehension that it wasn't just filled with the same outlets which dominate every provincial clone high street; I very quickly ended up with the sort of headache induced only by shopping centres and staring fixedly at a computer monitor for eight hours without blinking, the sort that feel like one's brain is being lightly sandpapered.

But for the people of Liverpool, good fortune does not stop with the provision of vital new branches of Top Shop and Clinton Cards, which are apparently their reward for being selected as 2008's European City of Culture. There's a two-floor Waterstone's as well, where a revolutionary - and I use the term at its most witheringly contemptuous - new initiative is being trialled: "personal shoppers".

Half a dozen staff are to be kitted out in green shirts - perhaps they're to be the bookselling equivalent of goalkeepers, the last line of defence against customer indecision - and made available exclusively for the benefit of customers between the hours of noon and three. And four and six; apparently, they all have to go for lunch at the same time.

I wouldn't want to misrepresent this professional upgrade, an evolutionary development more remarkable than the first movement of animals from water to land, so I shall briefly defer to the shop's manager, Ian Critchley:

"All people have to do is tell us a little about who they need to get a present for, and the personal shopper will select the perfect gift. Given we have over 60,000 books, as well as everything else we sell, we think this will be the perfect service for those who are spoilt for choice and pushed for time."

Aside from the fact that discounting on a scale which a psychologist would describe as self-harm means that certain titles are all but thrown in your face as you enter a Waterstone's, in case you should enter with your own arrogant ideas about what might make for a good read, the chain apparently thinks that being able to recommend books is some sort of secret shamanic talent, instead of the basic ability to be gauged when hiring booksellers. How little they would seem to think of their staff. How undermined those not in green must feel.

Sticks and stones

I had not been aware that Collins, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their first English dictionary, have been conducting a poll to find out which word it is that the British public would most like to see added. But the consultation period has now ended and the people have spoken, or at least uttered some sort of noise which might, in a kindly light, be viewed as the rudiments of language.

These sort of polls do tend to reveal worrying trends in our taste and judgement - Oasis as best band ever, The Lord of the Rings as best book, Boris Johnson for Major of London, anyone to win Big Brother rather than being shot immediately upon exiting the house - but on this occasion we have exceeded all expectations and come up with a 'winner' which frankly brings into question our long-held status as smartest species on the planet. Forget dolphins and bonobos: I think we're down to the level of earwigs or possibly some of the more intellectual varieties of moss.

For our winner is - and lacking the technological nous to embed some of drum roll into the text, I present without ceremony - 'meh'.

Meh. Meh? Meh! (No, it would seem punctuation doesn't make it any more palatable.) For the love of Jesus Christ and his tiny singing elves... could we not have come up with a word which isn't amongst the principal vocabulary of most farmyard animals?

Of all the glorious archaisms and neologisms which we might have chosen, we pick a word which the French, with their staunchly protectionist Académie française, don't even feel the need to coin. They just shrug, in that glorious Gallic fashion which brooks no debate, whether it be in relation to concerns about nuclear testing or the lack of a vegetarian option.

I'm not going to offer my own suggestions. Aside from the futility of it, I'm sure there are quite enough examples on this blog of wilful obscurantism in matters grandiloquent, of words lurking undisturbed in our linguistic backwaters. Instead, I shall be writing to the Secretary of State for Culture, or whatever nebulous department into which concern for our aesthetic well-being has been subsumed, recommending that the English language be confiscated from the British public until they have demonstrated themselves responsible enough to use it without tearing the entire fabric of our historic cultural milieu into tiny monosyllabic pieces.

All correspondence on this matter will therefore now be conducted solely in Latin, Aramaic or some sort of system involving flags.

A series of psychotic reviews

Even though I feel The White Tiger is a little slight as a Booker winner - and it does employ many of the same tricks as The Reluctant Fundamentalist on last year's shortlist - I don't think it undermines what I think this year's Prize has eloquently illustrated: 2008 has been a great year for fiction, with the lack of big names hogging the limelight allowing some new talent to impress itself upon the general public's goldfish consciousness.

But the proof copies of new titles are mounting up in piles which have already begun to teeter hazardously, so I thought I'd better start finding out how 2009 is likely to compare. I was tempted by Tim Gautreaux's The Missing, but getting that out would have been too much like a game of Jenga, so I began with Viking's big hope for the forthcoming year, Mr Toppit by Charles Elton.

Even the proofs reflect their grand ambitions: they have dust jackets, die-cut to reveal a detail of another design on the book itself. (Finished copies will be the same, except in hardback format.) There is a purpose to this exorbitance, however, because it is a book about a book, or rather a series of books.

So, the premise: Arthur Hayman was a writer of children's books, the five volumes of the Hayseed Chronicles, which are to become incredibly popular when championed by the American hospital radio presenter who tended him as he lay dying after a road accident. Their main character, Luke, is named after the writer's son, who is later to struggle to come to terms with the public's insistence on identifying him with his literary equivalent. The eponymous Mr Toppit is the baddie of the series, a malevolent omnipresence, who makes a first appearance in the enigmatic last line of the last book; he functions like a diametric opposite to Narnia's Aslan. Luke's discomfort echoes that of A A Milne's son, Christopher, and the furore surrounding the Hayseed Chronicles is modelled on Pottermania.

I don't really like to lay into books too often, especially first efforts, but it has two flaws: the characters and the plot.

As the book vacillates between various points in Luke's growing up, you would expect both he and the other central characters to display some sort of development in their personalities, but they are invariably one-dimensional. Luke himself is perpetually surly, never progressing beyond the functional uncommunicativeness of adolescence. His sister, Rachel, is dippy, easily led and impressed by glamour. Their mother, Martha, is numb and obstinate. Lila, the books' original illustrator, is insensitive and autistically monomaniacal. And Laurie, the American radio presenter, is clumsy in word and deed, caught up in the moment's tide.

It is Laurie, too, who is the weak link in terms of the plot. When the family return to their country home to prepare for Arthur's funeral, this stranger to them all comes along. It's utterly implausible. There's a muddy reference to the family's not objecting, but it seems such socially aggressive behaviour that meek Laurie can't be imagined imposing herself unchallenged. In the subsequent days, Martha dismisses intrusions on the family's grief with a distinct brusqueness on several occasions, but she never objects to Laurie.

Laurie's later progression from hospital radio volunteer to nationally-broadcast chat show host is glossed over in much the same way. It's too remarkable, and frankly unlikely, a development not to require some sort of explanation. And this is symptomatic of the plot throughout: Laurie, Luke and, more intermittently Rachel all turn up and do their narrative duty in isolation from any psychological context.

The plot's one heart-stopping revelation passes almost as an aside, as if all the participants are so wearily accustomed to their lots that it is meaningless. Maybe that's what was intended, but it does rather indicate that the plot itself is fairly directionless, a weak illustration of existential resignation. A poor book from which I feel it is my duty as a bookseller to usher you away.

Still, I don't think I need fear for I might have trampled the delicate flower of some blossoming talent: the author's a literary agent and therefore has the hide of a rhinoceros in leather trousers. My theory is that a great concept has got Penguin so excited that they're blind to the fact that its execution falls very short of its potential. It really is a bad book, so bad it ought to be sent to bed without any supper.

Tearing one book to pieces has given me a vandal's adrenaline surge. So shall we trash another one? I'll probably regret it in the morning, but let's not let ourselves be inhibited in the moment.

The book is Michelle Richmond's No One You Know, due next June as part of Ebury's first big fiction year. It's her first to be published in the UK, but in the US, it's been her mystifyingly well-received fourth, I believe.

It's a thriller, in which Ellie confides all her sorrows to her tutor, Andrew Thorpe, following the murder of her sister, Lila, only to find that he has been accumulating material for a book on the murder case. In it, he reveals his main suspect for the crime, Peter McConnell. When he is acquitted, Ellie is bereft. She has been betrayed by a man she thought was her rock, she has lost her only, very dear sibling, her parents' marriage has crumbled and she doesn't even have the hollow satisfaction of justice. For some time she monitors McConnell, observing him from the far side of the restaurant where he always eats, but eventually he disappears.

Many years later, as a coffee buyer travelling to Nicaragua, she stumbles across him. He had been with Lila on the night she disappeared. The two of them had been working for some time on a solution to a famous mathematical conundrum, Goldbach's Conjecture - and McConnell, it later transpires, succeeded in doing so, although that implausible outcome seems to be permitted to allow McConnell to pay tribute to Lila - and were having an affair. This additional disgrace costs McConnell his family and flees to seclusion in the realm of mathematical theory. He protests his innocence and Ellie is persuaded that the guilty party is still to be identified. She finds Thorpe again and investigates some of the minor players whom Thorpe passed over in his version of Lila's life and death.

The overall story works well enough, even if the narrative is rather too simple to satisfy as a whodunit of any species. But there are some plot points which don't ring true, some inconsequential, some fundamental. An example of the former occurs on Ellie's first buying trip: although she has a couple of years' experience as a coffee taster, it is supposedly a remarkable revelation to her that it takes 2000 coffee cherries to produce a pound of coffee. And, more reprehensibly, an example of the latter would Ellie's complete failure to comment on, or even notice, Thorpe's constant note-taking when she talks to him about her sister's murder. I started jotting these incongruities down, because at the time I thought I might be missing something, but I stopped after seventy or so pages when it became clear that the book was fundamentally flawed, or at least carelessly edited.

When the final twist came, I presumed that it was a red herring, as there were still over fifty pages to read, but instead it just wound down over almost a sixth of the book. It made me think of Bartledan, the emotionless planet in Douglas Adams' Mostly Harmless, where all novels finish after exactly 100,000 words, even if that occurs mid-sentence.

I think I should go a little way to undoing the damage that I have wrought by highlighting a decent book. As a bookseller, I can hardly send people away without recommending something. So Ten Storey Love Song by Richard Milward, published by Faber in April, is bloody marvellous. Reading in the blurb that he'd written it in the form of one continuous paragraph - it's nearly 300 pages - nearly put me off, but the book both justifies the effect and makes the most of it.

Its characters live in a run-down council block, all living lives of drugs, violence and false hope. Some of the cruder opening scenes were uncomfortably like much of Irvine Welsh's Filth - a book as dire as Trainspotting is sublime - but it's a book full of nuance and wit, allowing its characters' true natures to chivvy the plot along with just enough impetus to reach a cathartically moving conclusion.

By the way, it's his second book, he's twenty-three and the film rights to his first have just been bought by Hollywood. And he's nice, utterly lovely in fact. Tch!

On the subject of new talent, I've found it disappointing that so much new radio comedy over the last couple of years has been so turgid and clunking, the first Laura Solon series and most episodes of Ed Reardon's Week aside, that my ears were fair twitching with pleasure on hearing Radio 7's 15-minute sketch show on Sundays, A Series of Psychotic Episodes.

It's a little raw in its both writing and presentation, but the humour is so sharply original that it seems apparent already that its writer, Miriam Elia, is going to be a star (or at least constantly passed over by commissioning editors in favour of supposedly 'edgy' attention-seeking dross). Episodes are available for the time being on the BBC website and it's worth a listen for, amongst my favourites, the sketch 'Postmodern Pat and his Abstract Cat' and this wonderful line:

Were you born in the eighties? Then you may be entitled to compensation.

ηὕρηκα

Harry Potter En Die Towenaar Se Steen

I've been exploring Borders' website, to see what their relaunch has to offer. One new feature is their Spookily Accurate Book Suggestor.

They have the same problem as Amazon, at least with fiction, in that most of their suggestions are books by the same author, particularly when straying even slightly from the mainstream. Hunger by Knut Hamsen, for instance, produced a list of his other books, with a couple of plays by Ibsen for good measure.

The oddest result came when I entered Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, paperback edition. It responded with five suggestions: Chamber of Secrets in hardback, Philosopher's Stone on CD, Half-Blood Prince on cassette, one of the series - perhaps the first, but I couldn't say with any certainty - in Afrikaans and, finally, most surreally, The Story of Jazz by Franck Bergerot and Arnaud Merlin.

I think I'll go back to the endearingly ill-conceived storycode.co.uk. It may suggest The Poisonwood Bible every single time, but at least it's a good suggestion.

I've just read a debut coming-of-age novel by Peter Murphy, John the Revelator. I'm wary of such books, as so many of them are thinly disguised autobiographies, the sort of novels which one would hope a good writer might get out of his system and then place in a drawer, there to lie undisturbed until death and a publisher's scraping around for enlightening juvenalia. But Murphy is Faber's 'distinctive new voice' for spring and will be present at a new authors' party in a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd see if the book did indeed "brilliantly evoke all the frustrations and pent-up energy of parochial adolescence", as the blurb claims.

I duly ticked off the usual list: a lack of parental understanding, a charismatically rebellious friend, a knowing adult who appears genie-like when required to dispense advice, drunken adventures gone awry and unsolicited fantasy sex with a beautiful older woman. The trouble is that, beyond this, one is left only with some strange dreams involving a particularly sinister crow. The writing's good, I'll concede, really remarkably assured in fact, with some nice phrasing and switches of pace, but that's not quite enough: he's not John Banville.

I’ve also been reading Belching out the Devil by Mark Thomas, which exposes the world's most recognised brand - Coca-Cola if you hadn't guessed - as a company keen enough on profits to wash their hands of all manner of corporate impropriety, starting with turning a blind eye to guerrilla assassination of Union members in Colombia and not really getting any less horrific in any later chapter.

Now, I'm not naive enough to imagine that the moral footprint of my comfortable western lifestyle doesn't have its cloven aspect, but I feel that I'm learning about the realities of capitalism and making my choices accordingly. And what I don't do is stand in the way of justice or fairness. Coca-Cola do, to make more money. They want their brand to stand for American values and so we perceive that it does. But we don't look closely enough at how they interpret those values. They don't stand for opportunity and freedom, but for exploitation and control, and modern capitalism doesn't really distinguish.

Nestlé's new Munch Bunch advert sees them up to their usual dissembling too. A portion of their yoghurt, the ad garishly proclaims, provides a child's entire daily calcium requirement. But it says in tiny print at the bottom of the screen that 'one portion' is two pots. And on the website, I can't find the disclaimer at all.

Now, I know that's fairly minor sin in the annals of corporate deceit, but it does exemplify the willingness of big business to use legislation introduced to curb their excesses to claim that they are entirely compliant with society's wishes not be misled. Technically, they might be right, but morally, a term which is of course unquantifiable, it's perhaps worse than just lying in the first place.

It's just the same with their infamous baby milk misdemeanours, the principal reason why I boycott Nestlé. Once the problem was exposed, they assured the world that their sales reps would be retrained and that African mothers would not be told that formula was better than breast milk. When an undercover reporter revealed that it was still happening, they were able to claim that rogue agents were disobeying head office instructions. The number of agents involved suggests this is implausible, but on paper, they're off the hook....

Some months ago I spoke with a journalist who played a part in exposing Gap factories in the far East as using child labour. Gap immediately terminated business with the offending supplier. Did they know about it before the newspaper splash, I asked. I was told that of course they did and that if there were others they probably knew but wouldn't do anything about it until the next scandal, at which point they could again throw up their hands in horror and prove themselves to be the responsible international investors they hope we all believe them to be. And the worst thing is, I wasn't shocked.

How is it that we have allowed the technicalities of our legal corpus to define what is right and wrong? It is at the behest of big business and companies such as Nestlé and Gap now hold more political power than any government. (Speaking of which, how can any MP defend with a straight face a system with enough loopholes to allow Margaret Beckett to spend £2000 on the garden of her heavily subsidised second home, to pick just one of many - admittedly disturbingly Richard 'hell-in-a-handcart' Littlejohnesque - examples? Do they not understand that we don't care whether or not the rules allow it; what we object to is that she's blatantly taking the piss.)

It's probably unwise to lay into Nestlé or Gap on this blog. They strike me as the litigious type - multinational corporations seem to have much the same attitude to quelling dissent as mediaeval monarchs – and they can probably afford better lawyers than I.

Oh sod it, who cares? Let's go for broke. MacDonalds serve BSE-infected spinal cords in baps and Catherine Zeta Jones keeps her youthful looks by drinking the blood of enslaved orphans.

Meanwhile, Marks & Spencer appear to have hit upon the idea of using the insufferable Piers Morgan, in full-on smug mode, as the voice of their latest advertising campaign: "It's my opinion, and therefore a fact...". The boycott starts here.

Champagne socialisers

Finagling my way into the Booker Prize shortlist party this week, held at the V&A, I was disappointed at quite how corporate an affair it was. Unlike last year, where authors, editors and booksellers engaged in earnest discussion of the fortunate six, the hall was largely filled with guests of Man Booker plc and I heard rather more talk of the credit crunch than literature.

Still, everyone seemed to obey the little signs on all the statues requesting that we not leave our drinks on them and I saw no canapés ground into things which probably probably require a little more care than just the cool wash and a cupful of fabric conditioner.

The evening was one which now affords little opportunity for name-dropping, although I did chat briefly with Ben Okri, who proved himself to be an astute commentator on the British publishing industry. His last novel, Starbook, was one of the earliest fiction titles on Random House's Ebury imprint, which had hitherto focussed on fairly undemanding lifestyle non-fiction. He said that his reason for entrusting his book to them was that he felt that established literary imprints don't know how to promote their books to a general public indifferent to good writing. Perhaps this is why Pan Macmillan are apparently looking for someone relatively young to run Picador.

I reckon, however, it is retailers who are principally to blame, particularly Waterstones. They cram the front of their shops with 3-for-2s, all promoted at the publishers' expense, and claim this demonstrates their commitment to range bookselling. I imagine they'd be happiest if this was all they sold: it would certainly eliminate the expense of maintaining backlist and employing experienced booksellers.

Other than Ben Okri, the only writer I spotted was one of last year's shortlisted authors, Indra Sinha, prowling unmolested about the place like a depressed big cat. Animal's People fared poorly compared to the rest of the shortlist; sales don't even seem to have afforded him a new pair of sandals, as I'm sure his gnarly toes were poking out of the same pair last year.

All in all, the evening was poor reflection of the enthusiasm of the trade for this year's delightfully unpredictable shortlist. Michael Portillo spoke with more sincere passion than I ever remember him doing in the Commons and it was a disheartening to see with what little interest his speech was attended compared to the endless champagne.

Waiting for the bus home, when I'm wasn't keeping a wary eye on the mammoth rats charging about the undergrowth in the front garden of the house next to my stop, afforded me a nice opportunity for some inter-chapter people-watching. As someone with distinctly limited sartorial instincts, I do sometimes find myself marvelling at the extraordinary apparel of others. I'm not yet enough of an ageing curmudgeon to scoff at what those twenty years younger than me choose to wear and indeed I do find myself reflecting that I've probably missed my chance now to dress with the flamboyance and individuality which is probably an indulgence open largely to the young.

Others, however, would seem not to concur. String vest and bovver boots with tattoos seeping across the forearms are a regular enough outfit, but to see them on a man of pensionable age is distinctly incongruous. I've never been a fan of camouflage patterning, of either the khaki variety or the monochrome urban palette, both because of its connotations and its sheer ugliness, but the latest variation is just comical: trousers with the familiar splotches, but in pinks and purples. Summer fruits camouflage would describe it best, I think. The black shellsuit with metallic silver paisley motif, especially when matched with loafers - never trust a man in loafers - and one of those peculiarly sculpted moustacheless beards which frame the face deserved an award, or at least a grant from an appropriate fund.

But the royal blue satin hooded gown I saw this week was so baffling a choice only the prompt arrival of the bus prevented me from engaging the man sporting it in conversation. I assume he was either a former boxer too broke to update his wardrobe or an official from the sort of organisation presided over by David Icke.

My own crimes against fashion have been musical this week. A little timewarp concentrated on my corner of north London has resulted in repeated airings of my collection of Lynyrd Skynyrd LPs, picked up from the Camden Record Exchange at a time when their stock consisted almost entirely of discarded copies of No Jacket Required.

I blame this brief nostalgic outburst on Susie Boyt, whose account of her obsession with Judy Garland proved surprisingly engaging, especially to someone like me who tends to view musicals as little better than a gross offence against public order. My Judy Garland Life is a perfect example of how any subject can be made fascinating by an elegant writer with a passion. My defences were down, therefore, and I can only be thankful that this wavering of my critical faculties didn't escalate into a desire to listen to Whitesnake again.