“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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29 October 2015

ADVANTAGES OF NOT DRIVING

Back when I drove on the public roads, I thought about motorcycles and cars too much. I was/am a total petrolhead. I wanted to design them, and drew them all the time at school. I was obsessed by what could be done with the Volkswagen Beetle. This one's from my 1973 notebook. It playfully forecasts the Bugatti Veyron 22 years before VW built one. 

I couldn't drive slow and was wicked dwuggled on the holy water, so I removed my license from myself about '88. If I was half done I'd insist on sleeping on the couch or floor or getting a cab or a hotel but if I was really walking with the King I'd be going sideways up some stupid back track at ridiculous speed with a carload of screamers. That had to stop, and my desire for intoxication wasn't about to, so I rolled one up, drank a bottle of malt and watched my license expire. 

Living in the country without a license or public transport takes some planning, but the great advantage is there are no shops and you can't shop impulsively, meaning you don't need so much money. You become very much more aware of packaging, too. Watch that carbon footprint shrink! And the roads are a damn lot safer. They should pay me to stay off them. I don't have TV either: never owned one. Just sayin'. Quaint, eh?

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