“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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12 March 2016

DEADLY INTRAWEB WARS IN ORGANIC LAND

For its increasing tendency to bully me, I gently exiled a young huntsman spider from my kitchen last night. Half an hour later, I found it attacking my pet orb spider, which is a true gourmandiser, and spins a huge web from my back door to the tank.

It was tricky catching focus as the web moved in the breeze, but that stupid huntsman really seemed to think it could slay and devour the orb. I watched for about ten minutes, went back in to stir my broth, and came back to find the aggressor thoroughly bound.

Within a few minutes, the tightened parcel was little more than a ball of silk oozing a sort of black caviar froth, all the easier guzzled, I imagine, after the orb's deadly mushing enzymes had turned its dinner's gizzards to drink. Spider champagne. This is typical of the sort of violence you'll find in the neighbourhood once you've turned the industrial petrochem regime off in favour of a bug-friendly organic ecology. Sure saves the Mortein.

Sorry I couldn't get a better one of this feast ... too much flapping of the web in the breeze for crisp focus ... before sunrise that huge web was gone, along with any sign of the repast ... but it'll be back on tonight ... my orb's a glutton ... photos©Philip White

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