Thora Stardust

[cosmolinguist]

Paul Magrs's David Bowie song in the style of Alan Bennett caused much delight on a little corner of the internet today. Andrew tells me I'd like it a lot more if I liked Bowie and thus knew how well it captures the song.

I was happy to read it as a story whose ending surprised me, though; I never heat enough about old northern women and I already like this author talking about them. (Some new Brenda and Effie stories have been done as audiobooks, read by Anne Reid which delights me because I loved her in Last Tango in Halifax, where of course she plays an old northern lady.)

Anyway, seeing conversation going on about this on Facebook, and having nothing to add to this particularly because I'm a philistine when it comes to David Bowie, I could only echo the "please write more if this!" and (marveling at how odd it is to be able to so directly speak to someone I know primarily as a teller of stories that bring me joy; living in the future has its upsides!) I threw in a "can we have more Mrs. Hudson on the Utopia too?"

Mrs. Hudson on the Utopia is another little story in one of Paul Magrs's blog posts. This one features the aforementioned Mrs. Hudson -- Sherlock Holmes's housekeeper (more old women!) -- and...well, to tell you what other familiar character appears would give away too much, but suffice it to say the story was great fun and I was only sorry there wasn't more of it.

They were avid for details of what it must have been like, keeping house for “the Great Man himself”, as they styled him. Well, I could have told them a tale or two about the messy and dirty circumstances in which that Great Man liked to languish, given half a chance. I could have told them about gunshots and smashed windows in the early watches of the night. But I thought – why bother? I don’t need the friendship of this gaggle of nosey parkers. I am on this trip to find a new life. Not to dwell upon the vicissitudes of the old.

And, through the magic of facebook, I got a speedy reply to my cheeky demand: "Holly, that's the start of a novel. It's all done. Watch this space." Hooray!

So I'm telling you all now to read the little stories, and if you like those I think you'll like the Brenda and Effie stories, and maybe by then you'll be as excited as me about this new novel.

Comments

[newandrewhickey.livejournal.com]

What I love is that almost every detail is actually from the Bowie song, but it gives a *VERY* different feeling to it all.

The Bowie lyrics, since you don't know them:
Pushing through the market square
so many mothers sighing
News had just come over,
we had five years left to cry in

News guy wept and told us
earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
then I knew he was not lying

I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.'s
My brain hurt like a warehouse
it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things
to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people

A girl my age went off her head
hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them

A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheel of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest
and a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
don't think you knew you were in this song

And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We've got five years, that's all we've got

[cosmolinguist]

Blech. Turns out, if there's an impending apocalypse, I'd much rather hear about it from Alan Bennett than David Bowie. (To no one's surprise, I'm sure. I'd pretty definitively already nailed my colors to that mast, I think.)

[newandrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Me too. Of course, Bowie's song is just to set up the story (such as it is) of Ziggy, but I always thought it was mawkish and overwrought (though I love the album as a whole). I think it's absolutely wonderful, though, the way everything is paralleled and subverted in Paul's story, so "I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk" becomes:

"‘Hello Thora,’ I said. ‘Remember me?’ And you gave me an awkward little peck on the cheek ...

We set about waiting for the bus together, and she said, ‘All the timetables will have gone to pot due to the impending end of the world.’ and I said, ‘I expect you’re right. Shall we just walk?’ And she said, ‘I suppose we might as well.’ "

It's quite ridiculously clever.