Last night I met one of the major heroes of my adolescence. Irvine Welsh.
He was in Bristol signing copies of his new book Crime, so off I went to see him.
Reading Trainspotting as a 14-year-old absolutely blew me away. A lot of people, swayed by the media outrage from the usually reserved British media, decided it was an appalling work devoid of any merit and should be banished immediately, lest the Nation's youth all started injecting heroin before the credits had rolled as far as Robert Carlyle's name.
Now I won't attempt a ham-fisted review here but, suffice to say, the dark and savage humour impressed me hugely. And nearly 12 years on I've still got pristine veins in my inner elbow. Go figure.
Last night he read a passage from his new book, quite nervously I thought. But then again he's an author not an acTOR, so probably doesn't read to audiences on a day-to-day basis. I was hoping he would field some questions afterwards, but unfortunately he went straight to the book signing.
It was a bit disappointing there were no questions, but at the end of the day at least I shook the hand which created Francis Begbie.
To be honest, the best bit of the evening was shoplifting the book he signed for me. And it was called Crime. Ho ho.
In other news, I've furnished myself with a new car and will hopefully be driving it to the North of England this weekend. Is anyone going to be around for some lower grade crushing etc?
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Don't have any set plans for the weekend yet, but will certainly be out both days. Maybe a trad day Sunday could be in order, but it depends on what Fi is keen for as she has a rare weekend off.
I used to feel the same about Welsh and read all of his up to Filth which I struggled to finish. Seemed like Welsh by numbers, just knocked another one out. Murakami suffers from the same issue.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'd be so into that Welsh stuff now, what I'd think if I came to them new or even reread them. I see it as part of my adolescence.
The only one that stands up to rereading is Trainspotting.
Because it's amost a series of stand alone stories, some of which I reckon I've read more than ten times over the years, it's a good one just to dip into.
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