The Rooster is my newsletter. There are recommendations behind the paywall at the end of the post. This week I’m talking about two brilliant books that I have just read, an album that provides perfect musical accompaniment for the HEATWAVE and a piece of writing that has provided me with an essential lesson on parenting… If you want to upgrade your subscription you can do so here.
I have just put the phone down after a conversation with my editor. My novel The Fox is done lads. The final edits are in. The cover has been approved, the pre-proofs have been set in motion, the list of recipients for proofs created. There is nothing left to do now but slowly start talking to people about the book, and then await peoples reactions to reading it. I’m excited to be able to tell you all about it very soon.
And now that the book is finished, I spin on my swivel chair, towards the decks, and start downloading tunes for my first festival set at the end of the month. Honestly the way my work turns on its head at this time is kind of hilarious. There’s always a slightly discombobulating feeling in the switch, but sometimes, especially after a long period of writing, the jump from novel-writing to dance music feels like a relief. The music excites a different part of my brain. I can sort of relax into the familiarity of it. I’ll be playing AVA festival in Belfast next week. I haven’t done a proper young persons ravey festival in so long and I’m psychologically preparing myself for standing in front of thousands of fist pumping teenagers with their tops off, as a forty seven year old Mother of two. I never prepared for DJing to teenagers as a mother of a teenager. I’m not sure how to do this. Who am I to them now? Essentially an old woman. Who are they to me? Young lads who I am concerned may have taken too much Ketamine. How will this set work out? I’m hoping the music will make it all make sense.
I don’t know if it’s the sunshine but something has flipped in my brain. I want to start saying yes more. May has been frantic, with lots of short trips and because of the compulsion towards yes, a lot of firsts.
It started with a ceramics class from my neighbour, which came as a result of deciding, once and for all, to have my neighbours over for Christmas drinks. It turns out I have a badass American divorce neighbour who is a photographer and ceramicist. I loved sitting at the wheel, pumping the pedal with my foot and having to exercise all my strength to push and hold in the clay with my hands as it spun. I fucked up many times. I left with clay all over me. But for an hour I thought of nothing but the feel of the clay in my hands. I loved it.
I am renting an office for the first time. It’s just an experiment, for a few months. I’ve been hating the feeling of being left behind in the mornings. Of standing in the kitchen looking around at the mess. Some part of me has to has to clean the kitchen before I can pursue my work. Then I go upstairs and end up tidying my bedroom. Then with my backpack on my back, I bring the laundry basket downstairs on my way to my desk, and as I’m passing the washing machine I put on a load of washing on and because there’s stuff in the dryer I take it out and I fold it, then I put it away and before I know it there’s an hour of my working day gone. Lost in the domestic vortex! Is this just me? Do you do this if you work from home? I get cross with T. It’s not fair that he can just walk out the door and leave it all behind. For the last three weeks I have been able to walk out the door with him. To leave the dirty dishes in the sink and step out into the sunshine to my own space. A repurposed shipping container by some train tracks. I have a little cupboard full of snacks. A bluetooth speaker. I’m in my element.
I went to Venice for the Biennale. The Venice Biennale is the world’s most prominent art festival. They call it the art olympics. It consists of a huge central exhibition organised by an invited curator and accompanied by dozens of shows staged by countries in national pavilions. I had been asked to DJ at the launch party for the Irish artist Isobel Nolan’s exhibition Dreamshook. I took T. We walked around sort of gobsmacked by the beauty of it all. The opal water, which Cancerian swimming enthusiast here really had to resist from jumping in to, the architecture, stopping off to look into the fringe pavilions, art everywhere! And the people, jaysus, could have watched the people all day. All these arty types wearing bonkers clothes. A lot of hoof shoes. A lot of Issey Miyake. Colour blocking. Evening wear as day wear. I was obsessed.
Just a few days before the Biennale opened, all four judges of the Biennale walked out on the grounds that it did not want to give awards to artists from countries whose leaders were facing charges of crimes against humanity by the international criminal court. They were talking about Israel and Russia, both of whom were facilitated with pavilion spaces and allowed to exhibit this year. We saw a poster by the Art Not Genocide Alliance advertising a march and on a hot Friday afternoon, we joined it. There was something immensely comforting about travelling across Europe and finding people angry and frustrated, shouting in Italian, waving their Palestinian flags. The world is still trying, still pleading, still protesting for the rights of Palestinian people. Some with direct action, some in choosing what not to do. The Eurovision had its lowest viewing figures ever in the UK this year. If you live in Ireland you already know that RTE, the station that usually broadcasts the Eurovision, broadcast an episode of Father Ted instead. Five countries boycotted altogether. Boycotting works.
On Saturday night we heard that Venice was playing a match in the stadium up the road. We queued up at the ticket booth to buy last minute tickets. In the queue we met two excitable Finnish men who had come all the way from Helsinki to see their beloved Palermo play against Venezia FC. None of us knew when the tickets were going to run out so we every time the person at the front of the queue got a ticket there were noisy celebrations from the Finns. When they managed to secure their own it was as if they themselves had won the Series B league. The game was electric. Venizia is apparently the most fashionable club in Europe. Drake is in investor. And a Canadian company have invested over 100 million dollars. So there is a new stadium soon and a new league, the Series A which they’ve just been promoted into, but we were lucky to see them in their home stadium, the Pier Luigi Penzo Stadium, famous for its location right on the water. Walking along the sea at sunset, then crossing a lagoon to get to the stadium was really something.
Then last weekend I went on my first trip away with my football club. I was shy about this at first. I’m used to being in control. When I go away to work I have a tour manager, or a manager, or a close friend who I can turn to for company. I have no best friends at my club. I show up and practise then leave quickly after, apart from a few times when I’ve managed to carve out an extra hour to go for pints after Sunday games. Going to Mallorca for three nights, felt wildly intimidating for many reasons. But I went. And when I got there I discovered quickly that there wasn’t much football, just one prolonged session on Friday night in which we played six games of ten minutes each and lost four of them. It was five a side. My god it’s intense. And exhausting! The rest of it was a piss up. I made the decision to lean in. On Saturday at 9pm after a day of pints around the pool I was doing Tik Tok dances to Rihanna on a hotel balcony. Fast forward five hours later and I’m DJ-ing from the computer behind the bar, at an establishment called ‘Infinity’ ordering everyone to sashay down an invisible catwalk whilst I Played En Vogue Don’t Let Go. ( Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it). It has taken three days in all to get over the body poisoning of tequila, raspberry shots and european marlborough lights. But I’m glad I said yes.
The next thing on the YES agenda is my thirty year school reunion. This is normally the type of event that would make me want to run for the hills but I am going with my oldest friends, one of whom I have known since I was four years old. We are all in it together. I have asked in advance if we can be provided with name tags so I don’t have to go through the agonising performance of trying to remember people’s names as I’m standing right in front of them. Who knows what it will bring? I am looking at it as a sort of memory experiment. Maybe there will be new stories from my blurred past! Mortifying teenage anecdotes! Time will tell.
A quick reminder for the next London Irish Literary Salon happening on 25 June, with Wendy Erskine (author of The Benefactors which is longlisted for the Women’s Prize this year) and Eimear McBride whose debut novel A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing won the Womens Prize For Fiction back in 2014 and whose fourth novel The City Changes It’s Face came out last year. Music will be provided by Joshua Burnside. You can get your tickets here
Behind the paywall this month.. two books that I have LOVED reading recently, a new band to fall in love with, and an essential lesson I have learned about parenting..
My book The Fox has been bought internationally, and one of the countries it will be published in is Italy. The publishing company is Europa. when I asked my writer friends about Europa, is it good? should I sign with them? every single person said,
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Changes with Annie Macmanus to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.