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James Kelman |
James Kelman - The ‘boy’ from Glasgow who became a writer at the library-
John Gulliver
CRITICS have described James Kelman as one of Britain’s most original writers but you’d never think that when you’re in his presence.
There’s no side to him, nothing precious.
I have often met all kinds of writers praised to the skies, but behind the smile and the laugh you know that it’s all a bit of a front.
You’ll find out so much so don’t expect anything more, their eyes tell you.
But with Kelman I sensed immediately I was meeting the inner man when he came towards me in a little Stroud Green bookshop on Thursday where friends were gathered for a talk on his widely praised new novel, Kieron Smith, Boy – the story, in his own words, of a little boy growing up on a new estate in Glasgow.
His arm extended for a handshake, Kelman was smiling. “I feel so embarrassed,” he said “because I haven’t replied.”
He looked genuinely embarrassed. I had emailed him recently asking him to review a book by another eminent Scottish novelist, Archie Hinds.
There were around 15 men and women in the New Beacon bookshop, mostly black Caribbean.
Later, in the criss-cross of conversation with an interviewer, Roxy Harris, who lectures at King’s College, London University, Kelman recalled how he became a writer. He left school at 15, worked at a printing firm and then as a building labourer in the late 1960s on the then Barbican site. By accident, he came across Holborn Library in Theobalds Road where he “took two books” and discovered the world of literature. “That’s when I decided to become a writer,” he said.
Motioning towards Professor Gus John in the audience, he said he first met John, who was once Hackney’s director of education, at a demonstration in Edinburgh in the 1980s over the murder of an immigrant. He showed another side when he said he had launched his Booker Prize-winning novel, How Late it Was, How Late, in 1993 at another protest meeting, this time over the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Roxy joined in recalling how Kelman had left the Booker Prize gala evening before the party ended, to meet Stephen Lawrence’s parents at another meeting, and how he was followed by uncomprehending press officers and bigwigs in black ties and smart suits, none of whom knew anything about the racist murder.
They were out of their depth, and couldn’t talk to Mr and Mrs Lawrence.
But Kelman was at home with his type of people.
He also touched on the big theme of his writing life – how to enter the character of the downtrodden, the poor, dismissed by the literary set as inarticulate, and give them life. To Kelman, language has been “colonised” by the establishment through standard English and he recalled how Trinidad writer Sam Selvon had set out to do the same in the 1960s. Kelman isn’t the first to go here – DH Lawrence was perhaps among the first – and he won’t be the last. But he’s probably gone further than anyone else.
And more than that he’s still, at 62, unassuming, ordinary, and if you met him in the street you’d think he was a worker, and that’s how he would like to be thought of.
These £1m NHS roadshows are a ‘sham’ operation
I GOT a shock when I entered the large room at St Pancras Hospital.
I was expecting to see a crowd of people buzzing around anxious to find out about the latest plan dreamt up by Lord Darzi, a super surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.
But there were only two people there – a retired GP from West Hampstead, and a consultant from a Camden hospital.
Where were the hordes of people the organisers Camden and Islington Primary Care Trust had expected?
“I hope you’re not going to write about this?” an anxious member of the PCT asked me. I nodded. It didn’t seem important at the time.
Since then I have been following news briefs in the papers about similar “consultation exercises” elsewhere in London and decided there was as little interest elsewhere as in Camden.
You can’t blame the public. You cannot expect them to rush to the nearest public hall for a glimpse of a new NHS plan as soon as they see an advertisement in the local paper. But that, foolishly, is what PCTs expected. Or did they? Maybe, these exercises were all a con. Perhaps, PCTs were only going through the motions of consultation just to satisfy the politicians.
This week, though, the London NHS announced with a fanfare of spin that 51 per cent of Londoners were in favour of the Darzi plan to abolish small GP practices and replace them with super polyclinics serviced by 20 or more GPs.
Inquisitively, I asked the NHS spokesman: “Fifty-one per cent – 51 per cent of what?”
Out came the statistics. He said 4,000 members of the public had visited 37 “roadshows” in London, and 20,000 had visited their website.
That didn’t sound all that many people, even though the “roadshows” had cost more than £1 million.
So only 24,000 people had taken part in the poll. If the London mayoral elections had attracted a similar low poll it would have had to be cancelled!
My cynicism is shared by Dr Stephen Amiel, a GP at the Caversham Surgery in Kentish Town, and chairman of the borough’s medical committee.
“As far as I am concerned, the consultation was a sham,” he told me. “It’s a pathetic response when you consider the millions of people the changes are going to affect. The vast majority of responses were from people in the health system. To argue that 51 per cent are in favour is a complete distortion. If doctors claimed a drug was effective based on these figures they would be laughed out of court.”
He claimed NHS London had already made up their mind.
A medical lobby group yesterday (Wednesday) released findings from its own survey claiming seven out of 10 patients had not even heard of the consultation and 57 per cent of people did not know what a polyclinic was.
But Richard Sumray, chairman of the London joint committee of PCTs, is sticking to the spin.
“The response from the consultation was positive, both in terms of numbers of responses, and the views that were expressed,” he said stoically.
Sumray, a former Camden Labour councillor, who has been knocking about London politics for 30 years, would say that, wouldn’t he?
Pettigrew has day on big screen
WORD reaches me that a film of an out-of-print novel written in the 1930s is doing rather well Stateside as a film – and it is partly thanks to a small book-seller in Bloomsbury.
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day was rediscovered and reprinted by the independent women’s fiction book shop Persephone in Lambs Conduit Street. They found the obscure novel by Newcastle-born author Winifred Watson, liked it, and ran off some copies.
The tale tells of how Pettigrew, a rather frumpy middle-aged governess, is sent to the wrong address on an assignment and hooks up with glamorous socialite Delysia la Fosse, leading to a series of rather magical adventures.
The film, starring Amy Adams and Frances McDormand, has already grossed around $12 million in America and won rave reviews. Let’s hope it’s released this side of the Pond soon.
Ode to beloved high-flying Bluebirds
WITH his team now heading for Wembley for the FA Cup Final against Portsmouth, 85-year-old poet Dannie Abse, one of Cardiff City’s oldest fans, has written a special ode to celebrate his team’s giant-killing cup run.
But despite being a huge Bluebirds fan he remains pessimistic about the Wembley clash with Premier League Portsmouth, which is perhaps why he describes his poem as “something of a prayer.”
Dannie, who will watch the match on TV at his home in Hodford Road, Golders Green, adds: “I think Cardiff’s chances are small. The last time they were in the Cup Final was in 1927 when I was in my pram – and they won 1-0. So we shall see.”
Dannie remembers being lifted through the crowds at the age of eight to the pitchside seats at the Grange End for a better view. “In those days, when unemployment was rife, they let injured World War One soldiers in on the touchline to watch for nothing,” he remembers.
“And they’d let jobless men from the valleys in too. Football is like improvised theatre and if you love it, you love it.
“I remember the song Happy Days Are Here Again was always played before City came on to the pitch, which struck me as being a bit ironic since we always seemed to lose!”
Dannie played football in his youth before training as a doctor and coming to live in Hampstead.
“I was an inside forward,” he said with a laugh. “I could dribble. And I still dribble a bit now.” |
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