Because some of you live in the Metro Vancouver area, but don’t necessarily check the Atomic Fez web-site, here’s a duplication of the event announcement over there.

• What: Launching an Independent Publishing House: Fab or Folly?
• Who: The Shebeen Club and Atomic Fez Publishing
• When: Monday, June 15^TH, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
• Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 212 Carrall Street in Gastown
• Details: $15 cash only, includes dinner and one drink (pint). No minors, please.
• Facebook Event Page: it’s got pictures and things, also a map; RIGHT HERE
• Blather: follows

MEET THE NAÏVE PROPRIETOR

The proprietor of Atomic Fez Publishing will engage the public in an all singing, all dancing event at The Shebeen Whisky House behind the Irish Heather Gastro-Pub in Vancouver’s Gastown district.

Ian Alexander Martin is expected to discuss his reasoning behind beginning a Small Press Publishing house in these days of financial turmoil which have seen several international houses drastically scale back their structures, frequently closing sub-imprints and selling off their intellectual assets like so much scrap iron. Likewise, when even local publisher Raincoast Books scales downsize their operation following the completion of the ‘Harry Potter…’ series, is there any point in trying to enter the market?

Additional topics will include:

• why be a small-press publisher if you’re not also a writer?
• what sort of books does Atomic Fez select?
• the answer to the question “dead tree books or electronic books” is “YES!”
• whither the future of independent bookshop?
• why can’t people buy any small-press books at Chapters or Smith’s
• why shouldn’t authors just self-publish and go straight to the readers and their money?
• just how insane are you?

Come and hear a 20-minute talk about what Mr. Martin’s approaches are, and what he thinks the state of publishing is today. A question and answer session with follow the presentation after a short break.

ABOUT THE NAÏVE PROPRIETOR

For three years Ian Alexander Martin was a Director in Humdrumming, Limited — a very tiny publishing company registered in England & Wales — during the last ten months of which was acting as President and C.E.O., Managing and Editorial Director, plus also being responsible for the contracting, editing, typesetting, publishing, and marketing of twenty different titles. Meanwhile, Humdrumming continually earned the respect and admiration of writers and readers alike, as well as seven ‘short-list’ nominations from the prestigious British Fantasy Society’s annual awards (and more to come in a few months).

In addition to the above, Mr. Martin has previously been an arts journalist; editor; professional photographer; photo-finishing store owner; web-site designer and consultant; theatre actor and director, as well as being the Founding Editor and Publisher of the theatre web-zine The Boards. If you had told him at the turn of the millennium that he would have accomplished these things, he would have laughed so hard he would have been physically ill at your feet.

He lives in Burnaby with his wife and two cats, all three of whom frequently succeed in dragging him kicking and screaming from the computer keyboard.

Early early early leaving. Alarm at 5:45… ow. One had only barely got used to the time zone and now I’m up at an un-godly hour? Brrrrrgggggg…

Dress, shove the last things in the cases, descend to lobby and do the “rapid check-out” by tossing my key and form in a slot in the front desk, and I’m out the door to locate a taxi… which immediately presents itself. Huzzah!

On the way to Paddington Station [not the one on the left, that’s St. Pancras], we discuss the much over-discussed Economic Situation and the need to stick it out. He’s been driving a taxi for 24 years, and worked through the last recession; now he’s married 16 years and is continuing to continue as before, with the benefit of experience to show the way again. This ought to be good, and the thought in one’s mind is that perhaps it’ll be of assistance to one’s own business is tenuously accepted.

We agree that it’s best to try not to obsess about the whole matter, while still being well-informed about the events at the same time. A difficult, yet important balance. I tip £5 on a £10 fare, telling him to “weather it well”. He seems to be a sound feller.

Train, terminal, check-in (with security confirming I’m not some other guy yet again), locate æroport gate which isn’t open… ‘daft buggers!’, think I; and so I sit on a six-inch-deep ledge covered in some sort of fine plaster dust, and listen to the tiny lap-top with noise-cancelling headphones eliminating the hum of the “Air Conditioning System” and some bizarre drilling being done somewhere which is altogether inconvenient. All but a remaining 15% of those both are gone when the switch is “on”. The women prattling to my right about sweet nothing at all, however, comes through loud and clear. Damn.

The return flight comes complete with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (aka: “Indy IV”; a daft, un-necessary corollary to tie-up some loose ends which didn’t need fretting over in the first place, and along the way provide more trivial inside references than any film warrants at the best of times, but ultimately benign with solid production values and editing), the meals are okay, and there is turbulence over Greenland as seems to be usual.

I am tired, so very tired.

One suspects that this was the correct time to have left, albeit with un-resolved questions regarding others’ degree of dedication and timely effort regarding various matters left in their hands. Having not actually checked e-mail before leaving Heathrow, it’s quite possible there’s more encouragement to be had than appears just now. One hopes so. Have those individual boxes left yet to various people who’ve paid for their books months ago? Have a couple of boxes left headed my way? Do we have a rough inventory of stock on hand at the moment? What of… oh, a gazillion things, really…

While it’s tempting to conclude the whole thing as a corporation and rinse ourselves of so many heavy debts — to say nothing of the fact the President & C.E.O. (Acting) doesn’t live on the right continent — the effort to wrap-up a company in the UK is an insane amount of paperwork and shit, so we’re stuck with this structure, it would seem. Lord knows how we’re going to sort that, though. Damn it, we need to sell a shit-load of books and then pay bills… and then sort some way to make some decent money to get the next lot printed… and so on.

Grumble…

Need sleep.

So, in conclusion:

Once again I leave the UK with the sense that the place is crawling with things almost the way they ought to be done, to wit:

• pubs are plentiful and convenient
• people are able to speak to complete strangers without being thought about to begin proselytise for Dianetics or something
• art and culture are considered ‘parts of life’ and not “something them fucking book-worms’ do ’cause they’re not real peoples”
• traffic is grudgingly accommodated, but walking about in areas un-trammelled by motor-vehicles is far easier than one might think
• mass transit is seen as a requirement
• buildings which aren’t fresher than yesterday’s milk aren’t immediately ripped-up and replaced with big ugly blocks of concrete (well, mostly)

Essentially, things there are as I wish them to be.

Well, except for the bits that cost money. That’s a pity, but ubiquitous the world-over, damn and blast.

Too Bloody Early; Terminal 3, Heathrow, England

Arise around 9:30, I think, and feel the pain of last night. Errrrrgh. As one heads to Caffé Nero for e-mail, etc., the face of the most notorious punk band in the world appears on a billboard advertising butter. Yes, Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols shilling for Country Life Dairy Products; and he’s wearing an excretiable red plaid jacket. Surely this is one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Breakfast out of the way, I seek an alarm clock so as to ensure catching my flight in a couple of days… Hang on, Jennifer’s note mentions picking me up at the airport Friday afternoon, which is excellent… but, erm… FRIDAY?!? Wasn’t it Saturday…? Shit!

I rapidly e-mail a few people pointing out that they now have a 36-hour window to meet me before I leave the country at an abominable hour Friday morning.

Back to hotel we head, after buying a newspaper for the sole benefit of confirmation of today’s date (and ensuring that there is a world outside for which to return), then check my printed flight information and itinerary. Friday, yes. Good to know that now. It might have been a bit of a problem had I got it wrong by a day.

Right. So off to Soak-Up Culture of Great Worth: the British Library to wander and stare at Really Old Books and Papers. These include (but were not limited to only): Read the rest of this entry »

Due to popular demand… Many people have asked… Someone idly asked yesterday… ‘when would this series continue?’ And so, because I am here to give the people what they want, here is what happened on the day The Colonial Went to the B.N.G.

Arising around 8:00 (although the notes for the day state an uncertainty about that time), St. Pancras International Rail Terminal is headed for, with a desire to locate coffee and food. Also, connectivity to confirm that Trudi Topham is still meeting me for the purpose of both delivering some material to me which has been ordered from both small publishers as well as through Amazon UK (which wasn’t available through Canadian sources; mostly books with different editions and/or covers), as well as accompanying me around the National Gallery.

Happily, one can check e-mail over breakfast of coffee and muffin-thing, as St. Pancras Station has free Wi-Fi! HUZZAH!

Sadly, Trudi is at King’s Cross Station on the other side of Pancras Road, but I’m able to see the grandness of this international terminal with its impressive roof of the Train Shed [image, left] which was designed by William Henry Barlow (who’s been immortalised in a statue in the Station). So, in the end, NICE!

I wander across the road, and — after working my way through a teeming mass of humanity down the entire King’s bloody Cross Station’s bloody warren of platforms and levels — locate the lady herself, complete with massive box of books. Huzzah! We head to hotel, dump the shit in my room, and then head to the wilds of the underground, where I buy an Oyster Card so as to be able to move about easily on any number of methods of available public transportation without the need to ensure my tickets not expired, correct change, and so on. For anyone visiting London, this is a boon, as you are only charged for the tickets you would normally need, but the most you can ever pay per day with this card is the maximum daily charge for unlimited use of the system and that flat rate is less than the cost of several tickets. If you plan to use the tube or the bus more than three times a day (go somewhere, go somewhere else, return to where you began), you’ve just saved money, and all you had to worry about was slapping your card on a big yellow disc when entering the tube or when both getting on and off a bus. Brilliant! Get one and make your visit to the City of Western Culture a breeze. You’ll thank me for it, I’m telling you!

The card, oddly, comes in a little yellow wallet with an advert for IKEA on the back. “Oh…! It’s got IKEA on it”, I remark to Trudi, whereupon we say “Oooooooo-OOOOOO!” at each other. Why it’s called an “Oyster Card” and not a BLAN or TORVELD as a consequence of the IKEA sponsorship is good for a few minutes of discussion. It may have something to do with IKEA’s brand-new Family Mobile — a virtual mobile phone network — but I suspect the new London Buses will be built from flat-pack kits. Read the rest of this entry »

I arise around 10, probably. The head is still full of a bit of pooh, so the rest is good. Granted, today will probably set that health back a bit from being fully realised, but who cares?

Leaving the hotel on my way to breakfast and Wi-Fi, the pretty young African girl at reception brightens at my passing and greets me. “You’re not wearing your hat” she says, having obviously been on the desk yesterday afternoon when I wandered in under a red fez. This is what happens when you stay more than a week and don’t set fire to your room or engage in a drunken brawl: they remember you because of your anachronistic headgear.

Crossing Great Percy Street, I see two men eating chicken and each sucking heartily on large tins of Foster’s Lager. On the pavement. The boxes of chicken are sitting on the top of a metal dispenser, or rubbish tin ‚or something. Right next to the road. Wow. Upon my return, the men have gone and the empty Foster’s tin has been joined by an empty bottle of Tesco’s Scotch Whisky, so they are clearly men of selective and discerning tastes. Thank goodness they chose to share this display of hearty Lord’s Day Buffet with the public, so that the rumours of London’s citizens being able to carry-off any sort of behaviour and get away with it are continued.

Granted, this isn’t Mayfair or Knightsbridge, so what does one expect?

Caffé Nero has Diana Krall (Nanaimo’s Greatest Export) singing away about nobody wanting you when you’re down and out; how nice it is to hear a voice from home. However the staff recognised and greeted me me as a local — I think — or at least as someone other than just an anonymous bloke looking for coffee. How nice to be treated as belonging somewhere 1/3 around the world from my home. I could live here. Perhaps I am already doing so, in a way, but only for a short time?

After e-mail inviting me out for an afternoon, it’s back to the hotel to then meet up at King’s Cross [intersection, above] for a wander to the new King’s Place Arts Centre where we have cups of tea, browse some newspapers and see one of the many canals which make London accessible by barge. Mostly this is used for transport of things such as heavy transport goods now, but in the past has been used for bringing in ice and other supplies for use in The City; as well as people on barges taking a holiday or simply living and working on the canals of England, which they still do. More information on this ‘hidden gem of London and Greater Britain’ is available through the good people at the London Canal Museum.

Then it’s off to a find one of the famed London Black Cabs where an address is given to the driver who responds it with something akin to ‘where the hell’s that, then?’ After being chided for having done The Knowledge, help is offered him from one of his passengers sitting in one of the ‘jump seats’ behind him, and enquiry is made of another passenger as to what our destination is. “We’re going to The Pineapple!” I stare blankly at him, having no idea what he’s talking about. “It’s a pub.” I absorb this information: Pineapple, public house. Visions of people with massive arrangements of fruit on their heads serving drinks fill my mind, only to be replaced with images of people pulling pints into hallowed-out pineapple shells, or possibly fermented pineapple-juice.

It is as this precise moment that I internally shrug and resign myself to the understanding that I am no way in control of the rest of the day’s destiny, and accept that anything can — and probably will — happen.

The Pineapple (51 Leverton Street, Kentish Town, NW5 2NX) is a wonderful place to spend the afternoon in a massive chin-wag. Pints are inevitably involved. These are two of The Three Good Things in London (cf. 1066 and All That, Messrs. Sellar & Yateman [Methuen, 1998 re-print — ISBN-10: 0−413−77270−5; ISBN-13: 978 – 0-413 – 77270-1]), the third being currently discussed by a large committee struck to determine what it may be (word is that the third century of debate went rather well, but the fourth seems to be a bit distracted with discussing the introduction of motor carriages and ‘them dashed, pesky Labourites’).

I got the first round as we came in the door, we settled in ‘the snug’ with newspapers many… and then things got away from me as people came and went over a number of hours. At one point we had the day’s theme snack as it was “Sausage Sunday!”, which wasn’t bad to be honest. However, I’ve no idea who paid for my actual lunch of a Chicken Satay Wrap, which was also delightful. Rounds came and were consumed throughout, and again they appeared without my involvement… many people are owed pints by me… if only one could remember their names…

The lane behind the pub was visited, “because Ian wants to take a photo of it.” I did…? One doesn’t recall saying this, but upon arriving in it, the charm of it was immediately evident, and photos were taken [there’s one on the left, for instance]. A heaven of cobblestones, it harkened to a time of earlier days when the area was very working class and filled with a mixture of industrial filth and equally filthy people. These days the filth and the industry are gone, but the buildings — to an extent — remain, most of them having had ‘all mod cons’ rammed up their backsides and walls and floors moved around to accommodate the massive collection of stuff which the typical ‘civilised person’ scatters about their nest.

Time continued inexorably onward, we retired to the Solarium in the pub’s rear for a bit, then… Eventually we left and headed back to King’s Cross, on the way having a race on London Transport with one of our number taking the Overland Railway whilst the other two took the Underground. I’ve no idea the time at this point, nor if dinner was had, but I doubt it. I do recall coming back to the room to read The Independent on Sunday’s “Forgotten Authors” column and a piece about the new film W, all about the soon-to-be-ex-President.

And I watch more Blake’s 7. God, it’s slow to get going… the only suspense in it seems to be the question ‘will there be tension anytime?’