One For The Trouble: Book Slam Volume One

By Book Slam

'Varied, clever, memorable and impressive ... Book Slam has always been a force for literary good and 'One For The Trouble' is no exception. The book is being billed as an 'annual': may this be the first of many.' Alice Fisher - The Observer

‘Book Slam is an amazing and unique phenomenon — an incredible boon for readers and writers — we’re all very lucky to have it in our world.’ William Boyd

One For The Trouble – Book Slam Volume One is the first publication from the UK’s premier literary event. Editor Patrick Neate approached eighteen Book Slam alumni, from household names like Irvine Welsh and William Boyd to newcomers like Kate Tempest and Sophie Woolley, to take a song title for inspiration for a new short story or poem. Simon Armitage’s poem, for example, reflects hauntingly on the suicide of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, while award-winning young adult author, Patrick Ness, stretches his skills with a darkly comic take on ‘Let Me Entertain You’. The resulting collection is unique, diverse and thoroughly entertaining. One For The Trouble provides a perfect snapshot of the very best contemporary British writing.

Stories:

1. Grave Architecture(Pavement, 1995) by Richard Milward
2. New Gold Dream (Simple Minds, 1982) by Hari Kunzru
3. New Dawn Fades (Joy Division, 1979) by Simon Armitage
4. Comeback Girl (Republic Of Loose, 2005) by Irvine Welsh
5. I'm Going Slightly Mad (Queen, 1991) by Bernardine Evaristo
6. The Bed's Too Big Without You (Sheila Hylton, 1981) by Kate Tempest
7. When I'm Sixty-Four (The Beatles, 1967) by Joe Dunthorne
8. Tears Of A Clown (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, 1967) by William Boyd
9. The Message (Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, 1982) by Paul Murray
10. Ascension (John Coltrane, 1966) by Roger Robinson
11. Violet Stars Happy Hunting! (Janelle Monáe, 2007) by Helen Oyeyemi
12. I Read My Sentence ... (Radka Toneff, 1986) by Don Paterson
13. Let Me Entertain You (Robbie Williams, 1998) by Patrick Ness
14. Bank Holiday (Blur, 1994) by Luke Wright
15. I Am The Walrus (The Beatles, 1967) by Sophie Woolley
16. That Summer Feeling (Jonathan Richman, 1984) by Jon Ronson
17. Underground (Ben Folds Five, 1995) by Tim Key
18. Endless Art (A House, 1992) by Jon McGregor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Slam
• Release date: Mar 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908615589

Book Slam

Running for almost a decade, Book Slam remains London's best literary event and something of a cultural institution. Over the years, most of the UK's finest writers have graced the Book Slam stage (Nick Hornby, Howard Jacobson, Zadie Smith ...) and it's a great place to spot up and coming musical talent (Plan B, Kate Nash, Jamie Woon and Adele all played early gigs there). Now the Book Slam team have thrown their considerable muscle into publishing with the release of 'One For The Trouble', which is their first annual and a glittering collection of musically-themed prose and poetry from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Jon McGregor, Hari Kunzru and William Boyd. 'One For The Trouble' is available as a limited edition, signed (by all the authors) hardback from the Book Slam website; an ebook and a audiobook.

Book preview

ONE FOR THE TROUBLE

Book Slam Volume One

By Various Authors

Published by Book Slam Productions

Smashwords Edition

Collection © Patrick Neate 2011

Copyright of the individual stories and poems remains with the respective authors. The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

Published by Book Slam Productions Ltd 2011

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any from or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-908615

978-1-908615-00-8

Design and Illustration www.robiwalters.com

Book Slam Productions Ltd

First Floor

51 Hoxton Square London N1 6PB

www.bookslam.com

Table of Contents

Preface

Grave Architecture

(Pavement, 1995)

by Richard Milward

New Gold Dream

(Simple Minds, 1982)

by Hari Kunzru

New Dawn Fades

(Joy Division, 1979)

by Simon Armitage

Comeback Girl

(Republic Of Loose, 2005)

by Irvine Welsh

I’m Going Slightly Mad

(Queen, 1991)

by Bernardine Evaristo

The Bed’s Too Big Without You

(Sheila Hylton, 1981)

by Kate Tempest

When I’m Sixty-Four

(The Beatles, 1967)

by Joe Dunthorne

Tears Of A Clown

(Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, 1967)

by William Boyd

The Message

(Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, 1982)

by Paul Murray

Ascension

(John Coltrane, 1966)

by Roger Robinson

Violet Stars Happy Hunting!

(Janelle Monáe, 2007)

by Helen Oyeyemi

I Read My Sentence…

(Radka Toneff, 1986)

by Don Paterson

Let Me Entertain You

(Robbie Williams, 1998)

by Patrick Ness

Bank Holiday

(Blur, 1994)

by Luke Wright

I Am The Walrus

(The Beatles, 1967)

by Sophie Woolley

That Summer Feeling

(Jonathan Richman, 1984)

by Jon Ronson

Underground

(Ben Folds Five, 1995)

by Tim Key

Endless Art

(A House, 1992)

by Jon McGregor

Biographies

Acknowledgements

Preface

Welcome to One For The Trouble. This is the first Book Slam Annual, so you’re in at the beginning. Congratulations. If you already know about Book Slam, thanks for your support. If not, greater thanks still, because you’ve taken a punt. But we’re confident you won’t be disappointed.

Book Slam is London’s leading literary shindig, mixing the finest writing in all its forms – prose, poetry, comedy and song-writing. When we started at Cherry Jam, a tiny Royal Oak bar, eight years ago, it was something of a struggle to convince anyone of our manifest cultural importance. But thanks to an innate bloody-mindedness and the support of the bar’s owner, the estimable Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl fame, we were able to persist. Some of those early nights were the best – Nick Hornby reading alongside Jamaican praise poet El Crisis, Kate Nash before she was Kate Nash, Adele before she was Adele …Eventually word began to spread. It’s no surprise that this upturn coincided with the arrival of Angela and Elliott, my better thirds, who shared my enthusiasm, but brought a welcome professionalism to the whole venture. Over the last few years we’ve discovered there are actually a lot of people out there who think like us. It’s been very heartening.

Book Slam is now a large and rambling extended family. Like all such families, we have the odd embarrassing cousin and uncle who like a sherbet, and occasionally we have a full-blown row. But we meet up once or twice a month somewhere in London, three or four hundred of us, because we have a genetic love of stories. We never imagined it would turn out like this.

Angela, Elliott and I organize Book Slam mostly to create a night out to which we’d want to go. Nonetheless, it has always worked on two key principles. The first is that literature is not something high-falutin’ and esoteric, but rather a key part of our popular culture. The stories we tell, read and hear make us who we are, so there’s no way that books should just peep self-consciously from library shelves or only come out at night for ten soporific pages before sleep. Stories are important. To pick two of our contributors at random, I am convinced that the world would be a better place if everyone read Hari Kunzru’s novel Transmission, or Don Paterson’s collection Rain. I say this with some confidence because I know I’m a better man for both.

The second principle follows from the first. If stories make us who we are then diversity is vital. The more diverse stories by talented storytellers that we consume, the better we can empathize – surely of ever more importance in a complex world of seemingly limitless contradictory and unmediated information. For this reason, at Book

Slam, we have always tried to feature a diversity of material – acclaimed writers, sure, but also unknowns with important, moving, funny, or simply different stories to relate. This collection, for example, includes a quite brilliant story by Sophie Woolley, a talented but relatively unknown actress and writer with a voice that deserves to be heard. Suffice to say: if you haven’t been to Book Slam before and you get the chance, please come down. We promise you’ll enjoy yourself. And if you do make it to the event, please make sure you say hello.

The idea for this collection was simple. Book Slam has always featured the best live music and we wanted to reflect that in our first steps into publishing. So, we set our contributors the task of taking a song title for inspiration. Some took this literally (Jon McGregor’s moving reimagining of A House’s ‘Endless Art’ – not a song I knew, but one I now love), others suggestively (who’d have thought Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ would lead Paul Murray to a heartbreaking tale of Irish schoolboy rugby?). But all delivered interesting, engaging, remarkable work and we are indebted to every one.

Why One For The Trouble? Well, initially we wanted to call it One For The Money, but, as with all things Book Slam, figured, ‘Who are we kidding?’ One For The Trouble, therefore, seemed a pleasingly coy aside, referencing both the troubles we foresaw and a favourite old school hip-hop tune. Turns out we foresaw very few of the troubles and have developed a new (albeit grudging) respect for mainstream publishing.

Nonetheless, the process has been consistently entertaining and I’ve got to know a whole lot of writers I’ve long admired who turn out to be peculiar only in their talent. I stood outside a Soho hotel for a full twenty minutes, practising a pitch to persuade Irvine Welsh to contribute, only for him to say, ‘That sounds fine, Patrick,’ after approximately twenty seconds. I watched the redoubtable Helen Oyeyemi start signing the title page at two p.m. and, since she refused to compromise her signature, passed her the last sheet at ten past eight. I discovered that Don Paterson loves rum ’n’ raisin ice cream.

Of course, there have been hiccups too. I was told to ‘stop being a child’ by a leading literary agent, and Elliott had to restrain me from immediate childish response. I discovered that VAT – would you believe? – has a tendency to throw off a budget by precisely 20 per cent. I am pleased to report that we have repeatedly made folk at Companies House, the Inland Revenue and Barclays Bank laugh. A lot.

But it’s all been worth it. Because this is One For The Trouble, the first Book Slam Annual, and we are able to offer it to you with all humility and genuine pride: how often does one get to say such a thing? Thank you, sincerely, for your interest.

Patrick Neate for Book Slam

Grave Architecture

The rent was a snatch at £625 a month, and left her enough spare pennies to start a new life in the suburbs, away from the selfish bastard. He might’ve taken the old house – with its pool, which stank the whole place out, and its three TVs and toilets – but at least she still had her youth, and her wardrobe. He also took back his grandmother’s ring, the Jag, the 4x4, and the kids, but he had no use for her designer dresses. Those dresses were going to come in handy for her, once she felt well enough to snare a new suitor. Then they’d be disposed of, along with the rest of the rubble that reminded her of him.

Admittedly, the selfish bastard had helped her find the new house, but the gesture seemed suspiciously like another selfish manoeuvre. He couldn’t even hang on till the divorce petition arrived – he wanted her out of his life, as soon as possible. He reckoned it’d speed along the healing process. She reckoned he’d met someone else.

Her new house was about eighty years older than her old house. It wasn’t close to the shops, or her job, but the street was pretty, lined with silver birches that tossed leaves into her front garden, like ginger birds’ wings. The pace of life round here was slow. She could hardly see a soul in the windows of the other houses, and there was a lack of wildlife, cars and passers-by, which made her feel lonely. Apparently, it used to be a main thoroughfare, before they’d built the bypass. The loneliness explained the house’s value for money, but nothing could explain the problem with the walls.

If you watch those interior-design shows, you’ll know there are many ways to create the illusion of space inside a poky property. However, the strangest thing about the new house was it seemed a lot smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside. From the outside, she was instantly seduced by the stately three-storey terrace – it even had a loft conversion, should she wish to peer across the city, on the lookout for her old house (with or without binoculars). However, both she and the letting agent were surprised by the deceptively small interior. The dimensions of the rooms didn’t seem to reflect the vastness of their shell, like unwrapping a huge pass-the-parcel, only to find a cheap, minuscule gift.

Nevertheless, she took it. There were cracks in the corner of each wall, and a bit of damp in the dining room, but they were her cracks and damp, and not the selfish bastard’s. Once the doctors cleaned her brain out, she’d clean the house out. The pokiness didn’t matter. She could always buy some mirrors. She liked her own appearance. She had legs that went on and on, like a life-insurance commercial, and hair of gold. She would be fine.

* * *

Her footsteps didn’t echo quite as much as she would’ve liked, as she paced around the bare house. The selfish bastard had arranged for some removal men to come round with the items of furniture he hated from the old house, as well as her precious wardrobe – however, they’d been stalled by indecision on the selfish bastard’s part. No doubt he wanted a valuation on the antique dresser before handing it over, despite having no use for a dresser himself. The bastard couldn’t even do his own tie.

The only possessions she had on her first night in the new house were: her handbag, a carrier of toiletries, a holdall of clothes, a multipack of no-brand tomato soup, a refrigerated Mumtaz curry, teabags, milk, a kettle, a knackered saucepan, and some bedding. As she slept, the dark tormented her. She missed her kids and, in a way, she missed the selfish bastard. She tried to weigh up which was worse: a loveless marriage, or loveless loneliness. She supposed, by the end of it, being in a loveless marriage was like being in a straitjacket – at least, when you’re on your own, you can put your hands wherever you want. Soon, there would be action and romance. There would be curry nights with people she hadn’t even met yet; there would be branded soup; there would be shaking hips; there would be squeals coming from the master bedroom.

But, for now, she slept with the lights on.

* * *

When she woke the next morning, she was convinced the inside of the house had got smaller. For her own peace of mind, she went around with a tape measure, recording the dimensions of each room. She wondered if the cracks were the cause or effect of the walls shifting about. Perhaps it was down to the changing seasons, skewing the woodwork. Perhaps it was down to tectonic plates.

She wished the selfish bastard was at hand to give her some DIY or construction tips. Then again, his advice was usually cryptic, long-winded and misguided.

After polishing off some tomato soup with Teflon sprinkles, she headed out to the shop, for more supplies. It was a long walk to the nearest supermarket, but still no one passed her as she traipsed through the leaf litter. Even the cashier seemed ghostlike, scanning her items in silence, with a face like a balled-up polythene bag.

On her way back to the house, she received a text message from the selfish bastard: hello. how are you. removal men not till monday now. sorry about that. pm most likely. x She couldn’t decide which part of the text was most upsetting: the cold, business-like tone; the lack of a question mark after ’how are you’; or the solitary kiss, sitting there like it was warding off a fucking vampire.

When she got back to the house, she could’ve sworn the rooms had shrunk again. She wondered if it was a trick of the mind. Perhaps being out in the open air had distorted her memory of how poky the property was. However, when she got out her tape measure, the proof