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Peel
27 October 2004
Ooh, that was a long silence. Sorry, but I’ve hardly been able to get near the computer this last ten days or so, and when I have there’ve been other priorities than the weblog. Shock, horror! But I am frustrated by the way my writing-time is suddenly encroached on, pent up, cribb’d cabined and confined, all of that. Sometimes you just have to bar luxuries.
And such a busy time I’ve been having of it, too. I think this is inherent: that when I’m doing interesting things I can’t take the time to write about them, and when I have spare time to blog it’s because there’s nothing happening worth talking about.
So I’ve been to London, Henley and Huddersfield; I’ve eaten brains and roasted marrow and chitterlings at St John in Smithfield, which has been an ambition for a while now; I’ve given lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops and readings; I’ve been in conversation with Iain Banks; I’ve got drunk a lot, and trodden (expensively) on my glasses. Betweentimes I’ve been chipping away (when allowed to) at the young-adult fantasy, which must be about on its fourth draft by now. Still trying to tune in the tone of voice, it’s been twenty years since I did this and my agents think I’m asking too much of the target readership. I just think kids have got dumber, or publishers’ expectations less demanding.
This week, I’ve also had to deal twice with the death of an icon. Charles Shaar Murray reviewed Banksie’s new book in ‘The Independent’, and mentioned en passant ‘the late Brian Aldiss’. Which was a shock, as I’ve been reading Brian for thirty years or more, and talking to him on and off for twenty-five. Interestingly, I never did believe it; as soon as I read the words, I assumed it was a cock-up, and a quick e-mail confirmed that.
Alas, though, John Peel really is dead. It was the lead story in all the media all day yesterday, and they’re still talking about it today, in a busy week of news; I think he’d have been quite shocked. Like every decent right-thinking radio fan in this country and beyond - planet-wide, indeed, what with the World Service and the internet - I’m beyond shocked. I never did subscribe to that mass hysteria that sweeps through this culture when a celebrity dies, but Peel wasn’t a celebrity, he was just this bloke we listened to, ever since we first got a radio and a set of headphones. In my case, again, that’s thirty years or more; I have friends who’ve known him longer. I used to hate half the music that he played, but he was still and always the only DJ worth listening to on the BBC, a genuine and independent voice against the plastic playlists of his colleagues. Now he’s gone, I guess the plastic will subsume that last little corner, because who else is there to take it over? I detest nostalgia as a principle, but some losses are irretrievable; there’s a thread broken that cannot be replaced, and the world is measurably poorer for it.
© Chaz Brenchley 2004
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.