Paddingtonwolf
Flaming Galah
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2009
- Messages
- 78,088
- Reaction score
- 8,362
Tell you what - When the Wind Blows is one of the most moving books out there. And I liked Fungus the Bogeyman too. Raymond Briggs is genius stuff.
During my winter hibernation i read Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathin in Las Vegas, and frankly i'm not sure what to make of it.
I enjoyed it, but truthfully have no idea why.
At certain points i wondered if i should be stoned to read it, although i don't partake.
At other times i backtracked trying to decide if it was meant to be more of a "documentary" dare i say it.
Is this the american Tom Sharpe i wondered, but on acid? or the zany and quite mad Spike Milligan.
Or did i simply not get it.
I have it close at hand and will certainly read it again, in the hope, that like "Catch 22" it all becomes clearer second time around.
So if any of you have read it, I would be very interested to read your critique.
Had to go back to page 5 to find this thread. What a bunch of Philistines we are.
Anyway, just finishing Ian Sinclair's London Orbital, the story of his walk around the M25. (Not actually on the motorway, but through the villages, towns, shopping malls etc nearby.)
Some fascinating stuff. Frinstance: the sleepy Middlesex village of Heathrow was bulldozed to make way for the airport under completely false pretences. The then government claimed it was going to be a military airport, needed for long range bombing missions to the Far East. This, though, was bollocks cooked up to circumvent planning regulations. It was always intended to be a civil airport but they knew they'd never get that through, so by claiming it was for military use, they could essentially do whatever they wanted. And they had the arrogance to document all these shenanigans as well.
And, apparently, London is ringed by mental asylums from the Victorian era. Now mostly knocked down to build more profitable housing estates, with patients' records hastily burnt in skips. Not surprising really, as one treatment was to put an unknowing naked patient into a sealed room and then release swamp mosquitos, who would bite said patient until infected with malaria. This was thought to cure such conditions as schizophrenia. 3 out of 10 patients died afterwards. This was going on until the '60s.