Hello. Robert Wringham here. You may know me as the editor of New Escapologist magazine or as a writer of things. Recent follies include the novels Rub-A-Dub-Dub and Tether and a documentary feature film called Melt It! The Film of the Iceman.
This newsletter — formerly From the Desque of Robert Wringham — is a reboot, a do-over. Welcome, then, to Wringham Wreview, in which I tell you what I’ve been up to, share a few cultural or literary highlights, comment on a few media links, muse on a few light topics. I’ll do my best to offer something of interest to you every time. This might become monthly, but let’s start here and see what happens.
It is written in a state of repose. I won’t sit at the desk to do it. I’m chillin’. Who knows, you might like to read it in the same spirit.
The New Escapologist Substack is very successful and I always have plenty to say in it, but when it comes to this more self-promotional organ I’ve often struggled to know what to say. Let’s fix that with the magic of format.
Your friend and neighbour,
Robert Wringham
www.wringham.co.uk
Film Update: Our First Nom!
The main thing you need to know about our film is that you still can’t see it. Sorry. We have to do the festival rounds before it gets a tour, let alone a wider release or a streaming option. You’ll get those things eventually, but for now the news arrives of our first film festival award nomination: Best Documentary Feature. Sweet words.
For more gist of this film, see my webpage about it or else visit the Iceman’s Wikipedia page, which I also wrote and took the photograph for and everything.
Observational Comedy Moment No. 742: Coy
There’s a pub down south called the Coy Carp Inn.
I think it’s supposed to be a pun. “Coy” as in “shy” instead of “koi.”
But it might just a spelling mistake.
If you were going for a pun, you’d just call the place “The Coy Carp,” ideally with a picture of a bashful-looking fish in the logo, right? Why pollute it with this “Inn” business?
I become fixated on the “Inn.”
Coycarpinn? Coycarpin? Coycarpin’? Coy Carpin’?
You can see some of my puns — ones that actually work — here.
Dickon
My friend Dickon Edwards — whose 1997-2007 diaries I edited for print — was reviewed in Tribune last week:
A great philosopher once claimed that there are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who entertain and the ones who observe. At the time of this statement — which came via Britney Spears’ 2008 hit ‘Circus’ — Edwards had been keeping his online diary for over a decade, proving to be the exception that proved Ms Spears’ rule. As this first collected edition — edited by Robert Wringham from hundreds of entries — proves, Edwards is both a man-about-town and its chronicler — the main event and the shrewd observer.
This is no idle praise. Tribune doesn’t dish it out lightly and the reviewer is Claire Biddles who, when it comes to music and pop culture, really knows her stuff. I find myself feeling proud of Dickon and also of the small part I played in all this.
Change
Actually, the diary book was sort of my idea, which brings me to a broader point. If something in the world isn’t to your liking: change it. If something’s missing, add it. It’s something I’ve started to do.
Yes, yes, yes, I’ve made a point of escaping shit things instead of becoming a martyr to changing the world. But that’s as it applies to big things. Small things, however? Small things can be done. Especially when the skills to make it happen already lie within your grasp.
As I write in the editor’s note at the front of Dickon’s book:
I waited and waited and waited for someone to edit Diary at the Centre of the Earth for print. Come 2025, I decided to take matters into my own hands and, thankfully, Dr. Edwards was not averse to my overtures.
So now we have a first volume at least of filleted diaries for human eyes, for my bedside table, for the British Library’s eternity vault, and, dear reader, for your very own bookshelf.
Sorted. I get my copy, Dickon gets short-term attention and long-term canonisation. That’s all I wanted. No more falling to the wayside of things and people I care about. That’s my motivation on the Iceman film as well. Hopefully we’ll have an Iceman screening in Dickon’s town of St. Leonards-on-Sea this summer, so the two themes can come together.
Don’t Your Hands Get Wrinkled?
There’s some truly excellent bathtub writing in Service, John Tottenham’s brand new novel. Here, illegally probably, is a sample:
I slid into the tub as it was filling up and once submerged increased the flow of hot water until almost boiling. Then, and only then, did I know something resembling contentment.
It is my duty as a novelist to describe my time in the bathtub, basking in the consolation of art and liquor — I should be summoning the sounds of cars rumbling by on the street outside, the strains of eerie violin sliding in, and the gurgling of water as it lapped against the overflow drain; I should be depicting the ant scurrying along the side of the bathtub, flirting with the spume-laced waterline, then darting back up to attempt egress through the deceptive crack at the bottom of the fake beige-veined marble tile; and I should be delineating the first exquisite sip of the Presbyterian, rich with the promise of relaxation, as it eased down my throat, and how I abstracted myself from these material surroundings and lost myself in the soothing world of Barbara Pym’s prose — not merely to state, dryly and diaristically, that I enjoyed spending time in the bath, but to reproduce the experience with telling details and evocative little flourishes.
Well, I did that. Honestly, I did.
And there’s more:
“Most of my reading takes place in the bathtub,” I added, hoping to impress her with an interesting personal fact.
“Really?”
“I often read for two hours or longer in there, sipping a cocktail, with classical music playing in the next room. It gives me more pleasure than anything else.”
“Anything?” she said, smiling again.
“Just about,” I said.
“Doesn’t the water get cold?” she asked.
“I adjust the taps with my toes and drain the existing water as I’m doing it.” It always amazes me when I’m asked this question; the answer seemed so obvious, but maybe some people didn’t read in the bath.
“Don’t your hands get wrinkled?”
“No, because they’re above the water level, holding the book.”
“Don’t you get faint?” That long smile appeared again.
“Sometimes, when I finally emerge. Where do you read?”
“Usually in bed…”
“Do you work here?” we were interrupted by a customer.
“Whatever gives you that impression? Never mind. What do you need?”
Just wonderful stuff. Everyone should read Service. He works in a bookshop and is miserable there. It’s Black Books but really bitter. So Blacker Books then.
Joke No. 911: Scary
Stephen King lives with his wife in Maine.
Bangor?
Well, they do have three kids together.
I have other jokes and they’re not all filth. Tap-tap, is this thing on?
Cannellini Beans
You just know there’s someone out there who thinks it’s a “can of lini beans.”
Is it you? Have you found this by googling? Leave a comment. I want to know you.
Kagi Small Web
As some of you know, I like the Web as it used to be. This is not a nostalgia festival. I genuinely believe that the Internet was better before social media came along. Substack, with its tendency toward longform blogging, goes some way to remedy that, but the best way to experience the Web is through independent, hand-made websites with their own authorial voices. It’s hard to find these and to leap between them in the days of Google and sponsored links and all the rest of it though.
The item above this one — the can of lini beans — was stumbled upon by a Web (yes, always capitalise the “W”) user who, as invited, left a comment. They said, “Lol! Found this site via kagi.com/smallweb.”
I learned about Kagi just a couple of weeks ago thanks to friend Andrew in Canada. The “Small Web” feature allows you to island hop between websites at the click of a button. “Next site,” you say, and off you go. I can spend hours like that, just cronked out on the couch, visiting new places and reading quick blogs. It’s a much better way in my opinion — and far more full of surprises — than sludging around in meme-rammed social platforms, prodded this way and that by the dead hand of the algorithm. Let “originality and plurality” be your watchwords in all things.
Alan
Friend Alan is a photographer of great repute. He’s photographed Del Amitri and The Pastels and Alasdair Gray and, um, me. He has a Kickstarter going on, which might interest you if you like black-and-white photography, especially scenes of beautiful Scotland.
Kazoo
I was in a kazoo orchestra the other day. It was the opening act at Glasgow’s Counterflows Festival of avant-garde music. It was so. We were conducted by Agnes Pe of Spain. This was a real thing and it happened.
State of the Desque
My friend Landis ends each installment of his own Substack newsletter with a “state of the desk” update. Well, I’m nicking that. Here’s what it looks like today.
So there we go. A proper newsletter. Much better than the old one, hopefully.
Love,
Wringham
www.wringham.co.uk
