Month: May 2023

By Cosmo Adair.

Martin Amis (1949 – 2023) was an English novelist. 

I once went to a van Gogh show at the Tate with a girl. I had an adamantine crush on her and I’d tried every possible mode of flirtation. But she wasn’t interested; in fact, she couldn’t have been further from being interested. But we went to the Tate. This is an odd place to start a piece on Martin Amis, I know. But please – bear with me … 

By the time we were in the third room of the exhibition, and the sombre Prisoner’s Round (after Gustav Doré) was whitewashed by industrial lighting, I began to stammer out a few words. “Th-the impasto, you know — so marvellously done, and after Doré as well … Really, incredible. It reminds me, you know, of something Di–Dickens once wrote. ‘A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned …’ Oh fuck. Sorry. Forgotten it.” I couldn’t work out whether she was bored or whether she had seen through my act. Possibly both. “God, Cosmo,” she said. “You really like van Gogh, don’t you?” And she rolled her eyes. Her lack of interest was palpable. I shut up. After the exhibition, I feigned a commitment in East London so I could go to a different tube station. I had to end this torture quickly. There was only one thing in my head. “FUCKING MARTIN AMIS.”

I read The Rachel Papers when I was a sixteen year-old who had recently started reading ‘proper’ books. I was in the Holiday Inn Express, a few miles from London Gatwick, and stayed up until four in the morning reading in the hotel bathroom. This was the shit. The prose was electric. But not only was this a manual for writing; it was (I thought, naively) a manual for life. The above idea was taken from the novel — although the novel’s hero, Charles Highway, delivered his lines at the Tate’s William Blake show much better than I did. Like Charles, I had visited the exhibition the day before, had written notes and devised a sequence of intelligent witticisms which I could spring on the girl, as if spontaneously. Life can sometimes resemble fiction — but my own attempt couldn’t have been further from the book. 

Charles Highway (‘It’s such a rangy, well-travelled, big cocked name and, to look at, I am none of these. I wear glasses for a start, have done since I was nine’) was like me … except, of course, the regular sex and his superlative retention of poetry. And at that time, those were the only things I wanted in life — regular sex and a superlative retention of poetry. In fact, back then, both of those things were interchangeable — and if The Rachel Papers had taught me anything, it was that one quite easily follows the other. 

So, I would walk around my bedroom in recitation (‘My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness banes, no – FUCK – pains my senses.’), thinking I was Charles Highway or even Martin Amis, and would survey my future. I supposed that, like Charles and Martin, 1) I would be some Casanova of the literati, and 2) that I was a genius. I wanted to be Martin Amis (hair-cut, dress-sense, prose style, etc). Most blokes I knew looked up to, I don’t know — Harry Kane, Alex Turner, Richard Branson? But I looked up to Martin Amis and that — if I wasn’t already arrogant enough — made me even more convinced of the two aforementioned suppositions. I even copied Charles Highway’s technique of arranging the books on his bedside table and floor before a visitor comes. (‘The coffee-table featured a couple of Shakespeare texts and a copy of Time Out — an intriguing dichotomy, perhaps, but I was afraid that, no, it wouldn’t quite do … After a quarter of an hour I decided on Jane Austen, the mellow Persuasion, face down, open towards the end, by my pillow.’) I was relentless in my desire to be Martin Amis — and I took Charles Highway to be a teenaged Martin Amis verbatim. 

I revisited The Rachel Papers a few years later, when I was a little more mature. I was now aware, of course, that The Rachel Papers is very much a send up of the kind of guy I was so desperately trying to be. There was one sentence which really stuck out on this rereading: ‘Don’t I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Bayswater Road.’ It’s such an apt description of any young person’s romantic characterisation of themselves as a writer. 

Since then I’ve read more of Martin Amis’ novels. His unique cocktail of the lowest of low culture with the highest of literary styles is astounding. His entourages of characters are amongst some of the finest in post-war English fiction: the likes of Keith Talent, the murderer of London Fields, of whom Amis writes:

‘Keith didn’t look like a murderer. He looked like a murderer’s dog. (No disrespect to Keith’s dog Clive, who had signed on well before the fact, and whom Keith didn’t in the least resemble anyways.’)

And John Self, who is ‘addicted to the 20th century’:

‘My clothes are made of monosodium glutamate and hexachlorophene. My food is made of polyester, rayon and lurex. My rug lotions contain vitamins. Do my vitamins feature cleaning agents? I hope so. My brain is gimmicked by a microprocessor the size of a quark, and costing ten pee and running the whole deal. I am made of — junk, I’m just junk.’

And Richard Tull, the failing literary novelist, so envious of his friend’s success:

‘These days he smoked and drank largely to solace himself for what drinking and smoking had done to him, so he drank and smoked a lot.’

There are moments when you’re reading Amis novels which rank among the most sensual literary works in the English language. But his ingrained cynicism sometimes makes for a soiling experience: it’s that Dominoes feeling of utter delectation followed by grave sunkenness. He was the greatest prose stylist England produced in the last century. And his influence is everywhere — from Zadie Smith and Will Self, to some of the lamentable crap I churned out and called fiction in the first lockdown. His vocabulary, his eye for the zeitgeist, and his arrogance are unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. And it seems a terrible shame that such a deserving novelist never won so much as a Booker or a Nobel Prize before he died — only the Somerset Maugham award in 1973 (his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, had won this award some twenty years prior, making them the only father-son combo to ever win the award). 

I could say much more. But writing — now, more than ever — in the shadow of Amis, it seems a crime to even write a sentence. To read him is to become aware of the crass and error-ridden sentences which we all churn out on a daily basis. My only advice is that you read him. It seems apt to finish with this: 

‘Writers don’t realise how good they are because they are dead when the action begins: with the obituaries. And then the truth is revealed 50 years later by how many of your books are read. You feel the honour of being judged by something that is never wrong: Time.’

And so long as we’re not a semi-literate society, which only thinks and writes in dictation to ChatGPT, then I hope there will still be people reading Martin Amis, encountering the same levels of joy, awe, and (at times) sunkenness as his novels have made me feel.

By Ida Bridgeman.

‘A third of the way around the planet in a vehicle you swapped for a bag of crisps…Welcome to the World’s Greatest Road Trip.’ This is how the Mongol Rally introduces itself. I spent a snowy March evening nestled away in the corner of the Swan and Three Cygnets pub, hearing about the plans of four young men with a serious mission ahead of them. They plan to take on the Mongol Rally 2023, a road race from England to Mongolia in which they are given next to no guidance or help. The organisers of this event say that their ‘only job is to tell you where the finish line is and wait for you to turn up a battered but better person’. 

As all good stories do, Charlie starts his with ‘We were in the pub one day…’. Having met in the early weeks of their first term at Durham University, the four young men proceeded to, as is now a regular occurrence, chat the night away with tales of stupidity and plans of adventure. When given too much free time and a couple of pints, they have a habit of ‘coming up with dumb ideas’. Charlie in wistful reminiscence tells me that ‘we were going to sail a bathtub across the English Channel’, but then, in reflection he adds ‘you forget about the choppiness’, followed by ‘and bathtubs aren’t particularly stable’ (Not quite a sieve, but something of that Edward Lear poem ‘The Jumblies’ springs to mind). Unlike the failed bathtub race though, the Mongol Rally actually exists, as does the boys desire to partake in it, and so they shook hands and were set. 

The trip has been branded ‘Tour 4 MMM’. They proudly regard it as ‘a very clever multi-layered name’. Four young men, raising money for the charity Men’s Minds Matter, by touring across Europe and Asia in a rattling tin can. Their slogan? – ‘Eat my rust’. It’s a tacit nod to the boys’ style: speed is necessary at all costs, and a little rust never hurts. Or does it? I’m not entirely convinced by the quality of mechanics skills on hand. Fortunately, ‘Ralph studies engineering’. This reassuring statement seems to be their answer to any mechanical mishaps they might encounter along the way. 

Friends of the boys thought it was a ‘pipedream’ until ‘Nina’ showed up in Durham. The love these four have for one car could quite frankly compete with any Hollywood meet cute. Think love at first sight but the car dealer version. Ralph found it on Ebay, and Archie and Charlie went to check it out in some slightly dodgy looking industrial estate. They spoke to ‘a proper wheeler dealer’, with an earpiece in and a supposed long list of clients desperate to buy the car if these boys didn’t. One test drive alongside some haggling and it was a done deal, that was their car. ‘It’s the look we’re going for’ is the fond way they describe the rusted top, jammed close sunroof and awkwardly square bonnet of the tiny Nissan Micra. They were hooked. And the next week ‘Nina’ (the name taken from a sort of anagram of Nissan) arrived. 

The role of securing sponsorship and heading the campaign is given to Archie aka ‘Mr corporate chat’ himself. He is also head navigator because, unfortunately at 20 years old, he still can’t drive. A skill one might think useful for a multi-week road trip. This did not seem to faze the boys; they are convinced he will learn before the summer – nothing will deter this team. I asked who would be the man to get them out of a sticky situation and Archie is their answer – at least he can talk if he can’t drive.

George, head of socials and marketing, has big plans for spreading their story, aiming for 1,000  Instagram followers by next term. The Instagram page in question is a combination of amusing stories and serious content, ‘come on boys take this seriously we need a picture for our corporate post’ we were told on the photoshoot. It was hard to balance that with George’s insistence on ‘more sex appeal’, if we’re going to look like a boy band (as a passer-by suggested them to be) we want more Oasis and less Blur. 

Charlie is ‘Head of finance’ or so they say – Archie usually chips in before a heated debate ensues regarding who best lives up to their roles. They meet in the Swan to discuss plans, a pub where electronics are banned and storytelling encouraged, an environment fitting for the remote nature of their upcoming mission. When I asked the location that they are most looking forward to travelling in, Ralph suggests anywhere remote, ‘when the road goes from tarmac to dust, then we’re getting serious’.

‘What’s going to be your go-to meal?’ I tentatively asked. Archie’s face lit up as he explained that he is in the process of gaining sponsorship from MRE empire, an army rations company. Quite a pragmatic answer to the pertinent issue of eating during the trip. The same couldn’t be said for George’s insistence on bringing ‘one of those blow-up mattress things’ along with him for five weeks in a car that barely seemed big enough for themselves. Another sponsor that Archie has worked hard to secure is ‘Fuel the Adventure’, providing the boys with iconic jerry-can shaped electrical power banks. CEO Barry Jenkins described the boys as ‘4 lunatics’ but has said in a comment ‘I am delighted to be supporting such a worthy cause as they fuel their adventure for MMM’. Then, George piped up with ‘do you want a joke for your article?’:

‘Who can drink 20 litres of petrol?

Jerry can.’

(There we go George, joke included)

I inquired, in true Desert Island Discs fashion, what luxury items they would be taking – they will be camping and roughing it with the bare minimum of luggage. Ralph initially said a pillow, which they all agreed was a necessity, before settling for loo roll. In my opinion loo roll is a given – but there you go. Archie picked a satellite radio so he can listen to football – the language barrier won’t be an issue he insists, ‘I could be listening to it in German, you can still understand ‘1-0’. 

Charlie contributed with ‘I’m a pretty simple man I don’t really need any luxuries in life’ and mentioned something about maybe a pot of olives. In the meantime, George, as a diligent PPE student, has decided he will bring a book or two to enrich himself along the way; he’s recently been reading Hawking’s ‘The Theory of Everything’. He reckons he’s cracked physics, now I wonder if he should move to a car manual. 

Loud would be an understatement when describing these four. I overheard someone put to them the question of whether they might run out of conversation. My opinion? No chance. The only silence will be when they have a hugely over-dramatic argument over who messed up the cable ties that were holding the wing mirror together. Not unlikely given it fell off during a drive to the coast. I asked if they think it will fall out and the responses were mixed. Let’s hope the team doesn’t implode from within like a supernova surpassing Chandrasekhar’s limit, but only time will tell. This phenomenon (dredged from my non-existent knowledge of physics) happens when a star’s core surpasses a certain mass, which leaves me wondering what the mass limit is for a Nissan Micra to carry four blokes, an armfuls of army rations, George’s blow-up mattress, a slab of hopefully correct visa paperwork, and a couple of tinnys thrown in for those not driving (so Archie all the time at this rate). 
The Mongol rally organisers give some helpful words which I think are quite fitting: ‘if the sky falls on your head, prop it up with a stick and carry on. If you break down, find a way to fix it, buy a horse or start walking’. Our interview ended with imaginary maps being drawn in the air, and across the pub table, the words border crossing, getting lost, and avoid war zones blended into the general evening buzz.

A psychological reason of why you’ve been feeling zoned out recently

By Paula Wengerodt.

Picture this: I’m on my bike on the way to work. There is rush hour traffic, meaning dozens of bikes back to back over the bridge from Nørrebro to the city centre. Danish yummy mummies with three blonde children in a cart attached to the front of their bulky electric bikes, red-faced middle managers in their suits and ties, slicked- back Danske girlies with Asics on their feet and airpods in their ears. Everyone is truly on top of each other at this time of day, wheel-to-wheel. The lights begin to turn green, everyone wobbles forwards, but one woman just won’t move. When she does, it’s at a glacial pace. Road rage fills the air. I overtake, and she is literally scrolling on Instagram. This happens three more times that day. I know the Danes are comfortable on bikes, but there’s a time and a place – and I’m noticing this level of distraction more and more.

I see it at work when I have to call a customer’s name five times whilst looking them square in the eyeball before they register I’m talking to them. I see it in the street when someone cuts off my path because their attention is fixed on a phone. I see it at restaurants where (many) couples now have dinner whilst texting absent friends rather than conversing IRL. People simply seem increasingly detached from their surroundings. But why? Is daily reality in one of the world’s most beautiful cities just too hard to face?

I am no innocent in the tug-of-war between reality and the digital void. Lately, I too have been visited by the spirit of Our Lady of Perpetual Distraction. She is the patron saint of overstimulated brains, tired eyes and short attention spans… and she visits every twelve minutes, according to a 2021 Ofcom report. This is how often the average UK adult checks their phone, the survey found.

Having a panacea of information at your fingertips at all times is, after all, a pretty difficult thing to be self-disciplined about. If the magnetic pull of your attention towards the little flat box in your pocket after a good minute of focussed work or the irresistible ping of a potentially important email are familiar sensations, you shoulder no blame. Contrary to what Elon Musk wants, we still have animal brains with animal impulses, and our devices are designed to exploit those.

Good news: your brain has a built-in solution: selective attention. It is an essential part of filtering information into what is and isn’t worth paying attention to. It favours the loud, the bright, and the important. The bad news: when we are surrounded by loud, bright and (seemingly) important stimuli competing for our attention at all times, our selective attention mechanism can become over-stressed leading to functional blindness¹, a kind of passive, half-aware autopilot state. This confirms that attention is a limited resource. Our brains have a finite pool of mental energy to exert, which explains why I threw a £20 espresso machine filter away with the coffee grounds at the end of a long shift last week and then put an empty bottle of wine in the fridge instead of the recycling. The hypochondriac in me rejoices – this is not early onset dementia! My synapses are just a bit overwhelmed.

Our Lady of Perpetual Distraction is not a harmless presence, however. Exposure to distracting stimuli during a task increases the likelihood of disrupted memory formation, information recall and other cognitive processes. We notice less “irrelevant” detail such as the colour of a leaf on the ground or an interesting feature on a building. As a person who finds joy in the little things, the ability to see them is not something I want to lose. I want my brain to have a bit of perceptive energy left over, to draw inspiration from the everyday and to take in my surroundings. Doing without my favourite podcast when walking somewhere and not taking my phone to the toilet are the first steps (not that there is much beauty to be experienced in a poo – but it’s all about practice).

Perhaps I’m clinging on to an old way of moving through the world, however an ample body of research exists to support the real physiological and psychological effects of overstimulation, interruption and constant partial attention to multiple stimuli. Raised cortisol and adrenaline levels can cause inflammatory effects on brain cells which is linked to depression and anxiety, whilst consistent distraction and interruption has been linked to a drop in IQ scores double the effect of habitual weed use. 

So how do you avoid distraction fog? In the event that you do not have the time or energy to resist the tides of change and retreat to the land to work the soil like our Amish friends (which I have certainly considered), there are a few solutions echoed by experts.

1. Read a physical book for pleasure. This will help you train your brain to get back into a juicy flow state and make deep levels of concentration more accessible in the long run. 
2. Meditation or sitting in silence. Learning to recognise a drifting mind can help you practice holding sustained attention.
3. Getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night. This isn’t news, but insomnia and overstimulation can form a vicious cycle that becomes harder and harder to break. 
4. Physical exercise, around 150 minutes a week. Happy hormones released during aerobic exercise will bolster your brain cells against stress. 

This list may sound boring to some, but that’s exactly the point. A bit of boredom is good for you. For those to whom boredom is a luxury, I get it! Increased connectivity means increased expectations of being accessible at all times. Whenever you can, prioritise stealing a few moments for yourself. Although unwinding after work by scrolling mindlessly might feel like the most appealing thing to do, build in some moments in silent contemplation. I promise they’ll go by much slower than ten minutes on TikTok. 

¹According to the linked article by Craik, functional blindness is the “failure to carry out deeper perceptual processing”. It is a similar sensation to anxiety dissociation. The dorsal pathway which is responsible for guiding behaviour without object recognition or analysis takes over – your body walks, for example, whilst your attention is elsewhere.