The Journey to Headcorn

I've left Maddy with Holly and have wandered down to Kent to see Dave McKean and family. Dave asked me to let anyone in Paris, or in France, or within easy commuting distance of Paris (these days that probably includes people in Belgium and Estonia...) know that he has a show coming up in Paris. Dave will be signing at the gallery on Wednesday... (This is where it is and how to get there)

Here's a French article on Dave and the show...

and here's the gallery website. http://www.bdartiste.com/dotclear/


I wound up strangely out of sorts today, after my journey down to Dave's. The toilets on many trains in the UK have ridiculously unintuitive ways to open and close doors, with mystery buttons inside the toilet to close and lock the door that are hard to find, even for the sighted. I watched a blind man head into the train toilet. He couldn't find the door to close it, said "excuse me, can some help me?" until a fat man in a suit sitting next to the toilet stopped pretending he wasn't there and pressed the close door button for him. Then I watched the fat man hurry down the aisle and past me and back into the next compartment for all the world as if he was embarrassed by what had just happened. Soon enough there came a frantic knocking on the toilet door as, obviously, the blind man couldn't get out (secret, randomly placed buttons would do it, but you have to find them first). And there was a carriage full of people between me and the toilet, so I waited for someone to get up, press the outside button and let him out. And nobody did. now the knocking started again, louder, and more panicked, and I looked out at a carriage filled with people who were pretending very hard they hadn't heard, and were all now gazing intently at their books or papers. So I got up and walked down to the toilet and let the man out, and showed him back to his seat, because it's the least I'd want if I was blind, and it's how you treat a fellow human being, and for heaven's sake. And then I went back to my seat, and everyone looked up at me and stared and smiled with relieved "thank god someone did that" smiles, and I sat down grumpy and puzzled and remain grumpy and puzzled about it still. I'm still trying to work out what on earth was going on there -- I don't think I did anything good or clever or nice. I just did what I would have thought anyone would do. Except a train filled with people didn't, and in one case actively appeared to be running away in order not to. And I puzzle over, was this a carriage filled with particularly self-centred or embarrassed people, has something fundamental changed in the years I've been away from the UK (unlikely, and I don't believe in lost Golden Ages), did those other people really somehow blindly fail to notice that there was a blind man trapped in the toilet...? I have no idea and I write it down because, as I said, it puzzles and irritates me, and if it ever turns up in a short story you'll know why.

fireflies

I went to Philadelphia and watched Holly walk across the stage in a cap and gown and collect her diploma, and I was proud as any parent could possibly be. Then I came back again.

(Next week I do it again, only this time to Providence and to watch Mike get his master's. Slightly less thrilling, as he left in December and has been working at Google for most of this year, but I'm sure I'll be every bit as proud and happy.)

I only got online to tell you that if you take the dog for a walk last thing at night you can find yourself unexpectedly seeing the first fireflies of the year twinkling in the bushes, and what a fine thing that is.

But then when I got online I discovered that the Stardust Movie site is now live at http://www.stardustmovie.com, so I thought I'd mention it.

And I learned that the second volume of ABSOLUTE SANDMAN has just been announced at the DC Comics website -- http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=7881:

The second of four beautifully designed slipcased volumes, THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 2 collects issues 21-39 of THE SANDMAN and features remastered coloring on all 19 issues as well as brand-new inks on THE SANDMAN #34 by the issue's original penciller, Colleen Doran, and a host of bonus material, including two never-before-reprinted stories by Gaiman (one prose and one illustrated), a complete reproduction of the never-before-reprinted one-shot THE SANDMAN: A GALLERY OF DREAMS, and the complete script and pencils by Gaiman and Kelley Jones for Chapter Two of "Season of Mists" from THE SANDMAN #23.

Vertigo 616pg. Color Oversized Hardcover $99.00 US

(The illustrated story it refers to is what we old-fashioned types call a "comic", and it's the painted John Bolton Desire story that I was never able to persuade DC comics to do as a poster; the prose story is the short story that was on the box of the original Sandman statue.)

Somehow I doubt that Amazon.com will accidentally stick it up at $14.95 this time, but it's probably worth checking to see if they do.

And my advance copy of "In the Country of the Blind", an H. G. Wells short story collection with an introduction by me, arrived today. Having a few hundred Penguin Classics on the shelves, it's extremely nice to have one up there that I had something to do with.