Anything Goes

After falling for silent film (and award magnet) The Artist, I realised I'd bought but not read a biography of the Twenties last year. Lucy Moore's 2008 Anything Goes opens with a line that's far longer than anything I'd usually quote but goes some way to explaining why I'm enjoying this book so much.

Here goes:

"What made me decide to write about the 1920s in America was an increasingly powerful sense of recognition. So many aspects of the Jazz Age recall our own; political corruption and complacency; fear of outsiders; life-changing technologies; cults of youth, excess, consumerism and celebrity; profit as a new religion; astonishing affluence and yet a huge section of society unable to move out of poverty. Perhaps we too are hurtling towards some sort of catastrophe...After all, as history so often reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun"

From the terrible charm of gangster Al Capone and his ice cream coloured suits to the endless partying that reminds me of nothing so much as "with pleasure", the line that gives the game away in The Artist, it's a brilliant, timely read.

On insomnia

I've always liked dreams, whether it's Dali's proper lush sequence in Spellbound or someone droning all over Twitter about wearing a squirrel outfit in their head last night. Hate 'em? You're probably zzzing all over your keyboard. Best skip this post.

Perhaps I like dreams because I've never been a good sleeper. My mum says that, even as a baby, I used to fight my way through to the morning. I was a sleep-walker and a sleep-talker; waking her up to come and examine my sheets for non-existent ants. Thirty years later, nothing has changed. I have good phases and bad phases but the worst can give me flashbacks even now; my Finals, the endless stress of the summer of 2011, and how I couldn't stop my racing mind going round and round like a washing machine.

I woke up last Monday, bounced out of bed and into work. I was in a great mood and then I realised: this is what you feel like if you haven't woken up once the night before. This is how normal sleepers always feel. It's such a half-life, having insomnia. You get obsessive about brands of sleepy tea. In the dead of night, you say embarrassing things which get repeated to you by someone who is almost crying of laughter.

In short, I'm in a bad phase right now and I'm at the end of my tether. Any suggestions?

Invincible Summer

Matthew Kaven Brooks knows what I'm thinking. Found via the marvellous Sandra Beijer.