Chris Stanley's Bazaar

A few weeks ago, I paid three pounds for a concert ticket. Depending on what year it is, this could be an enormous extravagance or a huge bargain, but in the middle of 2020 I think we can broadly agree that it’s a waste of time. However, this was no investment. The ticket isn’t likely to be worth more than what I paid for it in years to come, but I wanted it anyway. When it arrived, professionally clamped between two slices of cardboard and sealed in a plastic wallet, my heart felt a little shaft of sunlight, which took me back to 7th May 2001. I’m going to tell you what this ticket stub means to me. In 2001, I was a student at the University of Leicester . I was in my second year, and truth to tell, it wasn’t going all that well. I was doing an English degree, something which I wasn’t sure was really for me. With no options in the first year of the course, I was inevitably stuck with Shakespeare and minute line readings of The Good Soldier , when I wanted to be explaining to pink-chee...

There’s ice on the ground outside, and the days have a nip to them that only the night can challenge. As you can probably tell, I’ve been listening to a lot of miserable music. Actually, that’s not strictly the case. To be honest, I’ve been listening to a bit of everything as I edit my novel. I think that’s a standard requirement to editing anything. I’m going to sound like a complete tool, but I always cut to music. Sometimes it works; sometimes it can help you pace a scene which is flabby, or back-loaded with action, or it allows it space to breathe as you take the rhythm into your subconscious. I used to be a music writer, and this is one of those rare times when I blow my own trumpet. It was only after I listened back to my introductory podcast  that I realised I’d forgotten completely to mention that I used to edit a music section in a newspaper, or that I’d been allowed to interview some pretty well known people, and that I’d authored about three hundred record reviews a...