Swandown

American Smoke – Iain Sinclair

The book flits to and fro across the Atlantic. About halfway through, at the moment there's parallel strands: a town in Kentucky, venue for a particularly bloody civil war episode, the town where William Burroughs pitched up for his later years, and Ripe, where Malcolm Lowry died, in 1957.

I've always wondered just how well-read authors are, beyond the review copies they receive. I've realised just how little I knew about the post WWII American writers, the Beat Generation. I could've rattled off Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg, then started to falter. Can I have Bukowski? Too late? Hubert Selby Jr? Doubt it. I wouldn't have thought of Lowry. I'm low of books to list and claim as read, too. Hunter S Thompson? Nope, he's Gonzo Journalism, much later and something else altogether, maybe someone continuing in the tradition of...

Of the big three, I've only read one book:

Jack Kerouac: Just On The Road. So long ago that the only thing I can remember is that I enjoyed it. In that case, why didn't I look further, get hold of a copy of The Dharma Bums or Big Sur?

William Burroughs: any number of aborted attempts. Maybe one of those right book, wrong time things. I'm not low on aborted attempts, and there's quite a few eventual completions: Crime and Punishment, Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time among them. Often it's been a question of practicality. Needing to read the library book first before the loan expires. Needing something lighter and slimmer for public transport, something easier when distractions are rife. I know Steely Dan are named after a strap-on dildo in The Naked Lunch. I don't suppose that really counts for much.

Allen Ginsberg: ziltch. Not a word.

I didn't even have have Lowry identified as a Beat Generation writer. Another aborted attempt: Under the Volcano. Abandoned for absolutely no good reason, other than the problem of tackling those first few complex pages repeatedly when my head was full of other stuff, unable to shake it off and out and get the clear run the book needs and deserves.

Lowry frequently used the Yew Tree, at Chalvington, and is buried in the cemetary at Ripe, along the A27. He lived in Rye, too. Sinclair describes Rye as the twee, cobbled place it is. Great to visit, no so great to live there: the local secondary school is in and out of special measures, the place depends almost entirely on tourism for employment, a seasonal existence. The surrounding areas are more attractive, if you can afford to live there. A little further east and there's the oddity of Lydd, and the stark, unreal beauty of Dungeness, where Simon Ings clearly set the early chapters of Wolves. The Yew Tree now is a popular pub serving way more food than drink. It once was one of those out of the way places, where the conversation stops should a non-local come through the door.

Swandown

Sinclair and Andrew Kotting took a swan-shaped pedalo from Hastings, around the coast and up the Thames to Hackney. It wasn't a Flintoff-style midnight, drunken jape. It was planned and filmed. There's a full-length documentary. It was released in 2012. London Olympics year.

They encountered hostile security forces on approaching the Olympic development site. Sinclair write about some of the displacement, jackboot approach, and insensitivity to local concerns in Ghost Milk. The borders of the site were patrolled by Gurkhas. Obviously bog standard G4S goons, as used to put illegal immigrants and asylum seekers through the wringer (not all of them survive the experience), were considered too soft to do the job properly.

The Olympics are a political event. There's no need for massively expensive 'bids'. For 'bid' read 'bribe'. Committee members are wined, dined, goody-bagged up to the eyeballs. Countries spend millions trying to secure the games. All the expense could be saved. It would be fair to put the names of the countries able and willing to host the games into a random number generator, and put them in order, accordingly. That would remove all the political wrangling, all the whispered corridor meetings, all the bribery and corruption.

There's a massive spend on an entirely irrelevant opening ceremony. Countries compete for the best opening and closing ceremonies that have nothing to do with the sport that follows. The circus comes to down. Pomp, rite, ceremony, and massive expense.

There's a television series BLISS and MM watched. It left many shaking their heads at how communities were allowed to be disassembled, destroyed, by uncaring, jackboot development and urban planning. In a few years, there'll be a similar retrospective on how the people of Stratford and the wider area were treated, businesses displaced, pockets lined and politicians left crowing about hosting the games and their 'legacy'. A legacy that includes no more funding for basketball, a sport open to anyone with a hoop and a ball, and played on small courts in inner city areas. Twenty of twenty nine sports reported drops in participation, grass roots participation, between April 2012 and April 2013. There is no government plan for school sports. Nothing clear and certain and encouraging team sports, anyway. There's a Newham website with before and after photos. It suggests that sanitised, branded and corporate means better.