Interlude

I am writing this as a temporary filler for my Future of the Book review, which is taking me a while to grasp, probably because, as John Mitchinson quoted Yogi Berra 'It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future'. So, in the interim...

A friend recently suggested that we couple up with a dating agency, pushing ToMax as a cool first date. Naturally, this would be called ToMatch and there would be adverts at the back of the ToMagazine. Dating agencies are used more routinely by people a little older than me, but the idea gives me a funny feeling. In some ways the concept is appealing because it is stripping out circumstance from love. 'Meet someone who you haven't just bumped into, but who is right for you.' On the other hand, it is probably wrong that having the same interests makes people compatible. Plus it is contrived, and that isn't very romantic.

I have started writing bits of verse on my phone as I travel around London and react to things, like this advert.

Have you ever seen two so repulsed by each other,

Arranged like puppets and forced, as a joke,

Into arms that were open to somebody other

Than this one, whose style is in vogue. 

I think my blackberyy's memo pad is a good replacement for the writer's cumbersome notebook.

On another note, I have been reading The File by Timothy Garton Ash. It is an astonishing book, written as history and journalism and a personal reaction. Ash returns to East Germany after the Iron Curtain falls, where he is allowed to read the file the Stasi compiled about him. He is easily able to identify the acquaintances who were IMs - unofficial informers against him. So he goes back to investigate what it was that made them, and people in general into informers. It is written beautifully and definitely worth a read...and a talk?