For '3 Wyrd Things' I ask various creative people whose work I admire to
tell us about three oddly, wonderfully, weirdly British things that
have been an influence on them and their work:
- a book or author,
- a film or TV show,
- a song / album or musician / group.
Carly Holmes is the author of several novels, a collection of short stories and, most recently, the non-fiction, 'Love Letters on the River'.
I first came across her writing in a collection of "haunting tales from Welsh women authors", 'The Wish Dog and Other Stories', published by Honno, but it was with her Tartarus Press (and subsequently, Parthian Books) short story collection, 'Figurehead' and her stunning second novel, 'Crow Face, Doll Face' (also published by Honno), that I really started paying attention, indeed I've been evangelising that novel to anyone who'd listen since reading it in late 2023.
Other than her love letter to the River Teifi most recently Carly was the guest editor of 'Uncertainties VII', the latest in the series of anthologies from Swan River Press.
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Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Sebastian
I want to start by making it very clear that I am not cool or cutting edge. I’d love to be one of those people who only listens to obscure music, who adores Ulysses (right through to the end), and will refuse to watch films unless the subtitles have subtitles. But I’m all about the pomp, the cheese, the melodrama. Think Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, Phantom of the Opera, Wuthering Heights (song and novel), Guns n Roses when they were in their 12-minute-song phase… Give me purple prose, give me tragic love that reduces you to splinters, give me ridiculous lyrics that make no sense (looking at you, Frank Black), give me rock opera. And turn the dial to 10.
For my song, I was tempted to go with Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’, as there were moments in my depressed teens when I felt it was written just for me. I felt-tipped the lyrics on my bedroom wall, played it on a constant loop, and still shiver with a mixture of anguish and love if I hear it when I’m not expecting to. But instead, I’m going to pick ‘Sebastian’ by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. I was late to this song, discovering it on a Best Glam Rock Album in the World Ever! CD when I was about nineteen, and it Blew My Mind. Exquisitely nonsensical lyrics: check. Full orchestra backing up the usual rock instruments: check. Long-haired men in satin outfits: oh yes!
I didn’t care what it was about, and I didn’t interpret a lot of the lyrics correctly until a few years later when the internet happened and I googled it and discovered how far off I’d been, but I adored every overblown second of that song. I played it over and over and over in my car whilst beating the steering wheel in time to the percussion, screeched it in the shower, scribbled the words in the margins of my university essays. Thirty years later and if I’m home alone with a bottle of wine open, I’ll still pop the CD on and twirl around my kitchen, misty-eyed and overwhelmed.
There were times on those long-ago car journeys, when I played it on repeat with the volume on maximum and my rap-loving brother in the passenger seat, he’d beg me to give it a break just for a bit, play something else. If I refused then he’d join in with an alternative version of the chorus, leaning close and singing right into my ear:
Somebody call meeeeee an AMBULANCE!!
Touche.
Victoria Holt
For my author, I’ll have to go with Victoria Holt. There are authors I love far, far more, and there are far better novelists than her, but I read her gothic melodramas when I was an adolescent, along with everything by Daphne du Maurier (who would have been another obvious choice), Georgette Heyer, the Brontes, Dorothy L Sayers, and Mary Stewart. Holt’s plots, her heroines, and above all her brooding landscapes, spoke to my pubescent need for high passion.
There wasn’t anything especially unique or elevated about these gothic romances that would make them more ‘worthy’ of being my choice than the Brontes or du Maurier; they were pretty standard fare. There was a beautiful young heroine, usually a governess, a handsome, glowering hero/antihero, and a house. But it was the looming, constant presence of the house in each novel that has remained with me through the years since; that and the fact that the heroine was always more obsessed with the house than with the hero and I totally got that.
Clearly a neurotically insecure child, from as far back as I can remember I’ve yearned for a home of my own: a cottage in the woods or a mansion covered in ivy. If given the choice I’d have the mansion and the woods. I longed for bricks and mortar that was all mine, a home that I didn’t have to share and that nobody could take from me. Holt’s heroines were in love with the houses in those novels, romantically in love, and though they also wanted the man I think they’d have kicked him to the kerb smartish if they’d had to choose between the two.
I’d read the novels and devour the descriptions of the houses, imagine myself owning them, walking the corridors and tending the gardens. I was also rooting for the lovers and I wanted a happy ending for them, but I trusted completely that a happy ending in Holt’s world would always involve the heroine getting the house. Maybe she’d have to share it with her new husband, like I have to grudgingly share my home with my husband, but we both knew it really belonged to her alone. And she belonged to the house.
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I remember watching Chocky for the first time at the home of my parents’ friends (I can’t now remember which friends but have a vague idea that it was on a trip back to Jersey to stay with relatives). We were visiting these people for the day, and the adults were gathered around the table in the kitchen chatting about boring adult things while I and my brother were parked in front of the TV in the front room with a tub of biscuits. Daytime television and unlimited access to the biscuit barrel: two things we weren’t allowed at home. I kept expecting my mother to suddenly come to her senses and appear through the half-closed door to remove both treats.
We flicked through the four channels available to viewers back in the 80s and found something that looked like it might work for both of us. Back-to-back reruns of a children’s drama called Chocky. The opening music was high-pitched and scratchy, a little creepy (I was, and still am, a total scaredy cat) but the opening scene was cosy and gentle. We settled down with another fistful of biscuits and hoped we’d get the chance to finish at least one episode before we had to leave. Thankfully, the adults opened a bottle of wine and got stuck in, and we stayed very quiet and managed to get a few episodes under our belt before being called into the kitchen to answer questions about school and hobbies.
It's odd, I don’t remember much about the specifics of the series (or the sequels), but it seemed to be frequently repeated so I’m sure I saw it a few times. My memories are all impressions and fragments: a sense of kinship with the boy, Matthew, who was as reserved and sensitive as I was but a lot cleverer; envy for his loving, warm family life; awe and a fearful protectiveness for Chocky itself, who seemed to me to be incredibly vulnerable and innocent despite its power; terror of the unknown humans who lurked at the edges of the show with evil intent.
If I try to focus on any particular detail of Chocky now, summon a concrete memory, all I get is a wash of electric blue, a high whining, and a feeling of foreboding. That works for me.
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