Still Life with Chicken. Landscape with Milk. (Issues with 1992.)

  On Tuesday I had my first dirty chicken since lockdown. I was in Wandsworth stalking my past, and talking like this because I was reading M. John Harrison. Even that attributes too much motivation though. I was just eating food and walking it off, a toy without an owner, and I wanted some of the elements of this cute process to be new, and the riverside did not disappoint.

 The flashiness north of Clapham has spread west since I was last here, sinuous new flats and fountains I thought would take me all the way to Putney but not quite it turned out. I hit a gate around Wandsworth, and a strong smell of milk, and then five large white patches on the ground which explained the smell but raised more questions. M. John would have approved.

  Whether I approve of M. John is another matter. Like that matters. But The Course of the Heart is not a complete fantasy, and its extrapolations from reality are, itchily, far more identifiably othering. Bullshit old tropes of white men, shadows and prizes. Was 1992 really that long ago? Maybe. And that's the thing about Horror, the unfettered imagination can be a bit careless of its targets. Every description that isn't of a human is extraordinary however, and it's nice to see familiar places written about: Camden, Peckham, Museum Street. Subjects of an earlier walk, Monday's I think.

 I'm sure there used to be an esoteric bookshop on this street. The wizard in Harrison's book lived just above it before moving to the flats in Putney, opposite where I used to get my hair cut. The book reminded me more than anything of Ken Campbell's Furtive Nudist, also published in 1992 - a bumper year for tragicomic, homunculus-themed meta-fiction it turns out... I think this is where Harrison's narrator lived: 

 Oh, and as with Parks and Recreation and Orange Is The New Black, I encountered theme-bleed between this and what I would read next:

'Their faces were drawn into snarls of concentration; they were grunting and sobbing frustratingly. Suddenly I saw my mistake. I put my hands up to my face and laughed. Not murder, then. They were fumbling and ripping at each other's clothes...' The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

'"Neato," Kristy said, stopping short. "Those trees look like they're hugging."
"What?" Penn said. "No way, they look like they're fighting each other."' The Legends of Greemulax, by Kimmy Schmidt (with Sarah Mylnowski)

I'm trying to alternate between male and female authors.