The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew That it Was None of his Business - Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch

I think I have just found the stand-out read of 2007.

I have received this book as a Christmas present after my friend J told me about it and I refused to believe that such a book could exist. Basically, this is a large colourful children's picture book about a mole who wakes up one day to find a Mr Whippy - style turd on his head. The irate the mole goes round all his animal friends, asking if they have perpetrated this outrage. By way of an alibi the other animals show the mole what their spoor looks like and how it does not match the one he's wearing. For example, the goat:

"'Me? No, how could I? I do it like this!' and plippety plop - a pile of toffee - coloured little balls tumbled on the grass. The little mole found them almost appealing."

Eventually, the mole meets some flies who are able to taste his shit-turban and tell him what animal it comes from. And then he's out for revenge, crimping off a little mole length on his enemy!

I was amazed by the subject matter of this book. I am going to keep a copy out on display in my living room for visitors to leaf through... That's right... it'll be a glass coffee table book!

The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson

A coming-of-age tale by the writer of "Withnail and I" set in the 1950s. And what a strange decade the 1950s were: beating your children was acceptable while masturbation was beyond the pale.

Thomas Penman is 15 and lives with his godawful parents who hate him and each other. His father actively beats and bullies him while his limp and useless mother spends all her time boiling up cheap, nasty meat for her dogs which she allows to shit in the house. By the end of the book you can practically smell the shit and dogmeat. Also living with them is Thomas' beloved grandfather who is dying of cancer. Being 15, Thomas is not so much concerned with the gaping hole that the old man's death will leave in his life, but with what will happen to his grandfather's prodigious collection of pornography on his demise. Grandfather is not a loveable, white-haired, Werther's-toting old gent! Following the trauma of serving in the First World War, he went a bit strange and devoted himself to creating rather eccentric porn - such as erotic stories about boys at public school and pictures of naked women whose bums he has replaced with a second pair of breasts. The jewel in this porno crown turns out to be a picture of a woman with who seems to have a duck up her arse, with just its head sticking out. If Grandad dies, Mum and Dad will go through his things and this priceless collection will be thrown away. And so the young, gonad-driven Thomas begins the sneaky rumaging through his grandad's stuff that will eventually expose all his family's secrets.

I really enjoyed this book, mostly because it is filled with lurid descriptions of rather disgusting things, whether they are old, incontinent dogs, the contents of teenage boys' minds, the hypocrisy of nearly all the adults or the grisly deaths of crabs exploded by Thomas and his best friend as a hobby. All of life is here and looking pretty unwholesome. Here's a taste taken from a description of how Thomas lurks about his home:

"More often than not he located in the hall, wedged between the wall and a piece of furniture called a tallboy. When there was no one around this was his favourite spot. It was a dark, secret place, with bland wallpaper covered in dots. No one else ever got in here. (The only other person who ever got in here was his grandfather who had been known to exploit the isolation to hang his testicles over the banisters.)"

From now on whenever some old timer tries to tell me that things were better in the 50s when children weren't cheeky, women knew their place and gays could probably be burned at the stake, I shall be thinking of the woman with a duck up her arse...

Book-Related Disappointment...

Last week I had a brilliant idea for a book. Not a novel, but one of those amusing stocking filler books without much content (ideal for a lazy git like me to write). It was going to be the Schott’s Miscellany of Christmas 2008. My idea was to write a dictionary of words that sound rude but aren’t. I had the words “crapulent”, “turdiform” and “pismire” to begin with and despite my friend’s protestation that “Three words do not make a book.”, I was confident that the F, C and S sections of any decent dictionary would yield further results.

Imagine, then my disappointment at coming across “Butt Rot and Bottom Gas: A Glossary of Tragically Misunderstood Words” by Eric Groves in my local Waterstones! Large quantities of easily-earned money no longer await me and it’s back to the day job...

Words I have had to look up...

Of late I have found myself having to resort to the dictionary a great deal. I thought I would share the words I've been looking up so that you (whoever you are) can get really good scores when doing the "Improve your wordpower" page in old copies of Reader's Digest in doctors' waiting rooms.

1. Demiurge - Sounds as if it ought to be half an urge, but turns out to mean an ancient Greek magistrate or a deputy god responsible for creating the material universe.
2. Acromeglic – Medical term to describe someone suffering from a form of pituitary cancer which causes them to make too much growth hormone (notable sufferer = Andre The Giant!). To my great upset, I found this word in one of my sister’s columns. So much for my theory that I’m the bright one...
3. Pismire – Another one that sounds like one thing but means another. Actually an ant.
4. Quintain – A target for practising jousting.
5. Halidome – holy place, sanctuary.