For some reason I decided the only book that could follow The Amber Spyglass is The Kraken Wakes. I think it's because the first person I knew who read His Dark Materials also once said she wanted to move to Edgbaston because it was John Wyndham's home land.


I have some great friends.

It's turning out to be highly quote-able, the first page of Phase One has someone called Phyliss, who's listening to a singer on a cruise ship, asking:

"Why, do you suppose, do people keep on mass-producing these decadent moanings?"

This could sum up most of my record collection and now, looking at it in this context, most of what makes up s lot of blogging.

Later on Phyliss's husband, Fireball Watson, starts receiving news clippings on strange phenomena after filing a report of strange fireballs seen at see. This causes him to reflect that:

“There must, I think, be a great many people who go around just longing to be baffled, and who, moreover, feel a kind of immediate kin to anyone else who admits bafflement along roughly similar lines.”

Which pretty much sums up the condition of being a fortean or being into forteana extremely well. It doesn’t touch of the fun we have chucking these ideas around and seeing what shape they fall into after each throw but the camaraderie of being into the unknown, off-beat and unusual is captured there. It's probably not what John Wyndham meant.