Men and Baays

A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire: for prospective partners, a two- or three-page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/TV/book bases. It was intended a) to dispense with awkward conversation, and b) to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might, at a later date, turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made. It amused us at the time, although Barry, being Barry, went one stage further: he compiled the questionnaire and presented it to some poor woman he was interested in, and she hit him with it. But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.

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This is High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. The man we got to know of through "About A Boy". I hadn't watched the film, like half the world and its cousin had. I will, nevertheless. It has Hugh Grant. I'd be mad to miss it.

About A Boy is hilarious. That Nick Hornby can write! And Hugh Grant, given the characters he generally plays, seems tailor made for the role of Will Freeman- the man who lives off a song his dad wrote, slacking off responsibilities and experimenting with his various fascinations. Hardly the sort to go off and help change lives. But he does. And that is about the plot.


I can't quite get over the picture on the cover. Much like the title of the book explains (or doesn't), this is not just about 36 year old Will or 14 year old Marcus. It is about the two of them, together.

But wait, this post was about High Fidelity. This time, made into a movie with John Cusack I hear. Having read the book, I can only expect it to be a riot. It tells the story of 30 something Rob Fleming's life lived as a grieving record store owner, struck by his girlfriend Laura leaving him for Mr. Sixty Minutes. High Fidelity, if the reviewers are to be believed, documents the 'way men are'. Oddly enough, most of it made decent sense to my perfectly female mind. Maybe all those neo-something-ists shouting about everything and everybody being androgynous at a deep subconscious level really is true. Never mind that. High Fidelity is brilliant entertainment.

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About A Boy:

A nervous-looking young woman in her late twenties was shown into the room. She was wearing a Kurt Cobain sweatshirt and lots of black eye make-up and if she wasn’t Ellie’s older sister, genetic scientists would want to know why not.
‘This is Ruth, who owns the shop. This is the young lady who broke your window,’ said the
policewoman. Ellie looked at the shop owner, bewildered.
‘Did they tell you to do that?’
‘What?’
‘Look like me.’
‘Do I look like you?’
Everyone in the room, including the police officers, laughed.
‘You put that picture in the window to exploit people,’ said Ellie, with noticeably less confidence than she had been exhibiting previously.
‘Which picture? The picture of Kurt? That’s always been there. I’m his biggest fan. His biggest fan in Hertfordshire, anyway.’
‘You didn’t just stick it in today to make some money?’
‘Make some money out of all the grieving Nirvana fans in Royston, you mean? That would only work if it was a picture of Julio Iglesias.’
Ellie looked embarrassed.
‘Is that why you broke the window?’ Ruth asked. ‘Because you thought I was exploiting people?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Today has been the saddest day of my life. And then some little idiot comes up and breaks my
window because she thinks I’m trying to rip people off. Just… grow up.’
Will doubted very much whether Ellie was lost for words too often, but it was clear that if you wished to reduce her to a gaping, red-faced mess, all you had to do was find a twenty-something doppelgänger whose commitment to Kurt Cobain was even more devout than her own.
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(Co-incidentally, the bits from both the books I remembered while writing this, read days apart, have some bitter joke about Julio Iglesias. Ouch!)

I am now reading Nick Hornby's biographical account of a life of football madness-- Fever Pitch (with Colin Firth). For someone that could never make much of football, it goes to say much about how in love I am with this man Hornby.

In love, so much, that even on a rainy day punctuated by waltzing tempers and petty fights, having to hear "You're being such a girl" (which I normally take offense to) didn't do much to distract me from the final pages of High Fidelity. Which it is.