Targeted by psychopaths

I may have mentioned before how much I love the Internet. Maybe several times, who knows? There's a wonderful birthdayish feel about ordering things, paying for them, forgetting about them, and then a week or two later getting lots of presents in the post. However. I seem to have become the target, recently, for any and every pointless "homeware" catalogue the postie can shove through our letterbox. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that my address has been pimped out by somebody I actually subscribe to (Lakeland, I still love you!! Call me!!), so can only assume it was a one-night-stand (i.e. something I bought for Christmas from some company I'll never use again) who has stitched me up like this. I religiously tick every box that says "I do NOT wish to be contacted with exciting offers by your carefully-chosen partner companies thank you very much, now or ever", but there's obviously some loophole even the pathologically cautious like me have missed.
My most recent unsolicited arrival was the catalogue for Really Linda Barker, which seems to specialise in cast-iron rabbits and "wall art". As I flicked idly through it I realised that far from being an advertisement for Ms Barker's range of metalwork chinoiserie (well, it's all made in China), it's actually one gigantic cry for help. In her own words : "Looking back through my previous collections, I've noticed I have a growing obsession with hooks, and for some reason, chickens". Which, to the trained eye, says "STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN". It's a short and fatally easy step from an obsession with hooks and chickens to ending up like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, experimenting with livestock and wearing a waistcoat of badly-cured human skin. And why restrict this worry to the otherwise wholesome-looking Linda Barker? God knows what festers in the mind of Johnnie Boden. Why does he so keenly want to share his views on feather-stitch and patent leather with you? WHY????? Is he making himself a girl-suit like Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs???
Best not to ask really.

"Oh look, there's a daisy-chain of human hands in the rigging!"

Feelgood horror fiction

Yes, there is such a thing. Although I'm using the word "horror" as a kind of general catch-all to include supernatural shenanigans of any kind. I've recently read a number of books whose authors breathlessly cite Stephen King as their muse, their inspiration, and their spiritual father. Sadly, not one of them had what it took. And that's not to say that they were badly written, just that they seemed to have totally missed the point about Stephen King, which is that he doesn't really write horror. I know, I know, he is the mainstay of every Horror section in every bookshop in the world, and arguably made the genre the mainstream moneyspinner it has become for so many publishers. However. Horror, to me, is what James Herbert writes - bleak, nasty, and full of rats, with everybody dead or mutilated at the end. While Stephen King has a limitlessly gruesome imagination, what he also has is a phenomenal sense of decency. You can tell that Stephen King was the fat speccy boy who was mercilessly bullied at school, and as a result has become the champion of the underdog. Almost every one of his heroes is a weak character - a battered wife, a small child, an old woman, a kid with a stammer/glasses/weight problem. And by the end of the book, natural justice has (usually) prevailed in their favour. It's the satisfying and very black-and-white morality of fairy tales. In the same bracket I'd put Muriel Grey (yes, the weeny Scottish Annie Lennox-clone from The Tube), John Connolly and the truly wonderful Phil Rickman. I was having huge difficulties getting off to sleep last night (Sunday night syndrome) and realised that it was because I had three chapters left of To Dream Of The Dead by Phil Rickman - and I had to put the light on and finish it, reassuring myself that embattled female vicar (and Deliverance minister) Merrily Watkins and her grumpy New Age daughter Jane would be OK. Of course they were, because Phil Rickman is (and I say this with the utmost respect for both of them) another Stephen King. Albeit an uncompromisingly British one.

The lovely Phil Rickman (on left). In his day job as BBC Radio Wales' "Phil The Shelf". Won't bother with a picture of Stephen King because you all know what he looks like.

Nightmares and horror films

Felt like adopting a Vincent Price tone for this post (sadly when I try and do the voice I sound more like Loyd Grosman in drag). We were discussing what it is that scares you, apart from the obvious (Inland Revenue, ant infestations, credit card fraud etc) (vets' bills..) and the first thing I remember being screamingly terrified of as a child was the shadow of my hand on the fridge door. Odd I know, but I was about 18months old and I remember watching the shadow, then moving my hand slightly, and suddenly MY SHADOW FINGERS GOT LONGER AND LONGER AND WITCHY AND LONGER. I recaptured the feeling perfectly when I was a student, watching "Nightmare on Elm Street". It wasn't the slashy gore; it was the way Freddy's arms extended and extended as he walked down a dark alley until they were about 10 feet long.
Which leads me to hypothesise (ooer) that there are two kinds of fear: one is the rational fear of knife-wielding maniacs and body-snatchers (ie random violence and losing one's mind/autonomy), and the other is far more irrational and comes from the inarticulate animal brain - that of things being WRONG, in terms of scale or gravity or logic.
Will now go and sit in the lovely sunshine with a copy of "That Hideous Strength" by C S Lewis - one of my favourite books ever. I still have to adjust my brain a bit when I read it, because I have never forgiven him for unceremoniously dumping Susan at the end of the Narnia books, and there's more than a hint of God's-Own-Anointed nationalism which you have to choose to read as benign rather than bigoted - but I still love it.