One of the great pleasures (or displeasures, on occasion) of being a writer is meeting and getting to know other writers. This also means you get to plug their books and talk a little about how good they are. It so happens that three such friends have had books published in recent weeks, so here is a little round up.

First, mostly due to the fact I love it and the back cover has a quote from yours truly, is Vic Templar’s Taking Candy From a Dog. This is the part memoir, part fiction tale of a very ordinary boy, living a very ordinary life in a very ordinary part of Kent, yet it is also one of the most touching and hilarious books you could wish to read about life as a child. It is warm without being cloying and funny without being too knowing. It is even printed in loving crafted editions by an independent publisher with an eye for the best new authors. It is a tale of picnics, wasps, summers that last forever, Wimbledon, Fred Perry, the Buzzcocks, Gillingham FC and family life in the 1970s. This is a promo video that Vic made for it.

Talking of promo videos, my friend Stewart Home made what he claims was the first promo video for a book way back in 1993. That was for his book No Pity, which you can see below. You can read a 1999 interview of Stewart by me here.

Stewart’s zillionth book, Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie has just been published by BookWorks and is a kind of extreme feminist abstract art manifesto brought to you via the medium of spam emails. It is as filthy as it is funny, with Home spamming the lists of art curators, art press and artists that used to spam him, only with twisted interpretations of what they want to hear. Home is one of the few avant garde novelists with staying power in British literature and defies categorisation. You may enjoy his early skinhead-punk-hippie-(anti)anarcho-marxist novels, you may enjoy his cultural theory books, his avant garde essays or simply just read the rude bits. But you will realise that he is something special and unique.

Last but no means least is Ian Vince, who writes about comic matters in his various books, such as his travelogue about a trip on a milk float. His latest book is all about Britain. It is a geological exploration of what lies beneath the land we walk on every day and is entitled The Lie of the Land. Ian has also set up a British Landscape Club for all those who share his interest in making geology more interesting. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but am sure that Ian’s amusing tone and enjoyment of the trivial shines through to make an entertaining read.

Interesting post today on the British Library’s Sound Recordings Blog, which explores the term ‘innit’. Obviously this word is one I have looked into a great deal, mostly during the writing of We’re British, Innit. I first came across it being used by members of the Greek community (immigrants and second generation) in Thanet, where I grew up. Though I do have some memory of it being in use in Cockney and London/Kent English before that, especially as depicted in uses of slang in popular culture.

You can hear it being used by, I think, Keith Moon, in this very odd 1966 Who track. Though there are examples in film going back to the 1950s at least.

Football is a topic very close to my heart and one covered a good deal in the book. I have watched thousands of hours of football in person and on television, but this must be the finest half-time talk I have ever seen. John Sitton, then manager of Leyton Orient (a team I saw play earlier in the season), sacks one player, offers two others a fight and in the process utters the most baffling yet fantastic line ever heard in a professional football dressing room. Not to be missed.