January '06

I like to walk down trains and see what people are reading. The selection is always amazing, there are the obvious best selling titles, but surprising titles too, from fiction, through hobbies to history, philosophy, psychology. Always surprised, always exhilarated.

But I suspect most of these people have no contact with the literature ecology of the region, our writers, publishers, festivals, promoters, libraries.

People who look to local markets for quality in food, who make the effort to, see it as a lifestyle choice, do not do the same for reading. This is partly through lack of information in mainstream press and broadcasting, partly the lack of real choice and signposting in high street book shops, partly our lack of resources.

When I was a funder, I often had the suspicion that it would be cheaper and more effective for independent publishers to give up trying to sell books through book shops and to give them away. The internet has changed things, created the possibility of an effective relationship between publishers and readers, but I still fancy the idea of a massive story give-away.

 

February '06

In 2002/3:

5,654,772 passengers arrived in Leeds railway station, 5,630,921 departed; 2,500,244 disembarked in York 2,485,152 boarded; 2,128,662 stories arrived in Sheffield, 2,119,159 continued elsewhere;

Hull saw 905,362 beginnings, 884,616 endings; at Bradford Interchange 874,823 people arrived and 973,496 left, while over at Forster Square 231,142 came but only and 96,540 went. Why? Where did they all end up? What happened to them? Did they all march across town and get on a train out at the Interchange?

 

© TfL/London's Transport Museum

 

The rails carry stories. Stories make places, locate people.

Train stations are unexploited cultural cauldrons, accessible, democratic, active twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Stations are micro-literature ecologies – stories, print, readers, book shops, cafes, bars, the time and the dislocation to read, think, reflect.

Trains hold readers, reading to pass the time, reading to work out where they have come from, why they are going, reading to interpret the view from the window.

Readers tell the stories that influence people’s decision about places. What kind of Yorkshire do people see? What are the narratives that reinforce the Yorkshire brand? Wuthering Heights? Kes? A Bit of a Do? The Full Monty? Emmerdale? Who is telling the story of your Yorkshire?

 

April '06

"People on trains will be an ideal market for the short story, more so than busses because the movement and sound of trains is more rhythmic, less distracting. And then, when the train is packed, you need somewhere to escape to, to avoid meeting other people's eyes. I'm sure that's partly why so many people read the Metro. Also there is a romance about train travel that busses just don't have, a sense of possibility. I know the idea of a journey is getting to be a real cliche but it is still a journey within a journey to read a story that starts and finishes while you are travelling." Mandy Sutter

 

July '06

As each story comes in I suffer a curious disappointment. This happens when you are commissioning and I have never been able to explain it accurately. I guess disappointment is a consequence of expectation, but I have no expectations, I have given the writers a blank canvas. Any expectation is abstract, based on the kind of work that writer has done before, my view of the writer’s interests, the writer’s voice, and however blank the canvas, there is a inevitable a slight tracery of my thinking on it.

Then you read and read, and begin to edit, work with the story, get inside it, and learn to read it without expectations, with each redraft you discover the story, notice new things, become more like a editor-reader-writer and less like a commissioning editor. Then suddenly there is a distance and you begin to jump up and down with excitement, a pure reader at last.

"A curve is the most natural, the strongest way between A and B, between two points in space. The straight line is always warped by effects." Architect Lars Spuybroek in David Winner's Brilliant Orange, The Nuerotic Genius of Dutch Football

 

29.09.06

The day before the books arrive. I have just about come to terms with the reality of what has always seemed a great idea. It was easy to say 30,000 books. It was easy to imagine people on stations giving them out to readers. Then the facts start emerging, just how much cubic space 30,000 books take up (I tried to multiply my few thousand books here to imagine how much), I worked out the size of truck, the delivery runs, the total weight - three tons, realise that by a week on Tuesday I will have lifted and moved every kilogram of that three tons. Terrifying and satisfying at the same time.

 

       

You can buy your set of all three books here at route online

4.10.06

Two days at Ilkley, one at Bradford, Hull, Sheffield and Bradford so far and in all of them we have run out of our daily allocation of books well before our daily allocation of hours.

 

5.10.06

Low-point. Rain. The truck’s windscreen wipers don’t work. Have to swap trucks. And shift one and a half tons of books from one to another.

 

6.10.06

I keep getting messages from the publicist. The BBC want to interview you on the station in Hull at 7am on Wednesday or Bradford at 7.30am Wednesday or Sheffield Thursday at 8. Always somewhere other than where I have to be. I offer to do it on the phone or down the line from the city I am supposed to be in, but this isn’t good enough, they want to do vox pops too (I worry, in my experience this means professionally cynical presenters, patronising their listeners and underestimating their intelligence, by searching out people to slag off the arts, complain about the scandalous waste of public money.) Then we hear Radio Hull went to Paragon at 11am, but all the books had gone, so the story become My god, people in Hull love books and I have to get more books there for tomorrow.

Eventually BBC TV, Look North, ask to film us at Leeds and we secure the permissions on their behalf from Network Rail. Half an hour before they are due the publicist rings to apologise, the crew have gone to rubberneck an oil spillage on the M62, she is very apologetic, as if we will be disappointed, but we don’t really care. The beauty of this project is that media coverage doesn’t matter, a few people have been driven to us by radio coverage or the Yorkshire Post supplement, and I guess the funders are interested in the media centimetres by which they seem to judge success these days, but for us: we are here, the readers are here, and we don’t have enough books.

 

 

9.10.06

Monday morning at York, whole Intercity trains walk past without a single taker. Depressing, think the people in York are the most miserable in Yorkshire, until about twelve when they seem to cheer up and the books start flying out. Later I talk to my partner and she tells me that, on Monday mornings in her office, no one talks to anyone until eleven thirty.

One of the no-takers is Chris Smith, erstwhile Culture Minister, he tries to burrow past me intent on the taxi rank, but I am after him, Fiction, free fiction from the region, come on, you’ll be interested in this. Then I lie, It’s funded by the Arts Council. He sticks out a hand as if to receive a relay baton, and without looking back, is gone.

In my dreams: Short fiction. Would you like some short fiction madam? A book of short stories. Short fiction from the region. Fiction from the region. Short stories. Would you like a free book. Free books. Free short fiction.

Free is the operative word. Sometimes I think people think I am offering them my own stories, they look at me as if I am deeply in need of help, but certainly not from them.

 

    

10.10.06

If this experience has done anything it will make me more polite when refusing hander-outers in the street in future, say a cheery No thank you and give them a big smile. Not scurry past as if I haven’t seen them, not sneer as if I am being offered shit on a stick. I have had to be careful to bite my lip when self-important business suits have marched past as if I am a piece of scum, or baggy ladies far too tired and badly dressed to be that snooty.

Though it has been an interesting experience in exploding stereotypes, the businessmen, the lads, the soldier enthusiastic about the project, the sure fire librarian aga-saga lover, or arty intellectual looking types who seem to view the book on the end of your arm as a physically threatening insult.

Overall though you wonder where the publishers have got the idea that people are not interested or would not buy short stories. Maybe people don’t like The Short Story. They are ravenous for stories that are short.

 

11.10.06

The five o’clock starts and nine o’clock finishes are over, leaving in the dark, getting home in the dark, the trestle tables and the truck have been returned to people who will go on with early starts, dark finishes. At the depot we have a discussion about the crack in the windscreen – they keep referring to it as a bullet hole. How did you get the bullet hole? He has a bullet hole. The truck's fine, except for a bullet hole. I’ve been delivering stories.

I can't believe how few books I have left. I was getting mean towards the end of distribution, not sure if I wanted people to have books and me to have none to continue giving out months hence. Out of the original 30,000, I have one pack of each, 180 red, 170 blue, 120 black. I had visions of needing a room to store the leftovers, instead the three packs fit neatly behind the sofa in my office. And already I have less than 180 red, 170 blue ....

On my way to a meeting in Rotherham, I stand in the waves of commuters decanting from Leeds station, Leeds is on a different scale to the other stations, the fifth busiest in the country. I look for a sign of our books. None. Metro readers. PD James. Tolkein. The feeling is very similar to that after a play, so much activity and intent for a burst of time, then done, gone, invisible. Then I hear the voices of people who gave us feedback, have an image of lots of individual acts of reading in more places than I can imagine.

You can buy your set of all three books here at route online

    

18.10.06

Writing thank yous to the people at the five different companies who operate the five stations we used. I want the thank yous to get down the line to the people on the front line, station managers, station staff - the guys who kept the Bradford distributors in tea and coffee, the upbeat friendliness of the railway women and men everywhere. With the exception of one press officer who never returned my emails or calls and never did anything she promised to, everyone in all five companies got the idea immediately, got behind us, and did everything they could to make Light Transports a success.

Our little glimpse behind the scenes showed how complex running stations, especially one like Leeds can be, they are like small towns with all the associated infrastructural needs, with bursts of humanity loading unloading, with all their own complexities and behaviours. An immense task that we all know goes awry from time to time. The fact that they remain so relaxed and cheerful and helpful is stunning. Great banter and camaraderie too. Despite the break up into a myriad of companies, a glimpse into what is maybe one of the last of the great industries.

 

11.11.06

Occasionally people say, I saw someone reading one of your books. And I say what at the beginning of October. And they say, No, yesterday. That feels good. Maybe it is a good job I haven't seen anyone reading one, I am not sure whether I would feel the need to capture them, as a specimen, take a photo or ask them to fill in a questionnaire, quiz them at least.

 

What next?

We were going to publish an anthology but the feedback on the format has been so good, we have kept back five hundred of each title and they are available as you'll have realised by now from route.

While there are no current plans (or the funding!) to repeat Light Transports, I am exploring ideas that get good free stories into people's hands. I am interested in the short fiction equivalent of Victorian street literature 'the large and curious assortment of cocks, catchpennies, street-drolleries, squibs, histories, comic tales, broadsides on the royal family, political litanies, dialogues, catechisms, street political papers, dying speeches and confessions.' At the same time, I love graffiti, especially in its iconographic and sign-subverting forms, when it rises above vandalism and becomes part of discourse, challenges the sanctioned graffiti of civil and commercial life. So I am looking for ways to put free narratives about this place out to an off guard public readership, in a form that is as popular as the street broadsides and as simple as graffiti, but which retains the form of the story.

July 2007

For the what next that happened, go to Bradford Square