Episode image is a detail from the cover of The Bees by Laline Paull, published in 2015 by Fourth Estate.
For the 78th Second Hand Book Factory, Charles Adrian is joined by hobbyist and perfectionist amateur playwright, comedian, pianist, juggler and French speaker Daniel Elliot, who is on the verge of becoming a professional business intelligence research analyst. Daniel also brought the leaves for the fresh mint tea that they drink. They touch on wanting to be a pound coin, the joy of staying at home and the emotions of a bee. Except that, apparently, the last book is about more than just the emotions of a bee.
The Bees by Laline Paull is also discussed in Page One 184.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
This episode features a jingle written for the podcast by the band Friends Of Friends.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 20th October, 2015.
Book listing:
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West
The Bees by Laline Paull
Links:
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Lovely. So we're going to drink our fresh mint tea. Thank you very much for bringing that.
Daniel Elliot
Thank you for boiling the water.
Charles Adrian
That's [laughing] my pleasure. You can leave me 5 and a half p [or] whatever it's cost me in gas.
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Cool. So shall we start? I think it's recording.
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Let's.
Charles Adrian
It's all good. So hello and welcome to the 104th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today in South Acton—where I live, conveniently—is Daniel Elliot. Is that what we've decided?
Daniel Elliot
That's what we've decided on.
Charles Adrian
Good.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello!
Daniel Elliot
Hi. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Thank you so much for coming. Can I just say I'm really... I'm excited to have you on the podcast because there... I don't meet that many people who say to me, ‘I've actually been listening to your podcast’.
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
So I find that really flattering and it's really exciting to have you as a guest on a podcast that you listen to.
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Yeah. No, I'm a big fan. I... Because we met at a comedy night in [uncertain] Angel?
Charles Adrian
Yes, that's right. Yes.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. And then I followed you on Twitter and I saw the podca... I saw... I think I saw you tweet about it.
Charles Adrian
Very possibly. Yeah.
Daniel Elliot
[I] followed it through and I've listened to quite a few.
Charles Adrian
Wow.
Daniel Elliot
I, sort of, found my way to the beginning and worked my way through.
Charles Adrian
Oh, you're like me.
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] It's very soothing.
Charles Adrian
I do that if I listen to something.
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Yeah, I can't bear to listen something, sort of, in the middle so I have to... yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's even better.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Wonderful. So you can hear the development. Although I suppose... Have you listened...? You've presumably listened to the ones that are downloadable.
Daniel Elliot
No. I found some of the ones that you can stream. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Did you find...? [gasps] You're... Wow, you're a real...
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... fanatic.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. A Page One fanatic.
Charles Adrian
Wow. I should be a little bit nervous probably.
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Wonderful. Yes. And... yeah, exactly. So we met at Angel Comedy.
Daniel Elliot
Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
So you are a comedian. How...? I shouldn't say that because it's up to you. How do you describe yourself, Daniel?
Daniel Elliot
I'm a hobbyist, I think, is what... I was thinking about that.
Charles Adrian
That's such a lovely word.
Daniel Elliot
I don't know. Because I do a few things and I like finding new little things to, sort of, do. So, sort of... I like... A lot of my [stuff], sort of, involves words. So I guess I've written... I wrote a play which we took to Edinburgh this year; I do comedy which I did in Edinburgh this year; and... but then I, sort of, do other... just various things. Sort of... I always try to have something on the go and then try to... And I never really finish it but I, sort of, get to a point where I'm happy with that. Like teaching myself piano and then I got to a point where I can, sort of, play the songs that I like. So then I, sort of, moved on. Like, juggling or learning French or something is the thing that I'm doing at the moment.
Charles Adrian
I see.
Daniel Elliot
So. But I'm not a master of anything. But [laughs]...
Charles Adrian
Do you think that...? Are you...? Is that okay, that you're not a master of anything?
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Yeah, I'm fine with that.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. I think you can... I mean, the level that I'm happy with—whatever I get to—is quite high because I'm a bit of a perfectionist but I wouldn't say that I'm a pro pianist or a... I don't have any designs on being a professional comedian, particularly. I just quite enjoy it.
Charles Adrian
Interesting. I love this word ‘hobbyist’—I'm going... that's...
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... [what I'm going to] put in the description but I...—because it conjures up images of a, kind of, 19th century gentleman botanist or something.
Daniel Elliot
[laughs] Eccentric. Yeah, yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Daniel Elliot
Going off to Belize to go and...
Charles Adrian
Right. Exactly.
Daniel Elliot
... pick up some...
Charles Adrian
And that's the kind of thing... I mean, I grew up—I think—wanting to become something like that.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. It's it's nice having things to do and that you can do.
Charles Adrian
Do you think you'll run out of things?
Daniel Elliot
No. There's an awful lot of things to [try].
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Daniel Elliot
[laughs] So, yeah, you can, sort of... Yeah. But it's made for interesting... I've just been applying for jobs because I've just moved back to London from Edinburgh and then going to, sort of, interviews and things and it's made for interesting discussions about my CV, where it's, sort of, like, ‘What do you think comedy has to do with the role of a business intelligence research analyst?’ [laughing] [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh my word.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
That's a good exercise in itself.
Daniel Elliot
Mmm.
Charles Adrian
So. Great! And so you've just... And you've just... You finished university...
Daniel Elliot
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
... recently.
Daniel Elliot
Yes.
Charles Adrian
So this is... You're in the real world.
Daniel Elliot
I'm in the real world. Which is the point where being someone with lots of hobbies stops being a student and starts just being [laughing] unemployed and then...
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yes.
Daniel Elliot
... and then you have to go out and, yes, live a life.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Daniel Elliot
And find out how far an English literature degree can get you.
Charles Adrian
Well, it gets you a long way on this podcast.
Daniel Elliot
Great. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[laughing] What is the... What is the book that you've brought that you like?
Daniel Elliot
I agonised over this because my focus in university has always been, sort of... I prefer, like, the more, like, 19th century thing... and classics and things like that. But I thought I didn't want to be the person that brings in, like, an... Although... I don't know.... I wanted to bring in something that maybe you hadn't read and other people might not have heard of. So I brought in The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, which is... I read a long time ago—[deprecating] a long time ago... about maybe ten years ago—and remember loving it and haven't picked it up for a decade or so—I don't know when it came out. But I was, sort of, racking my brain trying to think of a book that I wanted to bring in and read and thought: this one. So. And now I'm actually rereading it on the tube here... I was, sort of... I'm about halfway through now...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Daniel Elliot
... and it's great. So.
Charles Adrian
Oh wonderful. Read us the first page.
Daniel Elliot
I will read you the first page.
Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming. Maybe I would visit with you for the weekend and then suddenly, because I'm fickle like that, I would visit with the man from the corner shop instead – but you would not be sad because you would be eating a cinnamon bun, or drinking a cold Coca Cola from the can, and you would never think of me again. We would be happy, like lovers who met on holiday and forgot each other's names.
A pound coin can go wherever it thinks it will be safest. It can cross deserts and oceans and leave the sound of gunfire and the bitter smell of burning thatch behind. When it feels warm and secure it will turn around and smile at you, the way my big sister...
That's the end of the first page.
Charles Adrian
Wow. It's short but it's beautiful. It has a lot inside it.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah, I'm really glad that that's the end of the first page because her big sister has a Nigerian name that I would hate to try and pronounce.
Charles Adrian
Right. Okay.
Daniel Elliot
But... [laughs] But it's a lovely book. It's very sad at points but also very interesting and has its uplifting moments as well.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Daniel Elliot
I'm definitely enjoying rereading. I would recommend... I mean, I'm giving you a different book but I would recommend this one as well. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right. Okay. That one's to bear in mind. It does sound... I'm really struck by this image of the pound coin as the... the, kind of... the dream. I think that's... Yeah, that's fascinating.
Daniel Elliot
[indistinct] It's this young Nigerian girl who's, sort of, a refugee and there's a lot in here of her trying to... She's taught herself to speak like the Queen—she really admires, sort of, the Queen's English— and then her... the chapter... it's split between chapters from her and chapters from an English journalist and the chapters in her—her name is Little Bee, which is apt for the book that I'm giving you later but...is... Her chapters are written in this very... sort of, how someone would speak if they had tried to learn really good English—sort of, very proper English—but had never interacted with people from England.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Daniel Elliot
It's quite ing... It's lovely. It's really interesting.
Charles Adrian
Oh, beautiful. Thank you very much.
Daniel Elliot
Thank you. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Interesting. Okay, we're going to play... We're going to play a track now. So I'm going... [laughing] I'm going to play... You you gave me four tracks and very strongly indicated two.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
So I've gone with what you... and I'm really excited about this one actually because I think I was probably your age when the original...
Daniel Elliot
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... version of this came out in 2002. So this is Jenny Owen Youngs's cover of Hot in Herre, which is [laughs] kind of amazing. It wasn't... I mean, I liked Nelly but I preferred Country Grammar to Hot in Herre, I have to admit. When that came out I did, kind of, think, ‘[disappointed sound]’.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
But I liked him a lot and this is... this is totally...
Daniel Elliot
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
It's a weird...
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's a weird experience for me to listen to this.
Daniel Elliot
I... I've heard... Obviously I heard Nelly's one first but then I heard this one quite recently and thought, ‘Oh!’ [laughs]
Charles Adrian
It feels very millennial to me. There's something...
Daniel Elliot
It's become my running anthem. I listen to a lot while I'm running because I love... my aim is—incentive is—that if I keep running then one day someone might describe me as booty bodacious.
Daniel and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
Here is Hot in Herre by Jenny Owen Youngs.
Music
[Hot in Herre by Jenny Owen Youngs]
Charles Adrian
So there we are. That was Jenny Owen Youngs singing Hot in Herre—which is spelled with 2 ‘r’s in case anybody's wondering why I'm making such a meal of that. Right. Okay. So. Now, my book for you—beautifully camouflaged in this pile of books on my kitchen table—is All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West.
Daniel Elliot
Okay.
Charles Adrian
Which I suspect you haven't read...
Daniel Elliot
I have not read that.
Charles Adrian
... because I don't imagine many people have read this nowadays. It came in a collection of books from The Book People—which is how I came across a lot of books that I like, actually—and Victoria Glendenning describes this as her best novel.
Daniel Elliot
[interested] Oh. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I challenge anyone to name [laughing] any of her other novels.
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
I love it. I think it's really... I think it's really charming. It's very gentle. I mean, I'm a huge Victoria Woolf—[slowly] Victoria? [laughs]—Virginia Woolf fan. [laughs]
Daniel Elliot
I do... We have...
Charles Adrian
[laughing] That's how big a fan I am of her, I...
Daniel Elliot
The camp... building for King's College University of London—where I went—has... the English building is called the Virginia Woolf Building and for the last three years I've been calling it the Victoria Wood Building.
Charles Adrian
Aha! That's probably what I was doing in my head. That must be it. How weird. [laughing] There must be some kind of transference. So I am... I'm a huge... I also... I'm a big fan of [laughing] Victoria Wood as well...
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... but in a very different way. I am a huge Virginia Woolf fan and so I've always been a little bit curious about this Vita Sackville-West character and who she might have been. This isn't so... It's not so interesting in terms of her prose. She's not adventurous in that sense. It's just—I think—a very nice, well-written book about this woman who is at a point in her life where she finally goes, ‘Now I'm going to please myself’. She's been married all of her life. I think she's in her seventies or eighties and she's been married to an aristocrat and had lots of children and nobody's ever asked her what she wanted. And she wanted to be an artist. And finally her husband has died—as you will find out on the first page—and she says, ‘Right, I'm going to live in Hampstead in this nice little house and get to know some eccentric people and... and do what I want to do’. And I just... I... It really appeals to me.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I think that's really... I don't know. There's something about it that I found so... I think ‘pleasing’ is the right word, actually.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. That's great.
Charles Adrian
Very restful as well.
Daniel Elliot
Hopefully all our husbands will die and then we can...
Charles Adrian
Finally...
Daniel Elliot
... we can all finally [laughing]... finally...
Charles Adrian
Wouldn't it be nice to blossom before that happens?
Daniel and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
I also like it, I think, because I like being at home. It's why I thanked you for coming here. I love being at home. It's one of my favourite things. And so I love... I love the idea... Because there's there's part of me that feels a bit guilty about that. I feel like, ‘No...’ You know, because I read so much about the importance of being out and about and, living in London, there is so much to do out and about that I feel as though I'm wasting my opportunity. And so I really enjoyed reading about somebody who really [laughing] enjoyed being at home. She does go out but she has a nice garden, I think.
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
Anyway. Which I don't have.
Henry Lyulph Holland, first Earl of Slane, had existed for so long that the public had begun to regard him as immortal. The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognise extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life. To filch twenty years from eternal annihilation is to impose one's superiority on an allotted programme. So small is the scale upon which we arrange our values. It was thus with a start of real incredulity that City men, opening their papers in the train on a warm May morning, read that Lord Slane, at the age of ninety-four, had passed away suddenly after dinner on the previous evening. ‘Heart failure,’ they said sagaciously, though they were actually quoting from the papers; and then added with a sigh, ‘Well, another old landmark gone.’ That was the dominant feeling: another old landmark gone, another reminder of insecurity. All the...
Daniel Elliot
That's great.
Charles Adrian
There you go.
Daniel Elliot
I'm excited to read that.
Charles Adrian
Okay, what's your book for me, Daniel?
Daniel Elliot
My book for you is called The Bees by Laline Paull.
Charles Adrian
That's so exciting. I'm a big fan of bees.
Daniel Elliot
I an enormous bee fan. And I read this... I was waiting for a friend by a tube station and he was, sort of, half an hour late, so I just wandered into a Waterstones and just picked up a few books and then came to this one and just, sort of, was doing the thing of reading a couple of pages and then... And then the next thing I knew my friend was next to me and I'd read, sort of, a third of the book [laughs]...
Charles Adrian
Wow!
Daniel Elliot
... just standing up in front of it. And it's great. And I have whored this book out to so many people. I push it on everyone. So my friends—if they listen to this—are going to be exhausted of me talking about this.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Daniel Elliot
But I had two copies. One which... And I've been giving... because I've always, sort of... lending one to someone and then giving back. But one is now with... has, sort of, found a permanent home, I think, [laughing] with someone and so this one is my last one, which I'm going to give to you.
Charles Adrian
Oh, that's really touching. Thank you.
Daniel Elliot
It has been on many holidays and with families and friends and things. It's well travelled bees.
Charles Adrian
Oh, that is wonderful. And that's ideal. I mean, that's exactly what... That's... The whole thing—which I haven't talked about for a while in this podcast—is that I want to receive a book that has lived a little bit so that I feel like when I read it I get something of the experience that you've had...
Daniel Elliot
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
... reading it yourself. But this is... Wow. This is really exciting.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah, it's interesting. It, sort of, follows the life of a bee through a hive but it's got these, sort of...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [whispering] Aww, amazing!
Daniel Elliot
And then it's got these, like, political kind of things drawn from it because of the, sort of, hierarchies of who does what in a hive. And it's... it's great.
sound
[slightly squeaky, shuddering noise]
Daniel Elliot
So I'll read you the first page of the first chapter because that's the bit when the bees actually come in.
Charles Adrian
I'll just say that my fridge turned off. That's what that strange noise was a moment ago. It does that...
Daniel Elliot
It's a little mouse or something. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] ... periodically. Yeah. [laughs]
Daniel Elliot
The cell squeezed her and the air was hot and fetid. All the joints of her body burned from her frantic twisting against the walls, her head was pressed into her chest and her legs shot with cramp, but her struggles had worked – one wall felt weaker. She kicked out with all her strength and felt something crack and break. She forced and tore and bit until there was a jagged hole into fresher air beyond.
She dragged her body through and fell out onto the floor of an alien world. Static roared through her brain, thunderous vibration shook the ground and a thousand scents dazed her. All she could do was breathe until gradually the vibration and static subsided and the scent evaporated into the air. Her rigid body unlocked and she calmed as knowledge filled her mind.
This was the Arrivals Hall and she was a worker.
Her kin was Flora and her number was 717.
Certain of her first task, she set about cleaning out her cell. In her violent struggle to hatch she had broken the whole front wall, unlike her neater neighbours. She looked, then followed their example, piling her debris neatly by the ruins. The activity cleared her senses and she...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] That's ridiculous!
Daniel Elliot
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It reminds me of Jenny by Paul Calico, which is about somebody... I think... I don't know if she turns into a cat but it's [laughing] similarly, kind of... There is something absurd about hearing... like, finding out about the emotions of a bee.
Daniel Elliot
It is but it's also... It gets quite dark. It's not a funny book but it... you... It's interesting how... Generally the feedback is that people end up with a sort of weird halfway point between not thinking quite of, sort of, anthropomorphised bees but not quite imagining just an insect.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Daniel Elliot
You get a...
Charles Adrian
Because that's the challenge, isn't it? I mean, that's one of the things that fascinates me about bees is that I do try [laughing] to imagine what it is like to be a bee and it is impossible.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. It's very interesting. The whole... The idea of the hive mind and of...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Daniel Elliot
... sce... It... There's a lot of talk about, sort of, scents. And she doesn't really hold back with anatomy of bees. Sort of, there's words thrown in there that you, sort of, just have to, kind of...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Wonderful. Oh I love... But I love all that terminology.
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Yeah, which is great. And lots of, kind of...
Charles Adrian
I would say... like, first major criticism: don't bees have stiff bodies anyway? I mean, what is... what does it mean to relax as a bee?
Daniel Elliot
Well...
Daniel and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Daniel Elliot
I don't know but [laughs] I think you should read it and find out. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I know. I'm totally intrigued. I'm totally intrigued. I feel like I'm giving this quite a difficult reception but I... No, I genuinely love it. And Margaret Atwood has described it as ‘Gripping!’ So.
Daniel Elliot
Mmm.
Charles Adrian
And I'm a huge fan of Margaret Atwood. I think she must know what she's talking about. Wonderful. No, thank you so much. This is really exciting.
Daniel Elliot
Well, let me know what you think.
Charles Adrian
I will do. I will do. Thank you so much. This has been... This has been great. Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Great [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I'm going to finish with the second track that you... It's really... This was top of your list.
Daniel Elliot
Yes.
Charles Adrian
So we've done this in reverse order, as it were.
Daniel Elliot
Yeah. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
This is a [laughing] great song and I really enjoyed the video on YouTube. It's... For anybody who hasn't seen it, it's two very earnest people in a beautiful landscape...
Daniel Elliot
Yes.
Charles Adrian
... not really talking to each other.
Daniel Elliot
No [laughs]
Charles Adrian
They're just... They're like... They're like two wolves howling at different moons but—somehow—in harmony.
Daniel Elliot
A good melancholy staple of crooning, I think. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
It's gorgeous. I mean, I hadn't heard it before but I really like it. So this is Let It All Go by Rhodes and Birdy. Rhodes is the male voice, Birdy is the female voice. Is that right?
Daniel Elliot
[speaking over] Yeah. Yes.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Or is it the other way round?
Daniel Elliot
No, you got it right, yeah. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] No that's right. And that's it. Thank you so much, Daniel.
Daniel Elliot
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Music
[Let It All Go by RHODES, Birdy]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]