Vic Templar Taking Candy From a Dog (2010)
I lived in the general vicinity of the Medway towns from 1984 to 1989, and the first thing which struck me about the locality was that everyone seemed to be doing something. I don't mean doing something in the sense of a couple of local bands and maybe a bloke who wrote a fanzine. There seemed to be hundreds of bands in Medway, three or four gigs in different parts of town every night - most of them decent, a few of them fucking astonishing - and a house brick randomly launched from the upper deck of a bus heading along Chatham High Street would, nine times out of ten, most likely hospitalise someone who'd written a book, or at least published a collection of poetry. None of this would be particularly significant were it not for the high quality of this creative wellspring, and how little of it seemed affected, not even the self-conscious acknowledgement of itself as a scene.
Of the bands, my favourite - favourite in so much as that I still listen to them - were probably the Dentists, and this guy was their drummer. I knew him at the time, if not well, and was vaguely aware of him having had a couple of things published through Billy Childish's Hangman imprint. I should have picked them up when I had the chance, but never mind. I had a feeling Vic would probably have something interesting to say, but I hadn't considered the possibility that it would be this good.
Taking Candy from a Dog is an autobiographical novel fondly remembering details of childhood and growing up in Kent in the seventies, but because memory cheats, because it's often difficult to get all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle back into a shape which makes sense, it's the autobiography of both the author and his sister's sock monkey, a wartime gift from an American GI whose interjections and commentary still carry a faint trace of the Sammy Davies Jr. So, in other words, there's wiggle room allowing for some things which, although true, didn't actually happen.
It could have gone horribly wrong, ending up as Peter Kay chortling over Curly Wurlies. Andrew Collins similarly wrote an autobiographical account of growing up in the seventies in what was a fairly happy home, but I found his Where Did It All Go Right? cloying and a little too pleased with itself. Templar, on the other hand, gets the balance absolutely spot on, perhaps through a focus which relishes the sheer weirdness of childhood without really trying to play it for laughs, at least not as an end in itself.
I lived in the general vicinity of the Medway towns from 1984 to 1989, and the first thing which struck me about the locality was that everyone seemed to be doing something. I don't mean doing something in the sense of a couple of local bands and maybe a bloke who wrote a fanzine. There seemed to be hundreds of bands in Medway, three or four gigs in different parts of town every night - most of them decent, a few of them fucking astonishing - and a house brick randomly launched from the upper deck of a bus heading along Chatham High Street would, nine times out of ten, most likely hospitalise someone who'd written a book, or at least published a collection of poetry. None of this would be particularly significant were it not for the high quality of this creative wellspring, and how little of it seemed affected, not even the self-conscious acknowledgement of itself as a scene.
Of the bands, my favourite - favourite in so much as that I still listen to them - were probably the Dentists, and this guy was their drummer. I knew him at the time, if not well, and was vaguely aware of him having had a couple of things published through Billy Childish's Hangman imprint. I should have picked them up when I had the chance, but never mind. I had a feeling Vic would probably have something interesting to say, but I hadn't considered the possibility that it would be this good.
Taking Candy from a Dog is an autobiographical novel fondly remembering details of childhood and growing up in Kent in the seventies, but because memory cheats, because it's often difficult to get all pieces of the jigsaw puzzle back into a shape which makes sense, it's the autobiography of both the author and his sister's sock monkey, a wartime gift from an American GI whose interjections and commentary still carry a faint trace of the Sammy Davies Jr. So, in other words, there's wiggle room allowing for some things which, although true, didn't actually happen.
It could have gone horribly wrong, ending up as Peter Kay chortling over Curly Wurlies. Andrew Collins similarly wrote an autobiographical account of growing up in the seventies in what was a fairly happy home, but I found his Where Did It All Go Right? cloying and a little too pleased with itself. Templar, on the other hand, gets the balance absolutely spot on, perhaps through a focus which relishes the sheer weirdness of childhood without really trying to play it for laughs, at least not as an end in itself.
Yogurt is a game that Kes invented. The rules are very simple. You can't play it in your shoes though. The reason is you have to pull your socks so they hang off your feet like a panting dog's tongue. You then raise your toes in the air so that you're standing on your heels. You then walk around on your heels saying 'yogurt, yogurt, yogurt' in a voice from the back of your throat, like a Dalek. That's it, I told you yogurt was a simple game, didn't I?
There's also the cargo cult re-enactment of Wimbledon undertaken one summer, kicking off with someone playing the theme tune on their cassette recorder, taped off the telly - one of a whole string of sporting reconstructions with various sisters, friends, relatives competing as celebrities of the day.
'In comes John Noakes, off of his long run up, looking for his third wicket of the match. He bowls to Jean Jacques Burnell, who pulls it over mid wicket into Eric's fence for four.'
Most authors writing this sort of thing tend to spend half the time digging the reader in the ribs and grinning, but Templar's deadpan delivery combined with his attention to details - regardless of how much sense they'll make to the rest of us, results in something both profoundly moving and funny without actually cracking jokes. In short, he actually captures, right there on the page, the flavour of growing up in a certain era, and I recognise a ton of my own formative years in here despite the furniture having been completely different. Taking Candy from a Dog serves to illustrate how the most powerful, even profound statements can often be the least assuming, words softly spoken and well meant without the need for a full theatrical production.
...and extra points for remembering that the adult reaction to the music of the Sex Pistols was mostly amusement. It was about time someone actually took the trouble to point that out.
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