Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Tower Blocks and Graffiti
Phoenixine Ninety-Seven, September 1997
I was in Brisbane recently. Our office there is in a rather elegant high rise with a wonderful panoramic
view of the city. The only thing that spoils the building is that as one approaches it, one sees great
swathes of canvas (like swelling sails) attached at the first floor level. They look rather ugly and
completely destroy the beauty of the building.
But I refused to be distracted. The view from the 10 th floor was magnificent and I jammed my nose up
close against the window making "oohs" and "aaahs" of appreciation. The other people in the office,
utterly accustomed to the view, nudged each other in the ribs and made "look at the loony" gestures.
"By the way," I asked, "What are the canvas sails for?"
"To catch the windows," someone said. "They keep falling out and hitting pedestrians."
I stepped back hastily. "You're kidding, right?"
"No -- it happens all the time."
Brisbane is a city of hidden dangers. But there are other cities in the world.
Edward Rutherford's London is a venture into darkest James Michener territory. It tells the tale of
England's capital city from just prior to the Roman invasion up to the present day. The tale is told
through the eyes of the families who live in the area. Through all the turbulent times, in a series of
fascinating vignettes, we watch the city grow.
Rutherford has done this before. He applied the same techniques to his first bestseller Sarum which
told the tale of old Salisbury. For his second novel he ventured further afield and in Russka he
attempted the tale of eastern Europe. Unfortunately that turned out to be a very dull book in which it
was impossible to get involved. Perhaps that is why he has returned to England with his third book.
This enormous novel held me enthralled from beginning to end. The characters both great and small,
historical and fictional, leap from the page and the historical events he dramatises have a fascination all
their own. This one has bestseller written all over it, and deservedly so.
Nobody really knows why our office windows fall out, but the theory is that something in Brisbane's
fierce sunshine causes some sort of reaction inside the glass (probably with the pigments) and every so
often, at utterly unpredictable intervals, something goes sproing and the window cracks like crazy
paving, disintegrates into tiny fragments, and vanishes in the direction of down. I am told by those who
have seen it happen that it is most disconcerting. One second the window is there, the next it is gone
without warning.
Amusingly, the current owners of the building decided to save a bit of money when they bought it and
so they paid a lower price and absolved the builder from any warranty liability. Doubtless whoever made
that decision got promoted and the builder laughed all the way to the bank.
I first discovered Michael Marshall Smith with his bleakly funny novel Only Forwards. Now, with
Spares, his second novel, he has entered my list of writers whose novels I must have as soon as they
appear in the shops. Spares is a brilliantly funny, twisted and surreal novel. It opens in the city of New
Richmond, a flying Mega-Mall whose engines have failed. This has forced it to remain permanently
grounded and over time it has grown; metamorphosing into a city. On the lower levels live the scum, the
crooks and hoodlums and drug addicts. But in the higher levels of the city live the aristocracy of New
Richmond (a bit of an obvious allegory, but you can't have everything).
To the city comes Jack Randall. It seems that in the past he lived in New Richmond and he seems to be
on intimate terms with many of the low life. He arrives with a group of spares from one of the farms.