'Deep in my heart I know I love chips'

To conclude my BS Johnson experience, and for the benefit of anyone wanting to discover his work, here are a few more things, particularly about The unfortunates, which I did find a haunting and powerful book. If it becomes available online at something less than the lowest price I've so far found online of £46.11, I'll buy a copy.

1. It is one of the novels featured on BBC Sounds' Exploding Library series, the half-hour episode presented by the comedian Rob Auton. A bit self-consciously wacky for me maybe, but still was an interesting and enjoyable listen. The series also features another of my favourite novels Nights at the circus by Angela Carter. 

2. On Youtube there is Johnson's film about the novel, originally broadcast in 1969 as part of BBC Arts' Release series. It includes footage of him vising Nottingham and showing the orginal book in a box. If the book is timeless the film is very much of its time.

3. Out of curiosity, I have tried to use football scores to track down the date of Johnson's original Nottingham visit that inspired the novel. There is a reference to checking the West Brom v Chelsea score, a match also taking place that day, and to Chelsea having won 3-1 at 'The Bridge' that season. The only season I could find with this result was 1963-64, which seems about right. But Nottingham Forest weren't playing at home on the day of the West Brom v Chelsea game that season, while Chelsea's home match against West Brom was later than the away one. Surely Johnson, that stickler for truth, can't have invented football scores? At the very least, mystery unresolved.

4. The unfortunates includes a lament about the inadequacies of English football stadiums: '...so piecemeal... never designed as a whole' and commenting that 'the directors and owners... let the men on the terraces, their chief supporters, the sixpences of the masses, stand out in all weathers' and charge extra for 'corrugated iron sheds'. Myself, I used to have a soft spot for piecemeal grounds with corrugated iron sheds, but in the light of the tragedies at football grounds that happened in the subsequent quarter century, one must conclude that Johnson was ahead of his time on that point.

5. Lastly, whatever the challenges of reading BS Johnson, one line in The unfortunates I can definitely identify with. Contemplating what to order for lunch the protagonist muses: 'Deep in my heart I know I love chips.' He surely wasn't making that up.