22 March 2017

Ticker-tape




…although the link between jousting and Rishi Dastidar’s Ticker-tape seems at first to be a stretch, it is there, in the whole notion of a book launch where you hurl a book, throw it high in the air, its arc curving under the nostrils of a hungry public.  The action is no less than a spear thrust, which is the origin of the word launch, coming as it does from Middle English launche, and Anglo-French lancher, and Late Latin lanceāre meaning to wield a lance.  To be liberated with your lance, be a free lance, or a sprightly lance, or a totally crowd-clearing lance depends entirely on how you want to work these days - whether you take your lance with you on the Tube, or into the 5 pm gridlock, or over the soggy moors at night.  And if you lance frequently, lance a lot, in fact, then you are turning into something knightly, courtly, a bit cavalier perhaps, which etymologically speaking means you must be travelling with a horse.  And then we have to get into cavalcades, parades of horses, even a ticker-tape parade where (if you are lucky) paper, words, and poems rain down on your head. 

All of which means I’m hugely looking forward to this evening’s launch of Ticker-tape in Waterstones, Piccadilly, London.

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