Letsgoloolala with Lily Anne
Ubiquitous
It’s just now that I am about to write about that interesting cafe bookstore named Ubik, that I give some thought to the name. Ubik sounds as though it might be short for ubiquitous a word that is not often used in everyday language where I live. I look up the Spanish translation and find ubicuo and yes in both languages those two words seem to have the same meaning- omnipresent or present everywhere. It’s a bit like social media- it’s here it’s there it’s everywhere. I’m learning just now about a futuristic book published fifty years ago called UBIK and written by Philip Dick (rhymes with Ubik). Ubik is a substance in a can of aerosol spray. In a now sophisticated lunar world a business magnate assembles ‘his best’ to protect him from psychic intrusion. When a bomb blast kills the boss leaving his team unharmed they rush to planet earth with his body thinking they can restore him to half -life but it doesn’t work like that. Their boss is everywhere – his face even appears on their money and one by one they start to feel cold and shrivel up and die. There’s a lot of confusion about who is dead and who is alive. Enough! I bet they think that if only they could find that aerosol can everything would be just fine- and it probably would be, if only the damned thing did what it says on the tin.
So here I am in Ubik, the ‘café-come- book store’ in what sounds like an appropriately pretentious name for an intellectual group of thinkers and talkers. The thing is that while this name was on my list I was planning to be elsewhere on this particular night. Actually I waited for half an hour at La Escuela where I go to my swing dancing group every Monday but this is a Tuesday and I thought that a meeting had been convened to discuss poetry only to discover that it wasn’t going to happen until two weeks later.
I join an interesting looking mix of people, some seated as in a theatre looking down at the stage and others including those who arrive late, squeezing in on floor level to be able to hear what is being said. Given the paucity of my Spanish vocabulary I’Il need to do some guesswork but I know enough to understand that the topic is the book Remains of The Day. I also know that a film was made starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Unfortunately I haven’t read the book and although I may have seen the film my recollection is very hazy. So having contributed nothing so far, José Marie who appears to have a lively sense of humour asks me directly what I have to say on the subject. What can I say? I say to myself except the truth…. I’m only here because I was supposed to be elsewhere at an event down the road that didn’t happen. He thinks that’s funny and in a funny way the non-event and the choice of book for the following month has saved the day! Phew! Hurrah!
The book for the next month is none other than Puckoon- written by Spike Milligan, a man of at least some Irish parentage who grew up in England but has been a regular invitee to the Irish chat show known as The Late Late Show. Spike Milligan certainly knew how to make me laugh – he was one of the creators and actors involved in the successful comedy Goon show. I felt foolish enough and brave enough to volunteer that next month I would return and share my views on this quite ‘famous in Ireland’ book with present company or whoever happens to turn up on the night.