An alternative present

With a week to go before the proper release of V for vendetta at the pictures, here's something I originally wrote for my MA in spaceships. I've updated it a bit, but the original version was written in early 1997 - during the 12-month period in which the book's set.

It goes on a bit, and inevitably contains a wealth of SPOILERS for the book (and therefore also the film).

The Alternative Present in "V For Vendetta"
Simon Guerrier

It’s a comic. It’s twenty-five years old. It’s set in a 1990s that never happened. Why bother with it now?

First, a little background. The plot: a decade after a nuclear war, England in 1997 is run by an oppressive and authoritarian fascist government. On the fifth of November, a masked vigilante, begins his attack on the regime by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. His name is V (for clarity, I'll refer throughout to the comic itself in full, and to the character as "V"). The same night, he rescues a sixteen year old girl, Evey, who, over the course of the novel, he encourages to appreciate the practicalities of anarchy.

The comic: originally serialised in black and white in the UK magazine, Warrior (1982-3), V For Vendetta was only two thirds of the way through when Warrior folded. DC Comics later commissioned Moore and Lloyd to complete the tale, which was published, in colour, in a ten-issue comic series (1988-9), including two short interludes and "Behind the painted smile" - a text article by Moore on the genesis of the story.

DC - a large US company - are best known for comics characters that have become icons of popular culture: ‘Batman’ and ‘Superman’. The main character of V For Vendetta, and the story itself, is influenced by the traditions of the costumed super hero genre, but the novel deconstructs and reconfigures many of the ideological elements of that tradition.

V is a costumed hero. "The appearance of a costumed character in a story will generate a specific set of expectations - a state of affairs which the writer and artist can work with or against," says Richard Reynolds in "Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology". Clothes can be read like signposts, and the costumes of super heroes signify ‘super-heroism’.

The styles and colours of this clothing are also signs of kinds of super heroism. "Batman’s dark, bat-like costume is one utterance within the code [of super hero attire] that elegantly speaks the proper range of associations: night, fear, the supernatural. It also suggests Batman’s mode of operation: stealth, concealment and surprise," says Reynolds.

V wears a ‘Guy Fawkes’ mask, period clothes, cloak and hat. This not only serves to contrast him with the functionally dressed ‘ordinary’ people in the story. His clothes also conjure a sense of theatre and of history to the reader.

Theatre is crucial to V. In the opening panels of the story, we witness V dressing himself. Around him are theatrical props - further signifiers. He dons his costume at a dressing table, which has a long wall mirror surrounded by light bulbs: vaudevillian. There are posters for old films on the walls. This contrasts with Evey; who dresses herself in a ‘seedy’, ‘real world’ way; as a prostitute.

V’s clothes also connote history. He uses daggers not guns. The 17th century clothes may hark back to historical values and politics. Moore admits in 'Behind the painted smile' that V’s mask configured him as a "resurrected Guy Fawkes". The Gunpowder Plot in 1605 began a century that saw the Civil War and the beheading of King Charles I for tyranny. Both attacks on English government construed the government as repressive. The first few pages of Moore’s novel show us more directly the ways such associations link to V.

Richard Reynolds has compiled a working definition of super-heroism, constituting seven contingents all of which V fits. V is marked clearly out from the rest of society. His devotion to justice is above his devotion to law. The ‘extraordinary’ V contrasts with the ‘ordinary’ people. He is above the law, yet capable of patriotism and moral loyalty to the state, though not to the letter of the law. The story is mythical, and uses science and magic indiscriminately to create a sense of wonder. I will deal with both this ‘convenient’ use of science, and V’s political aspirations, shortly.

The remaining two qualities of super-heroism are also relevant to V, though less directly. V does not have super-human powers, nor does he act like an earthbound God. However, he can also get into almost anywhere - no matter how secure. He can apparently do anything he pleases, and for most of the novel seems immortal. He has access to materials and information, including his own version of the government’s Fate super-computer - the system that maintains the government’s panoptic surveillance of London.

In fact, he is equipped in much the same way as many other non-God-like super heroes, perhaps most obviously Batman, with his Batcave. Thus, while not a super-human, he is a super-able human.

The last of Reynolds's defining factors is conflict caused by the super hero’s ‘mundane’ alter-ego. Such is the genre expectation that the anticipation of V’s unmasking is a major element of the narrative. This expectation is frustrated. We never discover his ‘true’ identity. In fact, the narrative purposefully reveals his identity to be unimportant. This, again, has serious implications.

But despite its theatrical and almost magical lead character, the narrative is continually based in gritty realism. There is a definite sense of logical cause and effect. There is a very definite sense of pain. Violence is seen as horrific rather than titillating, as is so common in super hero comics. Characters’ actions have very real, often very unpleasant consequences.

Even the theatrical and enigmatic V, while not unmasked, is to some extent explained. We learn to recognise rooms and the connections between them in his initially estranging home, ‘The Shadow Gallery’. On pages 104-5 of the main text, as well as in the interlude, ‘Vincent’, we see him stealing documents and artefacts connected to his inspiration, Valerie. This is the only evidence we are given as to the way in which he has stocked his home. It suggests he’s assembled his collection of books, music and paintings through tangible means.

We are even, finally, able to locate the mysterious Shadow Gallery in ‘our’ world: the detective, Eric Finch, finds his way in from Victoria Underground station. We see V’s own version of the government’s Fate computer, and thus appreciate how he has been able to operate. We see ‘behind the scenes’ of the mythic presentation he makes of himself, even without actually knowing who he is. We learn what he is and how he does what he does. All the flamboyant and rather magical tricks he has performed for us throughout the story are ultimately explicable. Thus is it possible for Evey to take his place.

David Lloyd’s illustrations for V For Vendetta are also ‘realistic’ - not the muscle-bound exaggeration typical of traditional super hero adventures. The proportions of the people we see are ‘normal’ rather than ‘improved’. Even the colouring of the originally black and white pictures is stark and simplistic, with a plain mix of tones.

V For Vendetta is presented in a very cinematic form, using elements of cinematic story-telling rather than conventional comic story-telling. John Byrne used a similar technique when drawing the super hero comic, The X-Men, between 1977 and 1980.

"Byrne employed a sequential art that was ‘cinematic’ in the sense that it constantly interpreted each panel and each segment of the narrative from an implied and subjective point of view. The reader was drawn in, invited to take sides in the characters’ conflicts."

Reynolds, Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology, p. 86.

In V For Vendetta, however, these ‘cinematic’ qualities are taken further. Much of the story is told through silent panels and dialogue. Often, there are pages, occasionally even whole chapters, with only one or two captions. There are no thought balloons or sound effects whatsoever. This adds a seriousness and bleakness to the narrative.

Thought balloons in comic strips make blatant a character’s feelings. Moore had been concerned that this self-imposed restriction would make it impossible to confer what he calls (in "Beyond the painted smile"), "nuances of character". Rather, it means that instead of being ‘told’ what characters are feeling, the reader must scrutinise the dialogue and illustrations for such inflections. Sound effects highlight narrative peaks. V For Vendetta has to express these elements within the dialogue and framing of the scenes.

This all means that the reader must be more active in decoding and negotiating the story - reading the panels carefully to follow the characters’ responses. Readers are ‘shown’ the characters’ emotional responses rather being than ‘told’ them. This also makes the text more ‘real’.

While reality is important to the narrative, there are, however, a number of implausible aspects. There are several plot-holes that we can nit-pick. For example, V’s own abilities and provisions are extraordinary. While we see how he has stocked the Shadow Gallery with material with regard to Valerie, it is altogether harder to accept that he has constructed his own working version of the government’s Fate computer. Evey replaces V apparently without anyone else noticing. Yet she is clearly shorter than he, of a different build and has, presumably, a different voice. V has already caused great problems for the government by removing the ‘voice’ behind their news broadcasts. We see listeners shocked because ‘There is something wrong with the Voice of Fate’ (p.36). V’s iconography suffers no such propaganda upset.

The England of V For Vendetta is perhaps just as unlikely. It is difficult to understand how the regime operates. It makes great use of the video cameras it has on every street corner and in many rooms, but surely these can only be used in London and urban areas. What about in the country? A television programme addresses ‘senseless terrorist acts’ in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and the announcer promises that the next edition of the programme has ‘satellite pictures of the Soviet wheat-crop failures and asks Is Russia Facing Another Revolution?’ (p. 110). V comments that ‘riot-zone soap operas’ still broadcast after he has sabotaged the state’s broadcasting (p. 220).

Despite this acknowledgement of a chaotic world outside the unnatural city, it is not substantial. We see very little of the world outside London. Finch visits both Norfolk and Larkhill, but both have been deserted for years. We see little of the economics of the alternate world, get no idea, for example, where food comes from. Only the city - the realm in which V operates - is available to us.

More importantly, this whole post-holocaust locale of the story is at best, ‘convenient’. Moore admits as much in his introduction to the DC edition of the novel. "Back in 1981, the term “nuclear winter” had not passed into common currency," he says (p. 6). As a scientific study of the climatic effects of nuclear war concluded,

"... even in regions far from the conflict the survivors would be imperilled by starvation, hypothermia, radiation sickness, weakening of the human immune system, epidemics and other dire consequences."

Richard P Turco, Owen B Toon, Thomas Ackerman, James B Pollack and Carl Sagan, ‘The Climatic Effects of Nuclear War’, Scientific American, Vol. 251, no. 2 (August 1984), p. 23.

Through Evey’s memories - of a ‘yellow and black’ sky, and of the disintegration of civilisation (‘There was no food. And the sewers were flooded and everybody got sick. Mum died in 1991’ (p. 28).) – there’s some appreciation of the difficulties involved in surviving nuclear war.

However, Moore doesn’t go far enough, and his idea that a nuclear war of a scale enough to destroy Europe and Africa could have left a demilitarised England hungry but alive is not at all likely. The global debilitation of major nuclear conflict had been explored in novels such as Neville Shute’s On The Beach (1957), subsequently made into a film.

This raises the question of plausibility. In his introduction to the DC edition, Moore goes on to argue that nuclear war is not necessarily what will push England into the fascist state he depicts. His contention, writing in 1988, is that we are headed in that direction anyway. In our own world, according to Moore, "the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating cameras on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against," (p. 6).

In the twenty-first century, elections have been dogged by race riots in various English towns and cities, even before we mention the attacks on buildings in the US [NB this was originally written prior to 11 September, 2001]. That’s not to say that there are direct correlations between the book and the real world of today, but rather that many of its key features remain pertinent and terrifying.

When it was begun in 1981, the novel was a projection into the future, starting out on the near-future assumption that Labour would win the 1983 General Election. Even before the story had finished being written however, this scenario had been ruled out by history. The narrative was no longer a future projection but an experiment in alternative history.

Alternative histories are interesting because they are about considering other possibilities. The world as we know it is logically reconfigured from some point in history. As one historian has put the case,

"To understand [the world] is to make it coherent. The coherence is ours and in it, the loose ends of mere possibilities have no place."

Carr’s argument, as cited in Geoffrey Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1991), p. 9.

That totality of coherence is likely an ideal rather than achievable goal. Alternative histories rethink the ‘coherence’ with which we ascribe our world. By rethinking the choices made, they reconsider what our society is and how it has come to be. They are a philosophical exercise in practical history, working in gaps left by absolutist historians.

As Moore’s comments about contemporary government mirroring the nightmare regime of his imaginings show, the politics of the novel are relevant to the present, despite the debunking of the novel as a plausible future. V For Vendetta is an alternative present. It is set between November 5th, 1997 and November 10th, 1998, but it is ‘present’ because it’s about a way we could be living now.

That it offers a world we recognise to be ‘wrong’, to be clearly different to the world we exist in, is crucial. The alternative present compels the reader to compare and contrast the ‘real’ present and the ‘alternative’, to acknowledge (and critique) the ways in which our own society operates.

This intrinsic questioning of the constructs of our own ‘present’ is key to V’s mission itself. V encourages the people of England to question their government. The alternative present therefore echoes V’s own political mission. And because it is this concept that is crucial to the novel, the authenticity of the location, the plausibility of the chosen divergence, is unimportant. The parameters of the alternate present are set, we require only some basic explanation of the divergence.

What is important is that by following through the consequences of this difference, and doing so ‘realistically’ and in a way that involves the reader actively, it is conveniently possible to explore a range of contemporary political issues. The settings and solutions of the story are cataclysmic. The oppositions in conflict are foregrounded by the alternative present setting.

This makes the issues very evocative and effective. In reality, the conflicts are not so obvious. As Moore acknowledges, however, the kind of fascism he depicts is still visible in the ‘real’ world. More than ten years later, and despite a change of government, for example, legislation on homosexuality, such as Section 28, is still (contentiously) in place. As the report into the climatic effects of nuclear war concludes, it is long-term environmental damage that,

"... might in the end prove even more devastating for the human species than the awesome short-term destructive effects of nuclear explosions."

Turco, et al., p. 33.

It is, however, convenient to highlight the ideological conflicts in a more immediate setting. This is what V For Vendetta is essentially involved in. As Moore asserts, "Since both Dave and myself share a similar brand of political pessimism, the future world [is] pretty grim, bleak and totalitarian, thus giving us a convenient antagonist to play our hero off against," ("Beyond the painted smile", p. 270).

For the state itself to be the enemy of the costumed super hero is a radical departure from traditional comics. In the adventures of traditional super heroes, says Reynolds, "the initial plot development predictably leads to a violent confrontation with a costumed villain. A five-page fight scene is the obligatory result," (p. 50).

Yet V is not defending the regime from super villains, he is defending ‘the people’ (in the opening chapter he saves Evey from the police, as the novel progresses, he frees the people of England) from the regime itself. This is a much more serious and politically charged theme than usual for a costumed super hero.

Ideologically, this is radical for the genre. Mostly in super hero stories, "the villains are concerned with change and the heroes with the maintenance of the status quo" (Reynolds, p. 51). V is not the ‘traditional’, passive figure, reacting only when provoked by the villainous actions of others. He is the instigator of change, disrupting the status quo, from the beginning of the novel destroying the icons with which the regime has presented itself.

V consciously lives what in the 1990s was referred to as the ‘DIY lifestyle’, wherein,

"... new agendas are being set, often outside the traditional framework of British constitutional politics, and employing and developing strategies of direct action"

George McKay, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (London, 1996), p. 1.

V belongs to the traditions of counter-culture and oppositional politics of the late 70s and early 80s. The ‘slogans of resistance’ over these years - 1970s: Reality is a substitute for utopia, 1980s: Fight war not wars, power not people’ (cited in ibid., pp. 5-6) - might be seen as V’s own agenda.

We might also argue that V uses similar strategies as those of ‘punk’ to spread his message amongst the people: scandalous broadcasting, self-conscious explanation of his motives, iconography, even something of "a streak of English Puritanism" (McKay, p. 78, while studying the anarchic bricolage used by punk band ‘Crass’ pp. 78-90). While V is not himself a ‘punk’, he uses similar means to spread his political agenda. His attributes are iconic: easily recognisable and repeatable.

V is emblematic. Items associated with the letter ‘V’ itself, are left behind him. As the title of the novel tells us, the letter ‘V’ stands for the vendetta against the state. The encircled ‘V’ that V graphities beside his victims itself reminds us of the encircled ‘A’ of anarchy. All we know of him is that at the concentration camp in which he was incarcerated, he was ‘The Man in Room V’ (‘Five’ in Roman Numerals). Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony plays in the background as he kills the Bishop of Westminster - as Finch points out, the "da da da dum!" is Morse code for the letter V.

Extra-diegetically, this stylistic can be found in the novel’s chapter headings, for example, ‘The Villain’, ‘The Voice’ and ‘Victims’. These constructs confer mythic significance to V. The icons of V are adopted by the people. One young girl spray-paints the encircled V logo symbol alongside the word ‘Bolucs’ in defiance of the sabotaged street cameras (p. 189). A strip club has a character in a version of V’s costume placing a banger into the knickers of characters in approximated military uniforms (p. 192).

But because V has no ‘mundane’ alter-ego, these iconic elements, the ‘myth of V’, are all there is to him. Thus there is not so much a character to V as an idea. This iconic concept of V is far more effective in spreading itself than any ‘mundane’ individual. As he says to Finch after being shot, "There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There’s only an idea. Ideas are bullet-proof,"(p. 236).

And because the importance of V is not ‘who’ he is, but ‘what’ he is, as Evey discovers, it is possible for her to succeed him. She, in turn, takes in her own eventual successor. V is not so much an individual as an inheritance.

Even gender is not important to the ‘idea’ of V. It is Evey, a young girl, who becomes V’s undisputed replacement. We know that he is male, but V is sexed not sexual. Evey suspects him to be her long lost father on the basis that he has made no sexual advances on her. She has lost this prejudice by the end of the novel, and comes to realise why she must not know who V is. Her - and everyone else’s - ignorance of his individual identity ensures his immortality.

The ‘mythic’ V confronts the myth of the state. In Althusser’s definition of ideology,

"... in order to ensure that political power remains the preserve of a dominant class, individual ‘subjects’ are assigned particular positions in society. A whole range of institutions, such as the Church, the family and the education system, are the means through which a particular hierarchy of values is disseminated"

Althusser, cited in ‘Ideology’, Marion Wynne-Davies (ed.), Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, The New Authority on English Literature (London, 1989), p. 615.

Those that the government sees as threatening ‘other’ - the socialists, the minorities such as Blacks, Asians and homosexuals - have been forcibly removed. The remaining populace are continually monitored and coerced to adhere to the system.

V’s attitude to this compartmentalisation is clear. "Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured; twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss. Authority deforms their children, makes a cockfight of their love..." he says (p. 199).

The novel gives us plenty of evidence for V’s assertions. We see a large and diverse dramatis personae, all finding the society in which they live difficult and imposing. At the start of the novel, Evey is at the bottom of the hierarchic pyramid, and is forced into attempting prostitution, being so short of both food and money. Policeman (and thus agent of the state) Derek Almond is bitter and abusive to his wife, and it’s inferred that this comes from the pressure he’s under to rise in the hierarchy.

Crowds cheer and wave as the Leader, Adam Susan, is driven past – but they only do so when made to at gunpoint (p. 232). Susan is at the time in mid-soliloquy as to his elite status, disassociated from everybody else. He is emotionally detached and has admitted earlier the Spartan nature of his position:

"I am not loved. I know that. Not in soul or body. I have never known the soft whisper of endearment. Never known the peace that lies between the thighs of a woman. But I am respected. I am feared. And that will suffice."

Adam Susan, V For Vendetta, p. 38.

The mythic ideology serves only to be self-fulfilling. Nobody is happy. Nobody is fulfilled.

"Social change occurs when the ideology of the dominant class is no longer able to contain the contradictions existing in real social relations,"

Althusser, cited in ‘Ideology’, Marion Wynne-Davies (ed.), Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, The New Authority on English Literature (London, 1989), ibid.

Thus, the emotionally debilitating effects of the fascist regime are made apparent through the relationships and interactions of a massive cast. We do not just follow the story of V and Evey, we have repeated insights into the lives of Adam Susan, detective Eric Finch, the adulterous Helen Heyer, the widowed and impoverished Rosemary Almond, the thug Harper, and many more. Even V’s victims are given depth.

The cast are assigned characters as well as roles in the narrative. These interact continually throughout the novel. While we see little of the outside world, the people of London in V For Vendetta express themselves as a convincing social body.

We can navigate a whole series of causes leading to different effects, perhaps most notably the butterfly effect by which the widowed Rosemary Almond, un-provided for after her husband’s death, kills Susan, the Leader. We have followed this progression of emotional and physical events, and appreciate why she has taken this action.

In this way, the novel suggests something about the way society operates in general. After Moore’s comments on the ‘real’ England of 1988, it is no great leap to recall Margaret Thatcher’s infamous "There’s no such thing as society" comments made the previous year. The structure of V For Vendetta would rather suggest otherwise.

However, in her autobiography, Thatcher is keen to point out that her comments have been widely misrepresented, and goes on to qualify the point. Rather than society, she continues, in neo-classical vein,

"there are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour"

Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993), p. 626.

She sees society as an excuse rather than an obligation. Thatcher’s problem is with what she calls the ‘dependency culture’, whereby the population expect the state to take care of them. V is also involved in motivating the populace, but in a diametrically opposed way. Rather than belittling the problems and unhappiness people visibly suffer in the social body in which they live, V encourages those who are not happy to protest.

Thatcher’s argument is that government shouldn’t exist to provide for the people. V’s argument is government shouldn’t exist. George McKay sees the 1990s DIY lifestyle I’ve already linked V to as constituting "a politics of the disenfranchised, wherein the youth and marginals left out of Thatcher’s revolution find their voices and use them to express their resentment and opposition," (McKay, p.1).

Because the government has become separate from the civic society, the excluded develop a new mode of political expression. Un-provided-for and desperate widow, Rosemary Almond is perhaps the most drastic of those V has liberated. Like Evey, she has stood up to the disenfranchisement imposed upon her. V has given her the freedom to express herself profoundly.

The ending of the novel concretises the issues here. Frederic Jameson argues that, through plot, science fiction dramatises the contradiction between the need for narrative totality (the need for a clear ‘ending’) and the fact that,

"closure or the narrative ending is the mark beyond which thought cannot go,"

Frederic Jameson, "Progress Versus Utopia, Or, Can We Imagine the Future?", Science Fiction Studies #27, vol. 9, part 2 (1982), p. 148.

This is because, he continues, science fiction’s intrinsic "vision of future history cannot know any punctual ending of this kind, at the same time that its novelistic expression demands some such ending". His argument is that an ‘ending’ closes the speculation that the science fiction genre requires fundamentally.

V For Vendetta remains open and speculative. It ends ambiguously. Despite all the various characters reaching novelistically satisfying ‘end points’ in the narrative, there is still no certainty about what the future will bring. This is exemplified by the final images of Finch walking out of rioting London, and away up the M1. As we have already seen, there’s little clue as to what lies outside London, of what Finch will find in Hatfield and the North. If anything, the characters we have been following as central to the plot are no longer of individual importance to the anarchy V has provoked.

Either through death or marginalisation, each member of Moore’s huge dramatis personae is removed from the limelight. Even Evey, who takes on V’s mantle, is rendered no longer individually important. She merely takes her place as figurehead of the ideal. She maintains the all-important V iconography.

What V has done is turn the balance of power away from those who lead - the fascist elite - and, in doing so, passed it over to ‘the people’. It is no longer the ‘extraordinary’ V who must stand against the regime for the benefit of the oppressed. The oppressed must make the stand. V does not deal with the Leader of the regime, it is the ‘ordinary’ Rosemary Almond who kills him.

Thus Finch walks out at the close of the novel into a future that, while it is still dark, violent and uncertain, is no longer mediated by people determined (ideologically) as having ‘importance’. As V reassured Evey at the start, "Everybody is special. Everybody," (p. 26). All are equal. Effectively, V has turned the future over to everybody else. This includes the novel’s readers.

Jameson believes that the "most obvious ways in which an SF novel can wrap its story up - as in some atomic explosion that destroys the universe, or the static image of some future totalitarian world-state - are also clearly the places in which our own ideological limits are the most surely inscribed," (ibid). As he later argues, science fiction is not a way of imagining the future, but is intrinsically "a contemplation of our own [contemporary] absolute limits," (ibid, p. 153).

V For Vendetta’s ambiguous ending merely confirms that our ideology/ies are only limited so far as we allow them to be. Nancy A Collins believes that the novel,

"... should be on the reading lists of all those genuinely interested in the accessibility of alternative philosophies in popular culture,"

Nancy A Collins, "Eye Tracks: reviews and opinions", SF Eye, vol. 2, no. 7 (August 1990), p. 84.

It is not only an alternative, ‘nightmare’ version of our present, it offers our present an alternative political agenda - actively involved, oppositional and anarchic.

"Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world."

V, p. 222.

(If you're still reading this far, there's plenty more analysis at the V for Vendetta Shrine.)

Shock tactics

"There's not many kids that got into fights in the street because some kid calls your dad a 'reactionary class traitor'. It was like living in one of them books written by Chinese women about life during the Cultural Revolution."

Alexei Sayle, Overtaken, p. 11.

Having raved to my mate Peter a few weeks ago about the really rather t'riffic Barcelona Plates and The Dog Catcher, he was really rather t'riffic and sent me Sayle's novel, Overtaken.

First, it's a much more leisuredly read than the boy's bumper book of space.

Secondly, it's got the same sharp observation as his short stories, the same wicked turn-of-phrase and sudden reversals so out of left field that they overturn the whole tale in a sentence. Yet it's not quite the revelatory experience as the shorts - which are perhaps the best examples of the medium I've ever read.

I've been trying to understand why I feel a bit disappointed, despite all the good stuff packed into the book.

Comic novels often have the feel of sitcoms and comic stage plays, with extreme sorts of people in contrived situations. But prose, being slower and less immediate, and with the reader in control of the speed it plays out, leaves plenty of space for real character depth, to explore motivation, to add detail.

What might play out fine and frenetic between actors can therefore feel vapid in print. Farces are facile and silly, but keep the audience busy in just keeping up, and they won't notice until long after it's over.

The plot itself reminded me in some ways of another disappointment - Iain Banks's Dead Air. A crass, ranty rogue as narrator is shocked by cataclysmic tragedy and decides to show a few of life's bastards the error of their ways - in a variety of crass, ranty ways. Having been shown by example, the narrator uses shock therapy to enact ethical change... This sets up all kinds of unlikely adventures, with both the villains and narrator maybe learning something along the way.

In this case, narrator Kelvin is a 30-something property developer without a care in the world. He's just as crass and unthinking as those he comes up against, and for all the places and plays they've been to, his life with his five best friends is witless and banal, a stream of mobile phonecalls saying nothing.

(You never overhear anything intersting being said into a mobile, do you? Not ever...)

As well as talking through any journey, they natter through films and plays without a thought for anyone else. That they drive to the same places in different cars is a good indicator of their casual selfishness, as well as becoming a bit of a plot point.

Trouble is, in my head it comes with the voice of a bloke I used to know who'd regularly say stupid, crass things for effect. Stuff about race and class and women you'd find, if you argued him down long enough, that he really didn't believe in or care about. It was a cynical stabbing of people's emotional buttons, to make conversations a bit more abrasive.

More to the point, though you're clearly not meant to like Kelvin, there was never any point where I was rooting for him, either. Even when terrible things happen to him, he's a hard bloke to sympathise for.

Sayle's book is chock-full of wild, grotesque archetypes doing wild, grotesque things. More importantly, there's plenty of times when he leaps artfully out of the way of such cynical plotting. For example, what looks like another crude set-up with Kelvin (the narrator) and an old queen turns out to be a deft little gag about yo-yos.

It's constantly funny and diverting, with deft flashes of something more substantial. The result is something that doesn't quite reach genius (as I genuinely think the short stories do), but whose fingertips brush against it at times.

Looking forward to Sayle's next, Weeping Women Hotel - when I eventually get to it.

Hello Neil

...and hello to everyone who's found their way here from Neil's journal. My, but there are a lot of you. I'll just put the kettle on, and see what we got left in the way of jaffa cakes...

"It's also worth pointing out that writers don't have any say in casting. Occasionally we get a vote but it's only a vote."

Neil Gaiman, "Why I won't do homework".

Sometimes we get asked our opinions, and sometimes we can even think of people. Clive Mantle, for example, sprung to mind 'cos I knew it'd please my mum.

ETA: You might like to read my comment on Neil's talk in London last year, or on his Anansi Boys.

Happy goths

My interview with Dave McKean is now live, to accompany my review of Mirrormask.

Enjoyed Nimbos blogging our trip to the goth wossname at Tate Britain last week (well done with the title there, fella).

The Dr particularly like Fuseli's "Brunhild Watching Gunther Suspended from The Ceiling on their Wedding Night" (1807), in which some German bird ties up her new husband so that she can sleep unmolested. Bit bothered that this one's her favourite.

In fact, a lot of the stuff is about immasculated blokes, conquered by women or nature. I dared suggest this was showing the awfulness ensuing when the proper order of things is undone.

Definitions of goth are about as myriad, and useless, as definitions of science fiction. But it struck me, gawping at the pictures and the other vamps who'd come to see them, that the late eighteenth century was also the time of enlightenment, of experiment and proveable fact. Fact which, in building a scientific model for the world around us, underminded folk tales and myth.

So, I'd venture, gothicism is a conscious denial of the rational in favour of "dressing up" in the superstitious and strange. It's playing with monsters and nightmares when we know better; in the best possible terms, it's an affectation.

Yes, other defintions of goth are available, and I'm sure people will write in.

Whatever the case, goth is never the most subtle of art-forms, and the drawings on offer here are full of struggling and straining women whose clothes have fallen off, and naked, beef-cakey chaps with small winkies.

"And some quite big ones," said my friend C. as we headed to the pub down the road. Poor girl.

The pub was fun too, with a quiet upstairs done out in slightly tatty victoriana - which was just the Dr's thing. I chatted with a mate of S.'s about how writing and fighting are the same. No, really: there are those who just talk about it, and those who just get on with doing it. And it's most effective to keep your moves simple and to the point.

You can’t teach physics to a dog

“Einstein refused to accept quantum mechanics fully. And even Niels Bohr, one of the central pioneers of quantum theory, and one of it’s strongest proponents, once remarked that if you do not get dizzy sometimes when you think about quantum mechanics, then you have not really understood it.”

Brian Greene, The elegant universe – superstrings, hidden dimensions and the quest for the ultimate theory, p. 88.

It took a little over a fortnight, but I’ve finally finished the book on string theory which Nimbos got me for Christmas.

The book is about how clever people have spent the last 100 years trying to tie together two mutually exclusive ideas – one about how gravity works, the other about how light comes in lumps.

I’ve always been a bit of a plodder in understanding clever stuff, especially in the “real” subjects where you can’t just make it up. For the last two thirds of the book I was mostly just reading the individuals words and hoping that somehow my subconscious would put it all together later.

(Which is more or less my technique with Dombey & Son in my teens. And it worked.)

Greene admits himself that things get pretty weird and he’s often advising the layman to skip ahead (which I didn’t as I’m tough). Physics at the smaller-than-the-atom stage is counter-intuitive to an ape brain that sees in three dimensions, (a sense developed, I guess, from falling out of trees).

There seems, to me at least, an element of creative accountancy involved in string theory – that is, moving numbers around the page until the story adds up. That may just be my missing the sums, though (which I’d not have a hope of intuiting). The mathematics involved gets so complex – Greene says – that a lot of the weird stuff has to be taken on trust.

Hauling my eyes over speak of pan-dimensional Calabi-Yau shapes and the different kinds of oddly named quark (up, down, hot, carrot and Basingstoke), I felt the same “well, okay” response to the minutiae of theology. I broadly, for example, understand the difference between homoousios and homoiousio (and did before it was in Dr Who, and all) but not why it matters to anyone whether Jesus is exactly or pretty much like his dad.

But strings, Greene insists, aren’t philosophy. It’s all very well saying there’s this very, very small stringy bits that waggles in seven dimensions we can’t sense. The clever bit is working out how to test the theory, to prove that they really are there. Which is what Top Men like my mate Dr Kelly are struggling to fathom out now.

Am now working through Greene’s attention-deficit TV show version of the book, which Psychonomy kindly leant. “They can smell reality!” declares one of the talking-head boffins.

Yet for all I’ve rolled my eyes at the lame jokes and set-ups – or is that an epileptic response to the flashy graphics? – I can still nod my way through it comprehendingly. Yeah, a bit to my amazement, I get it.

So, in fact, no I don’t. QED.

Lazy boy

Many things to speak of, which I don't have time for right now. Some writing things happening, and work all very busy. Some films and an exhibition seen. Some indulgences had. A I've finally finished a book that was making my eyes bleed.

Will endeavour to catch up in the week. In the meantime, here is what my wee brother is working on. Will remind you to check back on the 12th, but tell your friends.

www.crocjohn.com

Bad grammar

After getting it howlingly wrong yesterday – thanks to everyone who posted – I’ve read up a bit on the Tripartite system.

Blimey. Had assumed that ‘76, in banning selection on grounds of ability, saw the end of the grammar school system, and what remained were entrance exams for particular, snobby schools (like mine).

Turns out it’s all a lot more complex than that, depending on where you live. And it’s got more complex as time has gone on.

“Estelle Morris has left us with independent schools, over 160 grammar schools, church and faith schools, specialist schools, advanced specialist schools, beacon schools, city academies, city technology colleges, ‘fresh start’ schools, ‘contract’ schools – in addition to ‘ordinary’ comprehensives and secondary moderns. No wonder many parents are confused!”

Clyde Chitty, “The right to a comprehensive education”, Second Caroline Benn memorial lecture, 16 November 2002.

Chitty’s lecture is really interesting; an honest assessment of the pros and cons of the comprehensive system. Wikipedia also links to Michael Portillo’s counter-argument, in favour of grammar schools’ elitism.

Admissions policy is, of course, a major part of the newly unveiled Education Bill. "There will be no return to the 11-plus,’ said the White Paper. Oh yes?

I’ve muttered before that foundation schools seem very able to keep out the wrong sorts. Admissions policies suit the schools rather than the pupils. Imagine if, for example, hospitals decided only to treat the “right sort” of sickness, rather than the immediate needs of the surrounding community.

Oh, hang on, that’s what they’re doing.

My brother was at St Mary's

Not sure what the press embargo stuff is on V for Vendetta, and don't want to steal the thunder of Boss Joe's forthcoming review on Film Focus, but that was not nearly as bad as it might have been.

As a general rule, any time they stray from the comic the logic starts to unravel. Yeah, the effort to update it, to make it about political shit now, kind of works - and they get some good gags out of it. But John Hurt being a Tory is 10 years out of date, and wish they'd asked if we still do the 11+, or checked a map to see where the tube runs. Natalie's accent wobbles a bit, bless her, and they'd lost some of my favourite stuff.

Of course, I'm hugely protective of the comic 'cos it really blew my head off as a kid. A friend at school - St Mary's, as it happens - leant me the DC run. Wrote GCSE and MA coursework about it, trying to understand why. Will look out the latter as a bonus-post here sometime.

But basically, it works. It's the first good adaptation of an Alan Moore comic, which is something of a feat in itself. (Though he's foregone a credit, so its oddly described as "Based on the comic illustrated by David Lloyd".) The Dr, who won points the first time I met her for saying she too loved the comic, was also very pleased.

Odd to watch work exploding, too. Right, back to the Terroism Bill.

"The slightly less funny version..."

Just off the phone to Dave McKean, interviewing him for Film Focus. My review of Mirrormask is now up, and there’ll be a transcript of our chat shortly (am about halfway through typing).

It’s odd getting to speak to your heroes. I remember discussing McKean’s work in “The Face” (a hip style magazine) with my sister, back when we both lived at home. Didn’t know who had done these weird, scary images – or how you could even do that with photos – but his were the ones I stuck into my notebooks.

Always been in awe of people who can draw well and make things. Spend most of my time these days working on Word documents, which don’t ever look much when I hand them in. Clever people transform the words I come up with into lavish magazine spreads, proper-looking books, or bring them alive on CD.

Of course it’s the design we see first, then the words. But the design doesn’t just draw our eye, it shapes our reading as well.

McKean’s stuff is certainly striking. Liadnan bought Varjak Paw for my birthday some years ago just on the strength of the cover, and I suspect a lot of Sandman got shifted on the same principle. That’s how I first read it, anyway.

And he seems, in the 28 minutes and 10 seconds that I spoke to him, a decent enough sort of fellow.

My review of Kidulthood is also now available. And I like this story, via a chum, about a shotgun wedding for a goat.

Now hurrying off to see V.

Sixth weekday

Today I wrote a review, chased some things and sent notes on three scripts. One more set of “No, do this!” to go for the year. Hopefully Monday.

Still hoping to speak to Someone about Something that day, but no details have yet been sent. Fingers crossed, but now have an exciting booking at 6 which may scupper everything. Will speak more of both the Someone and the booking when I can.

My dad rang to discuss a trip over to France in June, though explaining how we’ll have to make our own way home because his car will be full of booze. “Wanted to fix this before you both got booked up,” he said as we compared diaries. “Oh, actually you’re mother and I are quite busy that month…”

The wee brother flies to Australia on Monday to begin his shoot. There’s a website but am unsure whether I’m meant to link to it yet. Just rang to see, and he’s having a last tea with his mrs. Will endeavour to get my instructions some time tomorrow.

Also washed up, done the cat poo, and generally moved some things around the house. Cat has already claimed the rocking chair which the in-laws dropped round yesterday. The rocking bit took some getting used to, though. I think he shifts about all the time just to check it keeps happening.

The Dr is in Birmingham at one of her clever things, so am about to make my own tea. The last time this happened (on Monday) I ate four chicken breasts in one go. Num. Wonder what there is left I shouldn't touch...

Bright helm

Spent much of the day in Brighton today, discussing and agreeing the Great Plan. Announcments of things in due course, of course, but it's all a bit exciting in my mind.

Brighton was freezing bloody cold - and my idea of strolling up a bit of the beach seemed somewhat less genius after quarter of an hour. Still, the sun was out and the goth ruin of a pier seemed all the more eerie and cool. In fact, with the wintry sun flattening everything bleakly, the skeletal structure seemed to float above the sea.

Or perhaps that's just frostbite of the brain.

Back home in the afternoon to buy meat and admire our new chair. Then some phonecalls and chasing of work stuff. Have two Very Exciting Things as work on Monday, of which more as and when.

And now off to eat tea and watch Mirrormask.

Links effect

Sometimes it is more fun just to link to other people’s nice things. Cannot be fagged with my own thoughts.

• Rob has a blog again (and also does Droo tours of Swansea); this old post made be snicker
• Geofftech has reclaimed Beck’s tube map for the South
• The LRB’s concise explanation of MRSA is online, and suddenly things all make sense
• Everyone’s already heard Tom, but it is spiffing and this is for the historical record anyway

I think I'm buff

Yesterday's post needn't have worried. Last night's movie got cancelled (or misplaced) and tonights was rilly, rilly good. Alarming and awful in subject, but brilliant and funny as well.

Proper review of Kidulthood to follow shortly, but I won't be chucking Noel Clarke...

Yeah well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man

Matt Michael seems chuffed with the History of Christmas in the shiny new DWM. He’s impressed that there are “no stinkers” - which I’m very pleased about – and singles out some for high praise. So hooray!

Off to the pictures tonight and tomorrow, to declare them hit, miss or maybe. Reviews to follow on Film Focus sometime.

Chatted with a colleague only last week about being both a judge and defendant. It changes your perspective slating some trashy film when you can be / have been similarly bashed. Or, at least, it ought to.

No one has to like what you do, and reviewers aren’t required to engage with what you’ve done or explain their marks out of ten. Responding to critics, and explaining what you meant, is really quite rubbish.

You’re not owed anything, let alone love.

Many friends simply avoid reading reviews of their efforts, and are probably much happier that way.

But what do you do when you don’t like something a friend’s written? Do you back out of reviewing it, or use a pseudonym, or try a kindly critique of why it fails to excite?

The latter is a bit like splitting up with someone. Saying, “It’s not you, it’s me…” doesn’t actually lessen the blow. It’s more about assuaging your own guilt. Nor does it help forewarning your target, nor offering to buy them pints.

No, if you’re giving someone a bad review (or chucking them), you have to accept you’re the villain. If you really have to be the villain, just get on with it. Be honest, be clear, be concise. Be as nice about it as you can be.

But it’s not your call whether you’re still best mates afterwards.

Zoonoses

Learnt this splendid word today for work-type reasons, and am annoyed not to have spotted it in the increasingly squawky coverage of bird flu. Perhaps I’m not reading the hysteria with due diligence.

Playing with the BBC’s flu spreader wossname, it looks like, you know, not that bad. Your normal flu drops people far more readily.

(Entirely crass, of course, to try some lame gag about the difference between bird and bloke flu, and how they exhibit almost entirely the same symptoms, but you can still struggle into work if it’s bird flu. No, I shall not stoop to such depths.)

Zoonoses is the proper name for diseases we can catch off animals – rabies, BSE, and cheery things like that.

WHO says (more or less) that it’s newly found-out-about zoonoses that gets the mob worked up, while ones we already know about are simply not as cool. Even in sickness there’s fashion.

Sadly, it’s not “zoo noses” like what orang-utans sniff with. Being a technical word, it’s got the same, double-syllable “zoo” as “zoology”, rather than rhyming with “goo”. And the -ses is pronounced “seize” – that is, the same long plural of an –sis ending you get in “analyses” and “crises”.

Oh well. It still looks good on the page and screen.

Also for work-type reasons (therefore being paid for the privilege) I have discussed such a thing as an oocyst of cryptosporidium. It’s like black-ops, radar-invisible transport for top-secret spores (the cryptosporidium) to get about in.

Grown up stuff

Window people turned up at half seven yesterday, which was a bit of a shock after a night on the tiles seeing A. off. The Dr scooted into the shower and then into work, and I spent the day making tea and keeping the cat from escaping.

Blimey, I'd recommend Crystal to anyone thinking mature thoughts about double-glazing. Quick and efficient, the whole job done even before the football was over.

(Look, it wasn't like that. Me and the cat were shut up in the living room, which was the one they'd windowed first. And I was tidying up with the telly on. No, really. But goaaaaal!)

Once they'd gone, I did some more tidying (and txtd some Scouser chums). There is dust just everywhere, and no sooner have you dysoned than it's there again.

But the place is suddenly so weirdly quiet - we can now barely hear the trains, cars and youths passing the house. And the cat approves of the window sills.

Then, shagged out, I nestled down with the cat to watch some Quatermass. Report on that sometime else.

Also came up with some pitch ideas, and worked on something that's not going to be easy at all to make happen. Ng.

The Dr rolled in from work and we did some tidying, dusting and unblocked the drain. She also had news that C. is up the duff. Wahey! We were then off to see chums in Greenwich, where much booze and good stew got ate. And I got to play with the baby.

Late up today, but we've got more tidying to do, and a clever bloke coming with a drill to sort out curtain rails. Ah, domestic bliss.

Today just happens to be the sixth anniversary of a party in Catford where I stumbled up drunkenly to the not-then-a-Doctor and said I thought her fantastic. We tend do things today rather than Valentine's day, but this year got caught up with windows. So, just to really annoy her: you're still fantastic, dear.

The picture is by Nimbos, taken on Friday night on our way back from a caff that sold wine (hooray!). The eminent academic and seriously minded sage is cooing over this. 

300 and 9

Do this morning was rather sweet, though the grooms were both wearing sweaters.

Nipped off afterward to a gig near Waterloo, and this afternoon I’ve learnt something. They’ve changed how you calculate UCAS points.

In 1994 I had 24 points (and got seven rejections on one day). According to this helpful calculator, my stock’s now at 300.

A rise of merely 1250% in 12 years. I should have invested.

Also, got sent this list which is as baffling as it is brilliant. The boss says he’ll check to see if it’s in any way not Damn, Damn Lies. But blimey.

(Historical note, in case the page is updated or I happen to wake up: Gardner’s top 10 bestsellers this month has Time Travellers at number 9. I’m fast catching up Dan Brown, Penny Vincenzi and a book of Scrabble challenges. And I beat that Cartmel fellow, too.)

Will we both wear white?

It's all been a bit last minute, but tomorrow I attend my first civil partnership. The girls in the office are flapping about what to wear. M'colleague A. and I have just manfully discussed the delicate subject of jackets.

Keen to see how the order of service will go, because civil partnerships are emphatically not to be seen as gay marriages. Though, er, that is what they are, isn't it?

So, will we be allowed readings, confetti and things? And will there be bubbly drinks? I can't wait.

Since it's a civil do, you can't make mention of God - not even to acknowledge his poor, breaking heart. Having opted for a secular wedding ourselves, the Dr and I weren't allowed any of the God stuff (despite the best efforts of our mothers). Which meant we missed out on some of the madder bits of the Book of Common Prayer.

Looking up the reference to such joyous, puritanical roaring, was entertained to see it begins:

"[Matrimony] is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men..."

The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony, The Book of Common Prayer (1662).

That sounds worrying like official sanction for the hitching of chaps who can't catch. Don't try protesting that the use of "men" isn't gender specific and means "all mankind". That's balls; especially since the thing's then so keen to point out the fundamental differences between men ("love her, comfort her...") and women ("obey him, service him..."). If it meant "men and women", it could say "men and women".

Anyway, the bit I'd have quite happily wed to comes next:

"...and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding..."

ibid.

That's right, marriage is for shackling down the rutting beast within. Down boy!

"It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body."

ibid.

Now I realise that "continency" is referring to being able to contain one's urges, rather than being incontinent. But I love even the wilful misreading that the church wants us married to stop us pooing ourselves.

They invented gayness

After a morning rushing about getting keys cut and important bits of paper signed, I ambled my way to Ladbroke Grove for reasons which will be made clear in time. Met some chums, and some talented people I'd not met before. Discussed the joys of real swearing, the problems of when there's too many people, and the various ploys of my Great Plan.

Also nattered to Scottie about Simon Goldhill's Love, Sex and Tragedy - Why Classics Matters, which I finished last week. The Dr bought it ages ago as part of her ongoing efforts to civilise me. It's excellent, divided into sections that cover our attitudes to sex, Christianity, politics, culture and history, and detailing the debt each of these owes to the Greeks and Romans of old.

There's some fascinating top facts. It was the Victorians who invented homosexuality, for instance. At least, they came up with the term. The development of the early church is also seen as a reaction to Roman religion, which in some cases is just boggling.

The stuff on politics was also very interesting.

"The Athenian citizen was expected to attend the Assembly, to serve on the Council at some point, to act as a juror on occasion, to vote, to do the business of the deme, to take part in festivals and to fight in the state's army or navy. Modern democracies talk obsessively about rights. Ancient democracy thought of citizenship more as an issue of duties and activities."

Simon Goldhill, Love, Sex and Tragedy - Why Classics Matters, pp. 179-180.

No armchair anarchists in Anthens, then. You had to get your hands dirty.

The Dr tells me that the Guardian review of the book, though generally very impressed, felt the book could have covered imperialism. It also lacks any great detail on scientific enquiry and the enlightenment's debt to classics.

Also, Goldhill's argument falls into two kinds. The first - that our attitudes to sex, religion, politics etc. cannot be understood without knowledge of their Greek and Roman origins - is strongly articulated and, in some cases, amazing. But Goldhill, when he can't give evidence of such direct inheritance, also argues that the "different-ness" of the ancient world is therefore a model by which we can scrutinise our own society.

This, I feel, is less effective an argument, because surely any "different" culture would work just as well as a mirror. A study of the Navaho, or the court of Kublai Khan, would likewise challenge our social assumptions by not taking them for granted.

Home

Found my way to the War Tunnels yesterday, which were pretty amazing. Slave-built by the Nazis, the place was meant to be a hospital. Now it's an eerie memorial to the occupation. You get an identity card as an entrance ticket, and afterwards get to check whether your card is that of a restistance martyr or collaborator. Mine was a collobarator.

Then to the airport, where I fended calls from estate agents and brothers. Took an age to get home from City Airport, and the Dr seemed pleased with her toys. We nattered into the small hours. And this morning I have poetry.

Off for a day's running about across London sorting things out, now. To right is a picture of the offending bear.
 

We're the dirty rascals

Cocking bloody castle is not open until 2 April. Pootled across the slippy, skinny causeway anyway, and then rather mournfully picked over some rocks and glowered at the high walls in our way.

Got a glimpse of the exciting 16th century bailey and fortifications when a car drove up and went through the gates - probably a warden or somesuch. Then the doors slammed shut and we were bereft.

Place only fell to starvation I'm told, and is full of different keeps and baileys, and the German-built towers are much further off than they look. Dammit dammit dammit.

It is a cold, grey Sunday afternoon and the fims on offer in the cinema failed to excite. Tourist office not open on Sundays either, so we've stopped off for a coffee in another netted caff to check when the war tunnels are open. Likely to do that tomorrow though, as we have an engagement at five.

Stayed in the trendy bar last night and had nice food and red booze. Then ambled back to Liadnan's and watched 12 Monkeys, which I'd not seen in yonks. Bit depressing that it's ten years old now, and 1996 does seem an age ago. Brad Pitt's performance remains as riveting and brilliant as ever, and I think this must have been the first time Bruce Willis died in a movie. It's easily the best thing he's done.

Does it look like a monkey?

I carve these runes from inside an trendy pub on the St Helier waterfront, while Liadnan and I sip Chianti. Also, you get about a third off the price of DVDs here as compared to London. Truly this is a heaven.

On the piss with legal beagles last night, and Thai hot food I could still taste when I woke up this morning. Nice. We made a heroic trip to the shops (had to stop for a coffee though), and I have picked up a Jersey Evening Post starring my boss Joe's first column as Film Guru Dude.

Thence to the zoo, which was a bit top actually. Even included talks on the gorillas and the orang-utans. The males in each case are shagging like rabbits, which is a Good Thing. We had a happy time watching the gorillaz sunbathe and eat sprouts.

Also saw some pyschedelic frogs. The vivid yellow ones are the most poisonous thing ever, apparently, and the freaky blue ones were shagging as we passed.

The wolves were not anywhere to be seen, but we did go into a darkened room (to be like Madagascar time) and spied the Aye-aye, high up in the top corner of the den. He did a bit of stretching and staring back. And they have freakishly skinny fingers. (Yes, pots and kettles.)

Sent the Dr a mobile-photograph of one of the bears, which reminded me of our dimness of cat. Was rung up on the bus back into town and told off for sending monkey pics. My wife is a city girl, and can just about tell the difference between horses and cows. I shall post the offending pic when I am back at home and Picasad, so you can judge for yourselves.

Mmmm, wine. Off back to Liadnan's for local pub grub and - like as not - some ranting about the state of the world / legal system / books with spaceships and robots in them. And tomorrow (hooray!) an CASTLE!

"It is a good castle," says the not-quite-reading-over-my-shoulder-as-we-are-sat-opposite-each-other Liadnan. Woo and woopee! Oh, and happy birthday Charles Darwin if I have that right.

Jersey, part one

Apologies to those who've been mailing me off-blog. Am currently in an Internet caff in St Helier, and it's probably costing me limbs. I have replied to the must-reply-to stuff, but read the rest. Proper replies next week, if you're lucky.

(Apologies also if this post is all over the place. Trying to remember how Macs work, too.)

Cab picked me up this morning at six to get me to City Airport. Surprised how busy the roads were - and there was a nasty queue into the Blackwall Tunnel that threatened to spoil my weekend for a bit. But it all turned out groovy, the flight was fine and I arrived in a sunny-but-not-hot Jersey at just gone ten.

The taxi driver proudly pointed out the famous cows and the changes to the waterfront in the last 12 years as we made our way into town. More impressed by the space-age dome on the top of the hill overlooking St Helier - they've roofed Fort Regent and turned it into a sports centre, it turns out. Bit like any other sports centre, but the steep steps up the rockface are worth it for the view.

Met Liadnan, who gave me a quick walk round the block as a smoke-break before returning to work. He showed me the square where the best bits of the 1781 Battle of Jersey was fought, and the famous "V" cut into the ground during the Nazi oocupation.

He then headed back to work, and I had two museums to myself. The Island Fortress Occupation Museum is a bit shabby, with yellowed, original newspapers and smudgy handwritten testimonies in the way (if you're of a tallish persuasion) of the dusty old dioramas.

Still, the scope of the first-hand accounts is very impressive, and the 45 minute documentary also covers a lot of perspectives - from the locals, the resistance, and even the occupiers. Judging by the glasses and clothes, these interviews were conducted in the 60s and 70s, so the memories are still fresh and vivid.

In fact, there's palpable bitterness about the way black marketeers were able to exchange their Marks for Sterling after the war - as it was like the British Government condoned the profiteering. Evidence about collaboration and so on also seems to have gone unremarked on, to the consternation of those who reported in. Especially when girls who'd perhaps had little choice but to "Jerry-bag" were hounded through the streets...

Then to the Jersey Museum, which is more up-to-date and interactive. Learnt all sorts of top facts, like the fact that now cows have been imported since 1812, so as to preserve the famous breed. I can also now tell the distinctive features of the Jersey arch.

The Dr would have liked the 1861 merchant's house (part of the Jersey museum), especially the nursery-room drawings of different nations' characters. Also delighted by the museum shop pushing it's Lily Langtree biography. The Jersey born-and-buried toffs' crumpet was famous, they say, for her acting. And so was the John Nettles of her day.

After an American-sized sandwich with Liadnan for lunch, I climbed up to Fort Regent in the hope of some fun castle-y bits to look at, but there weren't any. Plodded back down and have spent the last hour in the Maritime Museum.

Clearly aimed at kids, there were lots of buttons to press and so on. Don't remember the Greenwich one being this much fun, but then a) I'm usually there with the distinguished academic, and b) there was no one else there so I could play.

Best thing was a globe with bright blue liquid inside that swirled around, and you pressed a button and the breeze coming in from the top picked up, and MADE A WHIRLPOOL!

The exhibtion also passes through a real, live boat-fixing workshop, which was the only point I wished there'd been other people round me. Felt a bit of a tit watching the experts on my own.

After the Nettles-narrated film about local sea-life, I pootled round the Occupation Tapestry, each pannel lovingly knitted by a different local parish. I like the colours in the sky.

Short time to kill before Liadnan's off work, and he promises drinkies tonight. He also wants to do the top-looking castle in the bay, which is why I've resisted that temptation so far.

Oh, and a correspondent tells me to check out the zoo. He says they have an Aye-aye, which - even more pleasingly - "there was no chance of seeing in Madagascar".

Will endeavour to report back soon.

I'll ruin everything you are

As part of China in London, the Doctor got me along to a screening last night, which also included free booze and eats. The goodie bag had sweets and soy sauce, too. Hurrah!

Leaving Me Loving You is a romantic comedy set in Shanghai. A pretty young couple split up, then find that they're both working for the same client.

The film is a showcase for Shangai itself, with lots of oppulent views of the river amid space-age skyscrapers. Though there's a lot of musing on life and love, it's not particularly complex or plotty, and sometimes the beautiful shots - to various versions of "Moon River" - go on a bit long.

Yet it's often very funny and there's some great moments. We were both rather charmed.

Found it odd that Zhou (the young bloke) is a doctor touting for work - and has a mate handing out business cards at any opportunity. And he's a bit of a nit, anyway, with stalker tendencies that include moving house to be able to watch his intended.

Xiaoyue would have been better of with Mr Man's driver, even if he is a bit married.

The Dr (my Dr) now wants to go to Shanghai - which suggests that the promotion worked. My grandpa was born there in 1914, too, so it'd count as checkin' out ma roots.

Will add it to the list of stop-offs on the round-the-world Grand Tour we're planning for... oh, sometime.

Odds and ends

Found this among the old files, while looking for something else. It's what I sent BBC Books last summer, when we talked about covers.

A nasty cold sits just behind my eyes and tongue, waiting to catch me off-guard. My throat is raw and miserable, and I keep getting shivers. Last night, I think I kept the Dr awake with strange dreams and feverish fidgets. Ho hum – just in time for my holiday. Have already drunk a litre of orange juice.

This morning, the man with a van arrived sooner than I’d expected. Been asked to explain how you can have 1½ bookcases. The one is seven feet tall, the half is a corner unit which is about 3½ feet tall. Simple, really.

It’s taken longer to re-stack the shelves than it did to drive to my old flat, get the shelves into the van, drive back and lug them into the living room.

Did this while listening to Night Thoughts, which is good fun and spooky. The ending is especially chilling, with a brilliant performance from Bernard Kay. Apparently it freaked out the director when they recorded it. Can see why.

Now have the Clever Plumbing Man trying to make our boiler less noisy. He’s found a small bit of metal that was inside something it shouldn’t have been, and is now flushing the system to be sure it’s okay.

Off to see some Shanghai films or something tonight, to do with Chinese New Year. 

"A doubly powerful lodestone"

Got sent another review of Time Travellers, which scores an okay 7 out of 10:

"This parallel world story grips the reader’s attention [...]

After a while, however, the narrative strays over that fine [line] between 'intriguing' and 'confusing'. Complex theories about alternate branches of time are offered to explain the temporal duplications. Science teacher Ian Chesterton finds these difficult to grasp, so what hope does the reader have? [...]

Despite some temporal confusion, this book is an impressive debut novel and well worth your time."

Richard McGinlay, Review: the Time Travellers.

Been working away on the pile of Benny stuff needing doing - more of which soon, I promise.

This morning realised that two on-spec projects I've had various thoughts about should swap titles. And the bouncer should make him drink all the beer.

Also hired, I think, a man with a van for a bookcase and a half. Only taken me two days, and it's still not confirmed. This is my life.

Rubbish blokes

Long ago in the mists of time, I challenged a chef mate whose food I (and Big Finish) adore to outfeed me and the two younger brothers.

On Saturday, she won that contest hands down with a great vat of coc-au-vin, a sausage thing, veg and apple crumble. Still feel full and it's been two days, and the brothers were escorted home by Greenpeace. Hurrah!

Then it was off to the pub till 1 in the morning for B's birthday thing. A great deal of bollocks talked, of course, though I did agree some stylistic sound-things for Benny. Spent yesterday not feeling too chipper...

Got B Sideways, which an academic mate of the Dr's had recommended, and drew him a card making fun of his rubbish knees. The film's won various awards and is about two blokes (30-somethings, so the packaging says), off on a week's wine-tasting in California, 'cos one of them's about to get hitched.

They're both rubbish blokes, in different ways. One of them's a narcissistic actor who's never gonna make the big time, the other's a despressed, divorcee schoolteacher whose novel no one wants to publish.

They arse about, drink too much, meet some women, and it's an easy, hippy sort of comedy with some hippy sort of musings on life. In the vein, I guess of Hal Ashby, who did (my faves) Harold and Maude and Being There.

As well as very funny, it's also pretty damning of men's bullshitting, and the damage such fantasies do. Talking shit, it seems, can really hurt people - especially when the lies catch up with you. And as an adamant writer, boozer and bullshitter, it really struck a chord.

Also read books 3-6 of Y: The Last Man, which offers some chance that rubbish old Yorick is not the last, best hope for humanity. All-but-one of the men dying out is a cod-sf wheeze, done by everyone from Mary Shelley to soft-porn. And the comic acknowledges and plays with that. And though there's sex and violence and boy-comic tropes a-plenty, it's actually really good and quite bright.

Liked the shitty revelation why Yorick alone was spared, and it's full of near-credible details about the rest of the world, like the attacks on sperm banks and the nuclear meltdown abroad. Even the sea-bent sapphism of the rest of the population is not too exploitatively handled. There's a geeky gag about the Golden Gate Bridge which had me giggling, and the plot keeps coming with nice reveals and reversals.

Still, I'm feeling the same characters recur a little too often - especially when the thing's gone into such detail about the vastness of ground to be covered and the time taken in getting across America. It's that irritating feeling of plot convenience in something that's otherwise so deftly crafted.

One day I shall share with you my (brilliant) theory on the three kinds of bloke. In the meantime, it's fun to read something lefty that doesn't automatically assume the world is much better by getting shot of all the rubbish blokes. As a rubbish bloke myself, I'm grateful.

Back to the future

In September 2004, when commissioning the Time Travellers, the august J Richards said I had to explain the physics of my time machine or people would write in. So I read some stuff about quantum mechanics, and came up with a theory.

With whopping great SPOILERS for the book (which of course you've all now read), here's what I came up with. Bit in italics are comments from Dr "Beard" Kelly, a proper particle physicist.

"As threatened when I saw you in Bristol, I’d like to pick your brains for a Dr Who thing I am writing. It’s about time travel, and I need to make sure that what I’m saying isn’t picked to pieces by the [Nimboses] of this world. Pints will be bought for your assistance, oh yes.

The first principle of the story is that, concordant with Heisenberg, whenever the Doctor steps out of the TARDIS, he changes history. TARDISs are designed for observing, and can slip discreetly and unnoticed into any surrounding to watch what happens. But opening the doors and actually interacting with people alters things. Indeed, bringing down a government overnight alters things a lot. So, over the course of his adventures, the Doctor changes things a lot. He just doesn’t admit it.

The wheeze of my story is that the first Doctor, towards the end of his first year on telly, arrives in London 2006. Only it’s a London, 2006 where he hasn’t yet stopped all those alien invasions in the 70s and 80s, and where in 1966, WOTAN (the computer up in the Post Office Tower) was able to take over the world by (and yes, I know this is horrifying) being able to TALK TO OTHER COMPUTERS VIA THE TELEPHONE LINE.

Scary, huh?

So, the people of the Earth having defeated WOTAN, they now don’t have phones and televisions and broadcast media. But, in a secret laboratory at Canary Wharf, they have designed a time machine. It’s conveniently powered by the nuclear power station at the Millennium Dome. Yes, I’m afraid the story’s full of silly gags like that.

For story purposes, the time machine is a large metal hoop, stood upright from the floor. It’s big enough for people to step through, and wide enough for them to get the TARDIS through, too. That will be part of the story.

Oh no, not a big hoop thing like in the TimeCop film is it? Or are you ripping off the big metal hoop idea from Stargate?

As I see it, the ways it works is like this. Particle physicists have already sussed how to make a wormhole, by exploiting quarks that are inexplicably linked across space.

The old "Quantum entanglement". You can do it with any particle I think, on a basic level. Sounds an interesting idea, as quarks like to be bound with other quarks, one has (currently) never been seen on its own due to the weird effect of the strong nuclear force. It gets stronger the further you try to pull a quark from its partner, unlike any other known force...

Also, you get quarks in pairs (a normal + an antiquark) in the form of particles known as Mesons, these are kind of like light versions of protons and neutrons (who normally have 3 quarks). Mesons were known about i think from maybe the late 40's (The pion, the lightest of these was found at Bristol Uni in '47...)

My time machine exploits quarks inexplicably linked across time. Special conditioning equipment (left behind by the Daleks, as it happens) allowed you to create these special quarks in the lab. This you do at exactly 12:00, right at the centre of the metal hoop. At 13:00, you create another, identical quark at the centre of the hoop. This second quark in linked to the first, and in effect creates a wormhole back to the first one.

This takes a lot of energy (so they do it at night). A lot more energy allowed you to stretch the wormhole wider, so that it fills out to the metal sides of the hoop. Then you can step through it.

The 13:00 quark sees the 12:00 quark as an anchor, or lodestone. It actually seeks it to create the wormhole. The wormhole bridges the vortex of time and space, through which the TARDIS travels. And this is where things get complicated: the TARDIS has special properties to help it navigate time and space. And these properties also act like a lodestone. So, when the TARDIS materialises down the road from the metal hoop, the 13:00 quark doesn’t link to the 12:00 quark, it fixes on the TARDIS. So people stepping through the 13:00 hole end up strewn all the way down the street.

There are also some other effects which I won’t go in to now.

So, does that make sense? Is there anything I’ve got glaringly wrong? Is there anything I should specifically refer to?

No, seems rather good actually, the best thing with high energy physics is that you can do very weird things... and they are allowed! There are all kinds of weird particles in various theories, some that we can't detect, other we can't get the energy up to create yet.

Some things to be aware of:

1. The world completely changes from what we know in 1966, so they won’t even be called ‘quarks’ (which was coined in ’68). There will have been parallel scientific research, but they won’t necessarily know in this London, 2006 what we know.

I'm not sure, SLAC discovered the evidence for the quark conclusivly in 68, but the theory of their existance was there since about '63 by a various people like Murray Gell-Mann who thought that protons and mesons were made of smaller things. I don't know where or what the particles in their theories were called.

The earlist reference to "quarks" I can find in the journal database we use is 1964. There existed particle-physics machines around that era (1950s/60s) that had enough energy to make quarks (just that people of the time didn't detect them). You can make then in electron-antielectron collisons pretty easily. Well, easy if you have a large enough machine :)

In the 50's 60's the UK had the Rutherford Labs near Didcot doing that kind of madness, next door to the Harwell nuclear research labs. And frankly if you ever get the chance to visit the place you'll see it was MADE for a Dr Who connection, has plenty of buildings of dubious nature and various large earth mounds that cover other dubious things. I mean, look at the place.

2. The scientists get a headstart. The Daleks have a matter transmitter in London in 1963, and my idea is that it is this that kickstarted the research. The matter transmitter actually uses time technology, rather than breaking the subject up into little bits and then reassembling. However, the reason the subject appears to materialise from the inside out (you see wiggly Dalek innards, then the shell) is that you’re observing the materialisation in linear time, but the subject isn’t actually materialising in linear time. So you see through them to begin with.

Makes sense, you can get computer programs that do a simular thing and simulate what looking at a 4 dimentional object (usually a cube) would look like projected into our normal 3D space. Its kind of freaky. So that sounds like the same effect above, only with time not space being the weird dimension.

3. Essentials for the story:

• The time machine has to fit people and the TARDIS through it
• The subjects have to be drawn off course by the TARDIS being in the area
• It has to use nuclear power (allowing me to blow the power station up at the end)

Needless to say, the scientist in charge of the experiments is a beardie Dr Kelly, who dies before the end.

Pip pip,

Simon"

Before the fall

We tend to define ourselves by what we are not. Lifestyle mags, like Cosmo for example, define their idea of woman-ness by contrast to man-ness. They’re about how to get/keep/chuck Your Man, and so could be argued to bolster rather than break down gender stereotypes.

Lads mags, of course, do exactly the same in reverse – lots of stuff about birds, footie, gadgets and motors, and none of that girly, gay stuff.

There’s an argument that modern Western values – a rejection of anti-Semitism and racism in favour of human rights, democracy and, in this country at least, a caring welfare state for all – are the result of World War 2.

Certainly those values weren’t seen as intrinsically “right” in the 1930s. No, whatever the reasons for our going to war, by 1945 we were defining ourselves by what the Nazis were not. We fought Hitler together and, for the last 60 years, together we’ve opposed all he stood for.

But how we define ourselves is prone to change. Liadnan recently railed against Gordon Brown’s mission statement for Britain, and then yesterday there was this:

“There are concerns about how to strengthen a sense of shared national community in our younger generation, for whom the old national symbols of wartime solidarity are a distant story and among whom respect for cherished national traditions and social habits is limited. There is a recognition that we cannot go on living on the legend of the Second World War as our shared national experience now that no one under the age of 70 has direct experience of that war.”

Lord Wallace of Saltaire, House of Lords, 2 February 2006; col. 343.

The debate was about engendering pride in the nation and national identity. Pride, too, defines itself by its opposite. Gay pride is about there being nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about being gay. “I’m black and I’m proud,” is about not being kowtowed by the white folk.

But national pride is not quite the same. In a lot of ways being part of a particular nation is like supporting a particular football team. It is, actually, something we can change if we really want to, for example. And what nationality we are or what team we support is not the same as what we feel – good or bad – about that team or nation.

Pride is the feeling when our team does well. We might not have won the match, but we’re proud of how we played. We’re proud of how few bookings we’ve had, or how we’ve encouraged new players. Sometimes our team can play so badly (think Liverpool v Chelsea last October) that, though we’re adamant they’re still our team, pride’s the last thing we’re feeling.

Again, we define ourselves by opposition. So we’ll wear our team colours when there’s a match on, or in celebrating a particular victory. In the UK, the Jack and the George are, generally, for the Queen, public buildings and big sporting events.

When there’s opposition to be faced, we come together. So we still celebrate, as if they were yesterday, one football match from 40 years ago and wars won against the Germans and French from last century and the century before.

The English, of course, still have funny delusions of empire, of having some kind of say in the world. Yet we’re not any different to anyone else in viewing other nations inferior, whatever the evidence to the contrary. That’s dangerously close to pride in the Biblical sense – falsely so, and asking for fate to prove you wrong.

I’m less sure about flag-waving when there’s no clear opposition about because at best it’s unnecessary and at worst downright sinister. It’s more about uniformity of thought than solidarity. On my first trip to the States in 1999, the number of stars and stripes on display was amazing and, I felt, a bit alarming. Huge flags hanging from every porch, neighbours competing for who was most proud. With only each other to parade to, you wondered who they were trying to convince and of what.

Yes, I appreciate things have changed since 2001, and that the flags stand in defiance of terrorist aggression. But they were there before, and there does seem to be a “you’re either with us or against us” attitude to TWOT.

Part of me wonders, then, how America sees itself as a nation. Certainly not as an empire, though that’s what it quite clearly is. The rhetoric is all of the underdog, fighting the good fight against all the odds.

In some ways, its always been the country of the bullied kids – the French (who helped win its liberty) celebrated America’s call for the world’s “tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” You could probably argue that US foreign policy now has the mentality of a bullied kid who grew up bigger than the bullies.

National pride has to be earned. It’s not just enough to love England blindly because of being English. We should be proud of our country because of what it does, not just because we live here. We should be proud of what our country continues to do that’s good, not just celebrate old glories. We should certainly not let those old glories slip.

For all the gains made in this country since 1945 – gains we can be justly proud of – it’s still amazing that women get paid less than men for doing the same jobs, while many claim racism is still endemic (reactions to Sir Ian Blair’s comments last week and Nick Griffin’s victory yesterday are what got me thinking on this post).

Likewise, we should be proud of our army when it upholds people’s rights and the rule of law, and not merely because it’s being shot at. It’s not disloyal to question why troops are sent to war, and that the war’s legitimate. It’s more supportive of the troops themselves than endangering them needlessly.

Sometimes it’s right to be ashamed:

“Channel 4 News tonight reveals extraordinary details of George Bush and Tony Blair's pre-war meeting in January 2003 at which they discussed plans to begin military action on March 10th 2003, irrespective of whether the United Nations had passed a new resolution authorising the use of force […] President Bush said that:

’The US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would “twist arms” and “even threaten”. But he had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway.’

Prime Minister Blair responded that he was: ‘solidly with the President and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam.’

But Mr Blair said that: ‘a second Security Council resolution would provide an insurance policy against the unexpected, and international cover, including with the Arabs.’”

Gary Gibbon, "The White House memo", Channel 4 News, 2 February 2006.

Sons of the Spider-Man

"The important thing about songs is that they're just like stories. They don't mean a damn unless there's people listenin' to them."

Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys, p. 304.

Finished this on the nose of midnight last night, after a late finish at wurk. An easily embarrased young bloke (whose racial heritage is subtly played) discovers that his recently-deceased dad was more than he seemed. What's more, the e.e. bloke has a brother he never knew about. A cooler, spunkier brother who's about to take over his life...

In style, it reminded me a lot of Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (my favourite of Adams's fiction). There's a similar casual collapse of the solid world-as-you-know-it for the hapless, meaning-well chap caught up with old gods. That's not to accuse Gaiman of copying; the backgrounds of characters (both gods and monsters) are quite distinct, and the books are about different things.

Didn't feel it particularly horrifying, though, despite what Gaiman said about how the thing came about (Lenny Henry muttering that there b'ain't be black horror stuff). It's more strange and kooky, and though there are some violent and icky bits... it's not too scary, say, to be read by the timid wife. The problem is (if it is actually a problem) that the whole's things too charming, too pleasurable a read to horrify.

It's full of lovely incidents and gags, but it'd be spoiling the surprises to describe them here. No mention, though, of the old gag about special spider abilities; Peter Parker can never get out of the bath.

As I write this post, snow is swirling gently round one of the courtyards of the (aptly goth) Palace of Westminster. "It's ash," suggests m'colleague B. He should stop smoking on the roof.

"Yes, we discriminate"

The Dr is unwell today, and much-miffed to miss some drinkies tonight, upstairs in the Gherkin. Probably just as well, though. They can't have had time to fix the windows.

Her wellness was not helped by yesterday's feature on her old school in the lefty propaganda. The Dr is, of course, a passionate, academic and professional believer in inclusion and access, and not keeping "the wrong sorts" out. She's written in and everything.

I, too, went to a faith school, but one that was open to everyone. Was the only practicing Caff-lick in my year by the end. And did horrendously badly at Religion GCSE 'cos I pretty much assumed I already knew the stuff. Knew, yes; thought about, not really...

A concern with faith schools is that discriminating in favour of particular demographics isn't just about which flavour of God you believe in. The Guardian article makes it quite clear that the religion bracket overlaps with the region's economic and class divisions, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't also a case for it overlapping racial divides, too.

Of course, all this over-subscription and ability to choose stems from perceptions of school success. Which basically means exam results. And note that it's the school choosing the pupils, not the pupils/parents choosing which school best suits them.

The reason schools want to cherry-pick their pupils is it's not the school that is judged in exams, it's the pupils. So you want kids from middle-class backgrounds with pushy parents... and again I'd venture that the faith school's demographic also overlaps there.

Only the other week, I heard an alternative to listing schools by their highest achievers:

"I was engaged in writing a report for the government back in 1993, in which I advocated the argument that schools were there to add value, and that the best measure of performance was value added.

It would be helpful to the parents of kids who do not look like doing well if their school profiles could declare for, say, children who had not achieved level 1 in key stage 1, how they had improved in performance by the end of key stage 2, and similarly, for a secondary school, for those who have come in with, say, level 2 or less in English and maths, how they had done by the end of key stage 3. Parents could then look not at who is top of the GCSE league, but at which schools are good at caring for and helping kids like theirs."

Lord Dearing, House of Lords, 19 January 2006, Cols. 792-3.

See also the next speaker, Baroness Massey of Darwen, discussing a school's responsibilities to its local community - the complete antithesis of the faith school's approach.

My main objection, I think, is that the selection process does not fit the teachings of the faith that the school claims to profess. Imagine a church arguing that its focus was not the parish and community immediately around it (making links with other faiths, helping the homeless and poor, etc.), but attracting those from other parishes more likely to get into Heaven, and prepared to make the commute...

Enter Sydney Newman

Watched The Beginning’s various documentaries last night (“researched” the actual episodes this time last year, so in less of a rush). Lots of fab stuff and New Things To Learn despite how much of it's been told before.

The Corridor Sketch includes some alarmingly young (and slim) colleagues, which is probably the funniest thing about it. It’s not, with the best will in the world, that brilliant – a factor not helped by being in among the Gatiss/Walliams skits. But glad it’s included, just to laugh at my friends.

Really impressed by the Origins documentary, but the bit that most impressed was the visit to the Radiophonic Workshop. Can see why people who knew her so enthused about Delia Derbyshire. She really comes across as dedicated, talented and lovely.

Liked linking Edge of Destruction to stuff in New Show, and wonder if maybe Mr Rusty and the 10th Dr could do commentaries on Old Show they particularly like. Do we know what their favourites are, anyway?

Been sent a picture of something groovy you all have to wait a month for. And other fab announcements will be made around then, too. Aaaaaah.

And to be even more teasing, tonight I will be attempting to agree an important few words somebody else has to say.

How it all started

As a favour to a mate, I spent this morning at a primary school, working with three classes of Year 4 kids on creating their own Dr Who companions.

Started by reading them a bit of Time Travellers and showing a clip from the Christmas Invasion, and then answered some questions before they had to work.

Frightening how media savvy the kids are – and they had no shortage of questions to ask about the series (new and old), writing in general and the state of television today. They were extremely adept analysing stuff they’d seen (not just what I showed them), taking stories apart and rethinking them. Wish I’d been that bright at that age.

Or now, even.

One class really took to rearranging the letters of their friends' names to create something good for an alien. Another was much more interested in how the Doctor met these new friends. And the third wanted to make the weirdest companions possible - one made of fire, another a lemur, another a robotised dog...

I’d been told to expect short attention spans, but it seemed more that they just took in the details absurdly quickly, moving immediately on to the next cool thing. You just have to keep the cool things coming. Amazed watching the teachers – calm and encouraging when they could, terrifying and stern when they had to.

The kids agreed that Mr Hughes especially would make a really scary Dr Who monster. Yeah, New Show should do evil teachers…

Some highlights:

• One kid knew and could spell "Raxacoricofallapatorius", but got stuck spelling "his"
• I asked one girl what her companion was scared of and she replied, very carefully, "Looming over her is the fear of ice cream melting"
• A boy explained the plot of his treasured DVD - a gold man with funny eyes turns into evil spaghetti and the Doctor ties him up (I guessed correctly which one)
• And there was a fierce argument between two boys about whether “Who” is his surname...

Have donated a bag of old Target books, because the whole wheeze was to get the boys reading. (In between tasks, the girls were reading 500-page novels about fantasy ponies and magic, the boys mostly struggling to read the captions in a Shoot! annual).

Will check back in a few weeks and see how the book have gone down. But vividly recall my own great thrill of discovering The Invasion in the library, the joy of boning up on old show.

Knackered, got into town around oneish to resume a more grown-up freelancing gig. And to pick up The Beginning.

By the power of Grayskull

Did my first bit of direct commissioning today, following a nice lunch with my boss where he approved my Great Plans. Three splendid fellows should now find themselves writing me things for cash. I have that power...

We'll be making official announcements in about a month (giving me time to get something together to show people), but I am giddy and excitable about it all.

Oh, and someone we won't name has already referred in something we won't mention to my newly created Mim. Hooroo!

Predicting the future

Have been listening to Douglas Adams at the BBC, some of which is just brilliant.

Some of the sketches are not quite so brilliant, though I’m glad to have heard them all the same. But what really stands out is his insight into and clarity explaining some really very complicated stuff.

All kinds of very complicated stuff at that.

Yeah, it's the non-fiction that impresses the most (I think). It’s made me want to re-listen to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Future and track down the Radio 4 version of Last Chance To See…? For years the book has been an ideal present for anyone I’m stuck buying a present for.

I was going to talk more generally about Douglas and his influence on me – or rather, his influences (plural) – but kept getting a weird déjà vu. So checked some email archives, and sure enough:

From 8 May 2002:

“I'm 160 pages into Salmon of Doubt, and am really enjoying it. Agree with what you say about a CD-Rom being a more suitable record - especially in mind of what Adams says about printed matter and dead wood. Also, I've read an awful lot of this stuff before - great swathes is available on the Internet [such as here and here].

Which seems rather to be missing the point. And there's loads of things from various publications - magazines, books etc. that as an Adams fanboy I've tracked down already.

This isn't then ‘the best of Douglas's hard drive’. It's ‘the best of Douglas’. Though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

One of the things I find fascinating is how much the myriad works fit together. Sometimes he repeats himself - you certainly hear the same jokes reused (reminding me of Oscar Wilde in From Hell).

More importantly, his ideas fit into a consistent worldview - so his musing on Bali fits like sticklebricks to his ideas about language and identity. His reckoning about God fits his ideas about left-handed guitars.

At the same time, you get a sense of his thinking as work-in-progress. That's especially true of the stuff he was writing for MacUser in the late 80s. Much of what he said then is outdated now, and many of the issues have become irrelevant.

But, as he says in his Artificial God lecture, the whole point of science is that you put up a theory and see if other people can knock it down. He's quite prepared to go out on a limb and talk about irrational beliefs and evolutionary theory, and to have that attacked and questioned and jeered, but as part of a process.

What he's interested in is gedankenexperiment. And as his ideas get tested and questioned and pulled apart, he's emerging into something reasonably comprehensive.

Though this may be the result of the editing process on the book - consistency brought about on the material because of the way it was selected.

What this means is I really want more: to pick over the not-so-brilliant stuff, to see the bits of writing he didn't put much thought into, the whims he didn't finish.

And more than that, I want to talk to him. For ages. And have an argument.

And I’d always kidded myself that someday I would. Shit.”

Books of human folly

Ten years ago - give or take a week - I used Reading Week to go see my elder brother in Madrid. This was in the days when I was learning Spanish, so it counted as work.

As well as drinking drinks you had to set fire to, going to the "English" bars and discussing the collections of the Prado with the bro's non-English-speaking housemate, I also got taken to the cinema. The brother wanted me to see Smoke.

"It's like Pulp Fiction," he said as we took our seats, "but without the violence."

And it was: various people and bits of their stories interweaving and bouncing off each other. It's such a brilliant film, and was my first introduction to both Paul Auster and Tom Waits.

Auster's stuff I've now read most of - all his novels, his four films, most of his prose, almost none of his poetry and even his translation of a Frenchman's anthropoligical studies. Am currently two thirds through his latest, The Brooklyn Follies. And adoring it.

Like Smoke, it's pretty ambling, rambling and all over the place, with various kooky people bumping into each other, telling stories, doing odd stuff.

Funny and strange and sad, it's essentially the tale of a man dying of cancer, people-watching and trying to sort out the lives of two members of his family. And mostly that's by talking to them, and telling odd stories, and hatching odd plots. It means it's full of top facts and digressions: an image from Kafka's Amerika, the Statue of Liberty wielding a sword not a torch, leads into a story about Kafka writing letters to a small girl who'd lost her doll. And then that's picked up by our narrator "adopting" a runaway...

A fun bit: little Lucy doesn't want to be dumped at her auntie's, so when they stop off for petrol and something to eat, she sneaks off to the toilet. Nathan (the narrator) and Tom carry on chatting:

"Tom was still going at full verbal tilt, and I got so caught up in what he was saying that I lost track of Lucy. Little did we know at the time (the facts didn't come out until later) that our girl had left the restaurant through a rear door and was frantically feeding coins and dollar bills into the Coke machine outside. She bought at least twenty cans of that gooey, sugar-laden concoction, and one by one she poured the entire contents of each can into the gas tank of my once healthy Oldsmobile Cutlass. How could she have known that sugar was a deadly poison to internal combustion engines? How could the brat have been so damn clever? Not only did she bring our journey to an abrupt and conclusive halt, but she managed to do it in record time. Five minutes would be my guess, seven at the most. However long it was, we were still waiting for our food when she returned to the table. She was suddenly full of smiles again, but how could I have guessed the cause of her happiness? If I had bothered to think about it at all, I would have assumed it was because she had taken a good shit."

Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies, p. 159.

Languid and easy, there's not really a plot or purpose and it could be accused of being a bit indulgent. This and Auster's last were both heavilly criticised in Private Eye for being "easy". But it's far more frustrating than that - at least to me. It's seemingly effortless.

Auster recommendations:

1. Timbuktu
A shaggy dog story, told by the shaggy dog. This is the one I got the Dr to read and, like me, she cried.

2. Mr Veritgo
You'll believe an orphan can fly. Walt's apprenticeship to Master Yehudi is more than just becoming an illusionist.

3. In the country of last things
A haunting sci-fi type thing, with civilisation fading away whenever you're not looking. The sort of book that's good enough you have to point out to people afterwards that it is sci-fi. Like Cold Comfort Farm.

(Oh, but that's another post entirely...)

Nothing

Head full of bung, and fed up with being so cold. Nothing else to say. Nothing.

(Turn your speakers on.)

Any sweet jumps?

We’re getting double-glazing. Had the Man come round to explain it all yesterday and now it’s all booked. How grown up.

Also joined the Blockbuster in Penge, which just goes to show how plenty-domestic we’ve become.

The Dr watched Vanity Fair, but thought it a bit silly and Not Like The Book.

Napoleon Dynamite is not quite the work of genius I’d been led to expect, but is often very, very funny. Some of the dorkiness is especially cringe-worthy for being so well observed. I liked the cow-shooting and the world-weary sighing the best.

Can already hear the obvious comments from those who have experienced my clubbing / wedding disco form. You do not appreciate my Moves.

Still, overall it felt more like a sitcom-type thing than a movie. A good, kooky sitcom off of late-night E4. (Have also been enjoying My Name Is Earl, despite nagging doubts that I should know better. But Jason Lee is always fab.)

Also oddly not-a-movie is The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, which felt more like a Christmas special than something you’d pay for. The po-mo premise (the fictional characters hunt down their creators) is grotesquely self-indulgent, but it more or less comes off.

Wished they could have resisted Royston Vasey. (And anyway, they’d already killed off Tubbs and Edward…)

Loved the C-plot film, with three diabolic Catholics trying to kill Theodon-King in the most fiendishly diabolic of ways. More of that sort of thing – and more David Warner, and Victoria Wood saying “cock”!

Again, there’s lots of very good stuff in the thing, but I’d much rather see the talented bunch play the whole cast of an entirely new story. Something grotesque and disgusting, with plenty of icky stuff going on. Something to give them new life.

The League of Gentlemen’s Renaissance, perhaps?

Cat test

 
Since Elephant's days are numbered, here's a test of free imaging wossanme Picasa. Hope it works. 

Hothouse

The great boiler saga drifts on. Not that it’s of any interesting to anyone else, but yesterday was also a rather expensive day. Paid my tax (twice what I’d expected, because they now want six months in advance) and the second instalment for the Clever Man who fixed the boiler.

He’s had fun today, drilling a waste-pipe into our cast-iron drains. The Victorians really built things to last, and it took about 20 minutes to cut a bit about the size of two £1 coins stuck together.

But the leak seems fixed, and things all approved and dandy. Just the electrics and windows and loft insulating to do now. And some re-pointing, and other odds and ends.

To celebrate this steady progress, the Dr took me out to the Comedy Caff on Rivington Street last night, with some friends and some friends of theirs. Marvellous night full of beer and good jokes, though I’d not heard of any of the acts before.

Not that this particularly signifies anything. But the line-up was Brendan Bourke (hawking his DVD afterwards), Stuart Hudson and Mickey Flanagan, with Drew Barr as MC. If that helps.

Bit pissed on the way home, and the Dr failed to recognise I. who was stood right next to her on the train. Even when he came up to say hello. And he was round at ours only last week…

She did, however, recognise S., though they’ve only met once before. Thing is, they’d talked that time about ancient Greeks.

Maybe if I slip in the word “Acropolis” now and then, she’ll listen to the important things that I’m telling her.

Among the important things discussed between comedy acts was the difference between teepees and wigwams. Wigwams are rounder-roofed, while teepees are conical, and built in the same sort of way as the cone of twigs you make when lighting a fire.

Something on the telly a while back looked at whether the Ancient British roundhouses (like the groovy remakes at Butser) had holes in the top of their roofs, as chimneys. Otherwise, wouldn’t the place fill with smoke and suffocate everyone?

A practical experiment, using state-of-the-art paper models, showed why not. The heat around the chimney – a heat-building cone – sets fire to the building.

Without a chimney though, smoke leaks gently through the thatching, and the carbon dioxide extinguishes any stray sparks.

So, I wonder, why doesn’t that happen with wigwams? They have fires in them (in the movies I've seen), and holes in the top of 'em that'd act like chimneys. And they don't burn down.

Hmm?

Got an eagerly awaited cheque through this morning which paying for the house a lot easier. And should have more monies soon, too.

Much work delivered this week. Done the requested rewrites on two unannounced things, totalling some 15,000 words. Edited something else and delivered it, and have just begun a new on-spec thing I’ve been meaning to get started for ages.

All this to stay warm. I will quote some Clements:

“There is still a perilously thin line that separates you from the hungry and the cold, and from the need to secure food and warmth. Few of us are more than a few months from bankruptcy […] While the Vikings are inhabitants of the past, the forces that created them are not.”

Jonathan Clements, A Brief History of the Vikings, p. 229.

To which I say, in my best Scandinavian accent, "Raaaaaahr!"

Vozravschayetes v Norwegioo s sakrovischem

Into the last straight on the big book of Vikings, which I heartily recommend. It's not an area I knew very well, but Jonathan Clements (admittedly, my chum) tells a compelling story, weaving together myriad sources from all over the place, and plenty of top-hole top facts.

Like the best detective he follows the money, so there's a fair amount on trade and its related migrations. I must admit my heart sank a bit when he brought up the economics, but it's sparingly used to give context and insight into why these burly blokes beat the shit out of everyone. Including each other.

The story of the Vikings also interweaves with the spread of Christianity in Europe - several Vikings get canonised - and the fortunes of the continent's royals. There's some good details on such famous folk as kings Arthur, Alfred, Canute, Macbeth and William the Conqueror (nee Bastard).

The chapter on Harald Hardraada is particularly exciting, with battles all over the world and more intrigue and familial back-stabbing than a whole week's EastEnders.

Starting as the Romans flee Britain, and ending with 1066, it nicely fills the gap in my schooling. And for all Jonathan gives broad context and specific motives to the various cast and crew, the Vikings remain to the core a vicious and brutal bunch of pirates. Right to the end, they're still going (a lovely phrase) a-viking.

Still, no mention of Vicky, Kirk Douglas or Tim Robbins - my Viking education till now. A shocking and uncharacteristic oversight, that.

Normally I'd quote a bit of the book for your pleasure and interest, but there's excerpts aplenty at Jonathan's own webthing.

So instead, here's some Sylvester:

"We hope to return to the North Way, carrying home the oriental treasures from the Silk Lands in the east, but the dark curse follows our dragonship.

Black fog turned day into night, and the fingers of death reached out from the waters to reclaim the treasure we have stolen. I carve these stones in memory of Asmund, Rognvald, Torkel, Halfdan, brave Viking warriors slain by the curse.

We sought haven in North Umbria, and took refuge at a place called Maidens' Bay, but the curse of the treasure has followed us to this place."

Ian Briggs, The Curse of Fenric, episode one.
(Transcript from the Dr Who scripts project.)

But what's it for?

Psychonomy's comments on Tuesday's post reminded me of something else we've haggled over: the question of why we are here.

His argument - I think, anyway, and he'll no doubt correct me - is that a Cartesian, evidence-based perspective of the world has to begin with "Because I am even thinking this, I must exist in the first place". Cartesius did put it a little simpler.

This, Psychonomy goes on, immediately brings into play questions about the nature of our existence, our perception, and our relationship to anything and anyone else.

The thing is, goes the argument, that science can tell us how we are here - and detail the mechanics and mechanisms - but it falls short of providing a reason.

I think the idea of there being a reason is misguided. "Why" means "for what purpose" - something more evident in the Latin-rooted "pourquoi" and "porqué" of French and Spanish. "Why?" means "What for?"

We can look for and find motives in human activity - to get the money; for revenge; so as to spread DNA meme - and we can also find reason in the actions of other living things. Animals and plants can have motives; though care's needed not to apply our own motives and morals to their activities.

But as to why space is like it is, or why there was a vacuum fluctuation and then a big explosion, we're a bit stuck. "It just happens," is about as far as we get.

Grasping for a reason, though - usually that "creation" is all part of someone's grand design - is anthropomorphising non-conscious events. The universe didn't start for a reason, any more than gravity gets something out of us not being able to fly.

Our existence just happens. Best just get on with it.