St Hugh of Lincoln

Greetings from sunny, if cool, Florence. A full report on our exciting stair-climbing actvities will follow another day. In the meantime, here is something quite interesting I learnt while on the plane.

Today - 17 November - is the anniversary of the death of Queen Mary in 1558, and so the first day of the queenery of Elizabeth I. A decade later, the 17th November was being celebrated as "Accession Day" across the country.

"Elizabth's Accession Day was probably the first political holiday in modern Europe and initiated the string of nationalist holidays that are now a staple of the Anglo-American calendar. While holidays like Guy Fawkes' Day or Independence Day seem perfectly normal today, the notion of a non-religious holiday, or even of a holy day celebrating a living figure, simply unimagineable before this in Europe."

James Shapiro, 1599: A year in the life of William Shakespeare, p. 187.

Shapiro then goes on to detail the various objections and protests to this.

My maths is a bit wobbly, but I think we're two years off the 450th anniversary of this auspicious date. So I shall see you all back here on this day, 2008, to raise a glass to the ginger virgin and the ushering in of godless revelry.

Reach for the sky

Splendid curry with fine folk last night. Discussed Lesvos and Snowdonia, and topics in between.

Dawdled tipsily home and, as we agreed glasses of water and plans for today, the cat clambered into his litter box and pooed out quite a belter. Should have known it was brewing: he only waits for us to come home when he’s sitting on an elephant. That way we can clear it up quickly, and he’s not left to skulk round the stinkied-out house.

While the poop was dealt with by the eye-watering wife, I helped expunge the fug by opening the skylight. As regular readers will know, our kitchen is in the attic and keeps its windows in the ceiling.

Cut to:

This morning, I was awoke from tasty slumber by something of a panic: the Dr could not locate the cat. He wasn’t hiding behind curtains or on top of the fridge. He wasn’t lurking among the old Dr Who comics that clutter the legroom under my desk. Nor was he in the living room where O. has been sleeping – O. had shut the door to prevent more cat-sitting-on-face hilarity.

The culprit soon became clear: the open skylight window. It’s quite a leap from the worktop to the roof, but not impossible for a cat.

Yet we speak in this case of a cat who falls off the tabletop for no very good reason, who can miss the chair he’s jumping on to, who can lose his catnip mice and socks even as he’s playing with them, and who fell out of the living room window earlier this year.

We speak of a cat that is famously dim and an almost doggish klutz.

I climbed on a chair to poke my head out the skylight but could see nothing but the steep-inclined tiles and a clear if wintry sky.

Leaving the wife to call the cat’s name and shake a tin of treaty biscuits, I went to look out other windows for a hairy black splat in the neighbouring gardens. This work was interrupted by a shriek from upstairs.

The cat was poking his nose nonchalantly through the skylight, wondering as to all the fuss. I leapt on the chair and grabbed his front paws, and after he realised that fighting back meant he lost his grip on the tiles underneath him, he conceded to be hauled back inside.

Little sod seems rather pleased with his adventure. We suspect he may have gone up there for the sake of chasing birds. But, as I explained to him in stern parental fashion, “You are not the same as Alfie.”

Men in tights

The Dr says I should let people know of Boots and Bonnets.

It details the excitingness of dour and sulky men in tight trousers. Men who, time and again, turn out not to be quite as dour and sulky as they seem.

But still wear the tight trousers.

My life at your command

I am back from sunny Stockton and a weekend of not much sleep. Saw some splendid people, made some nice new friends, and got to introduce Toby Hadoke to an appreciative Brigadier.

The Big Finish panel was nobly handled by Charlie Ross, and the exciting things we spoke of there will be announced to the nation soon. But this post's heading might well be a clue.

Back home to the spin-drying and a happy-to-see-me cat, and work and O. await. Currently listening to the final edit of "The Oracle of Delphi" and wondering why this blog has disappeared.

Is this thing on? Hello?

Halfway house of death

The Cybermen in Dr Who are a bit of a grisly business. They’re a mash-up of old, worn-out bodies with shiny new kit attached. They’ve replaced their squishy bits – guts and eyes and emotions – with metal and plastic.

They’re not scary because they’re cold, callous robots who don’t know how to argue. They’re scary because they used to be people like you and me. Somewhere in their heads they still know that, and yet they still going round being baddies.

Often, we see people at a half-way stage in the cyberising process, battling to save the people they are from being eaten up by the machine. The spangly new series had Dr Who beat the Cybermen by reminding them of what they’d lost – a trick he’d used before getting Toberman and Lytton back on to his side.

The Age of Steel’s poor Sally Cyberman – worrying about her wedding and why she’s so cold – was in part inspired by “Spare Parts”, a horrific pair of CDs by m’colleague Marc Platt about a cyberised girl and her family.

Normally, even the converted women are made into Cybermen. They lose gender distinctions at the same time as their appreciation of sunsets and well-cooked meals. Though in Sunday’s Hoot Crowd we got to see a woman mid-enmanning, fetchingly decked out in Cyber-bra and thong.

The Cybermen are scary because they fall between two stools; because they’re not neat and tidy there’s room for stories to explore. It also explains why they can do illogical things – saying “Excellent!” and wearing jeans.

Unfortunately, I find I have also fallen between two Cyber-stools.

All set to laser-blast Amazon for my not-yet-in-my-hands DVDs, I discover the address I’ve given them is a bit of a mash-up, too – half the old, worn-out place I was living in this time last year, and half the new and spangly flat on which Daleks help pay the mortgage.

Gah. And I've already head my head examined this week. Think it's probably time for an upgrade.

That was Zing-Zang

The response of the young folk to yesterday's post is that this blog could be a lot blinger. Imagine! It doesn't flash and bleep or try to gouge out your eyes... And it's pretty unbook to leaves words unabbreviated.

Ho hum.

A rather lovely evening in the pub last night to celebrate G.'s latest birthday. Got to talk to J. for the first time in ages, and we were recognised for our famousness by a nice lady called Jenny.

This morning, the postperson brought many fine treats. Dr Who's Magazine features the second installment of Jonny Morris's comic strip, "Interstella Overdrive". It neatly solves the astonishing cliffhanger, and is jammed full of deft tricks and ideas. Cor, I wish I'd written that.

I did write "Summer of Love", which also arrived this morning and which I've got on as I type. "Actually, that is quite something," says Benny - about something that Joe Lidster's packing.

Benny and I [but not Joe, as I originally wrut] will be at this weekend's Dimensions. I suddenly afear that I'll spend the whole time being asked about time-travelling clap.

Speaking of writing, I've also seen off a few things today. "Old Friends" has gone to the printers today, a 65-page something else has finally been completed, and I've got a pitch to work on for John S. Drew's "Dome".

And on Monday, having had my ears both vacuumed, Codename Moose and I discussed a great many possible projects.

So busy. I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, though the Dr is. She is part of a gang lead by Falldog's Red Five, and wants to hog the computer tonight for more period excitement. Best finish off here soon.

Postie hasn't brought an Invasion yet, so I shall settle for Philip MacDonald...

If she doesn't scare you

The Dr has asked me to post something special, as she's showing my blog off today. Hello. Has she talked about walking the cat?

Blogs are a quick, easy and free - FREE! - way of telling the whole world things that matter. Friends and devoted acolytes can follow my adventures, and I seem to have acquired regular readers in America, Finland and Japan. Hello to you, too. Chilly, isn't it?

Because anyone can read the contents of bloggings, you should be a bit careful about what you write. I've talked before about how weird it is when people actually read this stuff.

It's not a private conversation, it's here for all to see. So don't talk behind people's backs and don't tell tales. The people you're talking about will find out eventually. No, they really will.

It happens so much there's even a word for people who get sacked because of what they've blogged. "BE YE NOT SO STUPID," advises the first person to be dooced.

With that in mind, I call the Dr "Dr" on here. This helps protect her identity (and odd habits) from those that don't know her. And she'd hit me were a Google for her real name to bring up all my strange ramblings.

Just imagine! Someone would be looking up the things she's said or written, and instead they'd find me going on about, oh I don't know, something like how she used to get teased for looking just like Cruella De Vil.

You see? By calling her "Dr" she has no reason to hit me.

And neither does her mum, who used to be a teacher and whose nickname was "Cruella De Vil", too.

Bond Watch: Timothy Dalton

Been ages since I last reported in on Mr Bond, and I’ve only “Die Another Day” still to go. But here’s the notes I had written up so far.

The Living Daylights
Cor, that was a bit good. Fast-moving and plotty and smart, and daring to try new things. This is the best Bond film in ages.

In Vienna, Bond helps a Soviet general defect, but won’t kill the sniper he’s meant to. The pretty girl, he says, didn’t know how to handle a gun.

In England, the general explains to Bond’s superiors that the KGB are now committed to killing other countries’ spies. He’s then recaptured, and Bond finds himself questioning the sense of the story the general told. So he disobeys orders to go back to Vienna, to look up the pretty girl…

The story is not hugely different from the previous three – a rogue element whose business interests are mucking up détente. But Living Daylights also feels like it’s about something real: Afghan rebels and opium wars are as much in the news today.

(I’m disappointed they never did as the rumours dared suggest, resurrecting Art Malik’s Oxford-educated Mujhadeen leader, but this time he’s considered a baddie…)

Dalton famously plays the Bond of Fleming’s novels, thuggishly brutal when he needs to be and straining at the MI6 leash. He freely disobeys orders – not killing who he’s told to, buying different wine, and embarking on a mission he’s just been told not to. He’s fiercely instinctive, and glowers when he gets told off.

For a 25-year old movie franchise – and a much older character – that means you really don’t know what to expect. Bond is dangerous and exciting, and he isn’t making quiche.

He’s always working the angles, and there’s some great stuff done with his tetchiness. I love the look of exasperation when Kara doesn’t understand she should get on the plane.

I note from the DVD extras that the soldiers on Gibraltar consist of the franchise’s stuntmen. I get the sense they went, "Cor, a Bond whose knees still work. That gives me an idea…” It’s not just that Dalton can lead the action. The evil milkman is the first time we really have a big special-effects stunt sequence that doesn’t feature Bond.

The evil milkman is another in the line of blond, blue-eyed Bond villains – though only in A View To A Kill is the Nazi subtext made explicit. Perhaps that explains this rubbish about Daniel Craig not being 007 what with the colour of his hair. But no, you fools, MI6 have recruited just the chap to fool their dastard foes.

John Barry delivers an exceptional, final Bond score – full of pace and energy. The Pretenders make the villains cool and the slushy love bits not too slushy. All in all, a smart, thrilling movie which promises many more years yet of Bond…

Licence to Kill
Or “Kilt”, as Glady Knight insists. Oh dear, oh dear. There’s so much good stuff in this and yet it’s really quite a mess.

Dalton’s tetchy Bond having been quite successful, his next film makes him much tetchier. The opening is unlike anything we’ve seen before. There’s grittier noise and music, and one of the first things said is “Bastard”. (I think its producer Michael G Wilson who says it, too, so it’s a real statement of intent).

Felix Leiter is getting married and wants Bond to be his best man. Presumably they’ve seen each other socially since they last worked together in the early 70s…

Felix now works for the DEA, and on their way to the ceremony Bond helps him catch a big drug dealer. But the drug dealer escapes and enacts terrible revenge. So Bond gets revengey too. When M tells him to pack it in and act just a little professional, Bond cheekily runs away…

Yeah, this is an odd one. In the pre-titles sequence, it’s strange to see Bond not working on his own, and being a bit of a team-player. Yes, he’s the one to go out on the wire, but it still feels like he’s playing second fiddle. There’s something small and mundane about him not saving the world but helping the police catch a criminal.

And then he runs off on his own. Always before, Bond has been something of a policeman – investigating crime and on the side of the angels. Here he’s a vicious Iago, poisoning Sanchez’s organisation from the ground up. That stuff works well, Bond being sly and using his experience and training. But the film can’t decide whether it wants to be fun or not.

There’s a big thing made about loyalty – which is more important than money to both Bond and Sanchez. But without the authority of MI6, it does feel like a high-pissing competition. Yes, it may all be about honour, but I’ve sympathy with M’s perspective on, “This sentimental rubbish”.

The sentimental stuff is oddly played. There’s some weird flirty thing going on between Bond and Dellah – she snogs him and gives him her garter. It reminded me uncomfortably of what Anthony Burgess called Ian Fleming’s own “Bondian self-indulgence”, his “rather cold love-making with other men’s wives”.

I suppose it’s to set up how close they all are, and explain why he’s so angry about what’s done to her. But they can’t be that close as she doesn’t know about his past: “He was married once,” explains Leiter, “but it was a long time ago.” Yes, it’s been two decades since OHMSS.

Benicio del Toro later preens that he and is cronies gave Dellah a “nice honeymoon”, and then Leiter gets fed to the sharks. This is markedly more nasty than previous Bond films, though the same thing happens to Leiter in the book of “Live and Let Die” (meaning that in John Gardner’s novel of “Licence to Kill” there’s something along the lines of, “Oh no, not again!”).

Dalton is excellent, and I like his sticky-up hair. He comes across as smart and resourceful while at the same time a dangerous arsehole. The thing about Bond is you want him on your side…

Del Toro and his boss, Robert Davi, are not camp villains in the vein of their predecessors – they’re vicious and horribly realistic. The damage done to people is much more horrific: in many ways its worse that Leiter survives, bereft of one leg and most of an arm. Bond’s body is replete with scars – as is Talisa Soto’s. And the deaths are much more dwelt on.

Imagine another film with the grinder sequence. We’d seen Benicio del Toro go into the grinder, the mess, and then Bond saying, “No need to be cut up about it.” Here, we see him hanging from Bond, then a shot of his feet going into the grinder, a shot of bloody mess, and then back to him hanging from Bond. For all Bond has seen off his enemies before, this is far more vivid and sadistic. And there’s no quip to undercut the violence – a signature effect in James Bond.

Which would all be fine were the film more consistent. The water-ski sequence is the like a jump back to the fun Bond of old, and the bar-room brawl is full of gags as if from a Roger Moore movie. There’s then a silly scene set in the London office, with Moneypenny being all weepy. A bit of levity is all very welcome at this point, but its very oddly judged. Can we really believe she’d be so schoolgirlishly silly about the vicious and surly Bond played by Dalton?

Another thought: For the first time since You Only Live Twice, Bond does not stop at home. We glimpse England – and Moneypenny – in a throwaway scene.

Anyway, things then get really peculiar. Moneypenny sends out Q to be of some assistance to the rogue and on-the-run former 007. Q really is the least likely assistant on a mission of vengeance, and I suspect the production team’s desperation at working Desmond Llewellyn into the story.

There’s something odd about him and Bond sharing a room, and how did he get his explosives through customs? The man’s meant to be having a holiday!

The silly gags with Q seem flippant and ill-judged, bumped up against the more vicious stuff. It doesn’t seem very well thought through. Since his never joking about his work in “Goldfinger”, there’s been a running gag about how Bond treats his precious equipment. But when Q reports in with his radio-broom (!) he then just throws it into a hedge. Where did it come from in the first place, and does he throw it away?

It makes undercuts any tension. The astonishing finale with the exploding oil tankers is seen off by Bond having girl trouble because of a misunderstanding. It’s a stupid situation, and Bond’s brilliant solution is to jump into a swimming pool with his clothes on. (Someone does this at Leiter’s wedding earlier, too, and they also look like a twat.)

Even that would be forgivable, but while he snogs the lady, one of the statues winks at him. And then an excruciatingly mimsy song starts up. And everything’s meant to be all okay because MI6 say they’ll give Bond his job back.

But if I was them, I’d not bother. For all Dalton is brilliant, his Bond is too much the bastard, too fond of breaking the rules. Much easier to get someone else, and ensure he knows his place…

Gaining entry

Oh hell, I've been wikied.

Blade runners

The Dr reports on a strange phenomena: our local supermarket no longer stocks razor blades in the aisle with the other Man Toiletries. Henceforth, blades shall be dispensed from behind the counter with the fags and scratch-away dreams.

The reason, as spelled out on a firm-but-fair notice, is that blades are too commonly pinched.

So is there a black market in razor blades, with people hawking them pub-to-pub in the same tatty carrier as their knocked-off DVDs?

Or do shoppers pocket the shiny, slim packs as they otherwise pay for their groceries?

Also, what is the difference between “gel” and “hydra gel”, as offered in soap from Gillette? I assume it's something to do with water, and not that if you cut yourself shaving you grow another head. But isn't a gel wet and hydrating anyway?

And, since I’m on to the prostitution of meaning in adverts, does anyone else squawk with rage at the Credit Suisse promise of “wealth protection”? I think of the synonyms "hoard" and "stash", and of a dragon asleep on dwarf-treasure.

Mind how you go

I usually avoid mimetic blogging, but this one seems right for today. Neil Gaiman, who has something of the darkest night about him anyway, warns writers to beware of death:

• Gaiman: Important and pass it on

Oddly enough, I’ve been writing about intellectual property only this very morning. (Amongst other topics; at half midnight I was still busily scribbling my way through education, thanks to the haste of the old folks.)

The Patent Office explains the different kinds of intellectual property – chiefly content, design, the technical aspects and distinguishing features – and says these can be owned, controlled and protected just like any kind of physical property.

“A-ha!” says my skim-reading teenager self. “But we all know that property is theft!” And I’m aware that various folk have sizeable concerns about IP and the way it’s protected.

The older, more mercenary and interest-declaring me can see a definite difference between abstract whimsies and chunks of land. The arbitrary allocation of territory based on various bits of bullying in the past might well be interpreted as social thievery. But if something I think up starts spilling out cash, it’s only fair I’ve a share in the profits.

It’s the same argument, I guess, about the huge sums a few footballers get paid. There’s a lot of money in football, what with lucrative telly deals. I’d rather it went to the people actually kicking the ball than to the chaps who draw up the contracts.

It’s important, too, that it’s only a few of the footballers who make thousands from every appearance. Very few hacks make a living from the things they dream up, too. And royalties are a way of justifying their – my – investment.

(I’m also acutely aware that most of what I’ve published belongs in some part to other people. This is because what are charitably called “shared universes” (and less charitably, “merchandise franchises”) have so far been the only ones not entirely to reject me. Bastards. I’m going to be a star.)

There’s a flimsy, meritocratic belief that if only we create something with the right vim, then to us will be due all the glory. Write a critical mass of the stuff over long enough, and you’ll start seeing a meaningful return. Even if it’s not in your lifetime, your kids (or friends or cats or cows) can still benefit from your efforts.

Which is probably obvious to everyone anyway, but only just crystallised for me. I am not very bright… but I shall be sorting out a will. If I should meet with an accident in the next couple of weeks, it’s because the Dr (or the cat) wants to own the rude play with girls kissing.

Naughty mooses

We shall refer to him by the codename "Moose" to protect his identity. This morning he asked if I'd yet read a synopsis thing he mailed at me last week.

I had to admit I had not, what with life being a bit manic recently and all the strange, angry talk when I'm sleeping. (But works have been done: my tax return is in and I've done all I can with the Daleks. Scripts are copied and posted, copies of things sent out to people, and I've kept up with floods and a small catastrophe between two of my favourite people, and even thought fondly of two scripts that are started.)

So in between rounds of the Education and Inspections Bill, I've been able to manage a gander. Codename Moose's story is about a disfunctional extended family er, playing naughty bunnies with each other.

Imagine my surprise on discovering that it features the identical twins of jokes to be found within "The Summer of Love" (which is, I hear, reaching subscribers right now). That play is also about a disfunctional extended family er, playing naughty bunnies with each other.

Perhaps, as the Dr has observed before, Codename Moose and I in many ways have the same mind. Or perhaps, when I sent him the script of my tastefully discreet play, he went and copied the answers.

No, Codename Moose! Bad Codename Moose!

The web of fear

Am still running to catch up with last week’s escape, with works clamouring at the door like a monster. Real life has not made this a little bit easier, but we shall not go into that now…

Nimbos leant me Cobweb by Neal Stephenson and Frederick George. (It used to be by “Stephen Bury”, but Stephenson is so big and famous these days they now use his real name.)

It’s the last of Stephenson books I had left to read – not including his non-fiction nor the one even he says doesn’t count:

“The Big U is what it is: a first novel written in a hurry by a young man a long time ago.”

Neal Stephenson.

Written in the late 90s and set during Gulf War One, Cobweb is about shenanigans in an Iowa university that might be linked to Saddam Hussein’s threat to use chemical weapons. A red-neck cop and a Mormon CIA agent both struggle, despite the best cobwebbing efforts of the procedural system, to figure out exactly what it is going on. And not to get killed in the process.

Like “Bury”’s Interface (a much better book, I think) it’s brutal and surprising and intricate, with a lot of political kudos. There’s real passion in how the system snafus the best efforts of good people to somehow get things right – big issues trashed by little politics.

There’s a nice bit late-on where the cynical, weary CIA man wonders if his niece is right, and the war’s about nothing but oil. We’ve seen him out-play the players and get his fingers in all pies, but even he doesn’t know.

Stephenson’s books are festooned with great and unusual characters living strange yet believable lives. He’s keen on exacting detail, so his worlds are built solidly from paper-clips up. And often there’s a great warmth and vitality to geeky underdogs.

It’s odd to read now – the plot links Iraq to a more general US foreign policy, the real enemy being Iran. It also includes a threat to crash a plan into a US city and talk of Saddam’s many WMDs.

The army are warned about the effects of anthrax and Clostridium botulinum, and it occurs to me now that today’s cosmetic-use Botox may be linked to the research done when it threatened our soldiers. Fashion taking its cues from mass slaughter…

It’s also odd that the book’s two protagonists never meet (though one leaves a note for the other). I suppose that sets them up to be played in any film by De Niro and Pacino – I wonder which of those would play Betsy?

Like other Stephenson books, the plot builds and builds to a disappointing last splurge, in this case an action sequence which felt thieved from something else. Clyde seems suddenly to be written for Steven Segal, unkillable and doing the job of a whole army.

So recommended, but try Interface and Diamond Age first.

Tea radicals

There was an advert on the Tube on the way into work today which says how drinking tea can help the conquest of free radicals.

Free radicals sound a bit dangerous, like a hardened gang of revolutionarry poets. There's a joke to this effect in "Never Say Never Again", when Bond is sent to a health farm to eradicate them. It would have been a very different film if only he'd drunk some tea.

This also made me remember a learned and pina-colada-fueled discussion on Saturday, which happened to mention biscuits. I remember suggesting you could serve Garibaldis and Bourbons all on the same plate, and see if they started fighting.

Individuals and their families

Back home and all sorts of thoughts to catch up on. As well as roofing and nice things to eat, O. treated me to three movies – two of which I’d not seen before.

The Incredibles is great fun, though I was a bit spooked by how much its abolition-of-superheroism stuff reminded me of Watchmen. But it left me with all kinds of niggle.

Mr and Mrs Incredible live a tawdry suburban life and have put weight on in all the wrong places since the days when saving the world was still legal. And then a mad villain comes up with a plot which requires not just their combined wits to foil it. They also need to bring along their kids…

Slightly weirded out by the ending. The kids get to be heroes, and then immediately both consign themselves to mediocrity – not trying too hard against other children for fear of standing out and forgoing Goth for an Alice band. And this when the big lesson is hey, it’s okay to be different.

The clash of the amazing with the deadeningly ordinary does not sit entirely on the same seat. For all the family is full of kooky powers, it’s still very nuclear – a dull ideal like in an advert for gravy.

It seems it’s okay to be an individual so long as nobody else notices. In some ways it feels as if the kids’ extraordinariness is just an awkward phase they’re going through.

And though Mr I’s best mate is Samuel L Jackson, the Black-Ice Man appears only briefly and smacks a little of tokenism. This kind of thing has been better and more deeply handled – I thought especially of Tom Strong.

Then on to the Godfather Part 1, which was nothing like the patchwork of clips I’ve previously been exposed to. Long and slow and engrossing, I particularly liked the sequence of Pacino in Sicily, where we see where the five families came from and how their gangsterism came about.

Al Pacino brings a girl to his sister’s wedding and tries not to reveal too much about the family. People come to see Pacino’s dad to show respect and ask for favours. And the family teases Pacino for being above their mucky stuff. But when dad gets the disrespectful treatment and is shot while out buying veg, Al decides he’s gonna get his hands dirty…

Corleone’s insistence that family comes before any thought of morality reminded me of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, declaring that there bain’t be no such wossname as society.

Her comments have been taken to mean an everyone-for-themselves kind of attitude, though she’s actually talking about how we all have social obligations to one another.

A decade before Mrs T became prime minister, Scorcese shows exactly why it’s no good just looking out for your own. The vicious greedy war that follows is a plague on everyone’s houses.

And then Mars Attacks!, which I now realise is a great lodestone to my scribbling.

It’s not just the funny and alien babble which I’ve pilfered as my own. Griffiths in the Time Travellers is clearly meant to be played by Pierce Brosnan.

Fiddler on the roof

--- ETA: Pictures of the roof now available at Flickr. ---

Dear Dr,

Yesterday and today you would have been much excited to see my manliness, putting a roof together for a six-car garage. This involved lots of climbing up and down from shaky beams in the manner of a comedy monkey, and hammering and cursing and sweat.

But we are almost there - just another 10 slats or so and the whole canopy will be covered. Which is extremely satisfying.

You'd be very impressed by how much things have come on since last time we were here. Have been trying to get O. to take photos.

We have also been for some nice meals. On Sunday night, that place we had birthday tea in last time we were here, was so bustling - even at an un-Continental half seven - that we had to sit in the corner and wait with only a morsel of salty bread to sustain us.

After tea, we had cat-play and an open fire and one or three whiskies, and I went to bed a bit corpsish about eleven p.m. Must have been tired as I slept right through a very heavy delivery first thing. The pipes need connecting up - which is really quite a job - but O. will soon enough have central heating. Blimey.

Woke about eleven a.m. to bright and kind sunshine, and wrote seven pages of script I am happy with (and a few more I am not) before starting my roof duties.

Tried to blog last night but the connection died, and we were due for dinner at a nice couple's in a town a little up the road. Lovely food and natter, and a bath-weight of red wine. Can't have left much before midnight.

Today has mostly been roofing, though we did break off to go have a nice lunch. The small, cavern-like restaurant looked quite smart, so it was especially pleasing to wander in covered in sawdust and scritches.

We carried on with roofing in the afternoon, but the air-gun for shooting nails gave up the ghost and manual nailing was just not the same. O. had a good idea about going looking for figs, so we ventured down the road (merely 60 degrees of slope for about two hundred metres), where we found the figs all long-taken.

Staggered back up to the house and I suspect my knees are going to make a fuss about all this tomorrow. In fact, not sure if I have caught the autumnal sun or am just one huge bruise all over.

Am just waiting for himself to finish in the shower and then we are out for more noshing. You would like little Enzo, who is about the size Shaggy was when we got him, and more like a lemur than a cat. He likes bitey games, but he's not developed his claws enough to hang from your forearm. He is earning his keep though - he's really rather a good mouser. And he is sitting on my lap as I type this.

So, anyway. Things are good and I am being worked hard. And notice you are not here.

Lots of love,

Simon

He married him

I am in Italy and there is sunshine, plus O.'s estate is much different from last time. The Dr is delighted at my gaping absence as she can melt in peace at tonight's Jane Eyre finale.

Would feel a bit brighter if I hadn't been up at five this morning. And if I'd not gone to bed at one last night. But Falldog was getting hitched and we got to see all sorts of chums we've not seen in ages.

That Paul Cornell was looking very dapper - and again apologised profusedly for coming dressed like a farmhand to ours. Glitterforbrains advised me on dancing ("Don't try so hard, love,") and I got to ask Gary Russell, "How in heck did you manage?"

The groom and groom made some mention that theirs was "not really a wedding". But of course it is. It has to be.

Because of who it annoys when it is.

A massive contrivance

The Institute of Education was jam-packed last night for Stewart Lee’s tussle with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie.

We’ve been to a few of these Blackwells events now, and this was certainly the busiest, and with the best quality of audience questioning, too. This one was co-organised with ComICA, and (he googled) Chez Chrissie has some nice photos of it.

And all for a book that’s not published until 1 January 2008. I’ve not read it either...

“Lost Girls” is, if you have been living under some rocks, a three-volume comic book about three women meeting in a hotel on the eve of the first world war. And, er, then they lez up.

To make things more literary, the three women are Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Wendy from Peter Pan. The latter is still (depending who you hear it from) in copyright until the end of next year, which is why the book’s not yet been published in the UK and Europe.

Lee began by asking how many of the 1,000-strong (I’m guessing) audience had been able to get hold of a copy: about a fifth (I’m guessing). So we knocked through a sequence of pages, blown up on a whopping great projecto-laptop, with Alan and Melinda giving notes.

It has been a labour of love – both because Alan and Melinda are not just partners creatively and because it’s taken them 17 years to finish the thing. They spoke of wanting to produce a “benign” pornography, something that would appeal to both sexes. Or, Moore pointing out that porn for boys is piss-easy, a pornography of appeal to the ladies.

This was something that came out of the questions. Moore admitted he’d followed feminist arguments – both for and against porn – avidly, and found the debate rational and intelligent (as opposed to religious arguments against porn, based on “God doesn’t like the smutty stuff”). Angela Carter of course got a mention.

Gebbie argued she’d be much less bothered by porn if it wasn’t so industrial and soulless, photographed in tatty-looking rooms on a bed that’s been dragged from an alley. That did not, she said, make her feel like a goddess…

Pornography – the authors made no bones about that being what they’ve made – is a pejorative term. So they have attempted to do for this gutter genre what Moore did for another low form. Just as with superheroes, he’s subverted the derivative and derided, and made it all relevant and clever.

I’d argue that he’s done this with comics more generally. The Dr (who impressed me greatly on our first meeting by speaking knowledgeably of V for Vendetta) and I have read a lot of comics over the years, but we are not actually comics fans. The good stuff comes rare and occasionally, an exception to the tedious rule.

A colleague was telling me last week about his own experience working on a comic. The only letters they got were from those wanting to draw comics, with a small minority who asked about writing them. His conclusion – and he admits to not seeing the appeal – was that people want to make comics more than they want to read them.

Whatever the truth of that, Moore is a rare exception to my general dissatisfaction with comics.

I think this may even be dissatisfaction with most fantasy (and I’d include sci-fi in that bracket quite often), which tends to be about “escape”, so avoids reality when it can. Moore confronts the problematic in his fancies. He doesn’t just name-check politicians and political movements, he deals with the issues involved. V For Vendetta, for example, doesn’t need to include the word “Thatcher” to deal with (then) contemporary policy and its affects.

That’s the key thing – not the names that are being dropped but the affects that throwing these influences together can have.

Compare that to serious-minded Star Trek when it mentions the IRA, or when they realise that their precious warp drive is killing everyone on some planet. Topical and difficult as these things might be, they’re dealt with so glibly they hardly even register. Moore is all about affect, about wanting to touch the sides.

I think that’s important when considering how Lost Girls (which I’ve admittedly not read) uses its source works. Moore does not just name-check a few Victorian writers and artists whose works he wants to evoke. The various kinds of pastiche challenge the subtext of the originals, playing with their meaning and changing their effect.

Moore feels no need to explain the myriad allusions as he once might have – Google, he’s sure, will be more than adequate. He’s also unrepentant about how Lost Girls looks for the rude bits in children’s stories and brings them to the fore. Better to acknowledge our weird, sexy thoughts than to lock them away as too awful.

He was asked how he thought the original authors would have taken his revisionism – especially given Moore’s own lack of delight with adaptations of his own work. He argued he was not knocking out something derivative that claimed to be in any way the same thing. He’d made something new, something inspired by the original and which could not knock the original from its august and iconic pedestal.

But of course Barrie would probably hate it.

There was something more revealing earlier on, when he described Sigmund Freud – obviously a big influence on his reinterpretations – as a “coked-up kiddie fiddler”, with an apology to any Freudian relatives who might still be alive.

I thought it was interesting that he made a distinction between the sensibilities of the currently living and the long and now-mythic dead, the latter having lost their reality to the soup of history, so fair game to be played with.

(That’s my interpretation, not something Moore himself said…)

Preferring not to

In rain-lush Winchester this afternoon to see my Mum, whose birthday it is. We'd talked about going to see a matinee of the Queen, but got to talking more generally and so couldn't really be bothered. Talked films and things with the wee brother (who could also show some clips), and marriage and inheritance with the elder folk.

By something of coincidence after yesterday's post, my Dad is about to go visit Dresden...

The Dr had asked me to collect some of my 19th century novels for something a bit gothic she's working on. So on the train home I reread Melville's "Bartleby".

It's told by the master of a law office with chambers at some number on Wall Street. We hear of the three amusingly grotesque copyists under his employ: "Turkey", who is quiet by morning by pugnacious after his presumably boozy lunches; "Nipper" who's the opposite and quietens down in the p.m.; and "Ginger nut", the 12 year-old runner nicknamed after the cakes he's sent out for.

They're an odd and unlikely bunch, amusingly Dickensian and bit sloppy in their works. You feel the narrator is a little too accommodating of their whims. And then along comes Bartleby.

He's immaculate in demeanour and his copying is exemplary. But every now and then he'll respond to some minor request with, "I'd prefer not to." And the narrator is completely unable to say, "Like bollocks!" or "You're fired!"

And then it turns out Bartleby doesn't go home and spends his whole life in the office, and as the narrator investigates further it turns out the scrivener doesn't have much of a life anyway...

"So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succour, common sense bids the soul be rid of it."

Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street.

For all it now reads as a period piece, it's also suffused with modernity. Sherlock Holmes is "modern" because he embraces the new - bicycles and railway trains and fingerprints and science. But this is modern because it's caught up in the loss of old systems - beginning with the narrator's change in status because of the

"sudden and violent abrogation of the office of Master in Chancery, by the new Constitution,"

Ibid.

- and ending with the abolition of the "Dead Letter Office at Washington".

It's all built up on atmospherics and the narrator's own sense of strange impotence. I think it could be told more concisely - and suspect Melville might have been paid by the word. But it's a creepy story about eroded identity and how we decline to confront the abnormal.

jus in bello

Nearing the end of AC Grayling's "Among the Dead Cities", which comes very much recommended. He attempts - as objectively and rationally as possible - to examine the case for the carpet bombing of Germany and Japan by the Allies in World War Two.

Do the obliteration of Dresden and Hiroshima - to name but two notable cases - qualify as war crimes?

I've mentioned to a few people that this is what I've been reading, and none of them have yet come up with an argument or point of view not covered in the book, either for or against.

The arguments are expertly articulated and balanced against one another, and we hear not just from contemporary sources who bombed and were bombed themselves, but from legal documents, commentators on war like Grotius and Sun Tzu, and any number of wise persons.

It is a comprehensive and compelling case, and Grayling argues that whatever the barbarities of the Nazi and Japanese regimes, the indiscriminate and relentless programme of destruction was not necessary, was not proportionate and was not nearly as effective as it's proponents claimed.

A lesser wrong than that committed by the enemy is still a wrong. And what's more - as Grayling also shows - these lesser wrongs only complicate the aftermath of any victory. Which is not surprising, because if the victors cannot abide by the rule of law and human decency, why should anybody else?

Bombing people "back into the Stone Age" does not endear them to kindness and civility. I am reminded of Bruce Robinon speaking of his script for the Killing Fields:

"If I get incredibly uptight and frustrated, I get breathless because I'm asthmatic. The same chain reaction could very well happen inside a body to create a cancer: there's no other way out. The American war machine dumped eight billion - not million, billion - dollars worth of bombs on Cambodia, and that country had no protection against this and I think it turned back: 'If we can't destroy the enemy, we'll destroy ourselves.' That's virtually what happened in Cambodia: it went on a self-destruct."

Alistair Owen (ed.), "Smoking in Bed - Conversations with Bruce Robinson", p. 45.

But the most shocking thing about Grayling's book is not the accounts of what it did to people and their cities, and how it hampered the liberation of France and made things just ever more worse. It is to learn Area bombing was finally outlawed internationally in an additional protocol to the Geneva Convention - adopted only as late as 8 June 1977.

And, as you read through the list of things unequivocably banned for being such untennable savagery, to think, "But I've seen our side doing that on the news..."