Fry on Friday

As I may well have mentioned at the time, I recently went to see a recording of the TV programme QI, hosted by Stephen Fry. The episode in question will be shown this Friday (20 October) at 10pm on BBC2.

Wisely, in editing down the 90+ minutes of material, they've decided to omit Rory Bremner's earlier attempts to shoehorn political impressions into the format (which he sensibly dropped as time went on, and instead demonstrated some rather impressive general knowledge), and left many of Ronni Ancona's funny replies in (I draw your attention to her lengthy answer about 'obscurity').

Anyway, as ever with QI, it's funny and makes one think, which is an appallingly rare feature of TV nowadays as far as I'm concerned.

QI, incidentally, has its own website (and a shop and a club, intriguingly enough), and lo, the following link shows I'm not alone in appreciating the show:
http://www.qi.com/tv/audience.php

Very impressive, I think you'd agree. Whether it makes people at the BBC think twice about the programming on either side of the timeslot in question is, of course, another matter entirely...

REVIEW : Spamalot

Yes, this is a review whilst it's previewing, but rather than being a bit previous, I like to think I'm ahead of the game, okay ?

As you may know, this is a stage musical based on the film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', which has the blessing of the remaining Pythons, though it's mainly (and when you see it, pretty clearly) an Eric Idle-steered item. It's done well on Broadway, and now it's transferring to the West End of London, as is Tim Curry, who plays King Arthur.

So, what's it like? Well, it's a mix of bits from the film and new bits - a few new songs, expanded versions of favourites like the title song, and new plot-type bits. Overall, it's pretty good, but it doesn't truly hang together as a story as well as the original film does.

Notably good are some of the new songs, especially 'This is the song that goes like this', a great parody of the big romance numbers that all big musicals seem to feature, and the song about needing more Jews involved to get ahead in musicals (though this feels considerably less relevant in the UK than I'll wager it did in the USA). And the sets are very good, and there's quite clever use of Gilliamesque animated bits (the picture above is the animated 'Trojan Rabbit' which appears on the interval curtain, for example).

Less good is ... well, the thing is, because there are whole scenes which are lifted directly from the film, Python fans will be used to hearing them performed in a particular way, and whilst it's perfectly understandable that the cast want to make the parts feel their own, or to vary them when they're doing so many performances, bits like the Knights of Ni, Constitutional Peasant, the Black Knight and French Taunter are so well- known and well-loved (and rightly - for my money, Holy Grail's one of the funniest films there is), that hearing them performed by other people, with different emphases and inflections just feels wrong - like overhearing someone reciting Python in the pub or on the train, if you know what I mean. It has the unfortunate side-effect of making it feel almost like a student review version of the material, and that's not really what you want from a West End show.

That said, there are some nice jokes, the staging's really very good, Curry holds it all together well, there are enough in-jokes to keep Python fans happy, and there are new audio bits from Idle (introducing) and Cleese (as the voice of God). I have to accept that (my ongoing quest to spot the Pythons notwithstanding), this is probably about as close as I'll ever get to seeing Monty Python live, and as it's a fun night out, I'd cautiously recommend it; cautiously, as you have to accept it's NOT the Pythons, but once you do that, it's really pretty good.

Of course, as it's currently in Preview, it may well be that the critics will slate it when it opens 'officially' (after all, the member of Python are revered throughout the western world, but particularly in the UK, so there might be cries of 'what have they done to our Python?' or the like), so it might close quickly and you might not get a chance to see it, should you so choose. Or, it might be hyper-well-received (as I gather it was in the USA), and so tickets will sell out well in advance, so you might not be able to get tickets before 2008... now do you see why I decided to go to the Preview?

Who said that meetings are a waste of time?

I mean, I recently managed to doodle THIS!

And to think, my Sixth Form Head said I was shallow...

Bottle and Glass, as we say in London

This is a picture taken at the glass walk I did last Saturday. Yes, that's a walk on bits of broken glass, laid down on tarpaulin. And then the next day I ran ten miles.

I know, I know, doing such things in close succession is plain stupid, but of course that's part of the appeal. Then again, I do it because it's in aid of Phoenix House, a charity which helps to rehabilitate people with drink- and drug-related problems, and you can sponsor me or donate at the following page : http://www.justgiving.com/agonyofde-feet - this page gives more details about the charity, and also how your donation can be worth even more to them, without you having to pay an extra penny.

Please? Pretty please with sugar on it? Oh, thanks...

LINK : Director hits back

This made me laugh: http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/25/moviedirector.boxing.ap/index.html

I mean, I have a really sceptical view of the importance or relevance of critics, professional or otherwise, but I don't think one should necessarily take it this far.

Although...

A far from gruntled customer

Since there's absolutely nothing more gripping than hearing about people's utility hassles, just to say that I've lodged my complaint about lousy service with the higher echelons of Talktalk, and they're looking into it, allegedly. Be interested to hear why the company hasn't called me back (as they promised to do in late July) or sent me a replacement CD (over a month of waiting now) in order to get me the broadband I've been paying for.

So, if you're thinking about signing up for TalkTalk's package with the 'free' broadband, I strongly suggest that you don't, as - in my experience - their customer service is atrocious, and the broadband doesn't work. You know, I rather miss my dial-up with its usual connection speed of way below 56K, as that was infinitely faster than none at all.

If you have a Broadband deal which doesn't costs a lot, and includes calls (ideally evening and weekend, but I'll make do with the latter), please let me know, as unless Talktalk pull something rather remarkable out of the hat (and as I cc-ed my latest e-mail to their MD, maybe they will), I'm looking to change interweb provider... please e-mail your suggestions to me at mybandisbroaderthanyours@johnsoanes.co.uk.

And of course, until this is sorted out, updates will continue to be sporadic... yes, I'm as tired of that refrain as you are.

Not dead yet

... though you'd wonder from the paucity of updates, wouldn't you?

In brief, Talktalk's 'Free Internet Forever' offer actually seems to mean 'free internet for about ten minutes if you're lucky and then it dies and you can't reconnect but you can call our helpdesk and stay on hold for ages and pay a premium rate and then get asked to reboot or reinstall the software and then it works for about ten minutes if you're lucky...' and so on ad infinitum et absurdum, which is why updates have been so non-existent recently.

I'm as annoyed as you are, my special ones, as I had loads of things to say, such as how this blog has led an old school friend to contact me after a decade, how I almost went to see ITV's Sharon Osborne Show being filmed, and the like. Ah well, soon I will tell... though I don't know if the naming-and-shaming above will necessarily catalyse a happy solution. Still, the blog does sometimes appear to have magic-ish powers, so let's see.

So, in summary: this blog isn't dead, and nor am I. Will post more - and more interesting stuff - when I can. Honest

Anyway, enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you like best about me?

LINKS : Acronyms and Anachronisms

When I was at school, I contributed pretty heavily to the school magazine, including writing the introduction, which, when one took the first letter of each sentence, revealed the word ‘Masturbation’. Now, you might think this is unsophisticated and foolish, but I’m not the only one who does such things…
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1859782,00.html

The American comic industry has a lot of problems in regards to sales, readership, format, and of course content. None of these are likely to be solved by this bit of news:
http://www.pr-inside.com/baldwin-plans-christian-comic-books-r17246.htm
No idea why, but I’m reminded of the bombing of the mansion in ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut’…

Shambles indeed

As you may have seen, last week's Big Issue had a free CD with it.
"Ooh, free CD," I said to the chap near Victoria Station who I usually buy one from. "Who is it?... Oh, it's Babyshambles."
"I know," he said.
"That's a shame."
"Yes," he nodded, "it's not what I want to be associated with, really."

Note to Pete Doherty*: If people who are unfortunate enough to have to live on the street are looking down on you, it may be time to re-examine your life.

*Believe it or not, he does read this blog occasionally, so the web-bods tell me. When he's between tracks, I guess (See what I did there? Comedy).

Shoppers' Paradise

I was so scared / intrigued by the items being bought by the man in front of me in the queue at Tesco East Ham on Friday night, I craftily took a picture of his items .

This was all he was buying - note the bottle of Teacher's to the right.

I dread to think what he had planned for the weekend...

Stop wasting your money on overpriced coffees...

... instead, give it to a worthy cause.

Sarah, a very good friend of mine (and the mother of my lovely god-daughter) is taking part in an event called the Aviva weekend, from 15-17 September. Over the course of this weekend she'll walk 60 kilometres (over ten times the height of Mount Ararat, and you know how much effort I said that took), to raise money for the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer is - as I hope anyone smart enough to read this knows - a very bad thing indeed, and it ruins the life of so many people - women and those that care for them alike. I'm totally in awe of what Sarah's doing, and I hope you'll be similarly impressed, and kind enough to take a moment to click on the following link and sponsor her:
http://lo06.breakthroughweekend.org/site/TR?px=1477233&pg=personal&fr_id=1020&s_tafId=23740

No donation is too small, or too large, and I think she's also got her employer to agree to match donations made, so please give as much as you can. She's set herself an ambitious target, so please help her to reach it and help what is obviously a worthy cause.

And, of course, please feel free to pass this link on to your friends. Sponsors get to feel good, and the money goes to help breast cancer research and educational programmes, so other people will benefit from your generosity. It really IS a win-win situation, so why not do it now?

Oh, go on...

Update Frenzy

Nine updates in one day (well, ten if you count this one)! That must be a record. For me, anyway.

So there's lots for you to read, and please feel free to comment/correct/dispute as you see fit.

Once the bloomin Broadband hassle is sorted out, I'll see if we can have less of this 'feast or famine' updating, and a more consistent (if not necessarily daily) flow...

Last week I went to Berlin

And to prove it, here’s a picture of the Brandenberger Tor – not the big one in the centre of Berlin, but a namesake in Potsdam, a town just south-west of the city.

It was good (will write more about it soon, promise), and I even took the opportunity to use my rusty German (I know, I should oil him, but I never get round to it). I even ate a chocolate bar called – wait for it – a ‘Wunderbar’.

Which, like the rest of my time there, it was.

LINKS: Shake your head / Let's go to bed

Join me, please, in finding the following to be ridiculous, and indeed laughable were it not for the alarming free speech implications:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/northfulton/stories/0802roswellstudent.html Should we expect Stephen King to be arrested for the content of his pseudonymous novel 'Rage' any time soon?

And on a thankfully more reassuring note...

I'll freely admit that I find someone more or less appealing depending on what they choose to read, and it seems I'm not alone:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/08/01/i_bet_you_look.html
The comments are worth looking at, arguably more than the article itself.

Spotted on a Central Line tube the other day

Very possibly the most immature bit of graffiti I’ve ever seen, but it made the schoolboy in me laugh.

Can’t help but wonder who’s tried to remove the sticker – a religious person offended by the addition? A gay person offended by the use of ‘gay’ in a pejorative sense? An atheist who cares not for JC’s sexual orientation but doesn’t like religious material being displayed in an ostensibly neutral environment? Or someone else?

I wondered about this most of the trip home. Well, kind of – most of it was spent stifling giggles at the pen addition.

REVIEW: Eating Myself by Candida Crewe

The personal, it’s said, is the political, so let me just get the personal stuff out of the way before I get into the review of this book: I probably know more than I’d like about eating disorders, and care a bit more than is probably healthy, and the notion that people are suffering from them upsets me greatly, all for reasons I can’t fully articulate, though experience (inevitably) is a part of this.

So I was genuinely interested to read this book, as the cover flap claims it’s a memoir “which speaks to all women”. Given that one of the things I find so upsetting about eating disorders is the (for me) sheer impenetrability of the thought processes underlying them, I was keen to see if this book shed any light on them. It did not, and quite frankly proved by turns alarming, depressing, and annoying. Let me explain why.

The book is a mix of chronological recollections about Crewe’s life, and details about her current preoccupations with food, weight and the like. As such, I was rather hoping that there might be some clues or even analysis as to the point in her life when she started to feel a certain way about food and her self-image, and to factors which had triggered it. But these don’t appear; instead the worries seem to come along almost fully-formed in her early teens, and much of the time there are generalisations to suggest that most, if not all, women feel as she does. I often find this kind of generalisation faintly irritating (I want to know why so many women feel this way, not just that they do), but even moreso when the generalisation is one which just doesn’t sit at all with personal experience – the best example of this is on page 51, when referring to school dinners, she says, “Like many resourceful children down the ages, confronted with similar fare, when the teacher wasn’t looking I shoved it up my skirt, down my knickers and afterwards into the jaws of an appreciative lavatory”. Now, perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life, but I attended school (several, in fact), and ate school lunches, and never not once ever did I see, or hear tell of, anyone who shoved food in their pants (and this doesn’t just seem to be me, as I’ve asked a few female friends about this in the past few days and they’ve all looked at me as if I’m insane. So I think Crewe is alone on this one, and that her generalisation is extremely spurious).

That sort of thing was alarming, but more depressing material came in the form of Crewe’s comments about how her preoccupations with food and body image affect her daily life; she tells us how she tries to avoid eating breakfast wherever possible (p15), how she can’t settle in a room until she’s assessed who’s the fattest person in there (p82) and how she loves walls because “they hid the whole of one side of me. I have made use of them ever since” (p85). As I say, I found this depressing because the thinking underlying it is something I find utterly alien, and simply cannot grasp, and I just want someone to explain it to me, so I can understand it, if not necessarily agree with it.

Jumping ahead to the present in her life, Crewe tries to analyse where this preoccupation came from, and thankfully doesn’t give much credence to the received wisdom that it’s all the fault of men, saying they find “this mild lunacy… tedious and unsexy” (p200), though I feel she skirts the issue of whether it’s because of the judgmental eyes of other women, trying to assess which women. I’d say it’s more likely to be strangers than the known-to-me individuals which Crewe examines (friends, family, etc), but I’m guessing here. At least this section of the book has the benefit of feeling as if it’s actually analysing things, as opposed to just stating that this is how things are and not explaining them.

Then, Crewe tells us, she showed her husband the first draft of the first half or so of the book, and that he was upset, because he hadn’t realised that she was so unhappy. To which she replies that she’s not unhappy, and so she re-reads what she’s written, and says: “Looking at the narrative again… I realised that I was not actually writing about the immediate here and now but my distant and recent past” and “…I think I exaggerated or, rather, played a little freely with my use of the present tense” (p221). And then “What I did was to make out that I am still living by [those various habits, practices and beliefs] every day… While I admit that they do not malignly exist today as they once did, they have not entirely disintegrated.” Just in case those extended quotes are a little hard to understand, don’t worry, I’ll translate them into a three-word summary for you, paraphrasing Austen: Reader, I lied.

And this was a profoundly annoying section of the book for me, both as a reader and as someone who takes the use of words fairly seriously (despite often using them for flippancy). As a reader, I felt cheated, because the stuff that I had found so alarming in the first section of the book – about how she thinks x and that all women think x – turned out not to be true, which of course brings pretty much the rest of the book into doubt. She lied about her current preoccupation with food, so how do I know she wasn’t lying about the bulimia in her 20s? How do I know the academics she quotes from exist, or that they said what she claims they said? After the beautifully-phrased admission quoted above that what she said wasn’t actually true, you can see why I’d doubt it.

That’s my reaction as a reader, but as user-of-words my annoyance is two-pronged: firstly, that a subject as serious and life-ruining as eating disorders is something that can be written about in a haphazard way, and secondly - tying in to that haphazardness – that the book wasn’t rewritten after that first draft elicited this reaction and Crewe realised that she hadn’t been telling the truth. If you’re a writer or editor with any integrity in that situation, you say ‘okay, well, now, that stuff wasn’t accurate, so I’ll take it out’ and then you do that. You don’t just stick in a bit at the end saying ‘the first draft contained lies which upset my test reader, but I’ve left them in and acknowledged them here, so that’s all right’, because it isn’t. It borders on contempt for your reader, their intelligence, and undermines the seriousness of any point you’re trying to make. In writing terms, it’s hackwork, an example of the ‘that’ll do, get it to print’ mentality, and it does nobody any favours.

As you can tell from this extended review, I feel strongly about this book (because I feel strongly about the subject). I have no objection whatsoever to books which mix personal feelings on a subject with cold hard facts and analysis, and on a subject as emotive as this I think it’s almost inevitable. But as a contribution to the examination of the rise of eating disorders and an analysis of the roots of it, this book is utterly worthless. As a personal memoir – and it’s more that than anything else – it’s very well-written, but since we later learn that the author hasn’t been telling the truth, it’s invalid on that count as well.

On the strength of my dislike for this book, you might feel a perverse inclination to check it out (it’s in hardback at the moment, so maybe your local library will have a copy). In no way do I suggest you do so, but if you do, consider yourself well and truly warned.

As far as I can see, there’s still an important book to be written on the issue of eating disorders, their social and cultural roots, their triggers and cures, and all the associated issues. It would need, to my mind, to be a mix of the anecdotal and the factual, possibly with autobiographical elements, possibly without. I haven’t come across such a book yet (though if you know of one, please let me know – usual e-mail address), and I sometimes wonder if I ought to write the damn thing myself. I’ll add it to the list of projects. With the working title of ‘WTF? I mean, W-T-F?’

Along with general nausea, Stray Thoughts may be a sign of Attitude Sickness

1. Following on from the Fire Walk I did last year, I’ve recently received a letter from the same charity asking me to do a sponsored walk over broken glass. I haven’t yet decided if I will or not, but I must admit I love that my life is such that people write to me and suggest I do that sort of thing.
2. On the subject of foolhardy behaviour, I have to say it’s been interesting to see the reactions of women I know to the picture of me at the summit of Ararat. Many of them seem oddly … let’s say moved by it. Perhaps it’s the latent (more like blatant) symbolism of the ice axe…
3. Have you heard that Mousse T/Dandy Warhols remix, ‘Horny Like A Dandy’? It’s an obvious summer novelty track, mixing – yes – ‘Horny’ with ‘Bohemian Like You’. As a fan of one of those tracks but not the other, I can’t quite decide whether it makes the good one a bit shoddier, or lifts the rubbish one to the level of acceptability by association.
4. Shopper’s Paradise: last time I looked, Virgin had all Bill Hicks’s CDs available for £6.99 each, and Woolworths were selling the ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ DVD for £5.99. All of these are worth your time and money.
5. Oh, and speaking of films, re-watched ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ the other day, for the first time in something like a decade, and was reminded just how great it is. Strong performances all round, and once again I’m forced to wonder if David Mamet could write dull dialogue if he tried. Not that I’d want him to, but…
6. Something which I remembered the other day: when a relationship was on the way out, but we were refusing to admit it, I spent a couple of awkward Sunday mornings with the then-girlfriend, when neither of us seemed to be in a hurry to get out of bed (and not for fun reasons). You know how it is. Anyway, some time later, after things had ended, she told me that she’d been pretending to be asleep so as not to have to talk to me. On balance, I can’t decide which is the worst aspect of this – that she did it, that she told me, or that she assumed I wasn’t clever enough to realise what was going on, and so felt that she had to point it out to me?
7. Although I only got about 10 pages in Madame Bovary before giving up, I’m not discounting Flaubert as a writer, as I came across this quote from him (or, at least, attributed to him) which I think is rather insightful: “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work”.

REVIEW: Belshazzar’s Daughter by Barbara Nadel

Another book I bought on the cheap because it featured Istanbul as its setting, this is a thriller, and essentially a murder mystery.

The basic premise is as follows: an elderly Jewish man is murdered in Istanbul’s Jewish quarter, and a swastika drawn above the corpse in blood. There are a handful of characters presented as likely suspects, each with moderately plausible motives, and it falls to the central character, Inspector Çetin İkmen, and his colleagues, to find the killer.

The characterisation’s key here, and Nadel succeeds in providing a cast of notably different characters, as well as a likeably quirky lead. I found the opening ten pages or so a bit of a struggle, as we keep switching locations and characters without it being quite clear what’s going on, but once the relationships between the characters become apparent it’s genuinely interesting, and there’s some good dialogue and interior monologue.

However, having set up an interesting situation, the book falters in that something needs to happen in order to upset the status quo and allow İkmen to figure out who did what and when. And this comes, but in a rather heavy-handed fashion, almost as if Nadel realised that the set-up was so tight, and the characters so tight-lipped, that the only way to resolve the story was to drop a bit of a Deus Ex Machina plot device into it, rattling things enough to enable characters to make mistakes and for the detective to figure it out. Given how tightly written the book is generally, this felt like a bit of a fudge, though it does at least move the story out of the corner it seems to have written itself into.

But the writing’s generally of a very high standard here, with the characters feeling real and (in places) genuinely creepy or evil, and Istanbul is (to my mind rightly) portrayed as a city burdened by its own history, struggling to make a smooth transition to the present.

A shame, as I say, that the story’s resolution feels it was wheeled into place by plot levers being so blatantly pushed, but I only paid 99p for this book, and it was more than enjoyable, so I’d cautiously recommend it. Nadel’s written further novels featuring the same character, I understand, so they may well be free of the plot problems I felt this one had.

No coincidence, only the illusion of coincidence

As I’ve been saying for weeks now, I have arranged Broadband for my phone (and, of course, computer). I was hoping that I was going to be the first person in my circle to have it installed without hassles, breakdowns, or the usual delays. Oh, my optimistic folly!

The Broadband was not working for the first week after the first installation, and of course the ‘call back within 48 hours to tell you what the problem is’ didn’t happen. A snotty e-mail from me elicited a response, apologetic and saying that it was fixed now. Indeed it was, for about two hours, and then the phone line went dead, and remained that way for five days.

Now, I’m not saying that the phone line died because of the broadband installation being screwed up, but it looks bad, doesn’t it? I’m aware of the dangers of ‘Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc’ thinking (except when it comes to the West Wing episode of that name, which is as good as you’d expect), but the conclusion’s pretty inescapable…

Anyway, the landline’s back on now, but the Broadband problem’s happening again. Hmph. If it’s not resolved soon, I’ll name and shame them - that’ll scare them into sorting it out, oh yes by jiminy.

(And the reason I’m able to post this is because I’m doing it in one of those interweb café places – I know, I know, spending money just to update the blog! How good am I to you folks, eh?)

REVIEW: The Double Eagle – James Twining

Background: I bought this book because it was 99p, and it featured Istanbul as one of the locations, and so I took it with me to Turkey on my recent holiday. The woman behind the counter – rightly – observed that the cover made it look like the Da Vinci Code, which we guessed wasn’t an accident, but now I realise that should probably have been a clue.

The book’s a thriller, but the ingredients aren’t really very thrilling, to be honest: an ex-thief being pressured to do ‘one last job’, an FBI agent trying to prove her worth, FBI bosses who won’t be convinced about the agent’s hunches or ability… you get the general idea.

Do I sound dismissive? Probably, and that’s because, even for 99p, this book isn’t really very good. The central premise is moderately interesting (though probably much more so if you’re a numismatist), but the writing’s really rather poor, so perhaps the resemblance to Dan Brown’s waste of trees isn’t a coincidence. The low quality of the writing really started to bite for me around page 84, where two characters are talking in a graveyard, though oddly enough we’re told that one of them “stared down at the floor as he spoke”. I think he means ground – in fact he definitely does, and he knows they’re outdoors, because on page 85, he tells us that one of the character’s “black brogues [sank] into the grass’s soft pile”. It’s a decent enough comparison, that grass is like carpet, but the use of the word ‘grass’s’ is horribly clumsy, and really should have been caught before the book went to print. And that’s on two pages of a book that runs to 549 pages, which is why, like the aforementioned other novel, I kept reading, and re-writing it in my head as I went to see how it could have been done. Which is not a good thing.

Also, the ‘twist’ at the end is easy to guess (I did so on page 238, so when it came on page 482, imagine my smug boredom), so the drama of the ‘reveal’ is almost non-existent, as is that of the epilogue.

According to the author biography, James Twining’s working on another novel featuring the same protagonist, and I wish him well with it, but I certainly won’t be buying it, because I really can’t recommend this book, even as a spot of light reading.

In Deep Water

A picture here from my recent holiday in Turkey, taken with a waterproof camera (I know – technology, eh?).

The fish who’d been so prevalent up until the time I took the camera underwater were conspicuous by their absence once I started snapping, but I think you’ll agree that the water’s not exactly unappealing, nor un-blue…

And yet at school my grades were persistently below 'C' Level

This is me at the summit of Mount Ararat in Turkey, 5137m above sea level, about ten days ago.

No idea why my hat's decided to make me even taller than usual, so instead focus your attention on the ice axe in my hand, and the high-altitude beard.

LINK: Are these words from the future?

I like this :
http://www.futureme.org/

Go on, you know you want to.

LIST: Music To Climb Mountains By

You can keep your iPods with their single-digit battery life, my Sony bean-shaped music thing has a 50 hour running time when fully charged, and so is ideal to take on holiday.

And that’s what I did, and despite me accidentally leaving it running a couple of times, it didn’t run out until after I got home. Which is handy, as occasionally you get tired of the sound of your own ragged breathing on the mountain, or the aircraft’s engine drone, and want to listen to some proper music.

The following, then, is a list of what I listened to in Turkey (those marked * are single tracks, all the others are albums):

They Might be Giants – Istanbul Not Constantinople*
Pink Floyd – Echoes: The Best Of
Aimee Mann – Wise Up*
Jewel – Goodbye Alice in Wonderland
Pet Shop Boys – Left To My Own Devices*
The Divine Comedy – Victory For The Comic Muse
Somnium – 17*
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Best Of
Camisra – Let Me Show You (Tall Paul remix)*
Scott Walker – Sings Jacques Brel
Fire Inc – Nowhere Fast*
Original Soundtrack – Blade:Trinity
Fire Inc – Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young*
They Might Be Giants – A User’s Guide To…
Sebastian Tellier – Le Retournelle (original version)*
Big Bam Boo – Fun, Faith and Fairplay
Long-View – Mercury
Fatboy Slim – Right Here, Right Now*
Craig Armstrong – Love Actually (Orchestral Score)
Snow Patrol – Run*
Deacon Blue – Raintown
The KLF – America: What Time Is Love? (Full version)*
Kubb – Mother
Moby – James Bond Theme*
Craig Armstrong – Film Works 1995-2005
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine – The Taking of Peckham 123*
The Divine Comedy – Casanova
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine – Lean On Me I Won’t Fall Over*
Bonnie Tyler – Best Of
Malik Adouane – Shaft (from Buddha Bar Vol 1)*
The Orb – U.F.Orb

So: 225 tracks, 16 and a half hours of music, and the machine was only half full. Did the job for me…

Darling, I’m Home!

Well, for those of you who didn’t know, I’ve been in Turkey for a couple of weeks, initially climbing Mount Ararat (I’ve been asked to write a magazine article about this, and will post the appropriate link), and then taking a few days to recover and do some diving (beautiful blue water, and fish all around). Heaps of fun, and I broke a few of my own rules as well, which is always a healthy thing.

And, of course, I met some lovely and interesting people, as you can see from the attached picture.

You have not heard the last of me

As villains tend to say as they fall victim to their own diabolical death-trap, shaking a fist (or hook or claw) defiantly:
"Mark my words, I shall return!"

... which is to say, updates will be few and far between for the next few weeks.
Please bear with me.
Your patience is appreciated.

REVIEW: ‘Inside Out’ by Nick Mason

This book is Mason’s account of his life and times as a member of Pink Floyd, from its very beginning until the recent Live 8 reunion. As the only person who’s been a member from the start until the present day, Mason’s arguably well-placed to give a sense of the bigger picture.

And he does so pretty well; from the swirly psychedelic start at UFO and other London underground clubs to the grottiness of touring, he gives decent insights into the way various albums (and sometimes individual songs) evolved, with an amusingly dry modesty. The book wouldn’t be complete without references to the departures from the band – Syd Barrett and Roger Waters – and he doesn’t take the opportunity to pretend to be blameless in either situation, which I feel is a good thing. The book ends on a happy note, with the paperback containing an epilogue about the Live 8 reunion, but even without this it would be a good read, and it’s interesting to note just how the Floyd went from being improvisational and free-form to very ordered and regulated in their work (the overabundance of that from Waters sounding like the problem when it came to ‘The Final Cut’ album, I fear).

A very decent read, thankfully free of muso-style pretension or similar excesses of music writing, and definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of the band in any of their incarnations (I like most of it, though the Waters-led period suits the often rather adolescent nature of my concerns, but if you like the Barrett or Gilmour eras, these are just as well covered).

Postscript: Just this weekend (though I didn’t attend), Mason was special guest as Waters performed The Dark Side Of The Moon in Hyde Park. Nice to see the rapprochement continuing. But I would question the appropriateness of the heading under which this concert took place (see picture above) – Ambassadors of Rock? Rock doesn’t have ambassadors, with their polite diplomacy and Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Rock comes in without being invited, drinks milk from the bottle in the fridge, puts its hand on your bum without apology, and wipes bogies on the curtain before leaving, the door banging as it goes.

‘Ambassadors’. Tch. Rock’s not like it used to be in my young days, clearly…

The ‘To Read’ Pile

Over at http://toastandhoney.blogspot.com/2006/06/book-bound.html, Olivia recently commented on the pressure of having so many books awaiting her attention, and posted a picture to prove it. In a typically male spirit of competition, I attach a picture of the books which currently await my attention, in their increasingly precarious pile atop the bookcase.

I’m not necessarily proud of having so many books bought but unread (it’s just money sat there really, isn’t it?), but I’m not entirely ashamed of it either. If nothing else, it means that, if I’m on my way home from work and find myself close to the end of a book, I’m not going to find myself wanting for something to replace it… assuming I don’t finish it before I get home, that is –too often for my tastes, I find myself finishing a book either on the way to work, or even on the way home but with eight or nine stops to go, and find myself going cold inside with an awful sense of rudderlessness.

What to do? Pick up a discarded copy of the Evening Standard or, worse, Metro? Or just stare at the advertisements overhead for multivitamins and websites?

Good lord, no. Quite frankly, that would be worse than not reading at all.

REVIEW: ‘Millions Of Women Are Waiting To Meet You’ by Sean Thomas

Asked by Men’s Health magazine to write an article on internet dating, Thomas did so, and wrote this book to tell all. As you’d expect, it’s pretty funny in places (certainly aided by his candour), but it’s also surprisingly touching in others, and even insightful when he thinks about exactly what in his life has made him like certain things in women (height, income etc), and not like others. Would that we could all think this over so well.

However, a few niggles, and they’re petty-ish, but they broke the flow of reading, which is always irritating; Thomas (or his editor), like many people, doesn’t seem to realise that ‘infer’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘imply’ (and it’s always embarrassing when people use it wrongly – better not to use it at all,I feel), and there are several typos, the worst of which is where the name of a girl referred to several pages previously is wrongly substituted for that of his current girlfriend. As I say, minorish things, but they break the spell of reading, and whilst I’ve come to accept that UK reprints of USA-originated novels aren’t going to bother correcting spellings of ‘color’ and the like, I think a book from the UK ought to be better proof-read than this. Hmph.

Hmph-ing aside, it’s a pretty good read – Thomas is likable and honest, and his musings on certain sexual peccadilloes are both frank and funny. Worth a look, though it probably gives away a few things about male thinking which women would rather not hear confirmed (as much as they suspect them to be true).

… Night-Time in the City.

The other night, I went to the British Museum to see their exhibition of Michelangelo drawings (splendid – even the man’s rough sketches are technically skilled, and there’s something about standing and realising you’re mere inches away from the original sketch of the Hand of God). The exhibition’s been very popular (and if you get the chance to see it before it ends this weekend, I heartily recommend it, but the short deadline’s the reason why I’m not reviewing it fully), and thus the Museum was open until midnight.

So I turned up for my timeslot just after 9pm, and I ascended the unusually people-free steps, going into the foyer where two musicians (one violinist, one cellist) were playing classical music, and then on to the Great Hall where they were serving food, before seeing the exhibition. And as I came out an hour or two later with a contented grin on my face, once again marvelling at the things which are available to me in London, I decided to take a picture of the Museum building.

And that, my friend, is the picture above and to the left of these words.

REVIEW: ‘The Final Solution’ by Michael Chabon

A very short novel from Pulitzer-Prize winning author Chabon, this features a mystery in a small English village in the last years of World War II. It’s investigated by an old man who used to be a detective, but now more concerned with looking after his bees. If you don’t know who I’m referring to by now (and the book doesn’t name him) … well, then you might not appreciate it as much as I did, I guess. And frankly shame on you.

Anyway, as I say it’s a short book (126 pages), which means you can rattle through it quickly (an afternoon was enough for me), but it’s a good one, with some nice bits of characterisation and a good sense of pace, as well as a genuine feeling that WWII looms over the action like a shadow. In the paperback, there’s also an additional section containing an interview with the author, in which he makes a reasoned (not to say spirited) argument in favour of genre fiction. As Chabon won his Pulitzer for a book covering superheroes and the history of American comics, and this latest book is a murder mystery, I’d say he was well-placed to comment on, and argue about, this issue, but this may be because I agree with him wholeheartedly.

In terms of value for your money, this is pretty poor (£6.99 for 140 pages or so), so you might well want to see about getting a library copy, but I recommend you do so, as it’s a very good read. And I recommend mulling over Chabon’s comments about genre as well.

Something Happened!*

For those of us in the UK, the first series of ‘Prison Break’ ended the other week. In case you haven’t seen the show, the basic premise runs thus: a man is accused of murdering the Vice President of the USA, and his younger brother, convinced of his guilt, gets hold of the plans to the prison, has them tattooed on his body, and then gets jailed so he can break out with his sibling.

Yes, it does sound fairly preposterous – and indeed it often is – but I suddenly realised that the reason why I’ll be watching Prison Break when it returns is the opposite of the reason why I found the end of the first series of ‘Lost’ so irritating: something happened.

It’s a common problem in TV series – they want to keep you interested, so they set up an attention-grabbing premise or plotline, but network and business needs require that they endlessly play Scheherazade and refuse to resolve the tease. It’s all foreplay, basically. And I’m not knocking foreplay – it’s just there’s a reason why the first consonant of the word is what it is.

And whilst Lost lost (…) my interest by virtue of its refusal to answer many of its own questions, Prison Break had characters die, situations change, and all the things that made it worth watching because it was far from predictable what was going to happen next. Indeed, in places it looked like the writers were playing Consequences, seeing what the next episode’s writer would do to get out of the jam they were in, but the way plot threads faded and reappeared makes me think it was far more organised than that.

It’s a simple enough requirement in a story, I think, that something actually occur, or that the writer(s) have the nerve to make good on at least some of the promises implicit in the set-up, but it often seems to be one which TV serials are reluctant to do, in the belief that a promising status quo is what the viewer wants; for me, that’s not the case, and there’s little I like more when watching a TV show which actually dares to deliver the punchline which its setup promised (finding out who the killer was in Twin Peaks, for example), or which has twists of events which you didn’t expect at all (Spooks episode 2, for example, but more importantly Buffy on an impressive number of occasions).

I may be getting old-fashioned in my approach to things narrative-based, but as all stories involve the creator convincing the audience that these made-up-things in some way ‘matter’ and are worthy of their time and attention, I think it’s implied in that that if the audience spends time and effort following the story, that the creator will in some way reward that. And in TV, it seems that’s almost unfashionable (‘Life on Mars’, I’m looking at you), which I think is a shame.

Not least because it means I get increasingly wary of starting to watch a series in case it just strings me along to no narrative purpose.

*Apologies to Joseph Heller

REVIEW: ‘Rat Scabies and the Holy Grail’ by Christopher Dawes

Pretty much as the title suggests, this book is about the quest by former drummer in The Damned, Rat Scabies, to find the Holy Grail – specifically by looking into the mysteries surrounding the small French village of Rennes-le-Chateau.

Dawes, a former music journalist and friend of Scabies, gets drawn into this despite his reluctance, and writes about it well; his précis of the Berenger Sauniere mystery is admirably succinct, and saves the reader the trouble of reading the Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln book on the same theme, as it’s summarised in about a dozen pages. He does well at explaining the whole bloodline-Merovingians-Poussin-Plantard tangle, though he’s sceptical about it all (rightly, to my mind).

The back cover of this book suggests it’s a ‘testament to the bizarre nature of friendship’, which I wouldn’t wholly go along with, but if you want to have a fun read, this certainly fits the bill.

How to think Stray Thoughts and influence people

1. Just in case you haven’t checked it out yet, I once again recommend you check out The Writing Factory, a blog written by a friend of mine. It’s frequently sharp and insightful, and definitely worth a look. Go on, click on the link in the column to the right– you know you want to…
2. Currently on the turntable chez moi: the new albums by Jewel and The Divine Comedy, as well as selected Scott Walker CDs. Have you heard Scott’s Jacques Brel covers ? I hadn’t until recently, but when I did … well, they felt familiar, like songs I already knew, or had been waiting to hear all my life. Terrific stuff.
3. Speaking of things musical, and as this is Stray Thought 3, I think it’s a very silly state of affairs that the forthcoming Meat Loaf album ‘Bat Out of Hell III’ features a minimal input from Jim Steinman, who wrote, produced and generally sorted out Bats 1 and 2. It’s a matter of obvious historical record that Loaf’s non-Steinman written stuff has attracted less acclaim and fewer sales, so it seems a bit cheap to use the Bat element in an attempt to bolster up sales of a CD which has virtually no connection with the ones in the same ‘series’. You might well think I’m oddly concerned about this, but – and this appals most people when they first find it out – I think Jim Steinman is a great and distinctive songwriter, and that it’s a pretty transparent attempt to leech off past glories to call the forthcoming album Bat III. And I have a suspicion that much of the coverage of it will say as much. Keep an eye out for that in a few months, if not for the album itself.
4. As a friend of mine pointed out, the US Government’s claim that recent suicides in Guantanamo Bay were ‘asymmetrical acts of war’ do rather echo the Monty Python line that ‘a murder is only an extroverted suicide’. And they ring even less true coming as they did mere days after the US had proudly displayed photos of the body of a member of Al-Qaeda, which is, er, kind of barbaric, isn’t it? There may well be some truth to the fact that the Guantanamo detainees knew their deaths would make them martyrs, but that’s absolutely beside the point when you recall they were being held without charge or trial, in contravention of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Call me a bleeding heart, but if you think it’s okay for people to be arrested and detained in a location without access to lawyers or family contact without being charged with any recognisably criminal offence, I would respectfully suggest that you google the name ‘Pastor Niemoller’.
5. I’ve been doing some personal writing recently – a poem to write and read at a friends’ event, and an intergenerational collaboration for a family member – and it’s been rather strange to finish off these pieces of writing and realise just how different my mindset has been when I’ve been working to a genuine, immovable deadline; it’s made it feel more real somehow, and so there’s more of a sense of momentum to the writings. Very interesting, and really rather fun…

Baron jour-apres-Samedi

As many of you may know, I have an attachment to the character of Batman which, whenever I try to explain it, makes people look at me like I'm insane. Better, I often think, that they see it as a symptom of immaturity than some deeper psychological aberration. Anyway, I like Batman a lot, for whatever reason.

Which is why, this afternoon in London's Horniman Museum (oh, stop that), I was interested when I looked at a Haitian Voudou tableau to see an element which I recognised... just there, to the left of the scary-doll's hand, is what I believe to be the top of a Batman Pez dispenser.

Now, I've long believed there's a case to be made for Batman being a modern night-god character like Puck or Loki (as opposed to Superman, the sun-charged Apollo character), and I know that Batman and other superheroes are often used as sigils or servitors in Chaos Magick, but I think this is the first time I've seen the character used so directly in a religious context.

Unless, of course, the Voudou tableau was intending to invoke not the Bat, but the Pez aspect of things, that one's enemies might find their head hinging back and a rather chalky sweet emerging from the epiglottis. But in comparison with that, my theory suddenly looks rather more plausible, doesn't it ?

It’s not for me, it’s for a friend…

… honest. Those of you who check this page regularly will by now be used to my frequent requests for sponsorship, but in a pleasant change from the norm, this is a request for sponsorship for someone else.

My friend Debs from Radio Forest is taking part in the 5km Race for Life on July 2nd, to raise funds for Cancer Research UK. A worthy cause, obviously, and as I can vouch for Debs as a good egg, I’d politely ask that you be so kind as to click on the following link and sponsor her. It’s one of those nifty secure sites where you can donate or sponsor from the comfort of your own arse. I know, wonderful what they can do nowadays, isn’t it?

Here be the link:
http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/debsmart
Go clicky, I prithee, and blessed be for your kindness.

REVIEW: ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini

This book was a present (thanks, Jess), and a darned good one at that.

The story’s simple enough, really, dealing with the relationship between Amir and Hassan, two young boys growing up together in Afghanistan in the 1970s.

And yet it’s really much more complex than that, dealing with children’s friendships and the complex emotions underlying them. The prose is almost sparse, but this is definitely an asset – in order to make you understand what a character’s feeling or thinking, Hosseini provides the bare bones, allowing the reader to draw on their own experience to flesh it out, and this sense of reader-involvement makes it more affecting.

There are one or two slightly contrived plot occurrences – though you could say the same about ‘Candide’(and indeed I did) and that’s held in high regard – but the general pacing and emotional resonance of the book is strong enough to make these forgivable, and there are some passages which seem so perfectly crafted it’s hard to believe this is a first novel.

Very good stuff indeed, and definitely recommended.

Filthy Beast

Whilst I appreciate that the perfectly-voice-cast Kelsey Grammer might well be a little more senior in years than one might expect Henry ‘the Beast’ McCoy to be, what with his athleticism and whatnot, I’d say that it was rather ungallant of the makers of X-Men 3 to license the toy pictured here.

As I say, age notwithstanding, there’s no need for Hank to be wearing such obvious and voluminous incontinence pants, surely?

The next stage in human evolution, and he can’t even hold it in. I mean, really…

Don’t sweat the Stray Thoughts (they’re all Stray Thoughts)

1. In case I haven’t made it clear, I’m going to stop apologising for the infrequency of updates, and reassure you it’s the decent craftsman justifiably blaming his tools. In an effort to promote Broadband, my ISP appears to be letting the dial-up facilities just rot where they sit. I frequently get a connection speed of 4.8kps instead of 56K, and for some reason I can’t possibly fathom this makes updating the webstuff tricky. Not to mention trying to sign up online to the Broadband packages which now look so much more convenient…
2. Mission Impossible 3 is a perfectly capable action thriller, and you could do worse than watch it. Not as much Hoffmann or Pegg as perhaps one might hope for, but JJ Abrams does a bot-kick job of the action sequences, and the plot’s suitably twisty.
3. It’s been pointed out to me that I often refer to not doing certain things because they’d be a waste of time. Perhaps I do indeed have an overdeveloped sense of time’s winged chariot drawing up outside and throbbing and waiting, or it may be an attempt on my part to recherche tous les temps perdu, but it’s true; I do see the passing of time as something not to be piddled away. Which makes the fact that I’m expending both words and moments, two of the things I value most, on this, all the more special, doesn’t it?
4. I saw an episode of QI being filmed last week – Fry, Davies, Jupitus, Bremner and Ancona, which will allegedly be the last episode of series 4. Impressively entertaining, and informative, and I pity you poor folks who won’t get to see it in its unedited two-hour-long live glory…
5. Speaking of things I saw, I appear to be collecting Pythons: saw John Cleese in Soho a few years ago, and Michael Palin on the South Bank the other week. Didn’t approach either of them, but hope to complete my Python set over time, though I guess Gilliam and Chapman might prove challenging.
6. Speaking of the Pythons, I can’t help but think that the three whose humour was/is more verbally based (Chapman, Cleese and Idle) generally seem to be less content with their lot than those who delighted in the surreal and just plain silly (Palin, Jones and Gilliam). A terrible oversimplification, to be sure, but I wonder if there’s something about essentially verbal comedy which leads its practitioners to analyse words for their comedic potential to a negative extent. I think it was WC Fields who said ‘I know what makes an audience laugh, but I don’t know why’, and I wonder if seeking to find out ‘why’ is a path down which melancholy lurks…

“Do it to Julia!”

As you may have heard – or even seen – the National Lottery show on Saturday night was beset by protesters who jumped onto the stage and disrupted the programme. The picture here illustrates it – and also demonstrates what I thought I’d seen in the playback: that Sarah ‘I got my start in the Girlie Show’ Cawood kept doing her bit like a professional, whereas Eamon ‘I’m a serious journalist with years of experience’ Holmes ran across the stage and cowered behind her like the big brave man he is.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be a member of the crew if Holmes is ever sent to cover a war zone, that’s for sure.

Reports of my death have been much exaggerated…

… as have the suggestions that I’m in hiding, waiting to be a surprise housemate on Big Brother; technical problems are continuing to prevent me making entries as often as I’d like, I’m afraid.

Will try to sort them out, but in the meantime, let me just dangle this virtual carrot: www.johnsoanes.co.uk v2.0 is coming soon.

REVIEW: Bill Mason – Nine Lives: Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

The autobiography of Mason, as per the subtitle, contains confessions – he’s craftily waited until the (US) statute of limitations has passed on a number of jewel thefts before admitting to them in this book.

Mason stole large numbers of jewels over a number of decades, though invariably from the rich (mainly American celebrities who are less well known here), and he was strict about not using guns or other violence, making the opening sections of this book read like a real-life Raffles or Fantomas. Many of Mason’s thefts are accomplished appallingly easily, as he frequently points out that people have elaborate security systems which they don’t turn on, or heavily-reinforced sliding doors which they don’t lock. If nothing else, the book acts as a reminder to lock up after you go out.

However, from about the halfway point onwards, Mason spends a lot of time writing about his attempts to stay out of jail, and this is far less interesting. Perhaps it’s because the exact nature of legal wrangles is pretty alien to a limey like me, or because Mason becomes less sympathetic when he’s out on the town drinking with his lawyers and leaving his wife and kids at home, but I found this section pretty uninteresting. When he gets sent to jail – and he does, despite some fairly insane courtroom machinations – he writes well about this, providing some good insights into life behind bars and dispelling a lot of myths.

Overall, not a bad read, but I found myself plodding a bit through the legal stuff which dominates the middle and onwards. It’s well written on the whole, with Mason coming off as pretty likeable despite his open admissions of being a criminal, and it’s refreshingly down to earth, unlike most crime-based TV or films. You might want to check this out – it’s an American book, but it’s been published by Bantam Press in the UK, so though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you buy it, your local library might have a copy.

When I was thinking Stray Thoughts, it was a very good year…

1. I have won four tickets to see The Charlatans in Birmingham on May 14, and am unlikely to be able to use them. If you can use them, let me know, and they’re yours – quickly, though, as I can always eBay them…
2. Speaking of music and freebies, there’s a wonderfully perverse CD of cover versions free with the latest issue of Q magazine, which I commend to you. I particularly like the Nick Cave version of ‘Disco 2000’ and the Travis cover of ‘…Baby One More Time’. I kid you not.
3. There are moves afoot, I gather, to standardise the timing and sound of the muezzin (or call to prayer) in Cairo. I can understand the desire to make it sound the same (because some are definitely more melodious better than others), but I have to say that I positively like the sound – it’s a wonderful reminder when I’m on holiday that I really am far away from the usual routine.
4. Very amusing week in politics - as I hope is very clear by now, I’m not party political, but I do think it was funny to see the PM supporting various ministers in recent times, then retracting that support when the party got a serious kicking at the local elections, and kicking the same ministers out or stripping them of their power. Fair weather friend indeed, and it all has the feel of 1993 to me, when the government seemed to be staggering from one embarrassment or crisis to the next…

TRAVEL: A Frank admission (reduced rates for groups)

I’ve never been one for holidays which are all about lying on a beach.
I don’t tan (when exposed to heat and light, my paper-white English skin responds like something out of Fahrenheit 451) and my boredom threshold is pretty low: I once spent a couple of weeks holidaying in a French beach resort with some friends, and after about three days of lying in the sun, I felt as if my higher brain functions were shutting down – I may have been in the land that brought us the work of Rimbaud, but by the end of the fortnight, I was intellectually more suited to the oeuvre of Rambo.

So: I prefer to take breaks which involve a few sights, a bit of activity, and some kind of exposure to foreign languages and culture, at the very least.

An example of this was when I went to Amsterdam – and don’t get your hopes up, this won’t be the tale of how my wander down the walletjes led to me being exposed to the kind of foreign culture which you normally see on Petri dish or microscope slide – a few years ago.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, and there’s something very relaxed about the general atmosphere (insert inevitable dope-smoking joke here), and generally laid-back (ditto a legalised prostitution gag here). That, though, was all overshadowed for me by the visit I made to the Anne Frank House.

Located at 263-265 Prinsengracht, the Anne Frank House is just that – the house where the Franks and van Pels hid between 1942 and 1944, when their hiding-place was betrayed. If you don’t know the story – and I’d be surprised if that’s the case – I strongly urge you to read the Definitive Edition of Anne’s diary (which contains a lot of material expunged from previous editions), which was published about a decade ago. And then, when you’ve read it, do visit the House and Museum if you can.

Because it makes it all seem even more real; I always feel that things like the Holocaust are so vast and terrible that the mind often shuts out the scale of them, but the Diary of Anne Frank makes it all seem so human, and the up-and-downs of despair and hope which she writes about are so relatable, that if you read the diary and then think that those feelings were shared by millions of people whose names many of us will never know, then … well, it’s not a nice thing to know and read about or understand, but it’s an insight into the depths to which humanity can sink, and it’s as sobering as it is a warning.

And if Anne’s diary makes it feel real and relatable, then actually walking in the house where it all happened brings it home; you walk up the stairs and pass behind the hinged bookcase that separated the families from the outside world, and seeing the size of the rooms where a total of eight people hid for two years, it’s hard to imagine how they coped; I’ve been in shared houses where people have started to get a bit stir crazy if they’ve stayed in over a weekend working on an essay or whatever, but ultimately they had the choice, as we so often do now. The Franks had no such choice.

I was with someone when I went to the Frank House, but it’s not the kind of place you go round in pairs – you take your time, looking at bits of it and lingering as the mood or the moment takes you – so she and I were separated, and we met up again at the top of the house, in the Front-House Attic. I was standing at the window, looking out at the view, and feeling a sense of stepping into someone else’s space, like sitting on a chair still-warm from it’s previous occupant, at the realisation that Anne Frank (and the others in hiding) must have stood in exactly the same spot at various points, looking out at a city whose streets they might never walk again. I was feeling vague and kind of weird, rather overwhelmed by the way the Franks’ story had been made so concrete and real to me, and thankfully she didn’t try to jolly me along or make a joke or anything, just left me there to look out of the window for a minute or so.

As well as the house, there’s a bookshop (understandably), and also some exhibition rooms, one of which contains the original diary. Impressively, the museum doesn’t try to pretend that the obvious lessons of World War II have necessarily been learned – there’s a photo on the wall of a statue of Anne Frank on which someone has spray-painted a swastika, and an accompanying caption discusses the threat of neo-nazism. Henry Jones was right – goose-stepping morons would be better off reading books, instead of just burning them.

And nowhere is that sentiment more clear than the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Definitely worth your time.

Resumption of Service

Back again, after a long radio silence caused mainly by technical issues (that is, I need to get Broadband sorted out at home; don’t worry, it’s in hand). Still, I have some things for your perusal, so without further ado…

Vision On

For those of you who feel that the pictures of me on this blog just aren’t enough eye candy, you’ll be pleased to know that the website of the radio station where I ply my aural trade on Tuesday evenings now has a webcam; visit http://www.radioforest.co.uk and follow the link.

I’m there between 8 and 10pm most Tuesdays, but a number of other people with faces which are suited only to the medium of radio will be visible throughout the week, and all of a sudden we’ll have to remember not to pick our noses whilst in the studio.

REVIEW: The Descent

This horror film is, pun inevitable and intended, pretty decent. A friend recommended I watch it late at night with as few lights on as possible to get the best effect, and I can see why.

It’s a simple enough tale – a group of female potholers find themselves in a perilous situation underground, and as they struggle to get back on course, come to realise that they may not be alone in the caves. The film’s got a good number of jolts in it, there’s some good dialogue, and the characters are all fairly well-written and acted.

My only gripe would be that though the film doesn’t outstay its welcome (the running time, according to the box, is 95 minutes), I found the supernatural threat element of it, coming so late in the film, was almost superfluous; there are some genuinely tense scenes of people in very claustrophobic situations, and they’re well acted and directed to the extent that when we start to get the idea there are creepy things in the darkened corners of the caves, it’s almost unnecessary, as the environment itself is threatening enough.

But it was worth a view, and if you do watch it at home, I’d echo the recommendation that you do so at night with little lighting, so as to emphasis the disorienting effect of events onscreen being illuminated solely by headtorches and emergency flares.

Names have been removed to protect the innocent (and to protect me from the litigious)

Some years ago, I was attending a wedding – of an ex-girlfriend, no less, and before the big day came round, I was talking about it to a female friend, who was also going to be attending.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” I said idly, “if, when they get to that bit about ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’, someone cleared their throat?”
This wasn’t, I hasten to point out, said with any kind of malice. It was just one of those what-if things.
“I suppose so,” she said, sounding less than convinced.
"I mean, I wouldn’t do it,” I said quickly. “It’d be kind of funny, I suppose, but it would take the attention off the bride and groom, and that’s not fair - it’s their day, after all.”
As cheesy as it may sound, this is actually the way my mind works – for this very same reason, several years later, I refused to get into a slanging match with an ex who was attending a wedding; it wasn’t about us, it was the couple’s day.

Anyway, the conversation moved on, and I didn’t think about this again, until the day of the wedding, when at the appointed time, my friend – sitting behind me in the church – did indeed cough as if she was just about to say something.
I looked round at her, and I wasn’t the only one in the surrounding pews to do so.
She didn’t say anything further, though, and the wedding ceremony was completed, and as far as I know, the bride and groom (and, perhaps more importantly, the vicar) never even heard her cough. But I had, and at the reception, I spoke to her about it.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I said, meaning it.
“What are you talking about?” She looked genuinely bemused. “You dared me to!”
“I didn’t dare you! I said it would be funny if, not that I thought you should do it!”

…it was probably at this point in my life that I first became interested in how people’s memories of events can vary, or be malleable or just plain wrong. It’s something that fascinates me still; how we rewrite events, often to meet the emotional or intellectual needs of the present as opposed to reflecting the past. I do, I know, and have a sneaking suspicion that I’m partly doing it even in this retelling… though I like to think the facts are as reported.
But of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I ?

(She may have been right to clear her throat, mind; they’re no longer married.)

REVIEW : Rude Kids – The Unfeasible Story of Viz by Chris Donald

(At least, that’s what the title page of the book says; the spine and front cover, oddly enough, call it ‘The Inside Story of Viz’. No idea why.)

This is the story of how Viz went from being a photocopied comic sold by Chris Donald in Newcastle pubs to the one of the best-selling publications in the UK (beaten only by far less funny magazines like the Reader’s Digest and Radio Times).

Donald’s prose style is conversational and witty, and he manages to make topics such as distribution and merchandising deals seem almost interesting. I felt the book was at its best, though, when he was describing the thought processes behind the actual creation of characters, and thus later chapters – after his involvement in the comic has reduced, and he enjoys his early retirement on the proceeds of its success – were less engaging; I wish him well, and he’s certainly earned his money, but I found it harder to relate to the problems he was having with the restaurant he set up than the earlier descriptions of trying to come up with something funny. In all fairness, though, even those chapters aren’t dull, thanks to the generally affable nature of the writing (and, one can’t help but conclude, his general outlook on life).

On a purely personal note, I was amused to see the coverage of the launch party for the Viz competitor/copycat ‘Oink!’, to which Donald and other Viz creators were invited (and where they stole the cake which had been made for the occasion – shades of Malcolm Hardee’s ‘I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake’, I thought). I wrote a couple of items for Oink in my teens (as, more significantly, did Charlie Brooker), and Donald’s assessment of that comic, as well as the other competitors which sprang up as Viz approached sales figures nearing a million per issue, was interesting to see.

Definitely recommended if you’ve ever laughed at anything in Viz, and if you’re interested in how comics or cartoons are made, as well as providing another example of how acclaim and being paid very well for doing something you love don’t necessarily bring you happiness. Though I guess most of us will never actually get to find out if that’s truly the case, and so would probably be willing to find out the hard way rather than taking other people’s word for it.

This is the news. God, I wish it wasn’t…

Tonight’s Evening Standard headline board there.

Since there’s no mention of anyone else, I can only conclude that Mr Cruise has a fully functioning uterus. I guess this story’ll be covered in more detail in the New Scientist, so keep an eye out for that.

REVIEW: Kyro – Dingwalls, Camden, 18 April 2006

Yes, I’m writing this within a couple of hours of seeing the gig. Creative and prolific, and on a school night no less.

Anyway: the third Kyro gig I’ve been to in recent months ( does this make me a groupie? I rather hope not) and I think this was probably the best yet. There was a real sense of energy and enthusiasm about the set, with singer Ian charging around the stage and singing as if his life depended on it during the opening number ‘Killer’, but then slowing down by the time they got to the third track ‘Crazy’. The other band members, I noticed, were grinning to each other at various stages during the set, and the sense of fun was infectious; the music’s really strong, and the band and the audience alike were having a good time.

There was a great lull towards the end of their closing track ‘Rockstar’, where it seemed that they were almost done, and Ian thanked the audience for coming, but then the guitars and drums crashed in again and the chorus was back, and it all felt natural and unforced, and most importantly it sounded damned good.

As I’ve said before – and I hope I’ll soon have little need to say many more times, as events really should make it unnecessary – Kyro are very good indeed. There’s not a weak link in the band, and all the songs have something to savour about them. If you haven’t already done so, go to Napster and download their recent EP, so that when they make it big (as they rightly should), you can irritate your friends by saying you were into them before everyone else.

TRAVEL: Oh, water night

Several years ago, in a tent high in the Himalayas, I woke to the sound of running water.
In itself, this wasn't strange, as my party of trekkers had camped next to a fast-flowing river. But this wasn't the gentle white-noise background of the river; it was something else.
I lay there in my sleeping bag, not moving, trying to figure out what it was... and realised what it reminded me of: the sound of a milk bottle being filled from a tap. You know that noise ? It's a kind of flat, glassy note, and as the bottle fills higher, so the note goes up the scale..
I opened my eyes and saw a vague, hunched form to my left, and guessed what it must be.
The man I was sharing a tent with was urinating into a bottle.

In the mountains, altitude sickness is a very real danger, and can make you do strange things.
As you get higher up and the oxygen level in the air around you decreases, so your lungs have to work harder to compensate, and red blood cell levels drop, and all sorts of other unpleasantness can hit you; sleepless nights due to a tightness in the chest or nightmares, headaches like a band of metal shrinking round your temples, constipation or diarrhoea, and of course the fatigue born of the fact that you're trekking for six or seven hours per day.
And this, in theory, is a holiday. Yes, yes, I know, why would a person do this when they could be a on a beach somewhere, sunning themself and reading chunky novels like everyone else ? Well, if you know me, you'll know that the idea of being like everyone else invariably makes me leap the other way. It's a kind of predictable rebellion, and I'm sure it's this belief that I'm so very different which makes me exactly the same as anyone else.

But I digress; we'd flown from Kathmandu to the small mountain town of Lukla late that morning. The small plane looked like the one from the start of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (though to be fair, the nice folks from Yeti Airlines [no, I'm not kidding] did lay on barley sugars to help us keep our ears from popping as we flew into the mountains), but I have to say the landing was better than in the film. We touched down into the small Himalayan town of Lukla, essentially several dozen shops and lodges gathered around the landing strip which literally brings in most of the town's trade and tourism, and after receiving a warning about the dangers of altitude sickness (the importance of taking things at our own pace, not overdoing it and drinking at least four litres of water a day), we set off trekking.
We stopped and camped about four hours later, around teatime, and I was allocated a tent with a chap in his sixties. He was a nice chap, decent and friendly, and I admired the fact that he'd chosen to do this as a holiday - trekking for over a week in the mountains, to be rewarded with a fairly long-distance view of the peak of Everest, isn't everyone's cup of tea, after all.
Speaking of cups of tea, they were plentiful at the nearby lodge where we ate our evening meal before retiring to our tents; weak and milky and sugary, but the tea was always available, and the Sherpas would grin as they said the word 'tea' to us, perhaps knowing of my feelings towards it.
So we'd drunk several litres of water that day, and several cups of tea. I guess I can see why my tentmate decided to pee into a bottle instead of going out into the cold at 2am or so to the toilet tent. But it wasn't the way I would have chosen to be woken, and thinking about it now, the sound that woke me was more like a glass or metal bottle being filled than a plastic one, though I can only hope he wasn't caught so short that he decided to pee into his Sigg water bottle or similar... no, as I say, he was a decent chap, and I'm sure he wouldn't have lowered himself to do that... would he ?
As I say, altitude can make you do strange things.

Anti-Sceptic

I consider myself a rational, intelligent type, not given to flights of insane fancy or making decisions based on spurious notions or beliefs.

And yet... I've read about Chaos Magick and sigilwork and dabbled in them to an extent, infrequently do tarot card readings on the deck I own, have a couple of different translations of the I Ching which I consult now and then, and was grateful to receive a Solar Return Reading which a good friend of mine, an astrologer, recently gave me as a birthday present.

Occasionally, these things influence the way I think and act, and I could (with little notice) provide tales of precognitive dreams or other experiences I've had, deja vu moments, and the like; most people I know are similarly sceptical, and yet could tell tales of things which have happened to them which fall in such categories, and which defy satisfactory explanation using logical or scientific method.

What, then, is the explanation for this ? Is it that the experience of living is just the tip of a vast iceberg of things which we don't yet have abilities to grasp, and that there is indeed 'something more' out there? Or is it that even the most rational of minds will occasionally fall prey to the belief that there is something paranormal or supernatural going on because, for whatever reason, there's a part of their mind that wants to think such things could be true, and is on occasion willing to over-estimate the evidence to make it appear so ? Or something else ?

I genuinely have no idea, and - as ever - invite your suggestions...

REVIEW: V For Vendetta (original comic)

This graphic novel (aka big chunky comic) by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, despite being over a decade old, remains a perfect example of why anyone who maintains all comics are for children is, quite simply, wrong.

It's complex in its story and ideas, the art and colouring is a million miles from simple linework cartooning, and some of it is deeply moving (the Valerie chapter, for instance).

It's about ten or twelve quid to buy, but it's well worth the money, being the sort of thing you can return to over and over again, and find something new.

Recommended for anyone who says they like a good story, and isn't hidebound by limited notions of genre and/or medium limitations. Which, I would hope, is anyone reading these words.

REVIEW : V For Vendetta (film)

It's been a few weeks since I saw this film, and I've been mulling over my reaction since. It's very much a mixed bag, really, and my feelings towards it are rather coloured by the fact that Alan Moore (the co-creator of the comic) has strongly expressed his distaste for the changes made in the transition between the page and the screen. It's tempting to make this review into a 'the good/the bad' semi-list, but I won't.

Oh, and here be spoilers, so look away now if you don't want to know the results.

There are fundamental problems in the film, many of them inevitable given that a comic of something like 200+ very dense pages has been reduced to a film of about two hours. There are huge leaps in the action which don't necessarily make sense, the character of Finch has been horribly reduced (would have loved to see his Larksmere visit filmed), and the character of V has been changes, as has Evey.

But... there are some bits of the film which work surprisingly well; the Valerie sequence is about as well filmed as it could be, and is really rather moving, and Stephen Fry's character, whilst very reliant on the likability that Fry as a person brings as welcome baggage to the screen, is effective in both plot terms and as a performance.

Speaking of performances, Weaving as V is pretty good, though the problem with having heard V's voice on and off in my head for nearly two decades inevitably means that that his voice isn't quite what I was expecting (oh yes, that sentence looks mad out of context, but you know what I mean). Natalie Portman's not bad as Evey either, though she's slightly less sympathetic as a result of plot changes such as during the scene with the Bishop where she tries to betray V.

The general consensus about the film is that the bits which are faithful to the comic work well, and that the newly invented bits don't, and whilst the former aspect of that is certainly true, the latter isn't entirely the case; the end sequence wiht the crowd and the barricades - despite its mob tendencies going rather against the anarchist principles of the original story - is quite effective, and the threaded together bits with the dominoes works pretty well. To my amusement, as well, I actually thought that it was Christopher Hitchens playing Lewis Protheroe, though I was (unsurprisingly) wrong (it was Roger Allam).

So, a not-bad film, though certainly not a great one, and for people who haven't read the original work it'll probably be pretty entertaining, though viewers familiar with the original will almost certainly spend a lot of time missing what's not there, and umm-ing and ahh-ing about the new material. And some of the ideas in the film remain timely, such as the line about how governments should be afraid of the people, and not vice versa...

Is this a cautious recommendation? I think it is. Maybe wait for it on rental if you're not sure.

The bold and the beautiful

Came across a quote recently (attributed to Goethe, but I have the feeling it may originate elsewhere):

“Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

Has been running through my mind recently - in a good way.

A flat of one's own

It's not necessarily something of note, but it occurs to me that this month marks four years since I moved into my flat in East London (I'd call it 'mine', but let's be honest and say that I have an amicablearrangement with the building society). A friend of mine cautioned me that as soon as I moved in, I'd “start to hemorrhage money”.

Kind of true, and I frequently find myself on the receiving end of bills or other charges which I wasn't expecting, but more often than not, I find myself sitting on my sofa, writing or reading or watching a film and sipping a cup of tea, and stopping for a moment; catching myself grinning at the way that the place feels like home, and how comfortable I am there.

And it seems like one of the best decisions I've ever made.

REVIEW: Cyrano by Geraldine McGaughrean

This novel - which I think is aimed at teenagers, though it's far from clear - is a straightforward prose retelling of Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac. I'm a fan of the original play, to the extent that I've watched various incarnations of it on stage and screen, have read the play in various translations (and even in the original French; yes, that's right, look impressed, and feel slightly aroused by my erudition), and have even listened to the opera.

So I know the story, and was looking forward to the novel. But I was very disappointed - the description of places and people is slight (I don't think it's made clear that Cyrano has a big nose until a page or two after his first appearance, when it's meant to be a defining feature of him in literal and figurative terms), and the expanded page count isn't matched by expanded detail in the scenes, or in the backhistory of the characters (explaining why De Guiche hates Cyrano so much, for example).

Perhaps the most notably absent element is that of the romance scenes; when Cyrano's standing beneath Roxane's window, speaking in place of Christian, and wooing her, we're told she starts to tremble and swoon, but the lines he's speaking just didn't seem substantial enough to me to elicit that effect. Maybe I just take a lot of seducing*, but I thought it seemed more like Roxane was being swept away by the words because the plot demanded it than due to the power of the words being said to her.

As I say, I have the idea that the novel may be aimed at teenagers (I found it in that section of the bookshop after a friend had alerted me to the existence of this prose version), but in all honesty I think they'd find it a bit unlikely as well; even when I was most awash with hormones and teen angst and uncertainty I doubt I would have been convinced by a lot of the stuff in this book, so I think it's definitely a wasted opportunity.

If you want to read Cyrano, I'd recommend the Christopher Fry translation; if you want to watch it on screen in its original period setting, the Depardieu portrayal is about as good as it gets, but the modernisation of it by Steve Martin in 'Roxanne' is impressive, not least because he writes and stars.

And when I think about it, I first saw the Steve Martin film version when I was in my teens, and it worked for me, while I'm certain McGaughrean's novel would have left me feeling distinctly unmoved.

*I'd love to put a footnote to this confirming or denying, but thinking about it I don't think I can be so conclusive in a couple of lines. Feel free to e-mail in your agreement or disagreement (this invitation applies to women only. Sorry chaps).

It's your vote that counts

I didn't get a chance to post about it here last week, but many thanks to those of you who voted for me whilst I was one of the listed acts on http://www.yourcomedystars.tv. It's much appreciated.

I didn't make it through to the next round, but it was gratifying how many of you did take the trouble to vote, and also that the panel's comments (which, like my act, may well be archived somewhere on the site) all struck me as perfectly justified; I'll take them into account and get back on with booking myself to do more comedy in the immediate future. And of course I'll be sure to provide details of them here...

Stray Thoughts, as Stray as the wind blows

1. This Easter, despite being a godless infidel heathen, I received eight large chocolate bars, two smaller bars, and an Easter egg. Is it any wonder that I was recently asked if I'd gained weight? I love my friends and family dearly, but they're being staggeringly literal in the way they're going about ensuring that they see more of me.

2. I don't normally watch soap operas, but have seen some whilst staying at my parents' house over Easter, and can't help but note that the dialogue in Coronation Street appears to be much better than in Emmerdale or EastEnders. By 'better', I particularly mean 'at least half-similar to the way people actually speak', as EastEnders is notable in how much fun the script writers and actors are clearly having with the lines, but is equally notable in how little it actually resembles real speech.

3. Free DVD alert: if you haven’t already seen it, Morgan Spurlock’s certainly-worth-a-watch ‘Supersize Me’ is free with The Guardian next Saturday.

Late post

Well, once again I added a few more paving stones to the Road to Hell last week, for a variety of mundane reasons; mainly because I was away from an internet connection, but - obviously - I'm back now. And playing catchup, as you can see...

A plague(-iarism) upon both your (random) houses*

Yesterday, the case by two of the three authors of ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ against Random House, their publishers, alleging plagiarism in the novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ (coincidentally published by the same people) was thrown out. The Judge, apparently, said there was no obvious or solid plot in HBHG which had been lifted for DVC.

That’s fairly accurate, I’d say, as – and yes, I have read both books – HBHG purports to be a work of historical investigation and revelation, and DVC purports to be a thriller. Neither is at all successful, to my mind – the ‘non-fiction’ book is highly spurious, its research and methods most definitely built upon a pyramid of sand and far too reliant on ‘is it not possible that..?’ thinking as opposed to ‘therefore it seems almost conclusive that…’, and the DVC is full of inaccuracies (the frontispage claims it’s accurate, when it simply isn’t), poor pacing (characters stop for long expositional chats when they’re being pursued by killers), and staggeringly bad dialogue and writing generally.

So I was faintly perplexed as to why the authors of HBHG would want to claim there’d been some lifting, as the ‘facts’ that appear to have been lifted have been pretty well debunked over the years (the Priory of Sion, for instance, is generally held to be a hoax created by Pierre Plantard and French journalists in the 1960s and 1970s). So if I’d been the authors of the book, I would have kept quiet about it – sure, they’ll get some sales out of it, but the association with Dan Brown’s inexplicably popular novel is certainly not going to be good for them in the long-term, and certainly won’t do their already in-question historian credentials much good.

A nice comment on it from Howard Jacobson in one of the papers today: “Charging Dan Brown with plagiarising your work is like arguing with the referee for not crediting you with an own-goal. There are some things you should be pleased to see another person get the plaudits for.” Very true.

And oddly enough, the report on the case in yesterday’s Evening Standard referred to Brown as the world’s richest author, which seems a bit of a speedy rise; I thought that Jackie Collins or Stephen King (or even the more recent Joanne Rowling) would be more likely to hold that position? I’m ready to be corrected, but I’m similarly ready to pit my gut feeling about this against the Evening Standard’s fact-checking skills.

*Oh, stop wincing, we both know you wish you'd thought of this first.

Six Feet Under DVD Unlock Codes

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the post will mean precious little, but for those of you who DO know what I’m on about, it’ll hopefully perform a useful social service.

The unlock codes for the DVD given away with the Evening Standard are 347229 and 866314. Key them in and enjoy a healthy dose of Fisherly goodness.

And if you found this by Googling or similar: welcome. I’m John. How are you?

Truly a capital city

This was the view as I strolled across St James’s Park the other night.

The kind of sight that I almost take for granted, but which I recently realised that tourists pay large sums of money to enjoy for brief periods of time, whilst I see such things on a daily basis.

And people ask me why I like living in London.

These Stray Thoughts walk into a pub, and ...

1. I recently finished reading the fifth book in Stephen King’s epic (and it well deserves that description; decades in the writing, and huge in scale) Dark Tower series. I enjoyed it, and some of the ideas in it are staggeringly imaginative, but … well, the thing is, King’s style has changed so much in the last decade or so that the last couple of DT books almost feel as if they could have been written by someone else. I’d hate to think that might be the case, and in fact I suspect it’s because I haven’t read many of SK’s books in the last seven years or so. The chances are high that his writing genuinely has become more elegant and impressive, and that I just haven’t seen the various stages of that evolution. Certainly hope that’s the case, as the DT series deserves to be seen as a classic of imaginative fiction, though as it’s fantasy, I’ll wager it’ll be ignored or overlooked on a critical and academic level.
2. On the tube last night, there was an attractive woman; her facial appearance was a kind of mix of Joanne Whalley and Katie Holmes, though with a darker skin hue which suggested a foreign origin, and she was casually but stylishly dressed. But then she ruined all this by producing, and then starting to read, a celebrity gossip magazine. Tch.
3. It suddenly occurred to me the other day that I lived in the South of England for 10 years, then the North for 12 years (off and on), and now I’m back in the South again. And I have to say that until I moved to the North, I was utterly unaware of the North-South divide in the way that it’s often perceived – after I moved to Sheffield, people were often keen to point out my southern origins to me, and a girlfriend’s father even made some remark to the effect of my family moving North to be richer, or to exploit some economic benefit, or similar nonsense. And it was often portrayed as if the South of England spends all its time thinking of ways to plot the demise of the North, and to find more ways to move everything to London. Not only is this simply not true, but the – equally unappealing – fact of the matter is that many people in the South of England don’t even think about the North; they’re utterly oblivious to it in terms of their everyday thinking. Whereas a startling number of people I met in Sheffield were actively anti-South almost as if it was a matter of personal pride. All very odd.
4. I like Toblerone, but it’s one of those chocolate brands that I never think of in ‘everyday’ terms – it’s either offered at half price when I buy a magazine, or I’m buying it at an airport to get rid of local currency. It’s an international brand, and it’s been around for as long as I can remember, but it somehow always seems to be on the fringes of the chocolate market, for reasons I can’t adequately explain.

REVIEW : Kyro - Half Moon, Putney, 22nd March 2006

Once again, Kyro put on a great show, and their new bassist Max seemed like he’d been there for ages. Nary a bum note to be heard from any of the band, and the use of keyboards and samples is really coming into its own.

Five great songs in their criminally short set, any of which could easily be a single (and indeed they should be), and it would be insanely unfair if they didn’t see all their talent and hard work pay off.

And I won’t even mention the fact that Ian, their lead singer, was pogo-ing so energetically at one stage that he almost landed on top of the drum kit. He’s a good friend, and it would be unkind to bring it up.

Oh.

Men and women like different kinds of book shock!

Ladies first: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1369764,00.html

Second class male: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1747821,00.html

The general tenor of the news reports is a bit funny, I feel - dismissive of the male reading as pubertal, and somehow damning of the women's choices as if they should all be by Gloria Steinem... if anything, the results kind of suggest the gulf between academic and industry understanding of reader's tastes and the reality, I think.

Did you miss me ?

Well, I’m back now. Several updates today, and at least three more planned in the next couple of days. Get yourself a cuppa, and read on.

And please keep the comments and e-mails coming in; it’s gratifying to know people are reading this stuff and taking the time to compose responses.

Certainly makes a pleasant change from the usual e-mails I seem to get offering me Viagra or penis enlargement methods… which I presume are the usual contents of spam e-mails, right ? I mean, it’s not just me who gets this stuff, surely…