No proper excuses

Here we are, moderately good weather; in the middle of a still enchanting series of Doctor Who (despite Chris Chibby's best efforts), busy reading lots of good books; visiting National Trust properties; and politics in turmoil.

And I can't even muster one post.

Rubbish Lisa; blooming rubbish.

And it won't get better in the short term.

Sorry. No proper excuses, but I hope to blog after our weekend away.

A message to the Liberal Democrats

If David Cameron is C3PO made of ham, then surely Nick Clegg is now revealed as C3PO made of SPAM.

Not exactly the same as 'Dave' but bearing all the trademarks of Posh Boy mark II, just not even made of the real thing.

Shabby.

And I am sure that Nick Clegg's ambitions were always that he wanted to be John Prescott.

Disappointing.

Power, yes: but at what price?

I heard Paddy Ashdown this morning saying his reaction to the coalition was 'hooray'. Yes, that was exactly what he was saying to the idea on Thursday night/Friday morning. (I wish I could find the exact quote he used, but it was along the lines of 'we could not go into a coalition with the Conservative party'. Yes, right. Well, you stuck with that didn't you?)

Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful that the presence of the LDs in office will at least delay everyone on David Cameron's Xmas card list not getting their inheritance tax break. And if the tax threshold is raised to £10,000 that is great.

But caps on immigration is not what you campaigned on.
Neither was hopping into coalition with a party that in Europe is aligned to some very nasty parties indeed.
Neither was keeping Trident on your priority list.

All I can say to LD voters is that you need to REALLY mobilise supporters to come out when you get that referendum on electoral reform. And that you get a phrasing of question to the electorate that makes the very limited AV that the Tories will stretch themselves to offer seem positive.

If your don't manage to make the electoral reform thing pay off big time, and soon, then frankly I'm not sure the price of hooking up with the Tories will be worth the crap you will be eating in big policy terms.

UPDATE:
Phil puts it SO well... thank you. The poster itself you include says it all.

Profoundly depressed

Boo.

And hiss

Music Review: Pinchas Zukerman and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Nottingham Royal Concert Hall Friday 7 May 2010

Thanks be to Helen Lisette for the ticket organisation.

This initially crossed our radar whne the Nottingham Classical Concert season brochure hit our letterbox last year, and the event lived up to expectations.

Zukerman is an astonishing performer and an elegant conductor: he still dazzles.

Apologies! Lost voice - now wandering back in a lower octave

Lost my voice last week. It's a bit better now, but I'm still finding I'm a lower octave than usual.

Meh.

Usual reviews coming up as soon as able.

Flesh and Stone: Season Fnarg episode 5 - watching Doctor Who with the lights down in summer

Keep the curtains closed. Have a subdued light on. Don't blink. With a not so-bright evening it was possible to make the setting more autumnal. Flesh and Stone indeed.

Still, for real scares, whatever happens, don't watch full-length Confidential episodes without a barf bucket.

[Picture to go here]

Well, I thought that lived up nicely to the first part. I know not everyone out there agrees but I'm sticking to my guns of saying this is working for me: the series feels as if it has found a new groove. And I can hear the dialogue just fine unless I'm fooling myself.

Anyway. This Doctor isn't fanciable (for me: though I do already know some who have been utterly captivated. As the line goes in SKs comments at MediumRob's: Marmite). He's Mr Grumpyface. He's mercurial, but in a very different way to Ten/Tennant. He certainly doesn't consistently feel as if he knows it all - even when he does. He's channeling the second and seventh Doctors lots whilst nevertheless establishing his own approach to things.

Things I liked:

• River commenting "when you're older"
• Spotting the countdown as soon as Amy said 'Nine'
• Eleven losing it when Sacred Bob says the angels are doing it for 'fun'
• Bringing the story-arc forward (cracks, duck-ponds)
• The developing tears in the Doctor's eyes when he has the conversation with Father Octavian
• Moving angels! (just don't think too hard about Amy fooling them)
• Writing ret-con into the narrative (way to go with wiping out some of the awkward continuities of the RTD era - big Victorian steampunk Cyberking [Cyber-King or Cy-berking?] I'm looking at you, and for giving us a 'here and now' dating to Amy's life)
• That Matt Smith clearly has even more of a bonkers dress sense off screen than on-screen. Somehow that makes him seem even more like the Doctor.

But on the topic of the Confidential episodes: urgh. Moff - we get it, you're a genius, we're all grateful, we know you're good. I'm personally delighted "you are da man". But don't 'invite' your fellow writers to praise you in such ingratiating terms. We get it: you're the boss now. They're NOT going to say "he's a bit crap actually, that Moffat bloke: don't know why they put him in charge". It demeans everyone concerned to do this.

Otherwise though, it WAS nice to see so many nice bits from Ten's storyline in the Confidential. Just a shame that those are usually the very bits that get lost in the cut-downs (I haven't watched the cut-down version btw -- has it lost all the Moff-licking as well?)

Still, next week: vampires. Written by Toby Whithouse. Anyone betting on some fan-fic cross-overs? Anyway: a return to vampires in Doctor Who - better than State of Decay?

Exhibition reviews: Leicester New Walk Museum and Art Gallery

The forecast was for lots of showery rain, but it never appeared. Ah well, we still had a very pleasant day in Leicester collecting our tickets for the summer festivals (Big Session and Summer Sundae) and visiting the lovely New Walk Museum and Art Gallery.

We managed to catch the last weekend of the big Leicester exhibition (Journey out of Darkness) of German Expressionism which in itself was worth the visit. Leicester has, for a number of really interesting reasons, got a very large collection of German expressionist artworks including some very fine and regularly requested items. A key trigger point for their acquisitions was one very radical exhibition - 1944's Mid-European Art show: note the date and think then on how popular municipal bodies would be for showing German art. The show led to four important acquisitions: Franz Marc’s Red Woman, Lyonel Feininger’s Behind the Church, Emil Nolde’s Head with Red-Black Hair and Max Pechstein’s The Bridge at Erfurt.

But we also got to see the Meri Rail: Portraits of the Indian Railways (which thankfully runs until August, so you will have time to catch this). The people and and their captions/stories are fascinating and diverse: everyone from board members to drivers, orphan children who live in the stations to porters, tea-sellers to security police, job-form-sellers [there is a thriving business in selling the right job application forms for jobs on the railways] to engineers, cleaners to quota-sponsored athletes [the railway helps support those with additional talents]. Gerry Troyna's documentary and photographs with Achinto Bhadra are a delight to look at in detail.

The two together made for a truly stimulating visit: thought-provoking and visually interesting.

How many captions?: that debate picture of the hopping and hopeful politicians

Hard to know who looks sillier: the politicians or the audience for thinking these 'Prime-ministerial candidates debates' have any real meaning.

For the millionth time people, we do NOT have a US presidential election system. We do not vote for parties as such but rather for the election of the local representative of a particular party. To be perfectly honest the LDs could come a close second to the winning party in terms of the popular vote but this won't translate into a proportional allocation of seats because that isn't how the UK General Election system currently works. Unfair? Quite probably, but all parties would have to agree to some significantly impacting changes to the electoral system to see a real change in the political dynamics created by the 'First past the post' system. Vested interests etc will make such a change very difficult to implement.

Is it about making a protest then? Is that what this current election is about, given that Labour have alienated many of their core voters over their recent years in office? Should we be voting for what we believe in rather than 'least worst' options or pragmatic selection based on how the votes will actually count? (and what we could end up with representing us at a local level)

I don't know. All I know is that I don't feel able in all truth to allow my vote to even indirectly elect a Conservative MP for our area. Councils are another matter because councillors work on a much more direct local representation basis (although our current Labour MP is very good at engaging with the local community in terms of informing constituents and dealing with their queries, large and small, national and local issues).

Anyway.

This picture is still ripe for captioning as Norm so rightly notes.

Belated notice: MS awareness week 26 April-2 May

Thanks to Swiss Toni for the reminder, and apologies that I am late in acknowledging that it is MS awareness week at the moment.

Become aware, find out more, be engaged with the debates and representation of MS.

Everyone deserves "The Right to a Full Life".

Doctor Who review: on why 'The Time of Angels' needs to be watched again in the dark...

Scary wasn't it?

On one level I was grateful for the light outside the hotel window streaming in (HLW and I were getting a night away for silly conversations even if we got no further than a classy 4-star hotel in Nottingham city centre). But this should so have been airing in the autumn / winter... Curtains drawn, heating on, darkness outside...

Oh well. Balmy spring it is.

Won't stop me pulling this story out come the autumn when I can snuggle under the flicker of artificial light and the darkness of external streets peeping through the closed curtains.

So, anyway. River Song is back: with her 'meeting the Doctors out of sequence'; with her lack of foreknowledge about what Ten, and thus Eleven, know about her future ("spoilers")[1]; with her great bloody dress and shoes; with her 'prison' history; with her brilliant fending of Amy's questions on behalf of us[2]: it is indeed far more complicated than the simple answer.


Oooh....

Things I loved:

• the 'sweetie' boxed message crossing 12,000 years
• the explanation of the infamous 'voorp, vroop' noise that the TARDIS makes as it wheezily lands (and Eleven's impression!)
• the Church as military
• the realisation about the two-headed residents had single-headed statues... uh-oh...
• what an image of an angel can become... [someone has been watching 'Ringu'!]
• Amy's post-Angel encounter hallucinations: freaky FREAKY!
• Scared/sacred Bob
• River Song's Christian Louboutin shoes (ably spotted by HLW within split seconds. And I thought I was the one who liked shoes...)

As usual:
Telegraph - Gavin Fuller
MediumRob
Marie
Rev/Views
Behind the Sofa: Stuart Ian Burns
Behind the Sofa: Frank Collins
Behind the Sofa -> Two Minute Time Lord Podcast: Neil Perryman


[1] Stuart Ian Burns nails this:

When he [the Doctor] re-greets River we see the implications in his eyes, it’s as though Tenth is still in there somewhere looking out and remembering her fate and knowing that for all the history of his future she has literally in her hand, he sees her final end each time he looks at her but mustn’t offer any spoilers.

Just a beautiful description.

[2] Again, SIB nails it when he describes Moffat "effectively turn[ing] Pond into a sort of walking Gallifrey Base, voicing our ideas of who River Song is..."

On reading books (inspired by Norm)

Norm has an interesting post about his own personal approach to book reading, taking as his leaping off point the comments of a couple of writers on their own approaches to writing/rewriting.

Norm writes:

For my own part, nothing on earth would succeed in sending me back to a book I'd written some while ago, to amend, rewrite, add and excise. Of course, Elizabeth is talking about a novel - not the kind of writing I've ever done, I'm sorry to say. But how unsettling it would be to have to think oneself back into a whole set of questions, assumptions, arguments; to correct and improve, but at the same time preserve what's there in its general shape. Too hard. I prefer to move on to something different.

For those who do write 'non-fiction', the situation can be more problematic than perhaps Norm's example suggest. For the academic scholar, especially those doing PhDs and moving into academic publishing, there may be considerable need for and expectation of rewriting. This is not least because a PhD can very rarely be easily turned into a book because they are so often written for such very different audiences.

Although Norm was using the example of Elizabeth Baines revising her earlier published first novel for a new edition (an act that to me suggests a new text completely is being produced, albeit under the same name*), the 'rewriting' (and re-evaluation) process that Norm describes as being "so hard" is - perhaps unwittingly - happening anyway in his work. Certainly it is common in academia to take an article and expand/amend it into a book chapter, or vice versa. Maybe Norm has never done this, but this may make him fairly unique in academic writing.

For authors, especially non-fiction authors are frequently 'rewriting'. But this happens in the sense that authors will frequently write on variations of a series of connected ideas and issues. After all, they usually have gathered some level of expertise on a subject, even if they are veritable polymaths. Thus, taken as a collective whole, one could argue that Norm himself has across his various publications rewritten, refined, corrected and improved, and questioned his assumptions as he comes unfresh to each piece of writing. Because writing is a cumulative experience, one where we never write 'fresh' but from everything we have written and read prior to that seemingly 'new' publication.

Interestingly, these processes of re-writing that Norm so fiercely rejects I think find an echo in his resistance towards narratives that do not clearly and quickly set our their stall.

Possibly this derives from Norm's strong engagement with academic writing, where the sort of clarity required for following an argument is necessary. Perhaps building on his sense of not revisiting the writing process for his own works there is also a sense of completion and certainty in narrative that has transferred into his reading of fiction.

Of course, ultimately there are as many ways of reading and writing, of approaching what we want from a narrative and producing narrative structures, as there are writers and readers.

And possibly that is as it should be.

* the issue of 'new editions' of fiction always puzzles me especially where these texts are changed. I can understand publishing a manuscript/first version of a text. Perhaps what Baines is trying to capture is more of a 'Director's Cut' version, as used so often in movies, where things that got lost in the editorial process are restored. But this further raises questions about whether these changes should ever be restored. And does it remder it the same text as it was, or a different text entirely.

Theatre Reviews: Monday 19 April 2010 - Enron @ Noel Coward Theatre, London / Thursday 22 April 2010 - Arthur and George @ Nottingham Playhouse

Enron @ Noel Coward, London (due to transfer to Broadway April 2010, but continuing with a new cast in London til 14 August 2010)


I've briefly indicated that we enjoyed Enron in my summary of our London visit.

It was certainly a treat to see such a fabulous cast and such an intriguing play. Sam West, Tom Goodman-Hill, Tim Piggott-Smith all lived up to their star billing, but in such a macho play (and the narrative is inevitably all about the macho, even if it is shown up to be disastrously destructive) it was also pleasing to see how Amanda Drew stood her ground.


Of particular note though was how wonderfully the whole thing was put together, from writing to directing to staging. Making a musical - well, it has several musical numbers and plenty of song and dancing! - out of this excessively macho narrative takes a real visionary sense of how to interpret and portray the ludicrous duplicity and optimism of the central figures. Lucy Prebble has done an incredible job of making complex economic jiggery-pokery into a comprehensible tale.

This isn't a production with a sympathetic character as its focal point however; all the central figures involved are pretty loathsome, their actions myopic, manipulative and ultimately careless of human life. The 'raptors' may be given literal form on stage, but the real monsters are the human beings who thought they could control the markets.

Boy, did they ever get proved wrong. And more to the point, how the hell did their example not ring alarm bells earlier for the rest of the financial system?

Arthur and George @ Nottingham Playhouse til 8 May 2010



In its own way, Arthur and George is equally inventive at taking an existing narrative and bringing it to the stage (in this case, both a real life connection and more specifically Julian Barnes' reimagining of the tale).

David Edgar's adaptation I suspect works better for those less familiar with Barnes' book; the form of a novel - especially this novel - enables a more elliptical telling of the coming together of the characters' narratives. By virtue of needing to create a comprehensible narrative, the play inevitably foregrounds and shows what the novel controls and masks - not least the racial identity of George.

Nevertheless, the play does work its own stage magic to provide a degree of interwoven storylines, with characters located on the rotating stage carrying on their own overlapping dialogue, with furniture moving almost constantly, with characters facing each other, the audience, absent figures. The play also makes a virtue of its small cast by highlighting the understandable degree of paranoia George ends up internalising in his dealings with social racism (actors who have played earlier central characters who treated him so badly reappear towards the end in the guise of the great and good, but echoing earlier dialogue of cruelty and dismissiveness).

The cast are very good with Adrian Lukis offering a great turn as Arthur and Chris Nayak as the myopic George. Additionally, Kirsty Hoiles and Anneika Rose offer excellent supporting roles as Jean Leckie (Arthur's second wife) and George's sister Maud respectively. As a portrait of the casual nature of early 20th century racism, of the problems of innocence and guilt, it is well worth catching - especially if you are less familiar with the source novel.

London pictures April 2010 Part Two

Neil in Sam Johnson's library

Garden Architecture as seen from SJ's house

Reflections

Near Ely Place

St Etheldreda's Catholic Church

Ye Old Mitre Pub

Inside the old Prudential building

Rullsenberg in colour

Lincoln's Inn Fields

View across Lincoln's Inn Fields

Cloudy Neil and Rullsenberg

London Pictures April 2010 Part One

All bar the first few shots are from the tail end of the London trip - the first contrail after the volcano gives a clue that most date from Tuesday 20 April onwards!

Weekend on the Southbank

Neil in finery

Lisa at the BFI Southbank. Stripes with stripes.

The first contrail since before we left for London

Neil looks to the sky

Lisa at Somerset House

Down in Somerset House for the Bill Fontana soundscape artwork

Across to the Eye with a London bus in view

Temple Church


Temple Church

Inner Temple - as seen on TV and film

St Dunstan in the West

London in the spring: Friday 16th to Tuesday 20th April 2010

Been away. You may have guessed this, but given my erratic blogging, possibly not!

Anyway, we had a spiffy few days in London, marred only by my being rather unwell on Monday 19th (I'm unsure whether to blame the curry or the chill I caught sat in the BFI - the latter being ironic given that our first visit there had proven insufferably hot - a screening of the Lancaster classic 'The Killers').

Friday
Pizza Paradiso - of course, topped off with a glass of limoncello each on the house. Well, we were the last in there and they know us well after all these years.

A good walk round the block, picking up the tube back to the hotel and watching late night TV.

Saturday
Awake at ridiculous o'clock so we hit out for an early breakfast at Bar Brunos. We were so early even after finishing eating that staff were still breaking into Forbidden Planet so we headed round the block back to the tube to head to Marylebone. Visited Alfie's and marvelled at the prices for retro chic before wandering into Marylebone itself and into Daunts. Of course.

Stopped off for a half of much needed cider before getting the tube to Angel / Islington (no chuckling at the back there) and Neil walking me through the delights of Camden Passage where 1930s dresses were dazzling my eyes. Of course, all the ones I really loved (especially in Annie's) were at the higher end of the price range (though I noticed not as high as Alfie's prices were. Hmmm). Interstingly, we noticed when we dropped by Anthropologie - a shop I had nearly bought things from in Santa Monica where dresses were selling at approx $60 - that prices there made the one-off's of Annie's look VERY good value. £188 for a chain produced dress versus £180 for an original 1930s dress. Which do YOU think I would have gone for if I had been actually buying something...?!

On Saturday we also headed to the South Bank where we picked up the tickets for a screening of Butch Cassidy for the Sunday at the BFI.

We had a stop-off for Doctor Who which was... well, fun but on the could-do-better scale. Never mind.

A meal at Ristorante Cappuccetto near Cambridge Circus was a fine end to the day, with us ordering 3 mains between the two of us (well, I don't really count gnocchi with gorgonzola as a main, more of a side dish really) and a salad. I think the staff thought us mad, but we polished off the whole lot with ease.

A nice walk and then back to the hotel for more late TV.

Sunday
If it's Sunday in London, it's Spitalfields, S&M (and a very cheery waiter) and lots of wishing I lived nearer to this treat. Still, I saw my favourite designer Nina (of Enienay) and found some nice goodies for myself and Neil. Sadly my brain was possibly already frying as I completely forgot to use the visit to buy presents for people. Which just confirms the 'if it doesn't beep on my fone reminders, I will forget' syndrome I suffer from. Grr and apologies.

We then head to the South Bank to meet Poly (hello!!!) and have some very nice cheeses and chips before the film. The film of course was great, full of those sparkling one-liners for which Goldman so well-deserved his plaudits.

We regroup ourselves and head back to Brick Lane and have a very nice curry and then a long walk back via the City, Bank of England, Fleet Street and Covent Garden.

Monday
Did I say that London has been bright and beautiful for the whole trip? And no contrails either. Good job we weren't flying anywhere. We start the day late and head to Whitechapel for a visit to Freedom Press. Nice to support independent political bookshops. We then head back to town to grab a sandwich at Brunos before taking in a trip to the NPG for their Glastonbury and the Format Photography mini-shows (I rather like their one-room shows). We have a big night ahead, so while Neil visits Hausmanns I rest up reading my Doctor Who mag at the hotel, recuperating for the evening's visit to the theatre.

We have tickets for Enron which is fabulous, even if the characters are all unrepentant shits. There was a surprising number of bankers in the audience (go figure) but the performances and staging were wonderful - even if Neil was left somewhat traumatised by the unexpected sight of Sam West's moobs.

Tuesday
Breakfast at Brunos, moderately early and the staff are in fine form of chatty friendliness. We then go for a walk and wander to lots of new places. We see the first contrails of our stay, visit the sound sculpture of Bill Fontana at Somerset House (brilliantly evocative) and stand in the sun looking across the river. We stroll through the old bit of King's College (masked from the Strand side by its awful 20th century concrete frontage) - and I also note now that they have recently taken over some of Somerset House itself. We then head through to Inner Temple and Temple Church. I feel like I'm walking through Rumpole, Law and Order UK, Judge John Deed territory. We then wander into St Dunstan in the West with the giant clock strikers and then on to Sam Johnson's house (a great place to see!) and a further wander through the back streets towards Ely Place and St Etheldreda's Catholic church. We stop off for a drink at Ye Olde Mitre pub before we find ourselves in Hatton Gardens in jewelry territory and I amazingly find myself drawn to the a gorgeous Art Deco Sapphire and diamond ring. It is of course the most expensive of all the hundreds on display at a rocking £14,800. Cripes. (I can't find the item online of course, but trust me: it was beautiful)

We then set off wandering off through Lincoln's Inn Fields and marvel at the lush greenery and architecture of barrister land. We drop in for a quick visit to the oddity that is Freemason's Hall and finally head back to Pizza Paradiso for a final meal before collecting our bags and heading for the train.

I'll try and add pictures and links soon.