tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83040211029830512492024-03-19T11:14:44.971+00:00This probably isn't interesting, but...Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-89946096690939130472012-07-16T18:37:00.000+01:002012-07-16T18:39:38.432+01:00People Watching (Part 1; first draft)<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This is another story for the collection I mentioned <a href="http://thisprobablyisntinterestingbut.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/short-story-number-two-elysium-draft.html">last time</a> - it's probably going to have a second part, but I don't know if they'll come together to make one story or if they'll be companion pieces. It's based, I guess obviously, just on the idea of people watching, and of the weird voyeurism of it, which I guess is similar to any reading experience - you're completely separate from someone, but you still watch them and come to know them and care about them. It's set on a loose reconstruction (from memory!) of Ballycastle Beach, hence the picture<br /><br />It's very much a rough-and-ready first draft, so apologies for typos, repetition and just plain rubbishness. And as ever, opinions and comments very welcome.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu9Sm-nHHMw1MPa30Q3jMIDqFFb9lTG8PBKtZZXscQ1HLJu0C8v4yW34DM4qHGLek_0RlB52NFRW3It4BemmUSe6DfQ88Oa1O07H6NdzdzsA1C6KiaRL51QCilsR24BjClVoADWZsN1vo/s1600/Ballycastle+beach.Jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="417" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu9Sm-nHHMw1MPa30Q3jMIDqFFb9lTG8PBKtZZXscQ1HLJu0C8v4yW34DM4qHGLek_0RlB52NFRW3It4BemmUSe6DfQ88Oa1O07H6NdzdzsA1C6KiaRL51QCilsR24BjClVoADWZsN1vo/s640/Ballycastle+beach.Jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
It’s sort of snowing, but it’s not quite cold enough, so it’s more like sleet. It doesn’t lie on the ground in a nice white sheet, but instead clumps in semi-melted puddles which semi-blur into a very shallow semi-lake in the carpark.<br />
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If you turn your gaze out to sea (which isn’t pleasant, as there’s a stiff coastal breeze), you’re rewarded with a view which is subtly greyer than the one they put on the postcard. The sea is stormy, but not as wildly as you might expect, and the waves wash up harmlessly on the long sandy beach which curls away from you to the right, it’s smooth curve broken only by the solitary large rock, which locals will tell you was thrown there in days gone by in a battle of the giants, where the local hero had defeated his rival from behind the headland. Behind the headland they have a similar but slightly different story, involving a baby cow.<br />
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The headland ought to be in sight, but the weather is such that it isn’t even a shadow, as the beach eventually fades into an eerie mist. It looks completely deserted, but if you look a little closer you’ll see that just beyond the rock there is a figure, swimming in the sea. He’s too far away to make out clearly, he surely must be youngster to be doing something so ridiculous, or perhaps an old man, who has swam on the beach every day for fifty years, and no winter chill’s stopped him then and it won’t now neither.<br />
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The beach itself is deserted, but if you look up beyond the sand dunes which line the back of it (interspersed with steep columns of steps, which in this weather must be more treacherous than the dunes themselves to descend) you can see that one or two golfers were braving the conditions, before this latest downpour drove them to huddle under large umbrellas. Most of the course is off out of sight, especially today, but there is one green in view, with its flag bending and swaying precariously.<br />
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Casting your eye down the golf course, you come to the large club house. It must have been re-done recently, because it’s all glass panels and steel bars and angles. Perhaps it looks good from another angle. Outside the front is a red ice cream stall, but it has shutters across the front, and only the enormous dripping image of a rainbow-shaded tube differentiates it from a giant postbox.<br />
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The nearside of the club house is filled with large trees, they might be oaks, but their swaying branches are bare. The largest of them is enormously thick, but it has a tempting volume of low branches, and in the summer it must be ripe for climbing. Beneath the trees a slightly overweight man watches a slightly overweight dog sit stubbornly out of reach in the sleet. He doesn’t seem to mind too much, tentatively sticking his hand out to see if he can feel drops, which he can’t, because he’s under a tree. A large drip falls on the back of his neck. He swears.<br />
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Once you pass the trees, you come to row of shops which lie only slightly above the sea-front, separated from the near-end of the beach by a patch of glintingly sodden grass. There are still no chain shops here, with a glossy pink ice cream parlour standing alongside a peeling off-white general store, with a sign that might once have promised beach balls, but if so had lost its beach.<br />
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Next to the general store was a small café, with a dropping canopy protecting two metallic tables. Hunched at one of the tables is a young man, struggling and succeeding to light a cigarette, wincing against the wet wind as he does so. He has a steaming mug on the table, which he now cups between his hands. He too looks out across the bay.<br />
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Beyond the café, almost directly level with where you stand, is what must once have been a hotel, but the boards in the windows indicate that is no longer the case. It is a grand stone building, with three columns on either side of the enormous door, to which a wide set of steps lead gently down to the street. <br />
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On the other side of the old hotel is a small lane which winds its way up the hill and out of sight. Appearing suddenly from behind the hotel wall comes a figure in a shapeless dark green anorak, with hood up and head down, hustling round the corner. The figure wears smart blue wellington boots, but it still takes care to step around the large puddles.<br />
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Next it hurries up the steps to the hotel, running up them with slightly splayed steps because of the wellies. For a second you wonder if they know a way in, if the hotel is perhaps less closed than it appeared, but instead they simply pull up at the top of the steps, pushed back tightly against the shut doors. <br />
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They pause there for a second, before looking up for a second into the wind, before almost immediately ducking back down and turning to the side as the small overhang of the aged roof proves inadequate shelter. In that moment though the hood fell back, just slightly, revealing a pale-skinned girl with dark brown hair and a pained expression.<br />
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Huddled against the wall she extracts one glove with her teeth, and rummages into the pocket facing the wall, lifting up the anorak slightly as she does. She keeps at it for a few seconds, but then turns herself round to repeat the investigation on the other side. Seemingly unsuccessful once more she painstakingly yanks the remaining glove back onto her hand, and, turning to face the door, pats both her pockets together, her arms flapping almost like a penguin. She strikes a raised gloved fist against the door, and leaves it there for a second.<br />
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With an apparently unprompted motion she turns sharply to her left. The seated man has come to the edge of the covered area, his left arm shoved as far into his pockets as it will fit, his right arm raised with cigarette between two fingers. He is saying something to the girl. He is smiling.<br />
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With another quick look up towards the heavens, and a corresponding tug on her hood, she skips diagonally down the steps towards him, taking them two at a time. On the third from bottom step her left foot lands first, and skids just slightly, but far enough to take her over the edge of the step. She falls back, her arms go down to break her fall, and there is a splash as her right hand lands in a puddle, just as her bum hits the floor.<br />
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The young man is over to her in a second. At first he is concerned, but after a moment he begins to smile broadly. Her hood has come down completely now and she looks up at him from her ungainly position. Her cheeks are redder now, and she too is smiling.<br />
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He puts the cigarette to his mouth and offers her his hand, and after a head-tilt and an eye-roll she takes it, pulling herself to her feet, tipping him only slightly as she does so. She brushes herself down, rubbing her backside as she does. She doesn’t bother pulling up her hood now, but looks up to the man with eyes half closed against the rain, and says something. He laughs, and they both duck under the shelter.<br />
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He moves as if to go inside, but she calls him back as she extracts the wet glove from her hand, and places it on the table he wasn’t sat at. He unzips his coat slightly to reach into an inside pocket, and extracts his box of cigarettes and the lighter. He offers her the box, from which she extracts a cigarette with her gloveless hand, and raises it to her mouth. They huddle close inside the doorway as he lights it, at the second attempt. <br />
<br />
He then gestures towards the table at which he was sitting. They exchange a word or two; he nods and pushes her back just slightly, and she goes to sit down, picking up his still steaming mug. He vanishes inside.<br />
<br />
She is smiling and shaking her head, still with a hand on her backside. She moves it into her pocket and pulls out a phone. She pushes a button or two, and then replaces it. Next she looks out onto the beach, and smiles more broadly. You follow her gaze, and see that the man with the dog is now without a dog, and is shouting and gesticulating from beneath his dripping tree as the dog runs onto the beach.<br />
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She looks up as he returns, another mug in hand. She gestures with her head towards the shouting man, and he looks with her and laughs. He sits down and tries to light a cigarette. After a few seconds she tilts her head again, and takes the lighter from him and does it herself.<br />
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As they sit, the rain begins off. The whole scene grows a shade or three lighter, and a minute or so later the only drips are those falling from the canopy. They talk, he smiles and gestures a lot with his hands, she laughs and brushes her hair from her eyes.<br />
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They are interrupted as an overweight man walks by, pausing outside the café. It is the man without the dog, except he has regained it, and it follows on behind him on a short red lead. He is perhaps not so large as he seemed, but he is broad enough to obscure your view of the younger man, but from his new companions quiet smiling observation you glean it is he that the dog-walker is talking to. After a moment the dog-walker moves on, pulling the now reticent dog as he does. He is wearing a black beanie hat and a smile, with his red cheeks nicely complementing his grey stubbly beard.<br />
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As he leaves the younger man says something to the woman. She looks out, leaning away from the window slightly and looking back up the beach. She returns to her seat and nods, and they both in union lift their mugs to their lips, tilt them back, and then replace them on the table. Their cigarettes have long since been stamped on the floor, and they get to their feet. She retrieves her glove from the other table, still holding it gingerly between finger and thumb. He says something with a smile. She throws it at his face, and tilts her grinning head.<br />
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A glove pick-up later, and they head out across the street onto the grass. They walk briskly, both of their bodies hunched against the cold, her long hair blowing behind her in the wind. To begin with they walk side-by-side, but as they reach the grass he comes closer and pushes her playfully, speaking with a smile into her ear. She jumps away from him, but then with tight lips and grinning eyes she comes up beside him and takes his arm tightly, cuffing his head.<br />
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They are walking away now, so you can only see their backs – the bottom of her anorak still has a slightly darker patch on it. They walk arm-in-arm down onto the wet sand, at which point she lets her hand fall down into his. All the while they lean slightly towards each other, he still gestures with his free hand, from time to time she shoves him playfully.<br />
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As they move down the beach the sun makes an appearance. It is already low in the sky, just above the jutting headland which has emerged from the gloom at the opposite end of the bay, its silhouette now sharply illuminated. The brightness of the sun, especially on such a grey day, means that to continue to follow the couple becomes impossible, as your eyes water and you look away, back to the clubhouse with its windows now shining brightly, and the shop-fronts which look in this new light to be slightly more real than before.<br />
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By the time you look back to the beach, they are out of sight.Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-36674660728859647132012-07-10T00:39:00.001+01:002012-07-10T00:51:51.275+01:00Short story number two: Elysium (draft)<span style="font-size: x-small;">(This first draft of the second story I've written for a collection that will hopefully be out at the end of Summer. It's a bit scrappy, but I like putting stuff up as a marker that I've gotten the first draft out of the way. If you have any feedback feel free to let me know in the comments!)</span><br />
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“Are you alright, Jack?” <br />
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Jack glanced up, surprised to be called by name, until a second later he re-noticed the large badge on his chest. It was the girl who had been sat in front of him for the tutorial. Jess, he gleaned from staring (not for too long) at her chest.<br />
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“Ah I’m fine. I miss them, you know, but so does everyone else.”<br />
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She nodded, smiling a mouth-closed smile. “Well I do. I sometimes wonder if I’m the only one though. People are so good at soldiering on, aren’t they?”<br />
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“You’d be surprised.” The gruff voice came from over Jess’s shoulder; neither of them had seen their tutor approach as his students departed. Paul. He would have been old before to Jack’s eyes, middle-aged to a more generous observer, but now in this reshaped society he was positively ancient. Neither of the youths spoke, flustered that they had been overheard, wondering if they had transgressed.<br />
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“It’s alright to miss them, I certainly do, I don’t think you could be human if you didn’t. Who’s ‘them’ for you two then?”<br />
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Jack looked at Jess, but she was still smiling the same smile, looking down at Paul’s knees with wobbling eyes. <br />
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“Just my mates. My whole family got in, it was Dad that made us take the vaccinations. But the guys from school…” He trailed off; there was no need to finish the sentence. Paul nodded solemnly; everyone was as practiced as a funeral director nowadays. After an appropriate pause he turned to Jess.<br />
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“My mum.” She sobbed as she spoke, holding back tears. She gulped and bit her lip. “The whole family actually, but my Dad left when I was ten, and I never got to know my step-brothers.” She paused again. “I suppose I should have, really.” <br />
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The statement hung over all of them. Paul looked at Jess’s dripping eyes and swayed slightly towards her, as if he wanted to give her hug but wasn’t quite sure it was a good idea. He rescued himself by speaking.<br />
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“My son, Luke. And his wife. They… I don’t know.” <br />
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Their secret guilt spilt, there was another pause; it seemed unspeakably cruel to say anything to disrupt the lurking presence of the absent. Once again it was Paul who spoke.<br />
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“I don’t know if its worse to remember or to forget. It feels selfish, doesn’t it, just…” He searched for a word that would make sense of it, but the three of them knew any word would do. “It’s all for the best though. It doesn’t help to say it, I know, but its true.”<br />
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There was another silence. Only a minute earlier it would have been awkward, but with their newly shared history it was different, Jack thought, maybe even peaceful. Nonetheless he felt compelled to speak, to say something, to thank them both, but he didn’t quite know what for. Instead, he smiled quickly, picked up his bag and left.<br />
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What the rush had been for, he wasn’t quite sure, because he had nowhere to go. His parents would not be home yet, they were old enough to have more responsibilities, which meant more emergency tutorials. His mother did something in advertising, he’d never quite understood what, but since ‘gone viral’ had taken on its new meaning she would need to find a new way to contribute. His father, a doctor, was away most of the time, and when he did come to their new home he was duty-bound to wear a bio-suit.<br />
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If home was to be empty, he would have to fill this rare free time some other way. Most of the week since they had arrived had been spent in the endless tutorials. English and Sociology had been replaced by Physical Tests, Agriculture and First Aid, although the latter was mainly chillingly simple – if anyone shows symptoms, run. The basics covered, next week would seem them diversify: some would guard the perimeter wall, others would be assigned farmland or animals, others would be builders. More glamourous, less specified jobs were rumoured to be coming soon. The reason he was free this afternoon was so the tutors could assign them to their respective roles.<br />
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The evenings had also been busy, surprisingly so. The EQC (Emergency Quarantine Council, or perhaps Committee) had organised events each night to ‘foster community morale’, and everyone was keenly aware it needed fostering. After medical screenings that made the old airport security look like a VIP welcome (it would be silly, to be fair, to rescue all these people just to throw them together to infect one another), everyone gathered in the central hub. <br />
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Perhaps with an unlimited budget there would have been an extravagant audio-visual show; live bands would have played, films would have been shown on huge screens. But with the resources that could be scrabbled in those few panicked days, that was out of the question. So it had been simple pleasures – shared meals, a barn dance one night for those near Jack’s family, interminable rounds of party games he had used to loathe at Christmas.<br />
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But, he would have to admit, here it had been different. The men who distributed the awful gruel always managed to do it with a smile, whenever anyone joked (generally about the gruel) everyone made an effort to laugh, and everyone always banded together to support the shell-shocked children as they struggled to successfully act out ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. It was a rather odd place to find such Christmas spirit.<br />
<br />
As Jack mused he had wandered down Main Street. To either side of him was a sea of tents, interrupted only very rarely by more solid structures, resembling the temporary classrooms that had always leaked at school. They were very lucky to have one, it was clear, Jack guessed it was because of his Father’s work. Back on the other side of the teaching centre was where the main building projects were taking place – a hospital, and a command centre, and other buildings for functions Jack had not bothered to imagine.<br />
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It was mostly deserted – the majority of the residents would still be in classes. Even young children were taken care of – their mothers could not be wasted, so they were dropped off each morning at the central nursery. With a small smile Jack wondered if they taught them how to mime ‘Pulp Fiction’.<br />
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In no time at all he was coming closer to the perimeter fence. They called it a fence, because originally that was all it had been, but this had been the first building project. There was a wall which dwarfed everything else in the compound except the central hub, with a raised walkway running behind it. It looked like something from an old castle, except for the men with machine guns that patrolled the top.<br />
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On the other side, so his Dad had told them, were two barbed wire fences. He hadn’t mentioned what happened to those who attempted to cross them, but the armed watchmen seemed to answer that question.<br />
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Ahead of him was the huge tent which had been used for quarantine, up until three days ago. It was here he had waited each night, after the activities were over, hoping that Max, Jess or Hannah would come through. It was here he had heard the shouts, the screams, and occasionally the shots and the silence. It was here he had seen, only once or twice each evening, a lonely figure make their way blinkingly into the evening light, looking back over their shoulder, screaming, weeping, or dead in the eyes. The news of its closure had not come as a surprise.<br />
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“Hey! Jack!”<br />
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He looked up. A figure in uniform was advancing towards him, as close to waving as was possible with a two-handed gun in hand. After a second he realised who it was – Mike, from school. Mike had been a few years older than Jack, but they had played cricket together – he had left the previous year, to join the army, Jack thought. <br />
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“How’s it going buddy? You got in!” He was grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t believe you’re here. I thought… I guess…” His words faded back into the grin, but there were tears in his eyes, and Jack realised there were tears in his own too. If he hadn’t been terrified of the gun he would have hugged him.<br />
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“Yeah, my Dad was with the vaccine team… Got lucky I guess.”<br />
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He smiled. “It’s not luck, man. You can’t keep telling yourself that. Everyone had a chance. Remember those first few days, where everyone was saying they didn’t want the vaccine?”<br />
<br />
Those first few days. Riots on the streets. Fires all around the horizon. Voices on the television telling us to keep calm, until their studio burnt around them. The vaccine had been released, it was true, but so had the rumours it was another lie, released to keep everyone from noticing they were in hell. <br />
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“I guess,” Jack replied. “I just don’t feel I deserve it.”<br />
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“Hell, you probably don’t. But you got it, cos you were smart enough to take it when it was there.” There was a long pause, Jack was looking out away into the wilderness, his eyes damp. “And besides, there’s nothing to be done now.”<br />
<br />
Jack didn’t answer. Mike followed his gaze, and then swallowed. At first, the view was eerily mundane. The fortress had been built in parkland, on the edge of woodland, and about forty yards away the trees began to gather, the leaves mostly still green, although there were scatterings of gold beginning to appear. If you looked further into the distance and over to the right you could see the edge of civilisation: a village, which was quiet in a way the untrained eye might have thought charmingly rustic.<br />
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Only Jack didn’t look further into the distance. He didn’t even look at the trees, except at the bases of those on the edge of the woodland, where the corpses rotted. The whole expanse of open ground which was shaded by the trees was filled, before the swarm thinned out as it approached the first of two barbed wire fences, on which were impaled the remains of those who had dared to get a little further.<br />
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But it was the smell that got to him. The same smell as filled the burning streets. The smell that overpowered him when he was sent to bring the vaccine to Mrs Daniels next door. When he had read about death he had always assumed the smell was just a trope, something used to connote the abstract horror. He felt sick.<br />
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“We didn’t shoot most of them.” All the confidence was gone from Mike’s voice now, his eyes kept wandering back behind the wall as he realised the stupidity of letting Jack up here. “They come to the edge of the forest, and they see the bodies, and most of them just give up and lie down.” His voice faded, empty, excuseless. The only sound was the buzzing of the flies.<br />
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Then, on the edge of the forest, Jack saw a flicker of movement. He blinked, sure that the tears in his eyes had momentarily blurred his vision. He looked closer now. There was someone, something, crouched behind a tree. Mike saw his look and raised his weapon.<br />
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Then, as if responding to a silent starter’s pistol, the figure burst out into the sunlight. The explosive energy almost distracted Jack from noticing the hunched gait, the torn clothes, the deathly pale but strangely familiar face.<br />
<br />
It all happened so fast. Jess looked up, caught his eye, stopped, and was just in the process of calling out when her cry was masked by the deafening blast from Jack’s left. It was loud enough that he had to close his eyes, and when he looked back down, there was no body standing.<br />
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Jack scanned through the bodies where she had last stood. Was that her black top? He had already forgotten: was her hair still long and blonde, or might it be that cropped bloodied scalp? Slowly, painfully, he became aware that Mike was talking to him, shaking him.<br />
<br />
“What did she say?”<br />
<br />
Jack pulled away, stepped slightly further along the walkway, casting his mind back to the first day of school, when he had sat down in alphabetical order as instructed and found himself next to Jack Sampson. You couldn’t have two Jacks in a row, that was stupid. So, of course, he had found a new name, which everyone had called him, right up until he had registered into the quarantine zone with a kindly elderly woman with a form that had space for a first name and a surname, and sorry but the first name went on the badge.<br />
<br />
“She shouted Smithy.”<br />
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<br /></div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-78517037645032027932012-07-02T23:31:00.000+01:002012-07-03T14:55:04.028+01:00The Taming of the Shrew at Reading School<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLouiiIkYzx9tVxWXQD66XOMCYdUyZQUtiflTsUTxfnzUjU44TudvZfS_w4zu7UlWaMLdZ1f9-8G7MEaZcPJ11_NFRa4OepuULdJ1ntnAHQzEGbGI6PlxGRCIL3IVM7WboBN44RhjJ7EI/s1600/taming+of+the+shrew.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLouiiIkYzx9tVxWXQD66XOMCYdUyZQUtiflTsUTxfnzUjU44TudvZfS_w4zu7UlWaMLdZ1f9-8G7MEaZcPJ11_NFRa4OepuULdJ1ntnAHQzEGbGI6PlxGRCIL3IVM7WboBN44RhjJ7EI/s400/taming+of+the+shrew.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lucia McAnespie (Katherine), David Davies (Petruchio) and Tom Kay (Hortensio)</td></tr>
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What could be better than watching Shakespeare performed on the picturesque playing fields of Reading School, with the evening sun gently warming your back and a glass of wine in your hand? Well, that was a moot point tonight, as the evening began with a desperate plea for the huddled audience to lower their umbrellas, at which point more than one bedraggled spectator decided they had already had enough.<br />
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It is thus to the enormous credit of the <a href="http://gbtheatrecompany.com/venues2012.html">GB Theatre Company</a> that they managed to perform at all, let alone that they put on such a good show. On multiple occasions actors slipped, slid and fell on the soaking stage, but each time they managed to see the funny side, as indeed they did with the whole play. It goes without saying that humour is indispensable in comedy, but where some adaptations of Shakespeare rely on their audience to simply ‘get the jokes’, this production ran the comic gamut from start to finish, from well-staged wordplay to nudging innuendo to those clearly unplanned slapstick falls.<br />
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The Taming of the Shrew is a difficult play to perform, as Alfred Hickling noted a decade ago ‘most modern directors do not so much produce The Taming of the Shrew as construct elaborate apologies for it’. In this light the first act in particular was refreshing in its unashamed farcical humour: doubts about the treatment of Katherine were flattened by her gleeful misbehaviour, and Tom Kay (Hortensio) and David Davies (Petruchio) extracted every inch of comedy from their roles; Kay in particular was an inspired Gap-Yah influenced suitor.<br />
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That the second half was weaker is probably as much Shakespeare’s fault (or rather Renaissance morality’s) as the company, but their aggressive staging could not mask the sadistic nature of the plot: as likeable as Davies’ Petruchio was, his treatment of Katherine still amounts to deprivation, and her eventual capitulation seems more like Stockholm Syndrome than true love. Nonetheless the jokes kept flowing, pushing any nagging discomfort to the sidelines, albeit at the expense of any consistency in Lucia McAnespie’s redeemed heroine.<br />
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As with last year (the company performed Twelfth Night at the same venue) it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, with the company’s obvious comic strengths supplemented by strong performances from Lennox Greaves as the girls’ father Baptista, and from Dermot Canavan as Tranio. The only shame was that so few people braved the elements to see it – a much larger crowd is merited for the remaining performances.<br />
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<br /></div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-51059429031425304852012-06-30T14:02:00.002+01:002012-06-30T18:40:10.721+01:00Review: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Widely regarded as an<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1995/mar/28/fiction.reviews"> ‘instant classic’</a> when it came out in 1995, High Fidelity was especially noted for its ability to capture <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R_Ptl8lDQ6gC&pg=PT6&lpg=PT6&dq=high+fidelity+nick+hornby+%22every+second+of+its+own+present%22&source=bl&ots=yeahP-aW33&sig=mPcFkuI0a-GEFFQI0zsfLAzn1iU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=zPfuT6CBPNGxhAfi75T1DA&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">‘every second of its own present’</a>. However seventeen years down the line, does it stand the test of time?</span><br />
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In terms of plot, it might have been written at any point. Rob, a record store owner, has recently split up with girlfriend Laura, and goes through (as one of his ex-girlfriends puts it) ‘some kind of what-does-it-all-mean thing’, with Laura lurking all the while in the background, and Rob himself lurking just outside her house.<br />
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Hornby’s writing style also certainly endures. He ingeniously captures the self-conscious internal monologue of anti-hero Rob, particularly in the virtuoso opening where Rob recounts his ‘all-time, top five most memorable split-ups’: ‘Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breasts that I would try to touch her between her legs, a gesture that had a sort of self-parodying wit about it: it was like trying to borrow a fiver, getting turned down, and asking to borrow fifty quid instead’.<br />
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Besides Rob himself, the novel’s other characterisations are also brilliantly drawn. Barry and Dick, who both work in Rob’s record shop, are definitely highlights, and the interaction between them still rings true. Rob’s parents (and his relationship with them) are also terrifying believable: ‘Going to the pictures aged thirty-five with your mum and dad and their insane friends does not take your mind off things…the most pathetic man in the world gives me a smile of recognition’.<br />
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Of course, the passage of time (not to mention music technology) does create difficulties in understanding. Young readers now will find the concept of vinyl dated, not to mention the vast range of music the book covers. This, though, is not purely the result of time – right from the beginning Rob is clearly part of an exclusive clique. Just as you need to know vast swathes of classical literature to fully understand The Waste Land, you cannot fully appreciate High Fidelity without a comprehensive grasp of late twentieth century pop music.<br />
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A bigger problem, though, is that Rob simply isn’t very likeable. His sharp dissection of others verges of simple cruelty, and when turned on himself becomes (at times) frustratingly self-pitying. At times these problems threaten to overturn his likeability, making his appeal to women mystifying: Hornby has succeeded in creating a character who is less of an everyman than he might think. On the other hand, these deep-set character flaws make Rob’s growth in the novel significantly harder won than its equivalent in the average romantic comedy.<br />
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Overall then, Hornby’s writing talent is never in doubt, even in this his first novel (Fever Pitch, a memoir, came in 1992). The test is whether you are willing to put up with a barely likeable music snob as he struggles, like a thirty-five year old gap year student, to find himself. Overall, there are probably enough brilliant comic set-pieces to ensure the juice is ultimately worth the squeeze.<br />
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<br /></div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-30704818247631693652012-06-25T01:05:00.000+01:002012-06-25T01:14:26.311+01:00Review: Oriel Ball 2012 - Titanic<br />
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It might have lacked Magdalen’s price tag, backdrop and (as
we heard midway through the night) fireworks, but Oriel’s Titanic themed ball
proved a night to remember.</div>
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After the pain of finding a White Tie suit to hire on a
night with two balls (note to self: don’t procrastinate so long next time, and
don’t use web companies which send it a day late and without a waistcoat…
Thanks <a href="http://www.hire-society.com/">Hire Society</a>) and the drama of getting ready in time (7.30 seems very
early for a night out) we taxied our way past the huge line of Magdalen-goers
(with many a top hat in evidence) and arrived at Oriel for a queue of our own.</div>
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The ticket scanning system evidently worked well as the
queue moved fast, and we were greeted by a very impressive Titanic ice
sculpture, a glass of champagne and a delicious goats’ cheese canapé. There were programmes provided in the style
of passports, and a string quartet playing – already the difference in class
between a Commemoration Ball and the earlier Black Tie Balls was obvious.</div>
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The canapé was just the start of a truly outstanding range
of food. The front quad (the ‘top deck’)
featured an oysters, steak, risotto and desserts, as well as the plenteous
range of canapés – the oysters in particular were an experience, although more
for the comic value of watching others grimace and gurn than for their taste. The third quad boasted further food, with
pizza, falafel and (tragically elusive) pulled pork, with doughnuts and ice
cream also available.</div>
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The music was also very good, although inevitably there were
too many clashes to see everything. <st1:city w:st="on">Oxford</st1:city> stalwarts like Dot’s Funk Odyssey and Out of the
Blue were in evidence, although for once they weren’t the centre of attention,
and <st1:city w:st="on">Exeter</st1:city>’s
Arthur Sawbridge played a typically engaging set with a violin and loop pedal. An honourable mention should also go out to
Muntfinger, who I didn’t see but were reported to be excellent, with a ‘well
fit’ bassist.</div>
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The true highlight though were The Feeling, who struck the
perfect note to a crowded main tent at around midnight. They played all their hit songs from their
early albums (notably Fill My Little World, Sewn and Love it When You Call),
which went down very well with an audience who clearly remembered them as the
soundtrack to their secondary school years. They wisely avoided their later albums,
playing instead a range of crowd-pleasing hits including Walk This Way and Lose
Yourself, and managed to create a giglike atmosphere, which was somewhat
surreal with a crowd in full white tie.</div>
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Away from the music, the one weakness was perhaps a lack of
alternative entertainment. Early in the
night there was Ballroom Dancing, but this ended very quickly, and the balloon
artist was apparent only from the impressive range of animals on display (a 5
balloon spider hat in particular caught the eye). There was a casino, but with fake money this
could only keep you busy for so long, and the welcome seated areas (styled as
Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ lounges) could maybe have been better used.</div>
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As the night wore on the drink levels remained stoically
high, which (along with the very early 3am survivor’s breakfast) boosted
flagging morale. As the night came
towards an end the music shifted towards the cheese, with Call Me Maybe
bizarrely played twice in around 20 minutes, but crowd-pleasing hits in the
vein of Don’t Stop Believing rewarded those who managed to dance through til
dawn.</div>
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With the sun well up the night drew to a close; wine was
still flowing as the crowd surged out for the survivor’s photo, which was
cleverly situated outside the College to help disperse the crowd. A Taxi ride later and the night was finally
over.</div>
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On the whole, despite the hefty price tag, the ball seemed
money well spent, even if only for the unique experience of an Oxford
Commemoration Ball. The biggest downside
was probably the small group we came with, which did restrict us slightly as we
had to stick together – that’s obviously a benefit that comes from attending
your own College Ball. Nonetheless with
photos to fill in any blank spots in the memory, Oriel definitely provided a
titanically good night.</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0Oriel College, Oriel Square, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 4EW, UK51.7517291 -1.253816951.7419521 -1.2734718999999999 51.7615061 -1.2341619tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-65733667809601583862012-06-14T23:09:00.001+01:002012-06-25T05:29:16.161+01:00Smooth, first draft<br />
[Comments and opinions very welcome!]<br />
<br />
She smiled at me, I think. It was hard to tell, because she might have been smiling already and just happened to glance up and catch my eye, but I think it was for me.<br />
<br />
Of course, that wasn’t why I walked over. I was with Danny, who was meeting Amy, and since the girls’ school broke up at 3.20 and we were in until 3.45 they would always come and wait outside the gates for us to come out. <br />
<br />
It was quite a sight actually, with hindsight. Small groups of heavenly angels (surely they must have been as spotty as us?) would constellate outside the gates, each keeping furtively to themselves, applying make-up and touching up their hair in the grimy and fractured mirror of the vandalised bus stop. <br />
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When we came out of the gates they came quickly away from the mirrors and make-up, but did not deign to lift their make-up smeared eyelashes to us, excepting of course the one or two wildly enthusiastic screaming specimens whose excitement was only exceeded by the pitch of their voices. And excepting Olivia, who smiled. Probably.<br />
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Danny was taking Amy to prom, so the plan was to shop for dresses, a task to which I could pride myself in being only slightly less qualified than Danny. His role was to tell her she looked good, which would be helped by the fact that she would, at least to his eyes. My role was to keep Danny entertained, which would be hindered by the fact that Amy affected my tongue like salt on a slug. Olivia’s role was as yet as mysterious as that subtle smile.<br />
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We slowly wended our way down the street, past the smoking sixth-formers and the tutting and spluttering old women who might just have been waiting there since they had been checking make-up and flashing might-be smiles of their own. Amy was complaining about Maisy or Daisy who had been bitching about Lucy or Susie, the exact details seeming so much less important than the slightest hint of a bra strap through her white shirt, which for some reason seemed a resting place for my eyes more appropriate than Olivia’s eyes.<br />
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We wended our way down past the police station, through the churchyard, across the main road (you didn’t need to wait for the lights if you pushed the button and kept walking down, because it was one-way) and into town. As we went I first rolled up my sleeves, but then, worrying about the unsightly goosebumps, slid them down again, settling for an undone top button which was intended to look more alternative than it perhaps did.<br />
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We first went to the department store, where we walked around for what seemed like hours. Whatever Einstein said about time flying when it was spent with a pretty girl, he obviously didn’t go prom dress shopping. When we had traversed every aisle Amy had finally accrued five dresses to try on, and disappeared off to the changing rooms. But Olivia didn’t.<br />
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“You not been asked to prom Liv?” asked Danny, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets, removed from his comfort zone of nodding and smiling.<br />
<br />
She smiled again, I glimpsed her eyes looking shyly (or slyly) down in the second it took me to lose my nerve and look away, finding a sudden inexplicable interest in the nearby lingerie department, before the reality of my unnoticed shame dawned on me.<br />
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“Nah Dan. Not yet, anyway.”<br />
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She might have been looking my way, but regrettably her eyes weren’t on the floor so I can’t say I saw.<br />
<br />
“Oh… Cool.” I think Danny must have won Amy’s heart with his way with words.<br />
<br />
Amy returned, none of the dresses had fit, prompting her to claim she had gained weight, which Danny and Olivia quickly and confidently refuted, while I helpfully muttered something that was meant to be ‘no’, but wasn’t quite so well articulated.<br />
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The department store morphed into a high street shop, then a charity shop (very briefly, and more, it seemed, for comedy value), then another chain store, with sufficient time to walk disdainfully past the shops where all my clothes were from (excepting, of course, those bought by my mother).<br />
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Finally we returned, inevitably, to the first department store, where four more dresses were taken back to the dressing room. An awkward silence filled the air, once again my wandering eyes fell into the trap of the lingerie-clad mannequins, once again they darted away, this time they met Olivia’s smiling glance and I went still redder. <br />
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“You bringing anyone to prom then Matt?”<br />
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It took me a brief second to realise that Matt was my name. What to say? Words flowed rapidly through my mind without troubling to stop at my tongue. My mouth was dry.<br />
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“Erm, nah, don’t think so… Nah.”<br />
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There wasn’t much to say.<br />
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Amy returned, wearing a short blue dress that almost tore my eyes away from my shoes. Appropriate approving words were provided, and the dress was returned to the hangar for Mum and Dad to buy later.<br />
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We left the shop and went back down the street to the bus station where we would head our separate ways. Danny’s bus was there when we arrived, and with a quick peck on Amy’s lips he was gone, leaving me with the girls, shuffling from foot to foot.<br />
<br />
Amy was next to go, leaving with a kiss on the cheek for Olivia and a smile for me that never quite reached her mouth, let alone her eyes. It was just the two of us left, listening to roar of traffic. I bit my lip.<br />
<br />
Olivia’s bus pulled in, a number thirty-one, single decker, heading out to Trenton, so it said. I didn’t know where she lived, indeed my geography was so poor I couldn’t even have said where Trenton was. I bit harder.<br />
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“Hey Liv…”<br />
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I caught her eyes properly for the first time. They were a deep brown, so chocolatey you could almost taste them. She smiled, definitely this time. At me.<br />
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“See you round.”<br />
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Smooth. <br />
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I would have considered myself an open-minded person, but I knew as soon as I saw the croquet set that I shouldn’t have come.<br />
<br />
Danny, the birthday boy, had his back to me as I arrived, almost as if he was ashamedly concealing the mallet in his hand, which I for one felt would have earned him some credit. The boy next to him (spectacularly pink in both pastel shirt and Englishly sunburnt face) could make no such claim, openly displaying his ridiculous by using his own instrument to prop himself up, while swigging an unspecified liquid from what looked to be (if such things exist) a tie-dyed mug.<br />
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I stood for a moment, my mind churning in an unspoken frenzy as to the propriety of interrupting a game of croquet. A deliciously plumy voice from my left came to my rescue.<br />
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“Oh are you one of Daniel’s friends from home? Was it you at trashings? It is Chris, right?”<br />
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Chris had always been considered very attractive at school, which leant a benign edge to my apprehension as to whether a trashing was something with which one would want to be associated.<br />
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“No… no, its Matt actually. But yeah, from Danny’s school…” I had never been so aware of my elocutionary defects, but thankfully my plumy guide took it in her immaculately enunciated stride.<br />
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“Oh right, of course, I’m so sorry. I’m Lucrece, as in the rape of, you know, but my friends call my Lucy…” She trailed off, as the impeccable composure with which she had described her sexual-assault-based etymology floundered as to whether I was to be counted as ‘friend’. She recovered splendidly, flashing a wide (friendly?) smile. “I’m Daniel’s girlfriend.”<br />
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A lightbulb flashed in my head, but since it originated in some barely remembered Facebook stalking I thought it had better remain unspoken. So this was Lucy Winterton, of airbrushed-and-on-horse profile picture fame. With surprise I realised she scrubbed up far better in the flesh, something which was unthinkable for the girls back home. They must do things differently here.<br />
<br />
Looking back there must have been some diversity there (I’m sure I remember a Becky in blue Doc Martens who offered me a can of Strongbow), but between the croquet and the English sparkling wine (certainly not Champagne, I was told, as I was handed a glass and a joke about the Eurozone bubbling over), I quietly found myself drowning in a sea of Sebastians, Bellas and Toms, and even the Tom was on course for a first.<br />
<br />
Eventually I found my way to Danny, on a break between matches (sets? innings?). <br />
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“Matt mate! Great to see you! How long have you been here?”<br />
<br />
“Not long man, the train was delayed…”<br />
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“Oh cool. Have you played croquet?”<br />
<br />
I think it was at that moment I made the decision I was going to get the last train back to Reading.<br />
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With hindsight I suppose I was insecure, that their posh drinks and posher voices made me acutely aware I was a cider and glo’al stops boy. But it also seemed not quite to be real life, in the way that a dream might not be terrifying, but in its endless movements of time and space it is not quite so nice as the warm bed beneath it. What’s more, one girl kept quoting Sartre.<br />
<br />
Eventually, flitting from debates on American presidential debates to arguments on the need for peace in Afghanistan to enthusiastic endorsements of the significance of wine bottles without those pesky screwtops, I found myself alone leaning on the garden wall (the children on the other side were making disconcertingly realistic siren noises), from memory sipping slowly from Becky’s Strongbow. I knew when I got home I might be able to catch some friends coming home from the pub where they would be watching the football, “some friends” who might include amongst them a certain Kate Li, the thought of whom produced an irresistible lightness to my being.<br />
<br />
“Long time no see Matt.”<br />
<br />
Her long hair was gone, reduced to a boyish length with a dark fringe that led me to those ever chocolate-brown eyes which exerted almost as irresistible a pull as the flash of cleavage from her dark green dress. Olivia. I recognised her at once, of course, but she seemed so out of place here that she made as much sense as all the other elements of this dream-world. <br />
<br />
“Shut your mouth, Matt, you’ll catch flies.” I blushed, not just at her words but also at that smile. Three years of university had led me to the ludicrous confidence that I could do the whole girl thing now, but those three years had not counted on Olivia Wood.<br />
<br />
She took a seat next to me, pulling her long bronzed legs to her chest (what a dress!) as the sun disappeared behind a mite of a cloud, and the coolness of the evening made itself known. I went for the conversation topic that had been dominating my internal monologue all afternoon.<br />
<br />
“You didn’t fancy croquet either then?”<br />
<br />
She smiled, not knowing (as, to be fair, I myself didn’t) how one was expected to respond to such a proposition. “Nah, not really my scene.” There was a distressing silence.<br />
<br />
“So, how’s Uni?” I blurted. “Are you finished now, right?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah I am, until next year, fingers crossed.”<br />
<br />
“Oh are you a four-year course?” I knew that I knew what she was studying, but in my moment of conversational need it had fled.<br />
<br />
“Nope, but next year might be a PGCE, if I get my grades.”<br />
<br />
Obviously, it is unsurprisingly that a graduate might want to be a teacher, and indeed I knew numerous friends who were taking (or thinking of taking, if plan A collapsed) the same option, but to my mind that Olivia was doing such a thing was akin to the news that the first bacteria had grown legs. I suppose I was lucky that that wasn’t the first thing I said in response.<br />
<br />
“Do you want to be a teacher?” Even now I am impressed by my insightful line of questioning.<br />
<br />
“Wouldn’t you want to be taught by me?” She smiled again, giving me a look that just moments before would have left me dumbstruck, but inspired by my recent success I was motivated to take up conversational arms again.<br />
<br />
“I’d be scared the kids would hate me”<br />
<br />
She laughed again, but only in the way girls often do, independently of whether you’ve said anything funny. “I wasn’t, until I came here. I bet this lot would have murdered me for misspelling Fortley-Smythe on their reports.”<br />
<br />
“Oh I don’t know. See that guy over there, in the pink shirt?”<br />
<br />
She followed my gaze, to the group engaged in an increasingly threatening debate as to whether we could think without language, where the croquet player from earlier was gazing into space with a vacant expression. “What about him?”<br />
<br />
“Apparently his surname’s Jackson.”<br />
<br />
She looked at me with terrifying blankness.<br />
<br />
“So you’d be fine in the report?”<br />
<br />
It wasn’t funny, but she smiled anyway. “So what are you doing next year?”<br />
<br />
I had reached the point where I knew I would quite like to be a writer, but not quite progressed far enough to be able to deny to myself that it was a ridiculous suggestion. “I’m not sure really. Maybe journalism. Maybe writing…”<br />
<br />
“What would you write about?” She was looking right at me, almost as if she might be interested. I desperately cycled through my legion of unfinished opening chapters, searching for one that might sound impressive.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know.”<br />
<br />
She laughed. “You’ll figure something out.” The sun was dipping now, and the light was beginning to fade. She got up, smoothing down her dress, and walked over to the abandoned mallets, smiling back over her shoulder. “So, call me crazy, but fancy a game?” <br />
<br />
I checked the time on my phone. 9.07. It was a long old walk to the station. I’d already texted Kate to say I’d be there. Not that she had replied, but still. I hesitated, the sound of birdsong filling the long silence.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry, I better head home.”<br />
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*<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>*<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>*<br />
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It took three rings (and a firm nudge beneath the ribs) before it registered that the untimely call was not a fittingly absurd addition to a dream that had already taken in a chocolate lake and a dancing duel with my dentist.<br />
<br />
I fumbled for the jumper which we used to cover the too-bright lights of the digital alarm clock. 2:41. Hoping groggily that the ringing had not woken Holly, I picked up the phone and mustered the best of my sense-making skills.<br />
<br />
“Hello?”<br />
<br />
Someone was snuffling intermittently.<br />
<br />
“Hello? Who is this?” I panicked. “Jess, is that you?” Obviously it couldn’t have been, she had been in when we had gone to bed, and (bless her) was far too tame to have snuck out, and even at that age couldn’t have been lazy enough to ring the home phone rather than come downstairs to knock on our door.<br />
<br />
The sniffs continued, and then a voice. “Sorry Matt…” Rejuvenated sobbing. “It’s… it’s me, Olivia.”<br />
<br />
I rolled over. Rachel squinted at me, her look betraying concern, sleepiness, and the fact she lacked her contact lens. I mouthed Olivia’s name at her. She rolled and closed her eyes and snuggled back under the covers.<br />
<br />
“Hold on a second, Olivia, I’m going to get the phone downstairs.”<br />
<br />
She snuffled her assent.<br />
<br />
I clambered out of bed, feeling the cold draft of a winter night before the central heating kicked in. Having wrapped myself in my dressing gown (a father’s day present, and a far more useful one than the build-your-own tram that had followed it last year), I eased the door open and shut, and edged into the corridor, feeling the benefit of the new thick carpet we’d installed only a few months earlier.<br />
<br />
Edging down the stairs was an ordeal at which I was not unpractised (I think at that point I was still very much in a doctorphobic denial of the possibility of my prostate’s involvement), but I still held my breath at every creak, dreading I would hear the tell-tale whimpering. Eventually I made it into the living room, where I picked up the phone and curled up on the sofa, knowing that if I shut my eyes I would be asleep in no time.<br />
<br />
“Olivia? I’m here”<br />
<br />
“I’m so sorry Matt, I’m so sorry.” Her words were slightly slurred, I judged, now she had finally produced a whole sentence.<br />
<br />
“What happened? Is it Darren.”<br />
<br />
Darren was her third fiancé. I had only met him twice, as he and Olivia had moved up to Manchester for his work. I had reached the point in life where I now intuitively knew that men with tattoos and shaved heads were suspicious (especially if they were near Jess), but Darren had supplemented these telltale signs with a refusal to come to the theatre with us because there was greyhound racing on.<br />
<br />
“He… he… he hit me Matt, he hit me.” Her voice broke, and deep gasping sobs flooded out. <br />
<br />
“Oh Ol…” I had nothing to say, but we’d had these conversations before, and I had soon realised all that was needed was that I say nothing at all. My eyes still prickled though.<br />
<br />
She sobbed on. More awake now I closed my eyes, wishing once again I could pull her close, but now only for a long (probably damp) hug, and to wipe tears from those chocolate-brown eyes. A lot had changed over the years, the boyish hair had grown and ill-advisedly stained itself blonde, the slender figure had swelled in all the wrong places, but through it all those rich smoky-brown eyes remained.<br />
<br />
Twenty years ago that might have been the sum of my memories, but that croquet day had changed everything. As her hair grew so did my appreciation of her humour, but as her hair turned blonde so her smile was more regularly strained. I winced at the metaphor, but smiled at the smile.<br />
<br />
She had become a teacher, as she had wanted, but she hadn’t enjoyed it – she blamed the red tape, but I think the children might have had something to do with it. She had taken a job as some kind of analyst (junior manager? researcher?) for a large multinational in London, and while she’d hated it she seemed to have loved life at the time – we lived close to one another at the time, and we’d spent many a long night with a Chinese and Rachel and Oliver (of all the fiancés he was the best, if only for the name) setting the world (and, in particular, our rowdy neighbours) to the rights. She sobbed on, and I wept too.<br />
<br />
She’d lost that job when she lost Oliver (the two, from what I remember, weren’t connected) and just as I finally, improbably, took Rachel down the aisle, Olivia’s life started to fall apart. After Oliver came Richard, who brought with him bruises and tearful phonecalls, and after unspecified office-work came unemployment. It was hard to hold together a job when she couldn’t quite hold together a conversation.<br />
<br />
“Matt?” She cut across my memories.<br />
<br />
“Yes?”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry.”<br />
<br />
“I know Ol, it’s ok.”<br />
<br />
“How’re you?”<br />
<br />
I laughed out loud. “I’d say sleepy, in the main.” A noise somewhere between a laugh and a sneeze came down the phone. “Do you really want to talk about me?”<br />
<br />
“Please… I haven’t had a chat in days…”<br />
<br />
I was surprised, and faced the not unfamiliar, but still uncomfortable challenge of trying to arrange my life into a story worth telling. Jess, Holly, Rachel (I hadn’t really, I would have to confess, ever gotten over the running around after girls). You reach a certain moment in life where you realise that, as important as it is to you, no one wants to hear any more about Jess’s GCSE results (excellent, thanks for asking, better than Jack next door with the loud speakers and tattoo) or Rachel’s dentist appointment.<br />
<br />
“It’s good, Ol, it’s really good. Last night I watched a film with Holly.”<br />
<br />
“Oh God how old’s she now?”<br />
<br />
“One and a half.”<br />
<br />
“Oh… what film was that then?”<br />
<br />
“Apocalypse Now.” She laughed again, less phlegmily now.<br />
<br />
“Is that one of her favourites?”<br />
<br />
“I think she found the ending a bit of a snoozefest, but that was the point I suppose.”<br />
<br />
There was a long easy pause. I could almost taste the Chinese takeaway.<br />
<br />
“Matt?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah?”<br />
<br />
“Do you remember when we went shopping before your prom with Amy?”<br />
<br />
I laughed. “Yeah. Why?”<br />
<br />
“I really fancied you.”<br />
<br />
I laughed again. “Why?”<br />
<br />
“We all make mistakes when we’re young, I suppose.” I could picture the twinkle in her eye, the smile on her face.<br />
<br />
“You’re a twerp.”<br />
<br />
Another pause. With a jolt I remembered just a minute before she had been in tears.<br />
<br />
“Ol?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah?”<br />
<br />
“You ok?”<br />
<br />
She sighed, but her voice stayed clear. “No. No, I’m not. I hate it Matt, I hate it… You know when you’re watching a film, and it’s going ok, and you’re just getting into it, and then suddenly it all goes so so wrong, and you wish it would change back but you know it won’t? That’s how I feel.”<br />
<br />
“Sounds like Apocalypse Now.”<br />
<br />
She didn’t laugh this time, but I hoped she smiled. <br />
<br />
“I better let you go back to bed… Is there school in the morning?”<br />
<br />
“Jess walks most days. Probably flirts with susceptible young men, but what can you do?”<br />
<br />
“It’s alright, they’re probably too busy staring at lingerie mannequins anyway.”<br />
<br />
I laughed again. <br />
<br />
“Night Matt.”<br />
<br />
“Night Ol.”<br />
<br />
“That’s not even a name you turnip.” And with that she hung up.<br />
<br />
I closed my eyes, curling into the dressing-gown for warmth. It hurt that she wasn’t ok, but it had hurt for a while. I contemplated the idea of going to Edinburgh and showing Darren what I thought of him, but (as I had realised before on numerous occasions) the only result would be Olivia would have a smug-but-angry fiancé and a sheepish-and-broken friend. Friend.<br />
<br />
I opened my eyes, which, by chance, were focused on the fireplace. The photo of the four of us was there, the professionally shot one in the plain white studio which I’d bought Rachel for her birthday. We’d played around with props for what seemed like forever; Holly wouldn’t stop crying, Jess was close to mutiny, Rachel was close to tears.<br />
<br />
But then, out of nowhere, the mood changed. Rachel had made a joke, I think, but I can’t even remember what. Jess laughed, which dragged me out of my semi-complacent sulk (I might have paid, but I still thought it was a ridiculous idea), and even Holly cracked a smile. The photograph clearly wasn’t quite right: none of us are looking at the camera and I (completely by chance) look as if I’m about to drop Holly. But it worked. I smiled.<br />
<br />
I pulled myself to my feet, and turned to the door. My second novel was sitting, I noticed, on the arm of the other sofa, upturned and open. Jess had awful taste, but we all make mistakes when we’re young.<br />
<br />
I crept back up the stairs, stopped off (inevitably) in the toilet, slid back into my room and clambered clumsily back into bed. Rachel reversed into me, her skin so warm against mine.<br />
<br />
“Is she ok?” she mumbled, stroking my leg.<br />
<br />
“She’ll do.”<br />
<br />
Rachel made a contented muffled buzz of acceptance. Her hair still smelt of tea-tree. I wanted a tea-tree, I reflected, we should get one for the garden.<br />
<br />
“Rach?”<br />
<br />
“Mmmm?”<br />
<br />
“Love you.” <br />
<br />
She made another incomprehensible noise I understood instantly. I smiled.<br />
<br />
*<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>*<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>*<br />
<br />
It was a remarkably bright winter afternoon, the type where paradoxically it’s colder than when it’s overcast or wet. The sounds from the road were muffled slightly by the intervening trees, but presumably that effect would have been greater when the trees were fully stocked with leaves.<br />
<br />
At first, the churchyard was utterly empty. It was a slightly haphazard place: some of the more recent graves were aligned in rows, and there were paths through the forest of headstones, but in the main there was no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of Harold Rowlands (1802-1829) and Mary Brown (1991-2004), although most of the stones were at least a uniform grey colour, probably from a shared local quarry.<br />
<br />
At an apparently arbitrary spot, perhaps two thirds of the way from the church entrance to the main road nearby, there was a larger structure, that to the uneducated eye may well have been a crypt, maybe containing the bones of several generations of the local gentry. Such details could not be verified without a close expection, and even that would not betray the current fate of the esteemed and interred’s latest-of-kin.<br />
<br />
Now the faint sounds of singing from within the church (an old hymn, that even a generation earlier would have been well known, but now was barely even mumbled by whatever congregation lay within. A long pause followed, where neither bird nor beast disturbed the aching peace that filled the graveyard.<br />
<br />
A dull clunking of the bolt heralded the opening of the large church door, a historic monument to what a 1970s architect presumed medieval people might have used. The door swung open, and two slightly-too-fat men in black suits and ties shuffled out, looking back over their shoulder nervously, precisely as if pursued by the dead.<br />
<br />
The dead, in this case, was encased in the (fourth) most expensive coffin money could buy in the local undertakers, and was carried with solemn dignity by three men of varying ages, and with wheezing concentration by an only slightly chubby teenager, whose footsteps were tantalising close to being in time with his companions. The men in black covertly regarded the sagging corner with some trepidation.<br />
<br />
Behind this hardworking foursome came an impressive procession. A middle-aged woman in a black dress was first, her eyes as dry as long-dead firewood, accompanied on one side by a slightly taller and much younger woman, who (even with the pared-back make-up she had painstakingly chosen for the occasion) was eye-turningly beautiful, right down to her teary blue eyes. On the other side of the older woman was a child of five or ten (it’s so hard to tell), dressed in a black box dress almost precisely as Google had recommended, her face registering the deeply earnest sincerity of a girl who knows she is being grown-up, and the wondering (and wandering) eyes of a lost sheep.<br />
<br />
The rest of the assembled crowd, walking artificially slowly at the pace a tired and desperate boy carries a coffin, were a motley bunch. They were young, in the main, although there were a dispersed collection of hunched grey-haired figures who must have made such a walk many times before, and may well have been slyly weighing up the competition as to who might be next in the casket.<br />
<br />
Equally rare, and just as conspicuous, were the young, whether the erratically dressed children who inquisitively tugged their parents’ sleeves only to be met with variously icy or sympathetic glares, or the self-conscious teens who had not yet learnt to deal with the voyeuristic guilt of watching the last movement of this bland but friendly man, who they had just now heard was apparently once a boy of their own age, before he entered the mysterious worlds of marriage and novels and the long and valiant fight with the cancer that ultimately overcame him. A less generous observer might have noticed that only the first of this illustrious triplet was on their minds, and in a rather cruder form.<br />
<br />
In the main though, the mourners were men and women that the stoopers would label as young, the teens would dismiss as old, and that they themselves would gawp at with eyes that could not yet process that the first of their own generation had died, shattering their long-maintained claims to be young at heart. Some seemed less perturbed at this than others, one (without even bothering to look suspicious) was checking his phone and smiling, presumably because United were already winning.<br />
<br />
At length the coffin reached the recently dug hole, joining one of the neater lines of headstones, to the left of Margaret Garner but in front of the rather garish white cross of William Carter (1955-2010; That’s all folks!). To the left of the hole was a mound covered by a green cloth that might have been made of the same material as a snooker table. The carriers (gratefully) handed their burden to the men in black, who efficiently laid it on the cloths which lay across the grave mouth.<br />
<br />
A priest came to stand in front of the coffin, as the crowd shaped themselves into a watching crescent, no one quite sure as to how eagerly to edge themselves to a prime viewing spot. The lady in the black dress was at the front, just behind the priest, her eyes dry like the sky, her hands awkwardly clasped in front of her, without the hand they might have held.<br />
<br />
Eventually the crowd settled into place, the coffin was lowered gently, and the priest throw down some dirt from one supposes ought to be called a dirt-bag, intoning words that might have meant something to someone in an unknown past. The small girl stepped forward, armed with a white flower she had produced from nowhere, and (with a moment’s hesitation) dropped it down after the wooden box. Even the United fan had pocketed his phone.<br />
<br />
After a brief moment, where the muffled cars seemed louder than before, the priest spoke again, less formally now, with mention of tea and gratitude and refreshments. Evidently no one wanted to be the first to abandon mourning for coronation chicken, even the portliest man in black whose longing gaze betokened a past of countless slightly stale sandwiches, so it took the movement of the woman in black back towards the church to break the spell. She, and her girls, took up position to shake the slowly filing hands of those who were not quite as hopeless as themselves.<br />
<br />
In a surprisingly short time the crowd had almost totally vanished, and from the other side of the church the sound of uncertainly broached conversations began. At last, there was only one figure left, a plainly dressed woman, who had she tried might have passed for thirty, but as it was a tear-and-mascara-stained forty-whatever. She laid down a small bouquet, and stayed crouched for a few seconds; she might have been praying. Then she stood, wiped her chocolate-brown eyes, and with a sodden smile hugged the black-dressed woman who had silently come to her side.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-3216536003866140532012-06-02T02:11:00.000+01:002012-06-02T02:11:31.452+01:00Smooth - part one<br />
She smiled at me, I think. It was hard to tell, because she might have been smiling already and just happened to glance up and catch my eye, but I think it was for me.<br />
<br />
Of course, that wasn’t why I walked over. I was with Danny, who was meeting Amy, and since the girls’ school broke up at 3.20 and we were in until 3.45 they would always come and wait outside the gates for us to come out. <br />
<br />
It was quite a sight actually, with hindsight. Small groups of heavenly angels (surely they must have been as spotty as us?) would constellate outside the gates, each keeping furtively to themselves, applying make-up and touching up their hair in the grimy and fractured mirror of the vandalised bus stop. <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
When we came out of the gates they came quickly away from the mirrors and make-up, but did not deign to lift their make-up smeared eyelashes to us, excepting of course the one or two wildly enthusiastic screaming specimens whose excitement was only exceeded by the pitch of their voices. And excepting Olivia, who smiled. Probably.<br />
<br />
Danny was taking Amy to prom, so the plan was to shop for dresses, a task to which I could pride myself in being only slightly less qualified than Danny. His role was to tell her she looked good, which would be helped by the fact that she would, at least to his eyes. My role was to keep Danny entertained, which would be hindered by the fact that Amy affected my tongue like salt on a slug. Olivia’s role was as yet as mysterious as that subtle smile.<br />
<br />
We slowly wended our way down the street, past the smoking sixth-formers and the tutting and spluttering old women who might just have been waiting there since they had been checking make-up and flashing might-be smiles of their own. Amy was complaining about Maisy or Daisy who had been bitching about Lucy or Susie, the exact details seeming so much less important than the slightest hint of a bra strap through her white shirt, which for some reason seemed a resting place for my eyes more appropriate than Olivia’s eyes.<br />
<br />
We wended our way down past the police station, through the churchyard, across the main road (you didn’t need to wait for the lights if you pushed the button and kept walking down, because it was one-way) and into town. As we went I first rolled up my sleeves, but then, worrying about the unsightly goosebumps, slid them down again, settling for an undone top button which was intended to look more alternative than it perhaps did.<br />
<br />
We first went to the department store, where we walked around for what seemed like hours. Whatever Einstein said about time flying when it was spent with a pretty girl, he obviously didn’t go prom dress shopping. When we had traversed every aisle Amy had finally accrued five dresses to try on, and disappeared off to the changing rooms. But Olivia didn’t.<br />
<br />
“You not been asked to prom Liv?” asked Danny, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets, removed from his comfort zone of nodding and smiling.<br />
<br />
She smiled again, I glimpsed her eyes looking shyly (or slyly) down in the second it took me to lose my nerve and look away, finding a sudden inexplicable interest in the nearby lingerie department, before the reality of my unnoticed shame dawned on me.<br />
<br />
“Nah Dan. Not yet, anyway.”<br />
<br />
She might have been looking my way, but regrettably her eyes weren’t on the floor so I can’t say I saw.<br />
<br />
“Oh… Cool.” I think Danny must have won Amy’s heart with his way with words.<br />
<br />
Amy returned, none of the dresses had fit, prompting her to claim she had gained weight, which Danny and Olivia quickly and confidently refuted, while I helpfully muttered something that was meant to be ‘no’, but wasn’t quite so well articulated.<br />
<br />
The department store morphed into a high street shop, then a charity shop (very briefly, and more, it seemed, for comedy value), then another chain store, with sufficient time to walk disdainfully past the shops where all my clothes were from (excepting, of course, those bought by my mother).<br />
<br />
Finally we returned, inevitably, to the first department store, where four more dresses were taken back to the dressing room. An awkward silence filled the air, once again my wandering eyes fell into the trap of the lingerie-clad mannequins, once again they darted away, this time they met Olivia’s smiling glance and I went still redder. <br />
<br />
“You bringing anyone to prom then Matt?”<br />
<br />
It took me a brief second to realise that Matt was my name. What to say? Words flowed rapidly through my mind without troubling to stop at my tongue. My mouth was dry.<br />
<br />
“Erm, nah, don’t think so… Nah.”<br />
<br />
There wasn’t much to say.<br />
<br />
Amy returned, wearing a short blue dress that almost tore my eyes away from my shoes. Appropriate approving words were provided, and the dress was returned to the hangar for Mum and Dad to buy later.<br />
<br />
We left the shop and went back down the street to the bus station where we would head our separate ways. Danny’s bus was there when we arrived, and with a quick peck on Amy’s lips he was gone, leaving me with the girls, shuffling from foot to foot.<br />
<br />
Amy was next to go, leaving with a kiss on the cheek for Olivia and a smile for me that never quite reached her mouth, let alone her eyes. It was just the two of us left, listening to roar of traffic. I bit my lip.<br />
<br />
Olivia’s bus pulled in, a number thirty-one, single decker, heading out to Trenton, so it said. I didn’t know where she lived, indeed my geography was so poor I couldn’t even have said where Trenton was. I bit harder.<br />
<br />
“Hey Liv…”<br />
<br />
I caught her eyes properly for the first time. They were a blue somewhere between the colour of the sky and of the sea. She smiled, definitely this time. At me.<br />
<br />
“See you round.”<br />
<br />
Smooth. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-87953223186936737432012-05-20T02:21:00.001+01:002012-05-20T02:22:27.274+01:00Sonnet 1: On pretension<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
When all is said and done it’s just a word.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And all the time and all the tears you spend</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On quotes and notes can only be absurd</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When it’s only just one word in the end.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But yet, is’t not in words that dreams are made?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In words young lovers love, and tyrants rage,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And though the men that spoke them, wrote them, fade,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In soft mellifluous prose upon a page,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They die not. And in
our Xbox days</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Between the blogs and tweets and likes and shares,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We read, then through their verse and prose and plays</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then we, for one brief breath, are Shakespeare’s heirs</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so, while quotes and notes are vainly nursed,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s many words in that so fleeting ‘First’.</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-7369948591575527722012-03-28T16:24:00.000+01:002012-03-28T16:24:58.988+01:00Review: A Wreath upon the Dead by Briege DuffaudIn amongst the broadly conventionally realist field of Northern Irish fiction, Briege Duffaud's debut novel stands out as a remarkable effort to use the novel form to demonstrate the fractious nature of the Troubles.<br />
<br />
Published in 1993, prior to the end of the Troubles, it is perhaps unsurprising the content of the novel is bleak. A novelist, Maureen Murphy, is attempting to tell the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers from her home town, an effort which is hindered both by the scarcity of evidence and the strong feelings the tale evokes. Meanwhile the descendants of the original lovers are interacting once more in the context of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.<br />
<br />
However such a cursory plot summary cannot do justice to Duffaud's work. Told without any detached narrator, the novel intersperses documents (newspaper reports, diaries, sections of Maureen's novel) with stream-of-consciousness style outpourings from a range of characters. In the original love-story, set just prior to the Potato Famine, it becomes clear that Maureen's sources are in radical disagreement about just what happened. Meanwhile in the contemporary story, the half-remembered myths and sectarian biases of the protagonists mean mutual understanding is impossible.<br />
<br />
Duffaud's point in writing the novel is clearly that any account of history is partial, particularly in such a strongly divided environment as Northern Ireland. However by giving voice to such a range of perspectives, without endorsing any of them, Duffaud suggests the means by which peace can come - mutual articulation of contradictory truths.<br />
<br />
If the novel succeeds on this radical theoretical level, it simultaneously manages to be a rewarding read, albeit one which is unashamedly challenging. The historical love story is perfectly balanced, attracting our sympathy while suspending our judgement, while the complicated drama of the modern day tale rings true in a way that a conventional narrative could not. As noted, the tone tends towards the bleak, but that does not detract from the brilliantly flawed characters who make up this bizarrely fascinating version of Northern IrelandJoelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-25785543224731700312012-01-07T02:48:00.001+00:002012-01-07T02:48:54.452+00:00New Story<div class="MsoNormal">Looking down at his watch, James realised he was going to be late. 7.23, plus five minutes because he still hadn’t gotten round to correcting the time, and he was a definitely more than two minutes away from where he thought the restaurant was. Bad times.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Striding out of the almost empty shop (why they stayed open until eight on a Thursday was a mystery) he resigned himself to having neither time nor money for a present. He normally prided himself on his ability to find the perfect gift, and indeed this time last year had probably been his best performance ever. Of course, it was slightly more difficult to come up with the perfect gift for your ex-girlfriend.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As he fought his way into the icy wind he wondered to himself why he was even bothering to come. Matt would have told him that it was a hopelessly optimistic attempt to persuade her to take him back, but that wasn’t really true. Not that he would have said no, he just didn’t hold out any hope that she would give him a chance to.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And to make matters worse, it wasn’t just going to be Lucy, or even just Lucy and her insufferable family. (“<i>Oh</i>, you study drama? How <i>lovely</i>! You know I thought about being unemployed once too…”) No, this was the first time he was going to be confronted with Nicky. Lucy and Nicky. Licky, as Matt had gleefully portmanteaued. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Only as he turned into <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">East Street</st1:address></st1:street> did he see the huge grey puddle on the side of the road, and the bus bulldozing towards it. Clearly his luck was in tonight, he moaned inwardly, bracing himself and turning away from the road. But the splash didn’t come. “Great. Even the bloody bus pities me,” he muttered sullenly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Still inwardly cursing to himself, James finally made it to the restaurant. A ridiculously shaped creature glared down at him from above the entrance, its angry red eyes perfectly contrasted with the puerile discoloured tongue. It would have been funny, except he knew that he would have had to starve for a week to have taken Lucy for a meal here.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Late, he didn’t think to wait before going straight in. The restaurant had a curious scent of lemon, and the noise coming from round to the left told him the direction he needed to go. Ignoring the joyless grin of the waiter on the door, he headed to meet his fate.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It astounded him, in the era of Facebook, that there could be so many people around a table and he could know so few of them. At the head of the table Lucy’s mother was fussing, looking splendidly ridiculous in a supposed-to-be gold dress, while her father stood next to her, glaring at the Chinese lettering on the wall as if certain it was a deeply personal attack on himself, his family and Margaret bloody Thatcher to boot.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The subject of Lucy’s mother’s fussing must be Nicky, James surmised. Taller than him, thinner than him, with the rolled up sleeves of his prissy pink shirt revealing biceps even bigger than his hard-earned chicken wings. Lucy’s mother was apparently concerning herself with brushing a stain from just below his left hip. Get a room.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And there, watching this deeply incestuous act of cleaning, was Lucy. With a sudden surge of joy he noticed she was wearing the white jumper he had bought her last year, the one he had always teased her made her look like he must be her servant. It was long and tight, curving round her hips and covering the tops of her skinny jeans, which in turn ran down her long legs to a pair of shiny black heels. She was talking to her mother, her face twisted into what she always hoped was anger, but to him could only ever be adorable. He remembered the last good conversation they had had, back on their trip to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dublin</st1:place></st1:city>, and – </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“And who are you then kid?” The deep Scouse (probably?) voice brought him back to reality. He tore his eyes away and brought them to rest on a curiously obese man, giving him a not unfriendly look. James didn’t recognise him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I’m – I’m James,” he faltered, dreading what was he had to say next. “I’m a – a friend of Lucy’s.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh aye?” (Was it Scouse? Now it sounded more like Pirate.) “From University I supposed? You <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Oxford</st1:place></st1:city> types eh.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No, not from <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Oxford</st1:place></st1:city>. I knew her from when we were at school actually.” And we used to date. And she told me she loved me before she realised she preferred men whose names and fashion senses suggested they always wondered why they had a Y chromosome.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The man paused, clearly conscious of his mistake, but not troubling himself to look overly guilty about it. A glimmer of recognition flashed across the man’s eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh, right, James, of course. Yes well you probably wouldn’t remember me, but I live next door to the Higgins’s, I remember you driving round to see her eight nights a week. Red Vauxhall Corsa, right?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">James blushed to almost the colour of the car and nodded. The man smiled sympathetically.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well it looks like the only seat left is next to us, so you’re more than welcome to slot in here. If you don’t want to go give Lucy her present…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">James felt his cheeks burning still darker. “I didn’t manage to get her anything in the end…” He hovered momentarily, weighing up whether to go and say hello or not. He should do, he realised, but wouldn’t it just be awkward for everyone? And surely she would come over later anyway. Conscious of the genial Scouse Pirate’s watching gaze, James moved as if to go, swayed back, and finally surrendered into the waiting seat. The Scouse Pirate smiled knowingly, although he didn’t seem like he was going to share that knowledge with anyone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“The name’s Eric. And this is my wife Veronica.” A still fatter woman on Eric’s left smiled up at him, gesturing that she would say hello but she didn’t want to risk losing one of the prawn crackers in her mouth. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You might be wanting this,” said Eric, pouring James a large glass of an expensive-looking Merlot. James smiled and swigged. Deeply.</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-833763358906853472011-12-22T19:06:00.000+00:002012-06-25T01:07:47.210+01:00Charity vs Tax<div class="MsoNormal">
It seems, at least amongst my friends, that ‘right-wing’ is a dirty word. Right-wing views stand for backwardness, ignorance, oppression, greed, cynicism, contrasted against the progressive and caring Left.</div>
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There are obviously some very good reasons for this. Right-wing politicians (as a movement, as opposed to in specific cases) want to reduce benefits for the poorest in society, while cutting taxes on those who have the money to pay them: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, as caricature would have it.</div>
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But while this viewpoint is incredibly popular, I honestly believe it also overlooks a powerful idealism that drives those who hold Right-wing, small state economic views. Idealism is more commonly a charge levelled at the Left in response to their rejection of market economics, but I want to argue that the opposite is true: a real idealist must surely hold right-wing views. Let me elaborate.</div>
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For an opening premise, I would suggest that in a truly ideal world, there would be no police, because there would be no crime. There would be no Ministry of Defence, because there would be no war. There would be no welfare, <i>not </i>because there would necessarily be no poverty or disability to make it necessary, but because society would act to support those people without needing to resort to forcibly taxing every member of society to pay for it.<br />
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Obviously it does not need to be pointed out that we are not in this ideal world. We do need police and armies because there is crime and war; we need welfare systems because without them we (probably rightly) believe those in need would be left helpless. </div>
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It seems in contemporary British society, we have become fixated by the idea that it is the role of the State to provide for every eventuality of its citizens. There are enormous benefits as a result of this which cannot be overlooked: <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> has become an immeasurably better country for the sick and the impoverished than it was 100 years ago. Further, lest we forget, almost all of us will end up sick or impoverished at some point: this is not a case of a community of copers supporting a group of no-hopers, as some sections of the media would suggest.</div>
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But, for all its benefits, I would have to question this state-dependency. My problem comes not on economic grounds (although many economists far more qualified than I would suggest that it is currently impossible to continue with the levels of spending we have experienced), but on shamelessly idealistic grounds.</div>
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It goes without saying that the fundamental root of this system is taxation. Welfare programmes of all shapes and sizes depend on taxation in order to fund them. This is justified by the fact that taxpayers are entitled to benefit from the societal benefits of government spending. It sounds good, except for one problem: everyone seems to hate it.</div>
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Attention is regularly drawn to celebrities and businessmen who go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes: U2’s headline slot at <st1:city w:st="on">Glastonbury</st1:city> last year saw protests that the group-members do not pay taxes in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Republic</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Ireland</st1:placename></st1:place>. This is often portrayed as simply the arrogance of the super-rich, refusing to contribute to the welfare of the society that supports them. This is probably true in many cases, but what seems equally true in my experience is that similar tax avoidance takes place on every level of society. Whether it’s the tradesman who offers a VAT-sized discount if you pay in cash or the ex-student who conveniently forgets to notify the local authority that he is now eligible for Council Tax, it seems clear that the reason it is only the rich who hire tax-avoidance companies is not their moral bankruptcy, but simply the fact that tax-avoidance companies cost a lot of money.</div>
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You might respond to this by arguing we need to tighten up our taxation system to stop these people escaping the net, and that is probably correct, but isn’t there a more profound problem when the very foundation of our economic system is something that seems deeply unpopular with large parts of society?</div>
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I would suggest that the reasons people try so hard to avoid paying taxes are not simply that it takes money out of their pocket, but that it takes money out of their pocket with no discernable benefit to anyone. A national system can only ever be impersonal: you might be getting care in a government hospital, but there are so many stages between that and tax-paying that it is hard to see any real connection. It would be interesting to see how many taxpayers it takes to cover the annual operation of the tax system. </div>
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These are all problems, but is there an alternative? After all, tax has been at the heart of economics since (at least) biblical tithing: is it not the case that someone has to pay for these vital services, and it is fairest that everyone pays? I want to suggest an alternative.</div>
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Would you rather pay £10 of tax, or £10 to stop your local hospital closing down? £10 of tax, or £10 to support a local library? £10 of tax, or £10 towards rehabilitation for young offenders from disadvantaged backgrounds? I would imagine most people would not say yes to all three of those suggestions, but that almost everyone would say yes to one of them.</div>
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It seems clear to me that people at every level of society would be more willing to give if they were giving to something specific that they cared about. We are in the middle of a crisis over library closures; is this not something that the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s numerous wealthy authors (and wealthy readers) could subsidise themselves? </div>
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There are three obvious flaws to this plan. Firstly, while we might be able to raise the money to cover healthcare or education or libraries, the number of contributors towards sewage or prisons or national debt would probably be lower. This, I would suggest, is not really a problem at all: we would still need taxes to cover these services, but they would be significantly lower than current levels.</div>
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Secondly, and more seriously, there is the issue of ‘fairness’. It would not be fair that the charitable members of society would be subsidising the selfish; those who funded a particular program would have a strong claim to dictate how that money was spent – imagine Richard Dawkins (or the Catholic Church, depending on your own views) buying control of the education system.</div>
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These are serious concerns, but I think they could be addressed. To the first claim, that is surely not so different from the unfairness of the current system, where those who work hard subsidise those who do not, and the richest can buy their way out in any case. You might think that the ability to opt-out of giving would destabilise society and pull people apart, but I would hope for the opposite: the current resentment of the super-rich would surely be reduced if a billionaire banker was responsible for a new Cancer ward at your hospital. If a few members of society chose not to give and yet we could still carry on fine, I would suggest that they would be the one’s that lost out.</div>
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To the equally significant problem of new stakeholders in services that ought to be balanced and non-partisan, this could surely be managed. On the one hand we could insist that certain things were not tampered with. If donors to the education system were told they could not influence the curriculum then it might dissuade some from giving, but you would hope that enough people supported the principle of non-partisan education to make up the difference. Equally in many areas the input of donors could actually be useful: if successful businessmen felt more involved in projects because of direct financial connection then they might be able to share their expertise, and help services run more effectively.</div>
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There is, however, a still deeper problem with my idea: would it work? Cynics (and unfortunately probably realists too) would fear that private donors would not step in to fill the public shortfall; either nothing would change or public services would crumble. Perhaps those who dodge taxes would relish a system where they didn’t even need to dodge, and human selfishness would ensure that this audacious idea would be dead in the water. Even an optimist would acknowledge it would take years to change our national culture from tax-payers to willing givers, and that those years might see an unbearable cost in the meantime.</div>
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Nonetheless, I would still hold that such a system would benefit all taxpayers by reducing the impersonal burden they all pay, would benefit services by bringing in stakeholders who passionately care about their work, and would benefit society by bringing us closer together. If the only way we can support the neediest members of society is by impersonally docking x% from everyone’s wages, then human nature is worse than I ever imagined.</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-7382691337753767112011-12-22T02:05:00.000+00:002011-12-22T23:45:14.026+00:00Review: Wit by Mike Nicholls (starring Emma Thompson)<div class="MsoNormal" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d4/Wit%2C_2001_film.jpg/175px-Wit%2C_2001_film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d4/Wit%2C_2001_film.jpg/175px-Wit%2C_2001_film.jpg" /></a><i>Wit</i>, a 2001 HBO movie starring Emma Thompson, has never really made much of an impression on the viewing public in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>, if my total ignorance of it is anything to go by. Having watched it last night, this fact is absolutely mystifying.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">To be sure, <i>Wit </i>makes for anything but comfortable viewing. Depicting the suffering of an English Literature professor diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the setting never departs from the hospital, and the plot, if such a word ought to be used, is minimalist. For most of the 99 minutes, all the viewer is presented with is Emma Thompson speaking directly to the camera about seventeenth-century poetry.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Despite this (or, perhaps, because of it), what emerges is an astounding dissection of the human mind under stress. For much of the film I could barely tear my eyes away from the screen, and it was the monologues, not the action, which most inescapably held my gaze.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Many of the reviews of the film I’ve read of the film focus on its truthfulness to life: many reviewers praise the unflinching accuracy of director Mike Nicholls’ work; negative reviewers suggest that the high-minded professor of poetry is nothing like the average cancer sufferer. That, however, might be the point.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What we are presented with is not supposed to be “the average cancer victim”, if such a bizarre concept exists. This is a study of a thoroughly drawn idiosyncratic woman, battling with what ultimately proves to be the death of her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The progression Professor Bearing undertakes (whether it be typical or not) is from detached and ironic observer to agonisingly implicated victim. On several occasions Bearing shows us scenes from her earlier life, however as the film progresses we come to realise that she is not controlling these reenactments but is trapped within them. One of the most significant moments in the film comes when one such memory (of delivering a lecture) is interrupted by her nurse coming to take her for yet more tests: in Bearing’s mind she is being pulled away from her lecture, in reality she is being forcibly removed from her fantasy. For the first time the ironic mask cracks, and we see for the first time a frightened old woman.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The one jarring factor in Emma Thompson’s outstanding performance is her character’s supposed lack of humanity – she has no family or friends to visit her, while she recalls her insensitive treatment of her students – with her deeply personable tone in her asides to the camera. This, perhaps, is the tragedy of the film: she must confide in the audience because she hasn’t bothered to find herself a friend to listen to her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the supporting cast, Audra MacDonald’s Susia comes closest to filling that role, stepping in to block Bearing’s doctors from fully realising their ambitions to use her as a lab rat: Bearing’s treatment is experimental, and as a result she is treated by researchers rather than doctors. Apparently the film is shown in Med Schools to teach aspiring doctors how not to treat patients, but their absence of interest in Bearing as a person (as opposed to a bearer of cancer) seems perversely believable: Jonathan Woodward in particular conveys the awkwardness of a researcher who can find nothing to say to a woman whose life he is watching ebb away.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the end Susie’s affection (and a last-gasp visit from Bearing’s former professor) provide the humanity that the dying Bearing so desperately needs. Notably these connections are not formed over intellectual conversation, but a (bad) joke and a children’s book. What’s necessary is not intellectual discussion, but human contact.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It has to be said, such a sentence risks reducing the film to trite corniness, it must be stressed that this is far bleaker than a hopeful assertion that love conquers all. Emma Thompson beautifully conveys the exquisite suffering of her character: she is not fighting, she cannot be rescued, she can only marginally alter the manner in which she meets her unwanted end.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As her coping mechanisms fall away and Bearing ultimately dies, suffering the further indignity of having her corpse stripped and displayed to resuscitators she did not want, this dark message paradoxically becomes less hopeless than one might imagine. In the end, as Donne pre-empts, death is inevitable but not meriting of despair. You end the film not simply aware of your own mortality, but powerfully aware of the easily-forgotten fact that you are still alive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If any of that analysis sounds too clichéd, too cheesy, then perhaps that only bears further tribute to the power of this film: in territory where it is almost impossible not to come across as sentimentally manipulating the emotions of an audience, the stripped-back rawness of <i>Wit </i>transcends cliché. I thoroughly recommend this movie.</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-73789842960556110332011-12-12T22:04:00.000+00:002011-12-12T22:05:55.750+00:00One Day: A tentative literary analysis<div class="MsoNormal">Is literary analysis something that ought to be reserved for a particular type of book? It’s a significant question, because implicit in it is a questioning of the fundamental purpose of literary analysis. This is a debate that fascinates me, but rather than exploring it in the abstract, I want to take a work of incredibly popular modern fiction, and subject it to some serious, if tentative, analysis. The book I want to take is <i>One Day </i>by David Nicholls: it is well on its way to reaching one million sales this year in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place> alone, but simultaneously its original structure provides a entry-point for analysis.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The originality of the book is chiefly found in this unique structure: the book follows the lives of protagonists Emma and Dexter on the same date across 20 years. Nicholls himself said that he wanted to create the sense of ‘a photo album, so that the characters seem to change, yet remain the same’. However this snapshot approach is undermined by the fact that (as critical reviewers have pointed out) each chapter tends to begin with each character recounting what has happened in the preceding twelve months. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A second claim Nicholls makes for his structure is that ‘my initial instinct was to cover landmarks – births, marriages, deaths. Instead, I’ve taken one day at random – like a date on a bank statement’. This is a radical claim: as early as <i>Tom Jones</i> in the eighteenth century novelists have been conscious of omitting insignificant passages in story; but Nicholls claims to be doing the opposite. This might be seen to be commenting on the significance of non-momentous events, except it seems that Nicholls is again being disingenuous. It stretches plausibility that Emma and Dexter not only meet on July 15<sup>th</sup>, but it also the date on which they fall out, reunite, launch their first prime time show, become romantically involved, not to mention the date that Emma dies. This is not a criticism of the novel; but it is a dismantling of the claim that the days are chosen ‘at random’.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If the structuring is neither rigorously followed nor realistic, it might be better seen as a system of imposing significance and meaning. This is clearly a motivation for any narrative: in telling a story we take orderless <i>events</i> and manipulate them into a narrative with causation, and ultimately meaning. In <i>One Day </i>this meaning comes significantly from the fetishisation of one particular date. The actual significance of the date changes: initially it is the anniversary of their first meeting, by the end of the novel (in an allusion to <i>Tess of the D’Urbervilles)</i> it has become the anniversary of Emma’s death. Looking at dates for patterns to signify providence is a pastime of Robinson Crusoe, but in <i>One Day </i>it is not the characters who carry out this work (neither Emma nor Dexter is ever explicitly aware that it is the anniversary of their meeting), but the novel itself which highlights this anniversary and endows it with significance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">However in many ways, what is most significant in the novel is not the date, but the lovers themselves. <i>One Day </i>is deeply entrenched in the cultural attitude towards romance that two people are ‘meant to be’. <i>One Day </i>takes the comparatively rare (although by no means unique) approach of dividing attention equally between both lovers: <i>Pride and Prejudice </i>is the story of Elizabeth Bennett with Mr Darcy as her love interest; <i>One Day </i>has no such primacy. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In contrast to the shared focus on Emma and Dexter, the novel furthers this effect by marginalising all other characters, and particularly romantic interests. By beginning emphatically with their first meeting and continuing by highlighting both of them, there is never the slightest possibility that Dexter will end up with Sylvie, even when he is in love with her. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is striking that the novel indulges in endless counter-factual speculation about Emma and Dexter coming together sooner (what if Dexter had mailed the letter? What if Emma had answered the phone when she was on her first date with Ian?), there is a total absence of comparable exploration of the possibility of them finding love elsewhere. The sense that is created by all these effects is that Emma and Dexter could only ever end up together – the tragedy of the book is that it takes them both so long to realise this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course, this analysis holds firm for the vast majority of the novel, but the closing chapters offer two distinct twists. Emma’s death is obviously integral to the meaning of the novel, but it is equally worth considering the fact that Nicholls’ avoids the conventional comic romantic ending by bringing his couple together with five years left to go. It has been often noted that fiction has endless courting couples but precious few happy marriages: traditional comedy (and modern rom-coms) tend to end with a wedding day. The two years that Emma and Dexter are married function as a demystification of the ‘happily-ever-after’ myth: their inability to conceive symbolises the ongoing problems in the happiest couples. Dexter’s conclusion that he is not ‘happyish’ but ‘happy’ is a validation of this lifestyle and of the novel’s premise that the pair are destined to be together, but it is no fairy tale.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Far more significantly, the fairy tale premise is undermined by the sudden death of Emma. Again, this might conventionally be placed at the very end of the novel, with perhaps the last chapter inserted as an epilogue, but Nicholls resists this temptation in order to consider what happens when a Romeo has to outlive his Juliet. Dexter, unlike Emma, has been prepared for this by undergoing significant loss twice in the novel; once when his mother dies and once with divorce: neither case ends well. Thus it is unsurprising when his most significant loss sees him thrown out of a strip club.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course, Dexter doesn’t end in self-destructive mode; he ends by taking his daughter to the spot where he spent that first day with Emma. This artistic symmetry only confirms the sense that he has no life beyond her: he is on holiday with his daughter from a pre-Emma relationship and his post-Emma partner, but his actions are still focused on her. Partly this is because it is the anniversary of her death, a day on which she would obviously be in his thoughts, but in the structure of the novel every day shares this focus. Dexter does not end the novel in despair, but he does end it with very little beyond memory to live for.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Thus <i>One Day </i>is both inextricable from and sceptical of the myth of lovers destined to be with one another. On the one hand there is no possibility in the novel that Emma could have married Ian or Dexter been happy with Sylvie, but on the other there is no possibility that Dexter will ever see Emma again. ‘Em and Dex’ is at once a mythologized concept (it is hard to finish the book without wondering who your Em/Dex is) and simultaneously extinct. Fragile but beautiful, <i>One Day</i>’s presentation of love is far more complex than the pop-fiction romantic comedy box in which it has been placed.<br />
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Let me know what you think in the comments!</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-3188064046914459722011-08-29T00:18:00.000+01:002011-08-29T00:18:58.882+01:00My new novelSo I was working on this just now, its very raw (probably to the point of spelling errors...), but it's the prologue to what might potentially become a novel. Or not. We shall see.<br />
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It's (hopefully) funny, but also quite dark, and features prolific swearing, but if that doesn't put you off you're clearly bored enough to keep reading, so go on. Feel free to let me know what you think, even if you don't make it the whole way through.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, but I didn’t steal them. <span> </span>I was just walking down High Street, you know, and then someone came out of the shop, it was this girl, she was like five foot tall, quite chubby, still fit though, and she was carrying this bag, like a handbag, and then she started running and these two guys came out, from security, and they were chasing her, so she suddenly lobbed them at me, and I didn’t even know what it was to be honest, but I caught them, and suddenly these guys were on me, and like they must have seen me catch them cos they were quite close, and one of them tried to deck me but he missed and then they pushed me over and ripped them off me, so I just lay there. <span> </span>I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty fucking scary, cos I’ve never been in trouble before, and I didn’t want my mum to find out, cos she reckons my girlfriend’s been a bad influence on me and she ain’t, but its not like she believes that… So yeah, I didn’t do it, so like, I don’t even know why I’m here, do you know what I mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The balding, tubby, broad faced cop looked across the table.<span> </span>For a minute he just stared blankly, with the dead expression of an insomniac watching late night television. <span> </span>Then his left eyebrow slowly curved itself and climbed his glistening forehead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“That is literally bollocks.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">His junior partner just barely held back a snort, before almost instantly rearranging his facial features to the mirror image of a concern and responsibility.<span> </span>Kevin started to open his mouth, but the tubby cop interrupted.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“That is fecking ridiculous.”<span> </span>(He wasn’t Irish, but like many Englishmen he sometimes forgot that in tense situations.) <span> </span>“You went into the shop, you picked up the sweets, you shoved it in your pocket, you walked out...”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“…No but you didn’t see that girl…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“That girl? Of course I didn’t see that girl! Noone outside of the chubby chaser porn you watched this morning before breakfast saw that fecking girl! <span> </span>You took the ipod…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No but they punched me, and that’s definitely not…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Punched you? They asked you to stop for a second and you told them you had a fecking gun.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah but I didn’t.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“And I honestly don’t know if that’s because you’re a liar or because you’re genuinely stupid enough to believe it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">An awkward silence ensued.<span> </span>The edges of the junior partner’s mouth demonstrated admirable resilience. <span> </span>The tubby cop sighed, the length of the release of air showing he was making full use of his expansive torso. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Unfortunately,” (and it was quite clear he meant every syllable of the word) “policy dictates that we aren’t to charge minors for stealing confectionary.<span> </span>Even if it’s,” (he looked at his notes carefully) “thirteen packets of polos…” (back to the notes) “and a mars bar.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kevin’s face brightened.<span> </span>“Does that mean I can go?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Another majestic sigh.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yes.<span> </span>Yes it does.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Wicked!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">*<span> </span>*<span> </span>*</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“So I think I’ve invented this new religion.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack stopped and looked at him. <span> </span>“You what?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No seriously.<span> </span>Like I was thinking earlier when they pulled me over, and like I was so sure they were gonna shoot me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Why would you be sure of that? <span> </span>They were shop security.<span> </span>What, do you think they carry bazookas?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well like I don’t know man, but no, like, I was so sure they were gonna shoot me, and I was just lying there waiting to die, and then I suddenly heard this voice, and it just said ‘bang!’”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A long pause, possibly out of respect for this religious experience.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Bang?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Like a gunshot?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Nah, just like this voice, saying ‘bang’, you know?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Another pause.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What the fuck man?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No listen, seriously.<span> </span>So like, I was about to get shot, and then there’s this voice, and then everything kept going, just like normal, you know?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Right.<span> </span>So your religion is a voice that says ‘bang’ and does fuck all else? <span> </span>You know I think that is new.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No man, listen.<span> </span>So like, I was thinking, what if that was actually me getting shot? <span> </span>And like, whenever you get killed, there’s no heaven or shit, you just hear like a voice, and then your life keeps going, except for everyone else you die… Do you know what I mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No.<span> </span>No, no I don’t. <span> </span>I have literally no fucking idea what the fuck you’re talking about. <span> </span>What the fuck man.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No but like, think about it, why couldn’t it be true?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Why would it be true?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What do you mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Why would it be true?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No but, you know…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Why the fuck would that ever happen?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah but you can say that but like, it could be…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“So you could be dead?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Do you think you’re dead?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Really?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well, like…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You think you’re dead?<span> </span>You think I’m part of heaven? <span> </span>You think the best thing that’s gonna happen to your dead soul is that it’s gonna walk down Nelson Street with some crazy bitch screaming in her shitty little flat, and I’m gonna be next to you, and I’m gonna punch your dead little face?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“But you aren’t punching…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kevin spoke too soon. And ahead the other half of Jack’s description of nirvana had already come into being: a high pitched voice was shrieking out from a fourth floor window up ahead.<span> </span>Jack glared at the offending noise.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“She sounds bloody mental.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kevin stopped from his esoteric pondering to look up.<span> </span>A second strain of screaming had emerged, harmonising appallingly.<span> </span>This new voice sounded decidedly younger.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Kids,” muttered the seventeen year-old.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I know right,” said Kevin.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Suddenly a figure emerged at the window.<span> </span>It was a woman, she must have been in her mid-twenties, she was wearing a dirt-grey jumper and a shapeless skirt.<span> </span>She was carrying a wailing child.<span> </span>She was thrusting the child out of window.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What the fuck,” said Jack, his voice rising.<span> </span>“What the fuck is she doing?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The woman looked down at them, smiling calmly, seemingly unaware of the screeching mass in her hands.<span> </span>She looked Kevin in the eye and stuck out her tongue.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What are you doing?<span> </span>What the fuck are you doing?”<span> </span>Jack screamed at her.<span> </span>Kevin wanted to join him, but instead of words his mouth filled with the sharp flavour of vomit.<span> </span>His mouth opened and closed noiselessly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The woman seemed to speak, but her words were blocked out by the screaming child. <span> </span>She continued, her smile never leaving, her eyes fixed on Kevin. <span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Stop!<span> </span>You’re fucking mental!”<span> </span>Kevin couldn’t disagree with his friend’s sentiment, but he did wonder if it was the best time to be taking that tone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">She stopped talking.<span> </span>The baby stopped screaming. <span> </span>In the distance a car alarm was sounding, probably because it had detected the threat of a falling leaf. <span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then she threw it.<span> </span>Not straight down, but up into the air, almost as if her motherly pride had convinced her she’d produced the first infant capable of spontaneous flight. <span> </span>Like many parental hopes, it was quickly disappointed.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack froze, rooted to the spot. <span> </span>To his side he felt Kevin move, but his eyes were on the child. <span> </span>He was just conscious that time had not mysteriously slowed down, that the baby was hurtling towards the concrete at speed when its flight was intercepted by a person. <span> </span>Kevin. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">His extended arms crumpled and he fell to earth. <span> </span>There was blood.<span> </span>There was no noise. <span> </span>Fuck.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack suddenly found his legs and sprinted over. <span> </span>Kevin lay on the concrete, his face bloodied, his arms full. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh shit, oh shit.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack wanted to turn his friend over, but he could not bring himself to look.<span> </span>Like his friend a moment before he felt warm vomit rise up his throat, and this time it didn’t stop. <span> </span>Wretching, crying, choking, he moved his arms to wipe his eyes, and brought himself to look.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The baby was alive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not in the best state, one would have to admit.<span> </span>There was blood flowing from its head, and its legs were twisted at an angle that threatened to restart the nausea. <span> </span>But there was movement, there was noise.<span> </span>Not screaming.<span> </span>Whimpering.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack’s hand went to his pocket, his sticky fingers suddenly clumsy, numb. <span> </span>He pulled out his phone, barely even glanced at the picture of his girlfriend, and (at the second attempt) stabbed in 999. <span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hello?<span> </span>Police, shit no, ambulance, fuck I don’t know… There’s a baby, she chucked it out of the window, from the flats… No it’s alive, I think… Yeah… The flats?<span> </span>The ones on <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Nelson Street</st1:address></st1:street>, near the druggy park?<span> </span>Yeah… Fucking hurry yeah?... Jack.<span> </span>Jack Roberts…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The first Kevin heard of the conversation was his friend’s name. <span> </span>What a dick, he thought, it was me that did it. <span> </span>He faded back out of consciousness, his head feeling like it weighed a million stone. <span> </span>A siren in the distance reawakened him, and he opened his eyes slowly. <span> </span>He slowly became aware noone was looking at him, and torturously twisted his neck to see his friend cradling a still child.<span> </span>Shit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack looked back at him, his face pale, his lips slightly bloodied. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Is it dead?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“She’s alive, she’s fucking bad though.”<span> </span>An ambulance pulled up, green paramedics rushed out, two middle aged men.<span> </span>Nothing like Casualty.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You’re a fucking hero Kev.<span> </span>How did you know what to do?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I read this article… On the BBC…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">* <span> </span>*<span> </span>*</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Tom was glad his boss wasn’t in today. <span> </span>Normally she took the seat next to him, but in her absence he felt far more comfortable keeping up to date with the cricket score and simultaneously scanning ebay. <span> </span>And working.<span> </span>Obviously.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The presentation wasn’t due for another three days, and as it was ‘so important’, and ‘literally make-or-break for us’ he hadn’t been given anything else to distract him. <span> </span>Except access to the entire internet.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He contemplated looking up Sarah’s Facebook again, but he resisted. <span> </span>There was some pleasure in resisting, he thought, probably the same thing women got out of dieting. <span> </span>I could look, but I won’t.<span> </span>I’ll be a good husband. <span> </span>He rewarded himself with a polo, still resting on the receipt. <span> </span>He still wasn’t sure how that counted as work expensese, but hey, don’t argue with the system.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Tickets were appearing for a music festival back in his hometown.<span> </span>He looked at the price and grimaced: clearly the touts had gotten in there early. <span> </span>It was funny, back at school he’d never even thought it might have been expensive; his parents had gotten him tickets every year for his birthday. <span> </span>Now he actually had money of his own, £250 to get high and see dodgy music didn’t seem that appealing. <span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It had been there where he’d met Dani. <span> </span>It had been there that he’d last fancied Dani, he reckoned. <span> </span>Was that true?<span> </span>It had been a great weekend, a year and a half ago now. <span> </span>God she’d been beautiful.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was funny, he’d always had a thing with songs. <span> </span>Every song he liked reminded him of someone. <span> </span>Most of them Dani, many newer ones (mostly horrible R&B, unfortunately) Sarah, but then loads of his friends back home, certain holidays, even his Dad dying was immortalised in cheesy pop lyrics. <span> </span>He doubted his dad would have appreciated that particular gesture.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He snapped himself back into the moment. <span> </span>Presentation.<span> </span>‘How to make social media work for us.’<span> </span>People, he was good at people, people were fun. <span> </span>People didn’t like a rich bank with a morally dubious reputation, but a couple of well placed tweets and a funny photo would change that. <span> </span>People are stupid. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He flicked through the notes he’d made so far. <span> </span>A sweet company that posted one-liners every week, normally to do with chocolate. <span> </span>They had 14 million fans, apparently.<span> </span>He looked them up, what was this humourous chocolate goldmine?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Chocolate is not a matter of life and death - it's more important than that!” <span> </span>Three hundred and seventy-eight likes.<span> </span>Two hundred comments.<span> </span>Tom stared at the screen, sure there must be a hidden punch-line somewhere.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What the fuck.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The phone rang, and he let out an audible groan.<span> </span>It would be Amanda, checking how work was going. <span> </span>He could tell her the joke?<span> </span>Apparently three hundred people thought that was a good idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hello, NatBank Commercial Office, Tom Williams speaking?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Hello, Mr Williams?<span> </span>This is Sergeant Eric Thompson, from Tream Valley Police, we need to speak to you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The police?<span> </span>Why? “Sorry, what do you mean?” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“We need to speak to you about your daughter, Mr Williams.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Holly?<span> </span>Shit, what’s happened?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A pause.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“There’s been an incident.<span> </span>Your daughter’s… she’s been quite seriously injured.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Fuck.<span> </span>The last thing he’d said in front of her was “Oh fuck off you cow.”<span> </span>Fuck.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What’s happened?<span> </span>Is she ok? <span> </span>What’s happened?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Another pause.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“We’d be very grateful if you could come down to the hospital Mr Williams. <span> </span>We can explain everything when you get here, but she really needs you here as soon as possible.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Shit, what’s happened though?<span> </span>Where’s Dani? Is Dani there?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Another pause.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I really don’t think we can discuss this over the phone Mr Williams, could you please come down to the hospital?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“What can’t we discuss?<span> </span>Where’s Dani? <span> </span>What’s happened to Holly?<span> </span>Is she ok?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“She’s in a critical condition Mr Williams, but she’s stable. <span> </span>She’s… she had a fall.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“A fall?<span> </span>What do you mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“She fell out of a window Mr Williams.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“A window?<span> </span>Fuck, the window? <span> </span>We’re four fucking storeys up!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“It seems that a passerby attempted to catch her Mr Williams. <span> </span>There’s no doubt, if she pulls through this lad saved her life.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Fuck.<span> </span>Where’s Dani?<span> </span>What the fuck was she doing? <span> </span>Wait, the window’s so high up, how the fuck did she fall?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“We’re not totally certain Mr Williams. <span> </span>But please, come down to the hospital. <span> </span>Your daughter needs you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Fuck, ok, shit, I’m on my way”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He pushed his phone down, missing the socket by a distance.<span> </span>He stood up, turned to leave, then stopped. <span> </span>His head was spinning.<span> </span>How could she have fallen out of the window?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He grabbed his car keys, considered and dismissed calling Amanda, and walked away from the chocolate jokes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-62365359935810965932011-08-06T14:53:00.000+01:002011-08-06T14:53:30.778+01:00Why shouldn't we shop at Tesco?Today's <i>Guardian</i>'s<i> Weekend Magazine</i> led on<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/05/john-harris-fight-against-supermarkets?INTCMP=SRCH"> a story about how 'across the country people are battling the relentless march of the 'Big Four''.</a> Have the four horsemen of the Apocalypse come at last? Is there a nationwide movement to find 11 footballers good enough to beat Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool? No, the <i>Guardian </i>doesn't think we should shop in supermarkets.<br />
<br />
The article itself tells a harrowing tale. According to one banner near a Norfolk village 'TESCO IS A PARASITE - it fastens on to healthy, vibrant market towns and KILLS them'. Valiant freedom (from supermarkets) fighters in Bristol have damaged an evil new Tesco store so badly that it had to close for a month, but still the monstrosity matches on. 'Once one of the Big Four has a town in its crosshairs, it can usually be assured of eventual success... Once planning permission has been granted and another supermarket goes up, the inevitable happens: local traders suffer, and many go out of business'. <br />
<br />
Leaving aside the ridiculous metaphor that suggests big supermarkets want to shoot towns, the biggest problem with this narrative is that it totally overlooks the crucial step in the process. When Tesco opens in a town local traders do not 'inevitably' suffer and go out of business. There is no magical corporate voodoo whereby Jerry's Butchers down the road suddenly wakes up to find itself bankrupt. Instead, shoppers can choose to spend buy their food (or clothes, or life insurance) from the supermarket rather than the small business, and if they do the small business loses income.<br />
<br />
The <i>Guardian </i>focuses on the suffering of small business owners in the article, and that is indeed one side of the debate. However what about the shoppers, who can now save 10% on their food bills across the year, and thus afford to give themselves a holiday? Or those who previously didn't have time to get the film they wanted to watch that night because they couldn't squeeze in a trip to the DVD shop and the food shop in the small window of time they had free, but now thanks to a late-opening superstore can settle down in front of <i>Titanic </i>and have some dinner too in the bargain.<br />
<br />
You might argue that those are small and superficial benefits, and they don't compare to the loss to communities and companies that are the necessary cost of such comforts. But if the benefits are so small and the damage to the community so great, then why are enough people shopping in supermarkets to keep them running? If the anti-supermarket campaigners are right and the appearance of Sainsbury's in their town will ruin it, then they need only convince enough people of this truth (which they consider so obvious it is acceptable to cause criminal damage in defence of it) and the new superstore will be choked of custom and move away.<br />
<br />
The other side of the equation is that small businesses can save themselves by providing products or services that are more attractive than what Tesco can offer. Even if they can't compete on price due to economies of scale, there is nothing to stop small businesses going the extra mile to provide superior products or superior customer service. Residents in these towns can support small businesses not by opposing the arrival of supermarkets and denying choice to those who want it, but by continuing to shop in their local butcher even though they could get a wider range of cheaper meat just down the road. Unfortunately, the facts would suggest that (in the main) they don't.<br />
<br />
And what of the <i>Guardian</i>'s other claim against supermarkets, that thanks to the heinous Town and Country Planning Act of 1990 they can 'swing the debate by offering to fund no end of sweeteners: libraries, public spaces, housing, even schools'(!) How immoral, Tesco unscrupulous sinks small businesses by resorting to such disgusting bribery.<br />
<br />
Except, isn't the <i>Guardian </i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog/2011/feb/01/library-closures-protesting">angry about closures to libraries</a>, claiming they're a vital service to communities and education? Aren't we all aware of the great need for housing at the moment, and the corresponding need to ensure there are available public spaces? Didn't Tesco give <a href="http://www.tescoforschoolsandclubs.co.uk/">over £9 million</a> to schools in the UK last year, providing vital equipment that will only become more important in an era of cuts? Isn't the whole argument that Tesco comes to areas and destroys communities completely undermined by the fact that the <i>Guardian </i>are claiming that they buy their way to success by investing in precisely the same communities?<br />
<br />
Of course it is unfortunate for a very hardworking shop-owner if they close down as a result of losing custom to a supermarket. But given that supermarkets also provide jobs, produce products that need workers to produce them and form an important part of the communities they find themselves in, it is simply ridiculous to describe Tesco as a sinister parasite. If you prefer to help local shops then noone is stopping you from doing so. Just don't try and claim the moral high ground if I'd much rather nip down to Asda.Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-47779346686189475912011-07-18T21:34:00.000+01:002011-07-18T21:34:07.835+01:00Review: A Tale of Two Cities<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIrv84BoR961xj_TBaikCSD1L_M9Dc_rAtaqT3rXYq6LiscGUgAfGawnPR0bOktpQQHvoLg3tHJYZxl96CuftkeU_rmAgjx5IMX5nFlFu7LsKj_-7F9gpntQd15XwAs9jKuZNV5pVKFo/s1600/tale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGIrv84BoR961xj_TBaikCSD1L_M9Dc_rAtaqT3rXYq6LiscGUgAfGawnPR0bOktpQQHvoLg3tHJYZxl96CuftkeU_rmAgjx5IMX5nFlFu7LsKj_-7F9gpntQd15XwAs9jKuZNV5pVKFo/s320/tale.jpg" width="198" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>(contains some spoilers)</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Prior to this I’ve had mixed feelings about Dickens. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bleak House</i> is a fantastic book, with a brilliant cast of characters, targeted and effective satire and an extraordinarily complicated plot that all comes together for an excellent finish. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Dorrit</i> is similar, but crumbles at the end, and the characters never quite reach <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bleak House</i> levels. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oliver Twist was ok</i>, but the plot was a little too contrived, and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Nancy</st1:city></st1:place> aside the characters fell on just the wrong side of caricature. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Great Expectations</i> I hated, mainly because of a deep-seated loathing of Pip, and the ridiculous incredulity of Magwitch as a character. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the decision of who to study as a ‘Special Author’ next year looming, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Tale of Two Cities </i>was given the make-or-break position in my Dickensian life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Luckily for Dickens (I like to think he has a particular posthumous interest in whether he is studied by undergraduates, and consequently has a fierce ongoing ghostly war with Virginia Woolf…), the novel is outstanding. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It uses its historical setting (the French Revolution) to just the right extent: it creates an epic backdrop to the action, but never in a way that seems forced. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The emotional tone is excellent, and the story is such that I stayed up until 2am finishing it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To start with an area where Dickens is often brilliant but sometimes dull, the characters of the tale are a particular highlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Typically many of them are unashamedly two dimensional: the deeply evil Marquis St. Evrémonde, the dutiful and sarcastic Miss Pross (although she has a potential sapphic element…), the amusingly pompous Mr Stryver. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However all of these fit into the story very successfully, providing just the right amount of humour to what is (for Dickens) a comparatively serious novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The romantic leads Lucie and Charles are similarly conventional; however they provide a narrative centre for the story to revolve around.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">These characters are fine; however the novel thrives on a core of far more impressive literary creations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Defarges shift from supportive positive characters to terrifying antagonists in a manner that is totally credible, and illustrates the power of the civil war to make villains of otherwise ordinary men. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This gives them far more credibility than Dickens’ numerous motivelessly evil characters such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oliver Twist</i>’s Monks and Bill Sykes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The message here is that the movements of history can move anyone towards evil, a far more complicated a frightening idea than simply the presence of ‘bad guys’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This fickleness of the fates and its relationship with people is typified by the caricatures of the mob, willing to release a prisoner mercifully and then bay for his blood in the space of 24 hours.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Better even than the Defarges is the character of Sydney Carton, who makes a similarly dramatic movement from minor character to Christ-like hero. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His mysterious origins are never really explained; the novel seemed set up perfectly for the final act ‘twist’ to be that Carton was a long lost relative of Darnay (as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jane Eyre</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daniel Deronda</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oliver Twist</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bleak House</i>… the list could continue).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately Dickens rejects this convention and finds a twist that is far more powerful. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By giving the novel’s defining role to such a figure the centrality of the two lovers is comprehensively undermined: we are prompted to look past Romeo and Juliet to see those who suffer to make such pleasant ordinariness even possible.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Carton twist is not the only highlight of a narrative that manages to remain credible in spite of its coincidences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the novel draws towards its conclusion the elements fit perfectly into place: Miss Pross gets to demonstrate her heroism and loyalty (filling a role that very much parallels Carton’s); Dr Manette is allowed to reassert his masculinity in a way that is both deliciously constructed and touchingly heartfelt, only to have it snatched away from him again in order to disprove any claims of sentimentality; even Cruncher’s night-time activities are (at least partially) validated. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The long flashback scene is perhaps a weak point; however it provides crucial motivation that brings the plot together in a way that makes complete sense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Overall then, this is a great success from one of English literature’s acknowledged titans. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s hard to find a way to sum it up succinctly as it operates on so many levels. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Carton might steal the show in the finale, but that does not detract from the quiet heroism of Lorry, the wild passion of the Defarges or even the steady love of the Darnays. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The catalyst of the revolution permits these characters to blend in a way that gives a reader a fresh perspective on the impossibility of black and white judgements of that event, and thus it is fitting that Dickens breaks his trend of black and white characters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only surprise is that there hasn’t been a TV adaptation since 1989: the cinematic scope and sprawling narrative would surely lend itself to another three or four part series. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And will I be studying Dickens next year?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most definitely.</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-91330769100889709752011-07-11T22:35:00.000+01:002011-07-11T22:35:21.875+01:00Review: Dublin by Edward Rutherfurd<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7MSOnDsPOAYmmOmiJx5DBENdxF90ZKa5-On0hrWza6P5dNZJYEqF6uuwD41zlVfD7TN5r6swKRogW9zTKp9XQY3LbNA8VuiNEl20ad0YrQ0qiyHnnh5ClVv9A2mYeaKla3W-DALOVzmw/s1600/dub.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7MSOnDsPOAYmmOmiJx5DBENdxF90ZKa5-On0hrWza6P5dNZJYEqF6uuwD41zlVfD7TN5r6swKRogW9zTKp9XQY3LbNA8VuiNEl20ad0YrQ0qiyHnnh5ClVv9A2mYeaKla3W-DALOVzmw/s1600/dub.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dublin</b></st1:city></st1:place><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> - Edward Rutherfurd<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On one level, Edward Rutherfurd’s <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dublin</i></st1:city></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>succeeds as a collection of well-executed, if somewhat conventional narratives, linked together slightly tenuously by the inter-generational connections between the characters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On another level it raises some really challenging questions about how we view history.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First the stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book, like Rutherfurd’s other works, follows an episodic structure. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each section is set in a different time period of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dublin</st1:place></st1:city>’s history, from the pre-Christian era through to the Reformation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same family’s appear in each episode to give a further sense of continuity, but other than that each episode is almost completely distinct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As mentioned, the stories themselves rarely depart from very conventional plotlines. We have star-crossed lovers, ongoing mistakenly-held grudges, treachery, smuggling and more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each episode is granted only a couple of hundred pages and increasingly they encompass a wide range of characters, so logistical limitations are clearly a factor in the complexity of plotlines.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nonetheless these simple stories succeed in holding a reader’s attention for over 800 pages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Partly this is the historical dimension of the novel, however it is equally due to the very successful characterisation that carries on throughout the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rutherfurd has a gift for creating believable characters in the space of just a few pages, meaning that for all the stories’ simplicity, the reader still feels involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This characterisation, as in Rutherfurd’s other works, is especially strong when an episode stretches over many years: the characters which are most sympathetic are those that we see as children, and then follow as their life shapes them into what they become.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dublin</i></st1:city></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>this tends to be the almost invariably attractive female characters, developing from hopeful adolescents into more worldly women.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The stories are thus strong, but what marks Rutherfurd out has always been the historical dimension to his novels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Historical fiction is a very common genre at the moment, but Rutherfurd separates himself from his peers by his pan-historical focus on one location. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here we see the ancient Irish farmstead of Dubh Linn develop into the Viking <st1:placetype w:st="on">port</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Dyflin</st1:placename>, before finally morphing into the English city of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dublin</st1:place></st1:city>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there is one weakness of this novel compared to Rutherfurd’s other works, it is that the story stops 500 years ago: there is no attempt to build continuity up to the present day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is resolved by the sequel: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ireland: Awakening</i>, but in doing so obviously leaves this first novel incomplete.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rutherfurd is especially good at bringing to life genuine historical characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At times this can verge on simply name-dropping (in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York</i> one of the characters happens to gratuitously mention he’s met a young English sailor, by the name of Horatio Nelson), however <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dublin </i>has the very different task of bringing to life characters of an almost mythological status, in particular St Patrick and Brian Boru. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the scarce historical evidence for these men’s lives, let alone personalities, Rutherfurd seizes the opportunity to create these characters anew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>St Patrick comes through as one of the few genuinely religious characters in a book (and indeed a country) that is dominated by matters of religion-as-politics, while Boru is rendered incredibly sympathetic, even as he is extrapolated from his historical position as a legendary king.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The most interesting question raised by the novel, and indeed from all historical fiction, is that of the very nature of studying history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is almost uncertainly untrue that (SPOILER ALERT) the successful English occupation of Dublin was accomplished due to one Irish girl’s illicit relationship with a treacherous English soldier, and as such that particular episode in the book would have no place in a typical historical textbook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However it is equally evident that, especially for older periods, it is the experiences of the normal men and women that have totally disappeared from the historical record, leaving only wars and dates and kings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We like to pretend (at least in history syllabuses) that history is governed by prevailing socio-economic trends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However in practice those trends consist of the lives of ordinary people that probably had a lot in common with us today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If we told the story of our lives we might flatter ourselves into thinking it would make a similar read to a novel such as this: individual characters interacting, making mistakes and living and dying with the consequences. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in 500 years time, or 1500 years time, will that be what the history textbooks on the turn of the third millennium will focus on? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as somewhere in those narratives of ‘battles over dwindling resources’ in a ‘proto-nuclear age’ will be the lives of all of us, and it is this that is captured in any good piece of historical fiction. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dublin</st1:place></st1:city> probably didn’t fall because of Fionnula Ui Fergusa, but you never know...</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-54749749742119581722011-07-07T12:30:00.000+01:002011-07-07T12:30:09.827+01:00My Apprentice Predictions - Contains Week 10 SpoilersWith two weeks left to go in The Apprentice, Melody's firing means there are only five candidates left. While, in all honesty, this series has (as ever) shown almost all those involved to be useless at business; there have still been moments when a shocking glint of talent has appeared in the sea of mediocrity. There's a strong case for saying some of those who have been fired (Edna, Glenn, Leon) showed more potential than some of those left. However, with next week's task looking to be fairly engaging (setting up a new fast food chain), and <a href="http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s108/the-apprentice/news/a328302/margaret-mountford-apprentice-return-confirmed.html">the final consisting at least partly of interviews</a>, who should (and will) go on to win? If you have an opinion (or disagree angrily with mine) then let me know in the comments, however for me, in reverse order...<br />
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<b>#5 Natasha Scribbins</b><br />
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It's genuinely difficult to think of a single task on which Natasha has excelled. She has been in the boardroom twice (with the beauty treatment and pet food tasks) and in her two tasks as project manager has produced two very suspect victories: first by producing the Lad Mag 'Covered' which ignored their market research and was described as 'vulgar' and 'outdated', and then this week by misunderstanding the task to the point her victory was described as 'hollow' by Lord Sugar, only to be saved by Susan and Jim's sales. More than the statistics, Natasha hasn't really shown any ability in any key area of business: in sales tasks such as the week in Paris she's been weak, her personality is starting to clash with those around her (and with viewers), and as mentioned her leadership choices have been poor. She's been out of the boardroom since week 5, but if she's on the losing team next week, expect her to go.<br />
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<b>#4 Tom Pellereau</b><br />
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I like Tom. Lord Sugar likes Tom. Everyone likes Tom. He will probably prove to be an exceptional business man, as he clearly has a spark of invention and entrepreneurialism that is lacking from many of the other candidates. The problem is, in the context of this show, Tom has been useless. Excepting the Rubbish collection task and the Magazine task, he has lost in every single show, and its difficult to remember anything he contributed to either of those winning teams. As project manager in France he was appalling, showing no leadership and no control over Melody: yes Melody is difficult to lead; no that can't be an excuse for someone wanting to lead a large company. He has shown in many tasks that he has good ideas, and you can't fault him for enthusiasm and personality, but at some stage very soon he needs to show he can lead with authority, and I fear that might be beyond him.<br />
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<b>#3 Susan Ma</b><br />
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Despite her life persisting in being 'so unfair' and her unfortunate ability to be the most consistently unintentionally hilarious candidate ('Do French people like their children?'), Susan has in fact shown a lot of talent. Her sales abilities are impressive, she's shown herself to be correct only to be shouted down more often than Tom has, and she's picked up two wins as project manager; admittedly largely thanks to Helen's pitch in Paris and a total absence of opposition in the hotel-buying task. As was said in the last episode, Susan does seem almost like a bullied child, she does lack the respect of the other candidates (especially Natasha and, until she went, Zoe). This reflects badly on the bullies, but equally Susan has got to stand up for herself: as with Tom, the inability to manage strong personalities cannot be an excuse any longer. With this in mind, Susan ideally needs to project-manage and win in next week's task to show her steel, but at age 21 has potentially got as much up-side as any of the other candidates.<br />
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<b>#2 Jim Eastwood</b><br />
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Jim certainly seems to polarize reactions: many have attacked him as manipulative and passive aggressive, while others (perhaps manipulated by his passive aggression) are in awe of his patter and the results he often gets. Love him or hate him, Jim has been instrumental in winning many tasks: this week his sales were picked out by Nick as a 'Tour de Force'; last week his pitch to Asda was risky, but ultimately delivered a huge victory; back in Week 3 his negotiating skill in the hotel-buying task was vital in an £8 victory. As these demonstrate, sales, pitching and negotiating are all massive strengths for Jim, the question-marks come in his business strategy and leadership. In the Pet Food task he was instrumental in the poor decisions that lost the task; Vincent was fired just for not bringing Jim back. Similarly in the one task Jim has led his poor decisions resulted in a loss, although it was his decision (against opposition) to target the elderly, which was widely seen as a good choice. To attack Jim for being manipulative seems to miss that, far from being a vice of his, it is simply something he does better than anyone else: Jim's skills as a salesman are at their most desperate when they are defending his own performance, even when the evidence isn't there. We need to see Jim produce something beyond sales in the final task (which, in fairness, he did something towards by being the sole candidate to understand the importance of re-investment in this week's task) or he could be torn apart in the interviews stage, but thus far Jim is very much a contender.<br />
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<b># Helen Milligan </b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipNfi58arLbkp6Ae6-biL0xC62MhBMUbpipPNhQHqjDKCIpbVAcshQkww8Eiv1UCpEdSV8qWbURCupeCW4G0lROIEWnjW_L85lnuda8KJs6eEpg2Th5KjVscyssdD9mGC7s6-rUektjQg/s1600/Hel.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipNfi58arLbkp6Ae6-biL0xC62MhBMUbpipPNhQHqjDKCIpbVAcshQkww8Eiv1UCpEdSV8qWbURCupeCW4G0lROIEWnjW_L85lnuda8KJs6eEpg2Th5KjVscyssdD9mGC7s6-rUektjQg/s1600/Hel.PNG" /></a></div><br />
Picking Helen as the favorite might not be the most exciting choice, but to do otherwise could only be playing a very weak devil's advocate. Even looking past the fact she has won on every task, she has shown plenty of signs elsewhere that she is a very strong candidate: initially she was a quiet contributor who never attracted complaint from any of her teammates, before coming to the fore in leading successfully in the Rubbish Disposal task and the Biscuit task, as well as her series-defining pitch in Paris to La Redoute. With all this evidence her victory ought to be a formality, but (almost as if it were scripted...) this week's task threw a spanner in the works: Helen may have been correct to criticise Melody, but showed no business sense whatsoever in her own decisions in the task. Her coup was more self-serving than any valid attempt to help the team: it has no chance of being successful (and indeed I don't think Helen knew what she would have done if it had been), and only served to amp up the pressure on a struggling Melody. There have been small cracks elsewhere: her two victories came by £8 and by one pitch-from-Jim, and La Redoute aside she hasn't produced much at the highest level. Nonetheless with two weeks to go she is very much in the driving seat: if she performs well in next week's task then it would seem foolish for Sir Alan to pick against her.<br />
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</b>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-28441504414118950872011-07-05T14:25:00.000+01:002011-07-05T14:25:22.734+01:00My 10 Favourite Songs You’ve Never Heard Of<div class="MsoNormal">As someone who genuinely still thinks ‘Indie’ music is by definition rare and unknown, it’s fun to look at my itunes top played songs and realise that even I have some unknown diamonds in the rough. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The criteria for entry are fairly vague: if the artist has ever had a top 20 song then to be selected a track has to have never been released as a single, if not then it just can’t have reached the top 40.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you think you can do better, or if any of these choices make you inexplicably angry, then post something in the comments.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#10 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iorf901SMA">Fall Out Boy – 27</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A lot of people seem to see Fall Out Boy as a bit of a joke (see most of the band's <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fall%20out%20boy">Urban Dictionary entries</a>, and their later albums have come in for an especially heavy beating. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps this is unsurprising, when the band made decisions like not releasing this as a single from their final studio album <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Folie-Deux-Fall-Out-Boy/dp/B001F0JD84">Folie À Deux</a>. Chock full of the brilliant/terrible lyrics that have always polarised fans/people who want to see them die painfully, this is definitely another marmite song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However from the catchy-yet-macabre opening ‘If home is where the heart is, then we’re all just fucked’ to the ridiculous-yet-meaningful chorus ‘My mind is a safe / And if I keep it then we all get rich / My body is an orphanage / We take everyone in’, this a song that can both be sung along to in a crowd and pondered at home.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#9 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqocY9i03k">Nino <st1:place w:st="on">Rota</st1:place> – What Is A Youth</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Listening to this song, it’s unsurprising it comes from the soundtrack to a film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet: the melancholic vocals mean that if it isn’t being played over a montage of despairing lovers then you feel honour bound to assemble those around you and form such a montage yourself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The heart-breaking opening gives way to a slightly incongruously upbeat second half, but the song as a whole understatedly exudes a universally applicable sense of romantic tragedy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wow that sentence was depressing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#8 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AOQ9jXC6iE">Jack Johnson – Constellations</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems like a back handed insult to say that Jack Johnson is the perfect music to fall asleep to, but anyone who has heard him will know exactly what that means. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems impossible to imagine the man playing a gig, as his music is perfectly designed for softly rippling out of headphones as you lie on a beach at night. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As such, this song about lying on a beach at night brings together form and content in a way most classic poets could only dream of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact the lyrics are all in the past tense save for the loaded ‘The west winds often last too long / And when they calm down, nothing ever feels the same’ means that the song definitely has a sense of nostalgia, but nostalgia is a dish best served with relaxed guitar, soothing vocals and a lullaby.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#7 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fttL8X9-vx0">Brandi Carlile – Caroline</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With current musical trends moving endlessly towards R&B, Brandi Carlile provides a welcome break with some infectiously upbeat indie-country. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lyrics seem to be detailing a folksy lesbian romance from middle-America, however Carlile says the song was actually written to her niece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That fits in well with the childlike glee of the song, definitely the catchiest from a <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Give-up-Ghost-Brandi-Carlile/dp/B002PBMZBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309869493&sr=8-1">generally strong album </a>which also features many growers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#6 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T547vDMPpJ8">The Fratellis – Creeping Up The Backstairs</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Again it’s mystifying this wasn’t released as a single from The Fratellis first album <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Costello-Music-Fratellis/dp/B000HKDB72/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1309865132&sr=1-1">Costello Music</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The opening manic drumbeat heralds a breakneck pace throughout which only gets quicker, if anything the vocals only slow the song down. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lyrically the song isn’t the strongest, however the hints towards what make up the ‘mother’s nightmares’ fit in well with the song’s hectic vibe. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was massively disappointing not to see this performed live in a generally average set at Reading Festival 2008, as the energy of the track would make it perfect for such a stage</div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#5 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lcnvd8BNFE">Steve Earle – The <st1:place w:st="on">Galway</st1:place> Girl</a></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is a controversial entry, as thanks to its appearance in the film ‘P.S. I Love You’ and in a high profile Magners advertising campaign this song has probably been heard by more people than any other on this list, but judging by the tragic absence of any sort of ‘Chart Performance’ section on the song’s Wikipedia page, it seems clear that no one other than me actually went out and bought it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The uninitiated (including me, prior to five minutes ago) might see much of the song’s power in the assumption this is a timeless Irish tune passed down by the bards for many centuries, sung to Galway Girls for many a year. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, it was in fact written in 2000 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Earle">‘an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views’</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, as one of the millions of people around the world with dubious Irish heritage, that only makes me love it more.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>#4 </b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzGw_ORJblM">The Brilliant Things – Revolution</a></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Seeing this Irish band perform live at Reading Festival last year was a bizarre experience: one of the muddiest weekends of my life was suddenly punctuated by a blonde woman in a full length pink ball gown screaming to her watching crowd (of about 12) to dance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marie Junior’s vocals manage to balance softer moments with the soaring chorus that seems designed for far bigger crowds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The band are still yet to release an album, however if they do this soaring track will certainly be at the heart of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#3 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4OLQB7ON9w">Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It seems something of a tragedy that Imogen Heap’s crazily original (and slightly mental) tune peaked at 125 in the UK chart, whereas Jason Derulo’s derivative ‘Whatcha Say’ which sampled it reached number 3 and went multi-platinum in four countries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heap claims the song is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hide_and_Seek_(Imogen_Heap_song)#Heap.27s_commentary">about both a painful break-up and George Bush</a>, which makes about as much sense as ‘Hide and seek / Trains and sewing machines / Blood and tears / They were here first’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonetheless the brilliant a capella vocal arrangement (something Heap excels at) gives the song a truly haunting feel, which is perhaps even added to by its ambiguous meaning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#2 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7tWW246-EI">Eliza Doolittle – Creep (Radiohead Cover)</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">She might be best known for infectious summer pop songs like ‘Pack Up’ and ‘Skinny Genes’, but a quick look at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ElizaDoolittleMusic">Eliza Doolittle’s Youtube Channel</a> reveals a remarkable range of cover songs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of these, by far the most powerful is her stripped back cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost totally A Capella, Doolittle shows off her voice at its most raw: devoid of any possibility of auto-tune the very successful 23 year-old pop star somehow manages to give real emotion to this anthem for outcasts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As yet the track can only be seen on Youtube, and it may never get a commercial release, however it certainly emphasises the range of talents that this otherwise generic pop star possesses.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">#1 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbFlHd1GP1w">FM Static – Tonight</a><o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Everyone has songs that pick up emotional resonance because of hearing them at a certain time in their life where it seems a songwriter has perfectly understood what you feel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lot of the time you then get over the moment of teen angst that prompted such soppy sentiments, but sometimes the song is powerful enough to stick around long after the memories fade. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This haunting ballad about a dead brother from a totally unknown Toronto-based pop punk band is one of those. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The chorus is generic enough to apply to any situation, but on its own would risk descending into melodrama. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the details in the verses that really make the song stand out: ‘I remember the car you were last seen in / and the games we would play’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-49812005124332708142010-09-01T01:24:00.000+01:002010-09-01T01:29:47.371+01:00Reading Festival Review - SaturdayA day that featured no less than three outstanding performances from three very different acts, this was almost worth the weekend entry fee in itself. The great thing about Reading is that you can flick from great comedy to music, and this proved it: even missing the likes of Kevin Bridges and Jason Byrne, Frank Turner and Pendulum; there was still more than enough going on on Saturday to keep me thoroughly entertained.<div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">3OH!3 (NME Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Having spent the morning enjoying the sights of Reading town centre, I only made it back to the festival for 3OH!3 at 2.30.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It might have been the two times within a minute that I could hit by cups of (thankfully cold) liquid, or the fact it was the first band of the day, but this set really didn’t do it for me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They played the hits and got the crowd jumping, as well as making a 3-0-3 gesture with their hands (you join your thumbs and index fingers in a circle to make the ‘o’ in the middle, and then raise the other fingers to get three on each side.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sneaky eh?), but their back catalogue of songs were far less impressive – getting the crowd to sing along with lyrics is normally a winner, but I honestly couldn’t stomach publically chanting such profound lines as ‘I'm gonna have a house party in my house / I'm gonna pour booze down my mouth’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They were far from bad, but also far from as good as I was hoping, although that was possibly because I was subconsciously hoping Katy Perry and/or Kesha might be there…</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £7.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s hard to pick out why, but they just didn’t wake me up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">I Blame Coco (<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Festival</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Republic</st1:placetype></st1:place> Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Putting aside Gaggle the day before, I’ve always really enjoyed seeing bands on the smaller tents – you can get a lot closer, its louder and the atmosphere is a lot more intense.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I Blame Coco, fronted by Sting’s daughter Coco Sumner, were a good example of this – musically they were nothing too special, but the atmosphere in the tent was really good.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The highlight was ‘Self Machine’, which is well worth looking up for its catchy chorus that shows off her voice well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In general female singers at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Reading</st1:place></st1:city> are such a rarity that when they are around they make a welcome change.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £7.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In fairness, the fact that they were worth as much as a band with two recent top 10 singles is pretty impressive for a band I’d never heard before</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">JJ Whitehead (Alternative Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This was only a short portion of his set, when we arrived early for Milton Jones.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was some of the funniest material of the weekend here (‘Breast size for guys is like Coke vs Pepsi: we’ll express a preference, but really we’ll have whatever’s on tap.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As long as its not flat’), but equally some jokes bombed and he came across as fairly uncomfortable and nervous – on more than one occasion he complained about the noise from the main stage, which is one of the problems of situating any spoken-word venue in an arena where rock music is also being played.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Perhaps under difference circumstances he would have been better, but its always hard to get into a comedian who doesn’t seem confident in his own material.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £2.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Assuming the first part of the set was at the same level as the bit we managed to catch, he’d definitely be worth a fiver to see at a comedy club, but isn’t at the level where he could fill a theatre.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Milton Jones (Alternative Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I was torn what to expect with Milton Jones – on the one hand some of his one liners on Mock the Week are absolutely hilarious, but equally I have to admit I was sceptical he could last a full set of such short jokes without repeating older material, especially after that affected Steven K Amos for me the day before.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the end though I couldn’t have been more wrong – the material was from start to finish at the very least laugh out loud funny, on more than one occasion worthy of applause, and probably the most entertaining comedy I’ve seen live, certainly at Reading.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Particular highlights include an ongoing joke about his many Grandparents, but genuinely almost the entire set was brilliant.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His style of comedy might divide people, but if you’re into one-liners he was every bit as good as Jimmy Carr was when I saw him last year</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £25.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After a fairly slow start to the day, this set really got us going.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The comedy line-up was really impressive on paper this year to the point where on the poster Milton Jones wasn’t even a headliner, however for me he totally stole the show.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:city st="on"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Darwin</b></st1:city><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"> Deez (<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Festival</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Republic</st1:placetype></st1:place> Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our otherwise excellent clash-finder (from website <a href="http://www.clashfindergeneral.co.uk/">www.clashfindergeneral.co.uk</a> – it’s definitely worth printing one off rather than paying £7 for the official programme, which is handily worn around the neck so everyone can see you got ripped off…) mixed up the stage time for Darwin Deez, so it was purely by chance that we found out when he was playing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Given I only knew (and wasn’t especially impressed by…) ‘Radar Detector’ this probably wouldn’t have bothered me too much at the time, however with hindsight would have been a travesty: this was (up until this point) probably the single best set I’d seen in two and half years at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Reading</st1:place></st1:city>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The music was surprisingly good, but it was totally overshadowed by the show that the band put on: they repeatedly got the crowd involved and performed hilarious choreographed routines worthy of an OK-Go video.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We managed to cut through the crowd to be just a couple of rows from the front, and the atmosphere was brilliant – everyone in the tent couldn’t help but have a smile on their face.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>By the time ‘Radar Detector’ came on everyone, myself included, had been completely won over, and it provided a fitting singalong to end an incredibly entertaining gig.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Picking out a highlight is tough when the entire gig was consistently so good, but the moment when they got a security guard up on stage to dance with them sticks in the memory.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Also a special mention to the very attractive (if scarily androgynous) guitarist/dancer, who managed to pull off a baggy t-shirt and pink hat better than any girl I’ve seen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An outstanding set.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £30.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What made these guys even more impressive is that they were so entertaining on a budget of literally nothing – bands on the Main Stage could learn from their example of bringing entertainment in a form that wasn’t an over the top light show or some clichéd fireworks.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Dizzee Rascal (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have to say, while I like a fair few of Dizzee’s singles, I’ve never been convinced by non-rock music at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Reading</st1:place></st1:city> – it’s great to dance to in a club, but perhaps for that very reason it doesn’t transfer that well to a live performance simply because it’s nothing special.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To be fair to him he played to his crowd with a Nirvana based mash-up and the (enormous) crowd were all jumping for ‘Bonkers’, so clearly a lot of people enjoyed it a lot – bear in mind it wasn’t so long ago that 50 Cent lasted barely 10 minutes at Reading. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So no offence to Dizzee who did a very decent set, it just wasn’t especially my thing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Also the number of people on each others shoulders where we were meant that even a glimpse of the big screen was a rarity, let alone seeing Dizzee in the flesh (although he was handily dressed in bright red, presumably for maximum visibility).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £10.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s undeniably fun to be in an enormous crowd singing along to ‘Bonkers’, but for me it just wasn’t especially more entertaining than doing the same in a club – it was just as sweaty and you got about as good a view of the man himself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">The Libertines (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While I’ve heard a lot about them from various older and wiser people than me, my limited gigging/festival career had never yet produced a genuine ‘you just had to be there’ show; probably the closest I’ve come was Rage Against the Machine at Reading two years ago, who had an absolutely mental crowd, but unfortunately just weren’t my type of music at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On that night, having watched the breathtaking <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Guantanamo</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Bay</st1:placetype></st1:place> themed start to their set, I went to the NME Tent and watched Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles perform what I thought was a very entertaining set to an almost empty tent.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So perhaps it was meant to be that two years later, that very same man was at the centre of what will surely go down as the set of the festival, one to perhaps rival Rage in 2008 as the best of recent years.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have to admit I didn’t know very much of The Libertines before the festival, the only song I knew at all well was ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When my friends persuaded me that I had no choice but to see them I had youtubed a few others and been very impressed, but given the band split up when I was barely even a teenager I have to say I was totally unprepared for the completely unreal atmosphere of anticipation they inspired in the crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At <st1:place st="on">Leeds</st1:place> the night before they had had to briefly halt their set because the crowd was crushing so much, and even before the set started it was totally clear why.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the band came on to the vaguely surreal but still incredibly poignant sound of Vera Lynn (I think?), it had already become clear that this was something special.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">With no new material to slow down the set, the band played what I later learned was essentially a greatest hits set, and it came off perfectly.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The crowd around me knew every word to every song, while I had the advantage of being constantly surprised by a string of songs with great melodies and lyrics that even I could see the emotional resonance of – I’m definitely not the first, or even the thousandth, person to point it out, but it was impossible not to connect to a recently reunited band famous for their rock’n’roll antics singing ‘What became of the Likely Lads?’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That song was one of my favorites, along with the beautiful ‘Music When the Lights Go Out’, and ‘I Get Along’ was an outstanding finale.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t know the band’s back catalogue well enough to know if they could have pulled out another thirty minutes of material, but if they could have then this would have been a headline set that far outdid any I’ve seen in its atmosphere and scale.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Magical.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £60.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In fairness the case could be made that, for a genuine fan at least, seeing this gig would have been bordering on priceless – it’s still unclear if they’ll ever play together again.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Alas my student-sized wallet couldn’t stretch too far, but even though I almost felt like a trespasser in a religious ceremony, this was still something very very special.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:place st="on"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Arcade</b></st1:place><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"> Fire (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Even as I begin to write this, I can already feel the combined wrath of everyone with any musical influence, given that every review I’ve read of this set so far has been almost rhapsodic in its praise, but I just didn’t get the hype.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Perhaps it was the come down off The Libertines, and the fact that the crowd where I was (on the second barrier, which in fairness had been manic just thirty minutes earlier) weren’t especially into it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Their music wasn’t bad at all, but it felt, to me at least, as if they should have been playing a 3rd of 4th headliner slot – for 45 minutes or so it was fine, but the total lack of any recognisable hit for a non-fan meant it lost momentum and in the end I left to go and see Ash.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I humbly accept the criticism of everyone who knows anything about music, and if it salvages any credibility I have to say I watched some of their highlights on TV and slightly regretted missing the second half of the set, but on the night it simply didn’t do it for me, and having failed to get into the enormously overcrowded Festival Republic tent for Ash I called it a night.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sorry.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £15.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well I wouldn’t really, had I somehow gotten hold of a ticket I would have sold it for £15 to a fan and let them laugh at my stupidity and enjoy their night.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Overall Value: £156. </b><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <div>After a slow start this was definitely the best single day I’ve ever seen at the festival in three years: Milton Jones set the bar high; Darwin Deez pushed it up a little further, and The Libertines smashed the bar into tiny little pieces.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If that much metaphor mixing makes sense… </div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-84466350998221820442010-08-31T00:33:00.000+01:002010-08-31T01:26:53.102+01:00Reading Festival Review - FridayGiven it began with walking out of my opening set of the day after less than 2 songs and ended with Axl Rose shouting into a switched off microphone, this was actually a very very good days music. Flitting between 4 stages I managed to catch a lot of different acts, from the comedy of Steven K. Amos to the mosh pits of Lostprophets, with other great performances from NOFX and Mumford and Sons along the way.<div><br /></div><div>Rather than some boring scale of grading acts like a score out of 10, I've opted to give each band the amount of money I would be willing to pay to see them, based on the set they gave. I wanted to see if, even if the camping experience was ignored (which is in some ways priceless, and in other ways muddy), I managed to get my £192.50's worth out of the weekend. This takes into account a lot of things - I'd obviously pay more to see a band I hadn't seen before, or a band I wouldn't be able to see again. </div><div><br /></div><div>Enjoy the review.</div><div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Gaggle (<st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Festival</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Republic</st1:placetype></st1:place> Stage)</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Seeing that, while every other stage had music starting at midday, “Gaggle” were supposedly starting at 11.30, we decided to check them out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the end they were delayed half an hour anyway, but we figured we’d stick around.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our expectations for the band on the bottom of the bill of one of the smallest stages at the festival were obviously low, but in the five minutes that I saw Gaggle managed to undercut them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For those who don’t know this act, Gaggle consisted of approximately ten girls in fancy dress chanting to the accompaniment of very loud drums.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Two of the girls were carrying a large sign, which read ‘This is merely a distraction from the inevitable’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I can only assume this was a self-deprecating pun, the aforementioned ‘inevitable’ being their total lack of tune.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To be fair on them, friends who stayed for the whole set thought they got a lot better after the opening two songs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the other hand, I couldn’t even last those opening two songs…</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £0.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You would genuinely have to pay me to see them again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Young Guns (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I missed the opening few minutes of these guys because of Gaggle, but what I did see was fairly impressive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The music was decent, if uninspiring, and they did their best to get the crowd involved.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Also you got the feeling that they were genuinely incredibly excited, almost to the point of being overawed, at the chance to open the festival – something I found made me warm to them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On top of this they engaged with the crowd with some fairly amusing banter including a Reading-residents-specific joke about playing at the Face Bar (a dive of a venue in <st1:city st="on">Reading</st1:city>) which showed that they knew their crowd and also probably explained why playing the main stage at <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Reading</st1:city></st1:place> was so exciting to them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £5.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They were nothing special, but were definitely entertaining and made an effort, and compared to Gaggle they were mindblowing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Surfer Blood (NME Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">With a name like that, my expectations of this band were floating in some bewildering nether-space between Jack Johnson and Death Metal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sadly they weren’t quite that interesting – the atmosphere where I was was fairly muted.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Entertainment was provided by the drummer/pianist with an enormous mop of hair, who managed to hit his cymbal so hard that it fell over leaving a roadie to desperately scramble to remedy the situation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If that doesn’t sound interesting, you probably wouldn’t have liked this band,</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £2.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Staying until the end was at least partly due to their being not too much else on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Emo Phillips (Alternative Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I only caught the very end of his set when arriving for Steven K Amos, but it only served to maintain the impression I got of him from my youtubing him: I really don’t see what the fuss is about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What I saw seemed to mainly consist of saying uninteresting things in an incredibly annoying voice, which just didn’t do it for me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A friend of mine said he was an ‘acquired taste’ and he was advertised as one of the biggest comedy draws, so perhaps I just need to see more</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £0.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Steven K. Amos (Alternative Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Having seen (and been very much impressed by) Steven K Amos on Live at the Apollo, and knowing that he was coming straight from a well reviewed show at Edinburgh, I had pretty high expectations of this.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was funny, and in particular he improvised to the audience very well (an unfortunate pair of girls who chose to leave midway through the set from a position right in front of the stage were repeatedly asked why their were being racist, which they dealt with by putting up their hoods and refusing to make eye contact.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Unfortunately a lot of the material was stuff I had heard before, which I guess can be the curse of appearing on TV as a comedian.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Still, definitely worth watching though.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £8, although had I not seen him before I’m sure it would have been more</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">NOFX (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I must admit that a significant part of the reason I went to see these guys was to get a good space down the front for Lostprophets, but with little idea what to expect (my only previous experience of them being their absolutely hilarious song ‘She’s Nubs’, which I was gutted they didn’t play) I was very impressed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They combined their energetic and well received music with a near constant string of jokes and banter with the crowd, and were generally very entertaining.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Particular highlights were ‘Eat the Meek’ and ‘Franco Un-American’ (you know a band has done well at festival when you liked them enough to look up song titles when you got home a few days later), and also a string of Mexican and Jewish jokes set to music (“what did the Mexican boy get for Christmas? My bike.” being probably the closest to being repeatable in polite company).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Unlike a lot of bands on all stages they genuinely put on a show, so even for those who didn’t know them they were a very entertaining use of 45 minutes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">On top of this, they also played a secret set in the Lock Up Tent on Saturday night, which according to a friend was even better than the mainstage, as well as a lot heavier.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d have been tempted to go, but unfortunately they clashed with the Libertines…</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £15.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One of the few music acts that would have been entertaining even had their music been awful, I’d have been paying for comedy and music all in one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Lostprophets (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a line-up that almost entirely stretched beyond the grasp of my limited music knowledge, Lostprophets were one of the few familiar names on the bill – I’d already seen their headlining set last year on the NME stage, as well as watching youtube highlights of their Main Stage 2007 set countless times (definitely worth checking out).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Playing in front of a huge banner that simply read “MEGA MEGA LOLZ LOLZ !!!! !!!!”, the band played hits such as ‘Burn Burn’, ‘Rooftops’ and ‘Last Train Home’ which could have been written just for such a festival occasion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The atmosphere down the front was electric and everyone was jumping (except when literally stuck in the mud in the areas that hadn’t been covered with wood chips) and singing along.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I heard afterwards that their were some sound problems, but where we were it was plenty loud enough, and you won’t hear me complaining about a set with an atmosphere like that where I knew every word, other than the superfluous Guns N Roses cover.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £26.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It would have been £25, but not only was the atmosphere great but I also succeeded in finding a pound in the mud on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Great success.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Biffy Clyro (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Seeing as we were at the front anyway, it seemed a no-brainer to stay their for Biffy – I saw him from the back two years ago and was very impressed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t know if it was the come-down from Lostprophets and NOFX, but this set seemed to slightly lack something – for large periods the crowd were fairly flat and lead singer Simon Neill seemed to lack the charisma to go with the peroxide blonde beard and bright pink jeans in which he was dressed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It wasn’t bad by any means, and the hits got people moving, but it just didn’t really come together as well as it might from where I was standing, particularly given this was a third headliner.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £8.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m aware £8 wouldn’t get me into a Biffy Clyro concert.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Which is why I don’t think I’ll be going to a Biffy Clyro concert.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Mumford and Sons (NME Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’ve become more and more of a fan of this band since I first heard ‘Little Lion Man’ about a year ago, and judging from the size of the crowd they had here a lot of other people felt the same.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s often a struggle to get near the front for big acts in the tent, however here it was a struggle to even get near the tent, with the crowd spilling out on all sides.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Having arrived just as the band were started I had to settle for a space just outside the tent on the right hand side near a big screen – normally this would have ruined the atmosphere but the enthusiasm of the crowd overcame this – one enterprising group of kids near us improvised their own mosh pit made up entirely of their group.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The band have a very different sound to the majority of acts at Reading (my Mum watching the highlights at home described them as ‘folk’), and it most certainly worked – the atmosphere for songs like ‘Awake My Soul’ in particular was electric.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The experience was probably slightly inferior to what it would have been in the tent itself, but was still enchanting in its own way – they certainly outplayed Biffy Clyro who had their third headliner spot on the Main Stage.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £10.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This takes into account the lack of view – for a space near the front it would probably have been at least double this.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Guns N Roses (Main Stage)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What a mess.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There’s so much to say about this set that its hard to know where to start.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had been joking all day about the chances of Axl Rose showing up on time, so it was probably optimistic to arrive early, but it meant we got a reasonable space in the middle of what was (initially) a very large crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the minutes ticked by the atmosphere turned from excited to annoyed and finally to despairing – the group I was with lost half its members during the wait.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I heard some people afterwards defending the band and saying it was ridiculous to expect Gun N Roses to be on time, however I think this misses the point.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This wasn’t their gig, it was a festival, bands had chosen to see them when they could have been elsewhere – a friend of mine who did choose to see a different act and arrived an hour late got their in time to see the whole set.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was totally disgraceful and arrogant, and the lack of apology meant they had lost the crowd from the start – they came on to a chorus of boos, which continued sporadically throughout.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That being said, when they were on stage they put on a very entertaining show.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The entertainment varied from the hits (by this point I knew ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’, thank you Lostprophets) to spectacular guitar solos, particularly from DJ Ashba (or ‘Not Slash’, as my section of the crowd persisted in calling him), to the hilarity of Axl Rose’s array of costume changes, which only seemed to include variations on ‘pimp’ and ‘cowboy’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bits of the set were as good musically as anything else in the week, but the crowd were cold and wet and the atmosphere was very and up and down, particularly during technically impressive but unentertaining piano solos.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The stage set, so ridiculed by NOFX earlier, was spectacular if bewildering: the big screen behind the band alternated between showing live footage of the band, animations of fire, videos of women at least 20 years too young for Axl Rose and, most perplexingly of all, footage of Formula 1 cars.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Overall it was definitely worth seeing, but equally far from perfect.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In most gigs, that would be all there was to say, but Guns N Roses had a finale that was certainly more interesting than any other act across the weekend.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Having already overrun by 30 minutes, the organisers literally pulled the plug on the band before the encore, leaving Axl Rose to rant noiselessly through a switched off microphone.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The band do deserve credit for staying around to play an acoustic version of ‘Paradise City’ through a megaphone to fans at the front (we couldn’t hear it, a friend who could said it wasn’t bad at all given the circumstances), but equally the situation was entirely of their own making – not only were they an hour late but they also padded their set with the aforementioned costume changes and instrumentals.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As a non Guns N Roses fan it made for a fascinatingly farcical spectacle, but for fans of the band it was a lost half an hour of music, which is a shame.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’d have paid… rating: £25.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was incredibly flawed in so many different ways, but it was a genuine musical event in its own way, as well as featuring some brilliant music.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Of the £25 most would go to DJ Ashba, some would go to the effects team, and about 50p would go to Axl Rose on condition he didn’t change outfit in the process of receiving it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Overall Value: £95</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not at all bad for the first day of three, wiping off almost half the ticket cost already. </p></div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-86110233786811088582010-08-05T15:37:00.001+01:002010-08-05T15:38:04.139+01:00Inception: why the flaws don't matter<p class="MsoNormal">With the combination of a very successful director, a very original idea and a very strong cast, Inception always had a lot going for it. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is a lot of hype around the film, but it more than justifies most of it. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christopher Nolan has always been strong at creating films that look incredible; while in theory it is Ellen Page’s Ariadne who is the artist designing the film’s dream sequences it is easy to make the connection back to Nolan revelling in his medium’s new visual possibilities.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This isn’t to say the film doesn’t have weaknesses.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Many people have commented that it simply doesn’t make sense, but I didn’t think it was too hard to follow: once you get past the opening scenes (confusing mainly because nothing has yet been explained) the amount of exposition in the first part of the film makes the vast majority of the second part simple enough to follow. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However a more fundamental problem are the holes in the plot.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Just one example of this is that we have no real idea why (or indeed if) the entire project is in anyway morally justified.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are given literally a sentence explanation: if the project doesn’t succeed then there will be a global energy monopoly. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The fact that this line is stated by the rival of this company who quite possibly just wants to weaken a competitor is glossed over by the film: clearly we are not supposed to question that the goodies are good, and the baddies bad: this in spite of the fact that Cillian Murphy’s Robert Fischer seems nice enough and probably not deserving of having his empire ripped apart (remember, he only wants this because he’s tricked into doing so).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yet despite this and many other holes (a man who can afford to buy an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">entire airline</i> cannot finance any other way of achieving what he wants?), Inception is still a terrifically entertaining film. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Part of this is the relentless action: it is hard to have time to question what is happening if every five minutes is punctuated by an explosion, a gunshot, or the streets of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city> folding like origami. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">On top of this however is a further enormous strength of the film: the characterisation of Dom and Mal (who I honestly thought were called Tom and Moll for the entire of the film). <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some have criticised Mal as one-dimensional and bitter, but that seems to miss the entire point: the Mal we see in the film is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">not</i> the woman Dom loved. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The story is tragic precisely for this reason: the dream-Mal is a pale and deeply flawed reflection of her real life counterpart; yet the love Dom felt for her is so much that he cannot let even this malevolent double leave him. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The second fascinating dimension to the Dom and Mal story is the idea of the distinctions between dreams and reality.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mark Kermode, BBC 5Live’s excellent film critic, made the point that part of the confusion in the film (best shown at the beginning and the end) as to what is real and what is a dream is a reflection of this same dilemma that the central characters face. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This age-old philosophical problem is given life by the relationship between the characters: if it is impossible to tell whether we’re in real life or a dream (or a dream within a dream within a dream within limbo) then why shouldn’t we choose the option where we can stay with the one we love? <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The fact that Dom doesn’t give in to this temptation aligns him with us in ‘the real world’, but nonetheless the temptation is placed out there. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This reminded me of the scene in the first Matrix film where Cypher betrays his friends in order to abandon the harsh ‘real’ world and return to the blissful dream, however here it is given much more subtle treatment, mainly due to the positive emotion that binds the couple together.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Overall then, this is a really really good film, that’s well worth seeing twice. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The weaknesses in the storyline are more than made up for by the originality of the concept, the pace of the action, but most importantly the emotional connection between the characters. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Oh and you get to stare at Ellen Page and/or Leonardo DiCaprio for two and half hours, so it definitely has something for everyone!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304021102983051249.post-9218686092897363442010-06-27T18:13:00.000+01:002010-06-27T18:36:52.733+01:00Did we ever consider that Germany might be quite good?You probably won't be surprised when you hear that, having watched the England-Germany World Cup match today, I feel like a rant.<div><br /></div><div>What might surprise you is that it isn't actually about the England team. Sure, they weren't great, losing 4-1 can't just be put down to a disallowed goal (why didn't the commentators notice the massive parallels with 1966?). But at the risk of being proved horribly wrong when Germany play Argentina next week, maybe it might just be that Germany are quite good.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone has been saying that this is a weak German team, and maybe compared to some of their past sides that might be fair. However the combination of Podolski and Klose up front, with midfielders including Oezil and Schweinsteiger, means that they are clearly a massive attacking threat. England's defence looked very average today, but given that the only goal we conceded in the rest of the tournament was a speculative long-shot, surely its fair to put a significant amount of the blame for the loss on some pretty outstanding German counter-attacking?</div><div><br /></div><div>On top of that, the disallowed goal clearly had a massive impact. Both of Germany's second half goals came when counter-attacking when England had overcommitted up front. The defending was still poor, but equally the situations very possibly wouldn't have come about had the game been level at 2-2. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, on the whole, it could easily have ended up differently had a few things gone differently, but on the whole was a fair result against a good side. Was this the reaction of most England fans? Of course not. Listening to 5live on the way home from the game the most common words flying around, from both callers and the pundits, included 'woeful', 'embarrassing', 'debacle' (although I have to say, I do like that word...); one caller had a list of England players who 'should never have played international football': it included every single player in the team other than David James, Ashley Cole and Steven Gerrard. One caller, combining both spectacular economic knowledge and expert football punditry, said that the entire team needed a pay-cut because we're in a recession. (No seriously, that's what he said). On the whole, everyone seemed very angry.</div><div><br /></div><div>This brings us to a massive question about English sports supporters in general; why can't we deal with doing badly? The way things ended up today the blame is on the players for being so 'woeful', had the game finished 2-1 then the personal contact details of the referee would probably have been on the front page of The Sun tomorrow. This pattern of blame goes back a long way: in the last world cup we went out because Ronaldo cheated, in 1998 it was because Beckham got himself sent off. It also spreads across other sports: in the tennis this week the press have responded to Andy Murray being the only Brit in the second round by castigating the leadership of British Tennis.</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with all of this is the simple fact that, in sport, there has to be a winner and loser. The fact that England lost today was not simply a reflection on how they did, but was every bit as much to do with how Germany played. When Anne Keothavong went out of Wimbledon 6-4 in the final set having led 4-0 it wasn't simply because she's British and thus a choker, it was mainly because her opponent played some very good tennis. To lose in sport doesn't necessarily mean you were desperately unlucky or miserably talentless, its simply a fact of a pastime where 50% of competitors are unsuccessful.</div><div><br /></div><div>I know that most of the ranting is because people care so passionately about sport in this country, and this is often a very good thing. Nonetheless it seems that being so keen to point the finger of blame at anyone and everyone rather than simply accept defeat with good grace is something that needs to be avoided.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the plus side, having put an outside bet on Germany to win the whole tournament two weeks ago at 14-1, at least every cloud has a silver lining... :)</div>Joelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02454545531539469449noreply@blogger.com0