Sniffing the snowdrops

In Cold Blood - the killing or the telling?

2010-05-18T09:36:00.000+01:00

Written in 1966, In Cold Blood chronicles the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959 and the investigation and subsequent trial of the perpetrators. It is considered to be one of the first 'True Crime' novels and much of the book focuses on the killers, their lives, relationship and imprisonment.

In Cold Blood grabbed me and I zoomed through it. Not because I cared about the killers, or to be honest the tragic Clutters. The reader knows who committed the crime and that they got caught. As I read I wanted to try and comprehend the dynamic behind the killers, how they had come to the point at which they could commit such a horrible act and why? About half way though I actually stopped and thought about what was enthralling me in this book. Would the story eventually sate a need to know every detail and see into the mind of a killer; to comprehend violence and criminality in some neat equation. Why didn't I care more about the family? Or the killers? In Cold Blood was a forerunner for the media speculation that fills nearly every violent case - the call for gory details.

In Cold Blood does an excellent job of witholding the gory details and maintaining interest. The book is beautifully written and I wish more 'true crime' writers would put such effort into their script. In Cold Blood is also an excellent drawing together of testimonies and stories that attempts to enlighten us about the complex relationship between the killers. When the psychologists are finally involved they recite some of the babble heard on today's cop shows and now considered common knowledge. At the time of the trial of course this is a new idea and isn't given much credence - it also doesn't seem quite accurate and I found myself desperate to hear a modern criminal psychologists opinion.

This is Kansas in the 60s and to a modern British reader the capital punishment at the end of the novel seems barbaric - far more to me than the gunning down of a family for no apparent motive - it seems the plethora of violent detective stories and TV has dulled me to that. The inclusion of simple descriptions of rural Kansas and the very real friends and neighbours the Clutters left behind don't pull the heartstrings as much as modern dramatic storytelling might - they are from a bygone era - one that at times seems too innocent and almost oppressive. The book marks the beginning of a change in America. The Clutter's neighbours started locking their doors and the many people who were enthralled by Capote's book, marked the beginning of public fascination with true crime, one that ended in CNN criminal psychologists, teenagers who can quote random facts about common serial killer traits and eventually an ingrained fear of wondering criminals who kill in cold blood. Capote's 'novel' is therefore a book I strongly recommend. There is an innocence and almost pioneering nature to it, one that only stands out when you notice the comparative lack of (modern) sensationalism, lurid photos and psych reports. When the author doesn't have a degree in criminality, the testimonies included seem more genuine and almost as if he is stumbling about trying to make sense of the situation in the same way as everybody else; he is uniquely sharing rather than lecturing on an academic case. And so he provides a true crime book without the usual bitter voyeuristic aftertaste.

The Woman in White - Or 'Marian Halcombe - star in hiding'

2010-05-15T21:47:00.001+01:00

One night Walter Hartwright meets and helps a strange woman in white, this chance meeting leads to a melodrama of intrigues and investigation: The Woman in White has many of the traits of what would become the 'mystery novel' and is widely recognised as a classic.

Several things are bound to annoy me in the average Victorian novel. You can probably guess them; casual racism, anti-semitism and the eternal misogyny. The Woman in White is short on the racism (although the Italians are a somewhat stereotyped) but it's the portrayal of women is an eye opener. I was unsurprised when the genial Walter Hartwright met the mad Woman in White on a dark lane and acted as a gentleman should, with typical Victorian patrony towards the weaker sex. But I was strangely delighted when several pages later, Marian Halcombe was seductively introduced - for the next chapter Marian continued to delight me with her competence, sensibility, resilience, charm and intelligence. Then Laura Fairlie, Marian's sister was introduced. I was instantly aware this was the heroine, she was so perfect, so winsome, so willowy, so utterly and completely without personality, talent or ability (other than loving everyone just too much) What else could she be? And so it proved.

Laura is such a pathetic Victorian Idyll of womanhood it's painful - she is an asexual useless child, incapable of looking after herself. In fact her childishness is disturbing and perplexing to the modern reader. Whilst Marian Hartwright is just awesome.When faced with an angry husband the drip (Laura) faints, sobs and becomes ill. Meanwhile Marian clambers about on a veranda at midnight, wearing her underwear in torrential rain attempting to overhear two men who can destroy her entire life and everyone she loves in a few words. Marian - what a (Victorian) woman! And that (Victorian) is necessary, for she isn't a modern woman, quite frankly if she had acted a little less properly at several points in the book she would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

The characters are a strange mix. The romantic protagonists Walter and Laura are really quite bland but everyone else is wonderfully sketched; especially Fosco, Mr Fairlie and Mrs Catherick. The duel of wits between foreigner Fosco and the woman Marian is far more distracting than the cold war between British Gentlemen Glyde and Hartwright. Irratatingly plot points and assumptions are repeated often and discussed too much, I assumed this related to the book being originally published in sections, but perhaps a Victorian audience was less used to picking up on the little details and intentions than modern thriller readers and needed to be pummelled with the importance of every discovery. The scenes are well set and atmospheric and thankfully pages are not set aside for describing how pretty the countryside is. The Woman in White is action packed, exciting and maintained my interest. If you can get your head around the women's real dilemma (No they can't just hit people with the poker, steal the carriage and get divorced) and care for that ridiculous waif Laura and her suitor it carries even more tension.

The Moonstone is the first proper detective novel and The Woman in White is it's forerunner. But most importantly The Woman in White contains Marian. Glorious strong Marian. Possibly the first Victorian heroine I have ever appreciated*. Marian - I love you! If your creator wasn't dead I'd be demanding you get a sequel.

*Jane Eyre is pretty good but putting out flaming beds only looks impressive if you know that every other woman in the building would've fainted. Marian has Laura to continually make her look good

Bitten again

2010-04-29T19:17:00.002+01:00

I'm a Kelley Armstrong fan. Her supernatural books are my easy reading of choice; fast, funny and reasonably exciting. Plus they don't smack of desperate chaste teenage lust like some supernatural books out there. I picked up Frostbitten at an author signing in Manchester. The first I've ever attended. I was mostly facinated by the staff telling me how impressed they were with Kelley's down-to-earth nature. What are these authors normally like? Does Harlan Coben insist on only red smarties?

Frostbitten is a return to Kelley's first (and probably best) protagonist, the werewolf Elena. It's also a return to form, after the 'meh' of Broken. Elena and her wolf pack are doing what they do best; violently dealing with non-pack wolves. I think the improvement is due to the absence of the other supernatural species (witches, necromancers and half-demons) who have filled previous books. The story is purer and wilder without their cosmopolitan influence. Naturally Elena has some emotional turmoil to deal with as well as homicidal mutts, but Elena wouldn't be half as appealling without her issues. Blonde, beautiful, strong, clever, married to the werewolf version of brad Pitt, getting endless amounts of athletic sex, financially secure and blessed with beautiful children with live in baby sitting, she should be very easy to hate. Instead her worries and mistakes make her more accesible.

The book is like a ticklist of fan wishes. The introduction of new werewolves are sketched vaguely enough to wet fan's appetites, Nick finally has something to do other than look suave and Elena is back to silently muttering to herself about not being treated as a threat - but as a lust object (kind of hard when she is the only female of the species). Frostbitten is one of Kelley's best and her style really shines when she writes as Elena. I just wish that half the silly Twilight addled teenagers out there would stop dreaming of being useless Bella and start dreaming of growing their own claws and saving themselves like Elena.

Hats at the museum

2010-04-25T21:07:00.001+01:00

I have a passion for obscure museum and there was no possible way I was going to pass up the The Stockport Hat museum. Especially when it's FREE! Well it's free if you don't want a tour of the machines, rather than wandering about yourself. I love hats, people don't wear them enough. So I actually enjoyed the historical hats on display. In paticular the 18th century lilac dandy top hats were truly vile, in every way. I wasn't so sure about all the hats for the kids to try on - my mother's voice was whispering 'nits nits' from the grave, so I passed up on the opportunity.

Who knows where felt comes from? I do! Who knows what invention started the slow decrease in the British tradition of hat wearing? I do! Wonderful museum - look what I learned. And I loved all the machinery - seeing how the felt become a gnome cap and then finally a top hat. The staff were really friendly, the interactive displays were fun and if you are interested in hat factory related family history, there is a lovely study room. Also the cafe is cheap and has the added bonus of being a charitable organisation. When I grow up I'm going to be a milliner, but for the moment I'm just going to wear more hats.

Drown the jelly babies!

2010-04-08T12:36:00.000+01:00

The ringbearer had been making comments about another chocolatey cake, so I decided to adulterate the Sacher Torte. But what with? My efforts with gummi bears have ultimately been failures, so I decided to move onto the humanoid version-Jelly Babies. The ring bearer believed the Jelly Babies should be placed on top of the chocolate topping. I was forced to draw a line - I have no interest in decorating cakes with sweeties, I want to experiment with sweets as integral ingredients. The only reason I made a gingerbread aircraft carrier was because of the foolishness of the ship-shape, not because I deem decorating with sweets to be in anyway equivalent to baking with them. No-siree, I have standards. That said placing the JBs under the chocolate instead of the usual apricot jam filling seemed a fair sweet-involvement. So here we have it, my report on the jelly-babied Sacher torte.

1. Melt the chocolate in the bain marie. Steal several finger fulls
2. Laugh gleefully as you use the magimix to make (almost) instant breadcrumbs
3. Mix together breadcrumbs, sugar, egg yolks and then ladle in the molten chocolate
4. Prepare for the tricky bit. Fold in the beaten egg whites, stressing with every flollop of the spoon whether you have gone too far or not accounted for the collateral mixing that will occur during transfer to the baking tin.
5. Bake
6. Lovingly arrange jelly babies on top of the cooked tort. Try very hard to not place like coloured JBs together and fail. Ignore urge to check the mathematical reason for this on the internet.
7. Melt more chocolate. Steal yet more fingerfulls
8. Drown the jelly babies in chocolate. Mutter witchy chants to yourself as the little jelly babies disappear. Erroneously leave far too much chocolate in the middle.
9. Leave in the fridge

Personally I don't believe jelly babies go with dark chocolate. Strangely the green ones tasted better than any other flavour (a chocolate lime connection perhaps). I think perhaps the bitter aftertaste was the feeling that I had betrayed my initial mission towards sweetie integration. This was merely Jelly Baby insertion. The ringbearer had other ideas. He believes that the 'Jelly Babies enhanced the flavour of the cake, much like a cherry. Although some colours were better than others, especially black and red Jelly Babies', he has made no comment about the metaphysical requirements of experimental sweetie baking. He was however happy that a recent baked ham didn't come with optional sherbet lemons.

Forgettably nameless

2010-03-28T21:19:00.006+01:00

A Nameless Witch by A.Lee Martinez
After the horror of trawling through 600 pages of pretentious Norwegian post-modernism I was delighted to read this book that the ringbearer bought for me at Powell's City of Books. In short a witch with the terrible curse of being beautiful and ageless goes on a quest with her broom, a white knight and her familiar a duck named Newt. The part where I wrote 'a duck named Newt' should give you a hint as to where this book is pitched. Firmly into the fantasy comedy genre that Terry Pratchett presides over.

Its an easy read that rolls nicely along. The world building isn't oppressive and nor thankfully is the humour. (There are just too many Pratchett wannabes out there who feel that every sentence should be crammed with cleverness and include a witty comment). This book however has little original to add to the comedy fantasy genre. The situation isn't unique, nor is the author's voice or the characters (although Newt is fun). The author doesn't take the opportunity to add any depth to the gentle mockery he applies to the fantasy genre and it leaves the book toothless. The plot is very basic and only just holds the book together. However the book has some nice touches that made me smile, like Penelope the broom sweeping the road and the heroines efforts to be 'witchly'.

To be honest I'd recommend this to an adolescent, who needs something easy and enjoyable to ease them into reading. Or alternately someone who is suffering from Wergeland exhaustion. A nameless witch isn't unique, but it's fun and (very) easy on the brain.

Not very seduced

2010-03-18T22:22:00.015Z

The Seducer by Jan Kjaerstad (English translation)

I ordered this book many months ago in order to take some Norwegian literature with me on a cruise in the Arctic. Sadly the book arrived late and I have been struggling my way through it for nearly 6 months. Essentially the plot is thus: Norwegian TV documentary producer Jonas Wergeland comes home to find his wife murdered. As he responds to this event we hear about the many disjointed events from his past. Circling around, the plot is non-linear; each chapter covers a different stage in Jonas' life and they gently reflect on each other. It's a nice motif and would be fantastic if it didn't last 600 pages.

And Kjaerstad needs 600 pages to even touch on Wergeland's life and his accomplishments. Of Jonas's many achievements he invents the Fosbury flop before Fosbury, he creates peace in the Middle East by moving a small stone, he saves an African country from a school debating podium and scares off a polar bear with his penis. I'm not joking about the last one. Jonas was so unrelentingly marvellous that it set my teeth. To add insult to injury Kjaerstad hammered home just how brilliant Jonas was, how unique and completely at odds with Norwegian conservatism with a frequency usually reserved for 13 year old's writing fanfiction that includes themselves. Jonas Wergeland never has to try to seduce any woman; they just throw themselves at him (they all go on top too). In fact by sleeping with these all incredibly talented women (politicians, lobbyists, composers, artists) Jonas, by some freaky sex-talent-hoover picks up some of their talents, such as fishing or mathematical comprehension. Jonas you see has a 'magic penis', I won't go into the details- something to do with the angle apparently but it's in line with a family fascination , his Aunt Laura's main artistic outlet is keeping a diary of sketches of all the penises she has 'encountered'. The worst that can be said of Jonas is that he isn't well read - managing to get straight As and hoodwink the entire Norwegian educational establishment, politicians, artists and leaders with just 20 quotes written in a little red book. But that's it. The book isn't meant to be a satire on how the untalented can become great ( like Forrest Gump), Jonas is just as fantastic as he seems and he gets everything that he deserves.

Pretentious doesn't quite cover the nature of 'The Seducer'. I'm fine with an intense barrage of references to scientists, quantum mechanics, Shakespeare and even Norwegian writers such as Hamsun and Ibsen. But there was plenty in the deluge I didn't recognise, I only got through several pages of a student baiting a teacher, which was already boring me (I get, he's clever and arrogant) by asking my brother in law what dialectic materialism was. I would like to assume all this is just to remind the reader how unworldly and untravelled they are compared to the Sydney Opera House Organ playing, Communist China visiting, Cruise ship collision surviving Jonas Wergeland. But no, I fear the author is just too enamoured with his talent to trim it. Jonas is made famous (not for all the other incredible feats) but for his famous documentary series, which is is just so orgasmic that people watch it like Brits would watch the royal wedding. It isn't hard to spot that Wergeland's incredible, life affirming (yes really, 'life affirming') documentaries are meant to mimic the book itself. But true to form Kjaerstad felt the need to defend them (and by very obvious extension) himself by filling the final chapters of the book with a televised debate about them.

I enjoyed learning about Norway and it's recent past and the change in small communities as Norwegian oil money flowed in. I also enjoyed hearing about how Norwegians began to alter their world outlook and their role in Europe. The book made me feel that I genuinely had a better picture of Norway and it's interests (even abroad Jonas finds connections to Norway). The Norwegian interest in winter sports, schools, languages and the sea really rang true for me and I wish I had read the book lying on the sun deck on last year's Arctic cruise. But that is why the book is perfect for a very long holiday with a lot of spare time, because the book drags under the weight of it's pretensions and masturbatory enamour with it's protagonist.

The Good-Ship-Gingerbread

2010-02-10T20:35:00.000Z

Some of you will remember my efforts to come up with an idea for my Christmas gingerbread construction. Sadly events over Christmas left me without the time to bring an idea to fruition. However, I never give up on an idea and sometime in mid-January I set about the mighty gingerbread project. Inspiration proved illusive until walking through the flat I stood on one of the several small, push out and construct plastic aircraft the ringbearer got in his advent calender last year. I finally decided upon my gingerbread project! And somewhere to put those bloody toys. A Gingerbread Aircraft Carrier! Below is my delayed report on how to create your very own gingerbread navy.

Step 1. Carefully follow German Hexenhaus recipe, melting butter, sugar and honey together. All the while cursing the sticky hard to manoeuvre nature of honey.
Step 2. Add gooey warm mixture to dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cocoa, sugar). Mix and then start to form into a ball Recall some hazy warnings from high school home economics teacher about handling hot molten sugar and burning off nerve endings. Decide lack of pain means that issue isn't relevant. Leave dough to cool in fridge.Step 3. Employ the assistance of the ring bearer (note in pictures he isn't wearing his ring on the grounds that he doesn't want to get gingerbread stuck in it). Get him to roll out the gingerbread.

Step 4. Measure rolled out gingerbread against cunningly developed battleship net. Realise you have too little gingerbread and get Ringbearer to roll it thinner whilst feverishly chopping down the template to make it fit. Bank very heavily on the gingerbread rising a bit to ensure the air craft carrier doesn't have a dangerously thin hull. (I know that no hull could really withstand a short range gingerbread torpedo, but that's no excuse.)
Step 5. Cut out net and arrange pieces of gingerbread on numerous baking sheets and bake. Realise that whilst manoeuvring pieces to the baking tray the gingerbread stretches under its own weight. Reform shapes on baking sheet. Watch in amusement as ringbearer becomes enthusiastic with remnants and starts to form gingerbread anchors and fish.
Step 6.Remove gingerbread from oven and worry about the slightly deformed shape of the hull. Resolve to plug any holes with excess icing. Plan for excess icing meets instant ringbearer approval.
Step 7. Liberally cheat and make royal icing from ready made powder and arm the syringey icing thing. After realising that the ship's hull will not hold together whilst icing sets brilliantly come up with the idea of using glasses as structural support during icing. Forget that lighting is poor on this side of the kitchen and ice most of the ship together with minimal lighting. However decide that this is probably the authentic feeling of welding aircraft carriers whilst under blackout conditions and embrace the darkness.
Step 8.Having completed the hull add the deck and the bridge. Congratulate oneself a great deal when the deck fits on the hull and doesn't break during manoeuvring.
Step 9.Break out the sweets for decoration. Agree to ringbearer's notion that pink shrimp sweets should surround the hull like barnacles. (Ignoring the fact that they are a completely different species to barnacles and would if kept to scale with the aircraft carrier, be incredibly scary giant killer shrimps).

Step 10. Try and apply dollymixtures as portholes, wrestling with the futility of icing one single dolly mixture and making a great deal of mess. Start a small discussion with the ringbearer about where the red and green dolly mixtures should go to represent the ship's navigation lights. Send ringbearer off for emergency google check (green for starboard btw). The ship might lack propulsion, have impossible killer shrimp attachments and technically dissolve in water, but my god she'll obey International Regulations For Preventing Collisions at Sea!
Step 11. Unsure of how to include the jelly worms in the aircraft masterpiece place them everywhere, deciding they are either landing strip lights or the ship represents a little known sea battle called 'Jelly Worms on an Aircraft Carrier'. Draw the line at trying to make a gingerbread Samuel L. Jackson. Decorate aircraft carrier with mini planes.

The Gingerbread Aircraft Carrier lasted about a week. Most of the sweets were picked of within a few days. Structural integrity was maintained even when large sections were torn off and the mighty good-ship-gingerbread looked a very proud and noble vessel as she withstood her slow demolition and consumption. Sadly tearing off a chunk meant showering the floor in icing bits which was annoying. Perhaps the good-ship-gingerbread's final revenge upon us, her creators and destroyers.

Need care? Give us your house!

2010-01-22T09:38:00.001Z

In the UK a person is entitled to free NHS medical care. Should a person then require 'long term care' at home, in sheltered housing or in a nursing home a person must pay for their care (often between £600-£1000 a week for those needing nursing care) until their assets fall below £23000, when the council will help pay, (they won't actually pay for everything until you own less than £14000). In short you must sell all your assets (i.e your house unless a dependent is living in it) to pay for your long term care until nearly bankrupt. The local council will 'help' by only assessing you based on assets excluding home for the first 12 weeks of your care. After that, you had better have your house sold because they will charge you like you own it's value in ready cash. 12 weeks to sell a house. 12 weeks - would anyone get a good price for it? Of course if you were clever you'd have split your assets, changed the deeds to your house or moved your elderly sister in to avoid your full assets being assessed and allowing you to keep your home.

24 hr care costs about £600-£1000 a week (in a council supported residence). So with £103 nursing allowance, £70.35 attendance allowance and £95 pension a week, that leaves a pensioner with about £300-£700 to pay a week. How many private pensions cover that? And that's not accounting for if the pensioner should maybe want some *nice* food, to go out, a birthday present for the grandkids, new clothes or anything to make their lives more fun. The joint savings of couples can be decimated by paying for the long-term care of just one. leaving two victims of circumstance and unexpected disability. Pensioners who paid taxes all their working lives expect to be cared for. And they are, until that care takes longer than a month or so.

I understand why this is happening. The population is aging and the younger generations cannot carry the tax burden of caring for the older ones. Part of me thinks this is fair, if you can pay...you should, put the money back into the economy now and forget leaving a tidy nest egg for the kids. But the other part of me can't make the leap between paying for NHS care and not paying for long term care. Dementia or disability are not certainities or life-style choices, why should caring for them be any different to caring for people who have traffic accidents, diseases or cancer? Why should the taxpayer pay for people who have sufficient money to merely get old naturally? Probably for the same reason that the taxpayer pays for these same people with sufficient money to have midwives and ante-natal care.

At the moment the system essentially penalises people who have saved or bought their house (that's the middle classes then); so nearly all political parties have sat up and taken notice offering a variety of options to the country. The main problem revolves around the problem that there is no money for care *now*. The government's suggestions (which completely forgot about accomodation costs) are below.

1. A partnership approach, which proposes that the government and the individual who needs care share the costs, with the government paying between a quarter and a third or more for people on a low income.

Seems a lot like what they're doing already except with local authorities

2. An optional insurance-based model, which would also see the government paying between a quarter and a third of the costs, but would allow individuals to pay £20,000 to £25,000 to cover themselves against the remaining costs of care.

So that would be private health insurance then?

3. A compulsory state insurance scheme under which everyone who can afford it pays between £17,000 and £20,000 – and receives free care in return.

Hmm. Just peachy if you're rich. Destruction of your hard earned retirement nest egg in an unexpected tax if you're not.

Personally I don't like any of them, but I suspect there is no easy way out of this mess. I think perhaps the money should come from an income tax, hence the risk of paying for long term care is spread out amongst the entire population at an affordable cost. Where have I heard it before though? Oh yes, funding the NHS - who should have been paying for long term care all along. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and an answer needs to be found for the situation now. And that is why I rage. I rage at the lack of an easy answer.

Historic toilets

2010-01-18T17:06:00.005Z

Apologies for the absence, yet again my Christmas period was complicated with relatives going into hospital. Never fear though the mighty gingerbread project is not forgotten! It'll just have to be a pre-wedding-anniversary gingerbread extravaganza.

But onto important matters. Loos. The John Ryland library loos to be precise, which are AWESOME. Victorian in extremis. It's like walking into the past for a wee. Clearly other people feel the same sense of awe at the loos and there are signs up reminding them not to take photographs. However here is one from the Manchesterzedder's blog.

Of course the John Ryland Library is worth a vist anyday of the week. It is stunning and when I rule the world I shall live in it, happily polishing all the wood pannelling, reading books on cunning lecturns and naming all the gargoyles. Everything is beautiful in the church-like library building, built by the possibly gold-digging 3rd Mrs Ryland (She was a lot younger than her millionaire husband). Gold digging or not she was pretty smart insisting that her books be stored under electric lighting instead of gas whilst also being very picky about the doors and railings. In honour of the beauty of this place the modern extension is even tasteful. All libraries should look like this. All books should be stored like this. All loos should make you want to take a photograph.

Gingerbread architecture

2009-12-13T09:34:00.000Z

Image from cutmesomeflack.wordpress.com
Yes, I have been very quiet - also very busy. A stream of visitors forced the ringbearer to ban any cakey inventions. Apparently not everyone likes finding gummys in their chocolate brownies. However, I have been experimenting with my lebkuchen recipe and now I have a star stamp, I shall be manufacturing zimtsterne like I was the big bang.

However, I have another grand plan. No, not marshamllows in mince pies[1] but a gingerbread construct. Gingerbread houses are dull, so what to try instead? A castle? A post apocalyptic nightmare? Confuse the Christmas message with a Gingerbread mosque? A tank? A ship? Or should I keep it simple and depict some sort of naughtiness in the house? Ideas in the comments! Come on, the odder the better.

[1] Not a bad idea actually.....

Penguin pool!

2009-12-09T17:23:00.000Z

(Photo taken from Spiegel online)

Just how cool is this? You can swim in the pool next to a pool of penguins! I'm getting on a plane right now.

Penguin political correctness goes AWOL

2009-11-16T15:45:00.000Z

(Picture from Spiegel online)

From the Spiegel weekly news quiz:

Yes Sandy the penguin became smitten with her keeper Peter Vollbracht. But the fickle creature lost interest when Vollbracht was off sick and hunted out another lover. Once Tom, a real penguin, died the slippery little trollop made a beeline again for the keeper.

Slippery little trollop! Some lonely, recently widowed penguin who after a long period of loving monogamy has returned her affections to the man she used to do charity work with is a 'slippery little trollop' for flirting with something she can never mate with? Would Der Spiegel have used such language for a male penguin? I think not. Maybe she should have thrown herself onto her penguin husband's burial pyre or lived as an outcast like Nepali widows?

Most likely this is one of Der Spiegel's very rare, yet quite funny little cultural mistranslations. Still, I'm appalled.

The mosquito must go!

2009-11-13T15:06:00.004Z

Technically, as a nearly 30 year old I shouldn't have been able to hear the 17.7 Hz noise outside a corner shop in Timperley, but I could. It was like a knife through my brain, I actually felt nauseous and my hearing an head felt odd for at least an hour afterwards. I had heard of the Mosquito device, but had never come across one until yesterday. Designed to continuously emit a noise at a level only the under 25s can hear, it supposedly causes enough discomfort and annoyance that they will go elsewhere. The Mosquito is considered one of the most effective methods of preventing teenagers from gathering in a certain place.

This device is a form of ageist assault. I appreciate the horrors and intimidation of ASBO worthy youth in pack form and the right of ordinary shop owners and citizens to carry on with their normal lives. But this device doesn't segregate according to behaviour it segregates according to age. It says in one loud, painful tone that *everyone* under the age of 25 is a thug. Treat them like that and that is exactly what the vast majority of law abiding decent children will become. The device doesn't even make that much sense as a teenager deterrent - sure, they'll move on... to where? Another place that needs a mosquito and then another, soon teenagers and children won't be able to shamble or skip along a single street without being in discomfort.

The Mosquito and it's use is unregulated. It can be used whenever the owner likes and as it doesn't bother *them* it can be left on permanently. The one in Timperley was on at 10am on a weekday - surely not a prime time for teenage intimidation. The Mosquito can be boosted to levels unacceptable under health and safety laws and most adults are none the wiser. There is NO evidence of the effect of exposure on children's ears, all tests relating to adults only, which seems like an insane omission. However, this oversight is deemed to be acceptable as teenagers can surely walk away from the horrible noise. But small children with their parents can't 'walk away' and young people must still walk on pavements and cycle on roads near Mosquitos on a regular basis. These Mosquitos aren't limited to the privately owned shop forecourt, they can stretch up to 25m into public areas and yet no warning signs are required; so adults can wheel their baby/toddler right beneath it and stand and chat for 30 minutes in complete ignorance of the discomfort of their child. How are young people with learning disabilities supposed to cope with this unexpected onslaught?

The Mosquito device, it's installation and usage should be regulated. If there was a device that caused discomfort to everyone over the age of 50, it would be instantly banned. If someone played music at a deeply disturbing volume outside your local post office, so that anyone passing was caused discomfort, the police would be around. The only reason the mosquito is legal and unregulated is because the majority of its victims can't vote.

If you want to find out if you can hear the device, go here. You need good speakers for it to work properly, although the ringbearer says it might damage them.

Not-so-Fantastic Mr Fox

2009-11-02T20:58:00.005Z

Fantastic Mr Fox was the first book I read on my own and is very special to me. It was therefore with no small amount of trepidation that I approached Wes Anderson's version of Roald Dahl's classic book. However, I quite like Wes Anderson's movies, their gentle touch, sumptuous visuals and unabashedly slow and odd dialogue. So how bad could it be?

Well, pretty bad. Fantastic Mr Fox looks beautiful. It's just a shame that Anderson has shoved American and British culture together with little thought to his source material- one of the most British stories possible. The bad guys have British accents (awesomely played though) whilst the animals are voiced by Americans and include several animals native to America. The music is nearly all American. Anderson even takes the fantastic distinctive British stylings of Mr Jarvis Cocker and gets him to sing an American country fireside song. The British pub, town and train seemed incongruous on what appeared to be a very American countryside, whilst the dialogue was full of American terms and ideas. Did Mr Anderson think we wouldn't notice? Or was his only thought that the cultures would blend seamlessly as far as less internationally culturally aware US audiences were concerned? Why did he even bother with the small whiffs of Britain?

This is not a children's film. Sure, it lacks violence, swearing and sex , but it's dialogue - laden with adult psychology and Latin jokes is too cumbersome for children. Somehow the tale of an arrogant, cunning fox became another of Anderson's stories about a loving dysfunctional yet indie-cool American family. Not exactly something to keep the kids' attention. In extending the book to film length Anderson has naturally made some embellishments. Plot-wise these are still in keeping with Dahl's premise, but his world-building is somewhat strange. His animals inhabit a human-like world of clothes, professions and chemistry lessons, but yet the rules of this world are never fully explained or adhered to. Most annoying for me was the inclusion of Kylie, an opossum (not native to the UK) who fulfilled the standard Anderson role of platonic, odd pseudo family member. Why did soft spoken Kylie join in the raids and not -as-in-the-book- Mr Badger - an equally well developed character? In short Dahl's story lost out to Anderson's sense of style and snail pace.

Fantastic Mr Fox is a lovely Wes Anderson film about indie-American family values, portrayed in a beautiful environment, rich with style and pathos. A Roald Dahl film for kids it is not.

Bananering the pineapple cake

2009-10-22T16:47:00.000+01:00

The ringbearer loves foam bananas. Don't know why-horrible fake tasting things that they are - but he does. As we disagree on this point I decided not to put too much effort into the mighty foam-banana-cake experiment I agreed to and utilised one of the easiest (and stickiest) recipes I know. So here it is: The pineapple upside down foam banana cake.

Step 1. Batter making. This is dead easy, no folding, bain-maries or even a mixer. Just add eggs, sugar, flour and pineapple juice in a bowl and stir.
Step 2. Melt butter in chosen dish on the hob, then add sugar. Squish the sugar into the butter (This is great fun and looks horrible)
Step 3. Place the pineapple in the dish. Also add pointless banana items in a specifically zoned area.
Step 4. Pour over the batter. Put in oven and bake.
Step 5. The only tricky bit. Cool the cake a little bit and attempt to flop cake out of dish onto plate. If this isn't done when there is residual oven warmth then the cake will NEVER come out. Seriously you could use the stuff to seal a reactant leak at Sellafield. At this point I spot a problem. Look at the picture below, have you spotted it?
Yes. The cake would flop over the edges of the plate. Now normally this would come with the considerable benefits that I could legitimately eat the fallen off parts. But I wasn't in the mood - there might be foam banana in parts of it! After much clanking and near misses I discovered a rectangular platter in the cupboard, that still didn't quite fit and had curved edge issues, but would mean less spillage. And tadaa!

The cake is naturally best served warm with cream. The ringbearer was delighted and to prove it gave me some very eloquent reviews. (I think he's been taking my remarks about his monosyllabic reviews to heart). He declared it to be 'A pineapple cake as interpreted in Las Vegas.' If this is a good thing I don't know. He also said 'It had a heightened sense of banana which formed a hyper real mix with the pineapple.'. I will grudgingly admit that it wasn't that bad and was very probably better than the softmint yoghurt cake. But lascked the diverting scientific questions about softmint integrity. Foam banana integrity was incidentally very good-which isn't suprising they taste of hardened wood anyway.

Refreshing the almond wine biscuits

2009-10-14T10:05:00.002+01:00

Enough with this cake business, I have decided to embark on some biscuit alteration. My best biscuits are probably the 'wine biscuits' from Dr Oetker, so I thought I should try something with those. But what? Pondering the sweetie shelves, I came across my beloved sherbet fountains (in new packaging-of which more later). What accompanies sherbet, in tingliness? Why Barrats refreshers of course!
Stage 1 Make the dough. This is very easy indeed, especially with the mighty magimix. The breadcrumb like stage is meant to be combined with wine, instead of a tablespoon of water. As much as the ringbearer and I enjoy necking a bottle of left over wine, it always seems atrocious to open a bottle just for a few ml, which you can't taste anyway. I therefore switched to German grappa, which not only tastes stronger but we have a bottle of and rarely drink. Once the dough was made it was rolled out and cut into circles.

Stage 2 Refresher tests. Would refreshers survive the cooking temperature? Sure, they only needed to last about 15 minutes, but would they degrade? I therefore popped 1 in with the jacket potatoes. 30 minutes later the flat stunk of burned sugar as the blackened remains of the refreshers was removed from the oven. Not a good sign, but the jackets were in at a higher temperature, the refreshers were cooked for longer on the wrong substrate/matrix than they would on the biscuits, plus I have never let one very clear indicator of possible failure stop me before....
Stage 3 Topping. The rounds were then covered in beaten egg white, sprinkled with sugar or sherbet and then decorated with chopped almonds and/or halves of refreshers. I also cunningly hid the refreshers under the egg white, as a sort of initial blast cover. the biscuits were then baked in batches. At this point we must digress to the new sherbet fountain packaging.Plastic? Aren't we meant to be caring for the environment? Sure the paper sometimes got a bit soggy, but that was part ofthe art of consumption. The only reason I can think that Tangerine confectionery chose this atrocious environmentally disastrous, untraditional, quick and easy packaging for the lazy and slobby is that it allows you to replace the top and save your sherbet. Save your sherbet? When did obesity fears outweigh the importance of elegant eating and the environment? And who leaves a half eaten piece of liquorice for later? YUK!
Results. Score one for optimistic disdain of rough-shod scientific tests! The Refreshers survived unburnt, especially those hidden by egg white. Personally I could only just about taste the sherbet, which manifested as a slight extra-tang. However the refreshers were very potent and tasty. Certainly these biccies are unsophisticated and quite frankly taste a little loopy, but I liked them. The ringbearer, once he had gotten over his disappointment that a vast cake wasn't appearing from the oven (also his delight that the flat didn't fill with stinking burning refresher again) deigned to taste the biccies. He claimed they were like 'An outbreak of sunshine on a biscuit base', but mumbled a bit about whether he thought they were better than the sugar and almond original.

Spiders vs Conkers. FIGHT!

2009-10-13T16:03:00.000+01:00

Are spiders conkerphobic? The Royal Society of Chemistry wants to know. (Chemists of course ask all the important questions). I'm a bit torn on whether I want it to be true. If it is, then conkers will become righteously popular again -which will mean less for me, but also better horsechestnut tree care.

I love the headline 'Spiders vs conkers', it just evokes such glorious images. Possibly a Pixar style silent comedy as the spider attacks the tricky to control sphere, or a more malicious horde of spiders facing an avalanche of conkers (One spider would naturally be pacing at the front trying to rally the troops). Would one spider be capable of creating a web that would hold a conker, let alone stop one rolling or falling down? I'm off to find a spider web to do some experiments.

Oktoberfest statistics

2009-10-08T16:08:00.001+01:00

The Oktoberfest statistics are in! Just the 759 "beer corpses" and three drink related deaths over a 2 week period. Best of course is the 700 id cards and passports, fishing rod, toaster, 3 crutches, miniature pinscher, 18 children and a milk tooth that were lost (the children alone were reclaimed and I reckon the tooth fairy can get into the Munich lost-and-found). And I assume we are all very relieved that the traditional set of dentures has been reported missing. Why don't we get stats releases after big events in the UK? I personally demand to know how many tonnes of fish and chips were sold in blackpool on a given bank holiday weekend. I also want to know the number of Carling carcusses found after any given music festival.

Conker threats

2009-10-05T16:46:00.000+01:00

Well this is a disaster, the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner are here in the UK! They are making the beautiful Horse Chestnut trees look nasty. What person want to hunt for luscious smooth conkers under something as pitted and pocked as the leaves above? Sure the moths might not have lasting effects, but these are trees, not people. In 30 years time we could be talking about his moth like we talk about smoking - If we knew then, what we know now etc etc.

Why have there been no public service announcements? Our conkers are at risk! Sure the Forrestry Commission is keeping an eye on them, but is it enough? Maybe Mi5 should be brought in for better surveillance and spread calculation. Our finest scientific minds should be workling on this. We should have daily adverts telling us to collect up conker leaves and burn them! Children should be taking part in leaf-collecting-drives in school! Old ladies should be collecting leaves on the bottom of their zimmer frames! Communities should come together to burn the leaves - and not just on bonfire night, every night! There should be an emergency helpline for notifications about infercted trees!

Save our Conkers!

It is clear to me that I must do further research on the risks to conker trees, so that I can run my own public information campaign. There is something out there called Bleeding Canker of Horse Chestnut, which is already giving me nightmares.

Cheese map

2009-10-05T14:30:00.003+01:00

A map of cheese. Truly a glorious thing. I reckon I could draw a line through the mini cheeses and plan a road trip.

Moths declare war on conkers

2009-10-02T17:14:00.000+01:00

A certain kind of moth is attacking conker trees in Germany, needless to say I am very concerned that these little b*stards might make it over the channel. I shall be writing a strongly worded letter to the border agency on the subject of searching people for chestnut leaves and conkers. I myself am distraught that I might have brought some to the UK when I moved back here.

On a side note, is drinking under a conker tree a good idea, or are the Germans normally inside before the splendiferous seeds start dropping?

A moral conker dilemma

2009-09-30T18:31:00.000+01:00

I have been struggling with a quandry and it is beginning to interfere with my enjoyment of conker season.

Is it morally wrong to collect conkers within a park which includes a children's playground? And how far geographically do you need to be from a school, when collecting the lovely smooth, mahogany covered jewels so as not to deny a child of it's outdoorsy fun and therefore personal development? Should one collect conkers where thou willst and teach the kiddies the importance of eagle eyed observation and getting-there-first?

Madame de Pompadour - Nancy Mitford spreads the aristocratic love

2009-09-27T18:29:00.012+01:00

Madame de Pompadour is one of the most fascinating women in French history. A King's mistress with massive influence, which she maintained even after the physical element of her duties subsided. A woman of charm, beauty, artistic appreciation, imagination and intellect. A jumped up commoner, she was (like marmite) both hated and loved. An excellent introduction can be found here. I find I can despise Madame de Pompadour for spending the starving peasants' money on nothing, making important political decisions based on how charming a noble was but also appreciate the incredible longevity and influence in the snakepit of Versailles of a commoner. Therefore as far as I'm concerned anything about the Pompadour and her position is fascinating, and I cheerfully picked up Nancy Mitford's biography of her. Nancy's Mitford's biography is quite biased (although she does admit some of Madame de Pompadour's faults) and makes for a sympathetic read. I almost felt sorry for Madame Etoiles as she made her first haphazard forays in to the French court (It took her several months to learn how to walk, talk and curtsy - and this was a woman considered to be at the apex of Paris society) The biography is gossipy and touches on enough of the greater political and social economic issues of the day to appreciate the importance of Madame de Pompadour's actions, although it barely glances at her legacy (if any).

I found Mitford utterly condescending in insisting on quoting people and maxims of the time in French. Occasionally she translates but mostly expects her reader to follow the archaic French and in doing so she often completely undermines her points. I know that a hundred years ago or earlier every educated person spoke a second language but this is really unacceptable for a book written in the 50s designed for a wide and not purely academic audience. I was left wondering whether the author had assumed French speaking or a certain level of education/class were a pre-requisite for an interest for reading historical biographies about the French or if she was just lazy. Nancy Mitford's well known tendencies towards self aware snobbery would imply the former. She also brazenly assumes her audience are British frequently referring to the French equivalent of 'Our' Knighthoods or 'Our' House of Lords.

Mitford's plummy upper class style is apparent throughout the book, to begin with I was annoyed at her inability to avoid personal opinion and use colloquial phrases. She variously accuses historical figures of being 'a dear old bore', 'tiresome', 'dowdy' and 'simply delicious' . She describes the Queen's social abilities with the assertion that, 'Nothing is so frumpish as last year's gambling game', and 'we must beg leave to doubt' another noble's opinion of the Queen's personality. Her greatest adjective for a minister is his notable 'goodness'- whatever that might objectively be. However after a while, I found I quite enjoyed Mitford's tone and felt I was on a tour through an aristocrats world with an aristocrat. What she thought was important for posterity was probably not far off what her subject's peers thought.

I'm not sure Mitford's biography is the best that can be found to cover the fascinating subject of Madame de Pompadour nor the French court, but is certainly unique and if you can forgive the lack of translation and aristocratic tone an enjoyable read.

EDIT: Grammar, spelling, uselessness

It's conker season!

2009-09-18T17:50:00.000+01:00

I love conkers. I love finding them. I love sifting through the fallen leaves to get at them. I love prying them out of any remnant casings. I love polishing them up. I love pocketing them. The first conkers are here. They may be small and a little soft but they are here. Hooray!

Softminty adventures in yogurt cake land

2009-09-15T17:36:00.000+01:00

I have been of the opinion of late that the ringbearer has been getting one too many cakes his way. Therefore I decided to concoct one of my favourite cakes, which includes yoghurt and strawberries. Somehow the ringbearer's puppy dog eyes did manage to persuade me to add malteasers instead of strawberries. But I was not completely manipulated! I have long pondered how to include mints into cakes. After all mints take up a large section of the sweetie shelves, shouldn't they be included in my experiments? Here was the ideal opportunity.Stage 1. Baking the chocolate cake base
Pretty boring really, except I added some malteasers just for fun
Stage 2. Playing with gelatine.
I love playing with gelatine (not much for vegetarian baking I'm afraid). Covering the sheets in water makes for a nice mystery when it comes to fishing around for the squishy gelatine. Subsequently squeazing the gunk before heating it in a pan is also very pleasant sensation. Nice and oozy.Stage 3. Making the yoghurty mix
Yoghurt, lime juice, whipped cream, sugar and gelatine. Yummy! This was then slopped onto the cake baseStage 4. Addition of the sweeties
I refused to go all malteasers, so most of the cake was still strawberry filled. A section was mixed with malteaser, a section was homogeneously malteaser and another section included lovely softmints.
Stage 5. Refrigeration and a discovery!
The yoghurt mix set quite nicely around the strawberries and malteasers. But fascinatingly the softmints melted (liquified)! My chemistry senses were twitching! Softmints become quickly chewy in the mouth and dissolve. Which might happen due to a change in pH rather than (as I thought) heat and agitation. Had my yoghurty mix been acidic enough to liquefy the softmints? Or had the presence of gelatine caused some sort of diffusion? Or had the softmints just givenup any semblance of solidity the moment they were exposed to the cold. Cowards!

The liquid softmints meant that the minty flavour had travelled further than expected within the cake and was not limited to pockets of mintyness. This was odd but not unpleasant and went quite well with strawberries. The malteasers also worked really very well. The ringbearer noted that the cake was the only one he had eaten that left a minty fresh aftertaste. Although he refused further comment as he was clearly bitter about the 'healthiness' of the strawberries. I therefore think that it would be easier to add mint cordial to the yoghurty mix rather than softmints to achieve the same taste sensation. The malteasers might be a permanent addition to the normal fruity goodness.

Any suggestions about the magic melting effect of cold yoghurt and gelatine on softmints are welcome.

Fantastic Mr Fox - where 'Roald Dahl' is too obscure

2009-09-08T17:59:00.003+01:00

'Based on the book by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. What a ridiculous mouthful for a tagline! Is it just me or does it also cheerfully imply that audiences only know the Roald Dahl *films*? Worrying, very worrying. The Return of the King - based on the book by the author of 'The Two Towers'
Edit: grammar baby!

Being MISERly about the programme brings many problems

2009-09-07T13:56:00.001+01:00

This Saturday I went to see the matinee performance of Molière's Miser performed at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. The tale of a miserly father trying to make money from marrying off his two children with somewhat predictable twists, misunderstandings and revelations. I'm very fond of the Royal Exchange. The theatre's futuristic pod squats brilliantly beneath the Victorian building's domes and columns, like a Dr Who Villain in it's non-contemporary lair. The pod itself is a glass multi-levelled piece of beauty that encloses a stage surrounded 360 degrees by seats that reach up to the ceiling. It is always fascinating to see how the players adapt and utilise the space to accommodate an audience that surrounds them. Personally I love seeing plays there, it's like looking down into a goldfish bowl at some very dramatic postulating fish.

Until I walked in to the matinee I knew nothing of Molière or his play 'The Miser'. What I did know within 3 minutes was that the production design was bold and brilliant. The cast all wearing a strange punk-17th century cross, with the miser's household covered in splashed white paint and dust. The stage itself was also white, filled with dripping pipes, occasional bare metal furniture and plastic sheeting that managed to be both modern and period at the same time. A brilliant touch was the gold barely hidden beneath the floorboards and visible only to those audience members willing to tilt their head and squint.

The performance combined some excellent bouts of choreographed chasing and comedic action, that suited the quick fire dialogue. The mime background of the movement director Julian Chagrin being very evident and an excellent addition to the play. Derek Griffiths[1] naturally excelled as Harpagan the Miser and was well supported by the younger cast. Other performances I enjoyed were Helen Atkinson Wood providing an excellent robust Frosine and Simon Gregor as a physically hilarious La Fleche. I laughed continuously and I even enjoyed when Harpagon interacted with the audience; a situation that normally makes me squirm. I found some fault with the actresses, who upon being given hooped dresses to wear all seemed to believe that their character's mannerisms should include unnecessarily grasping their skirts and swinging them about, but I was mostly entranced by their quick banter and comedic timing. Unfortunately the quality of the acting seemed undermined by the performances of Jaques and Signor Anselme. Jacques failed to sparkle or even keep up with his part of any interaction, providing a plodding delivery that seemed to be out of pace with everyone else, perhaps indicating an unfamiliarity with the role or the line's delivery. Signor Anselme was really quite awful, providing some of the most stilted line delivery I have ever seen and quite damaging my enjoyment of the last scenes.

This led me to be suspicious that the two actors might be understudies. However, I had not purchased a programme leaving me with no idea as to what the actors should look like. This led to some frantic internet searching and desperate face recognition but I struggled to draw conclusions. I just about confirmed that Signor Anselme was not played by the well known cast actor (Tim Barlow - him with the long coat in Hot Fuzz), but Jaques's portrayl remains something of a mystery. I therefore feel a little uncomfortable criticizing performances that might have been last minute additions. So I will still recommend the play as a very enjoyable few hour's entertainment. Sumptuous to look at, inventive, funny and somehow making 17th century dash-about, twisty comedy accessible and new.

Plus a note to myself: Buy the programme.

[1]He was the voice of SuperTed! Not that I could tell

Beer Wars!

2009-09-04T14:55:00.005+01:00

Heineken has gone to court to stop a local Swiss group from distributing a spoof brand called Keineken (No Heineken). Heineken are apparently 'not amused'. Well I am very amused. Anything that sticks up two fingers to the giant breweries tends to be a good thing. We need variety in our beer and local bereweries deserve as much advertising as possible. Who next? Stella Nilpoi? Snarling yak label?

The Room - all glory to Tommy Wiseau!

2009-09-02T13:36:00.000+01:00

I have now seen The Room in all its jaw-dropping brilliance three times and I feel I must recommend it here. I cannot begin to describe just how bad this film is. You just couldn't make a film this bad if you tried and this is integral to its genius. Seriously, at any given nanosecond you are torn into a thousand atoms trying to establish if *anything* is correct with the scene you are watching. There is not a section of the movie-making process that is correct. From the editing, directing, acting, writing, lighting, set, music, cuts, plot, costumes everything is gloriously, wonderfully wrong. It is little wonder that it is a cult film.

The first time I saw The Room, I spent the entire film with my jaw open struggling desperately to work out what was going on [1]. As the glorious travesty unfurled I found that every time I managed to just about establish what the intended plot was, I was struck lightening like by yet another stand-alone piece of continuity/lighting/acting/directing error. I laughed only when I could, for there was not space to breathe and assess the next moment of filmic confusion and arrogance.

The Room requires at least 2 watchings for it is almost impossible to form a heckle whilst digesting the next onslaught of stunning failure. Of course some bits are more painful that others. Why are footballs only thrown 3ft? Why must we have so many sex scenes that last the length of the soft-rock soundtrack? Why is Johnny humping his girlfriend's hip? Why does everyone keep turning up and walking in and out again? What happened to the drugs/drug money? Who was the psychologist? Where the hell was Johnny from? What about the cancer? And the baby? Spoon! Johnny is Christ getting a blow job? What is wrong with Denny? What happened to the very specific pizza? Why doesn't Denny use a chair? Why are they wearing tuxes? The questions, like The Room 's panning shots across San Francisco will never end. Nor should they. Watch this film, it's good for your soul.

Brickyard jimmy says it all better than I ever could.

[1] In fact a friend, during his first viewing was forced to split one character into two to try and aid his comprehension of what-was-going-on.

As happy as pigs in an artery clogging cake - the anti benecol

2009-08-28T09:04:00.001+01:00

Upon coming across a nice looking recipe in the Sunday papers, I decided to persue some baking that didn't involve sweets or covering my camera in batter. Of course the moment I walked into M&S this idea was scuppered. The gloriously tasty Percy Pigs were by the cashier. I instantly jumped upon the notion that as they were large and foamy rather than gummi, they might not melt in such a counter productive as mini teleporting gummi bears. Surely a few pilot piggies wouldn't hurt an already unknown recipe? Plus the ringbearer looked positively delighted when I left the health food shop with Macademia nuts and nothing that looked like fruit or tofu, so I thought I could use that good currency to keep him guinea pigging.
Stage 1. Following the recipe I masterfully separated eggs (OK one bit of shell got in) and ground the nuts into a fine pulp. Just coz they were looking at me funny! Yeah! On a side note nuts are expensive, in future I might try mixing them up with something cheaper, like hazelnuts..... or sawdust.Stage 2. I then made the ovely gooey chocolatey, nutty mess. And found a problem. Its the old how to fold in sweets with beaten egg whites scenario. Would adding the piggies at this stage effect the airyness of my folding? I decided not to find out and elegantly folded away.

Stage 3. Shlomped the goo into a lined baking tin. The consistency was approximately that of blue tack. Definitely more elastic than viscous. If only I could have put it in a rheometer and found out more! With this punch resisting consistency came problems. How to insert the pigs? I tried putting them in sideways and hoping they would sink below the goo leaving one pink trotter dramatically held aloft. But no such luck (see the photo at the top). These piggies didn't seem to like chocolately, nutty mud and were trying to run all the ways home. So I forced their little heads under the mixture by he vicious application of a cocktail stick.
Stage 4. Baking was successful, although as you can see form above there was piggie rupture. But at least I knew where to look for them this time.

The ringbearer snaffled a chunk of cake before I could even point out where the piggies were. He helpfully offered the review, 'Tastes better than it has any right to'. Personally I didn't know cakes had rights and was a little concerned about how I had been violating them. In my opinion the piggies, which were still whole and tasty added a certain something without tasting artificial to an otherwise terrifyingly dense and rich cake. (The ringbearer was delighted with this causer of instant obesity and continued to wade through the cake with scary commitment.) After a 3cm^2 piece I was forced to have a lie down to try and clear my arteries.

Importantly I have now discovered that Percy Pigs are a key ingredient in sweetie/cake fusion baking. Under cake conditions they don't teleport, they stay pink and they taste nice. Trust M&S.

Suggestions for further baking always welcome

Pritt stick decides to enforce a stereotype - my first rant post!

2009-08-25T17:00:00.000+01:00

I love pritt sticks. They, more than any doll, car, lego set or teddy bear made me a very happy child. Which is why I was so disgusted to spy the above item on WHSmiths' shelves. It appears pritt stick is no longer unisex, no longer a simple tool to aid the creativity of developing children. No, we now have pink pritt stick: 'Just 4 girls'. Pink is a colour that is thrust upon young girls as 'their' colour by marketing and old fashioned idiots from a very early age. I know some researchers come up with notions to say otherwise [1], but I refuse to believe that it is healthy to declare one colour suitable for 'girls only' and then market it to them and their parents indiscriminatingly. It is as unfair to little boys as to the little girls to declare them separate entities who can have little in common.

Why do we need a pink pritt stick? I doubt girls need encouraging into the arena of 'sticking things'. Why don't boys have a pritt stick 'Just 4 boys'? Why can't boys use pink? Is it in any way correct to tell boys to use the grown up pritt stick whilst telling the girls -that as they are girls- they should use something childish and frivolous?

So thank you pritt stick, for removing another unisex activity from those available to children, you were once my dear dear friend. I expected this rubbish from Mattel and Toys R Us but not from you. If you had just marketed coloured pritt sticks, I would have totally bought a purple one.

[1] Disputed here

Strudel Surprises - when mars bars, tootie fruities and cherries collide

2009-08-21T20:30:00.000+01:00

I had intended to limit my strudel experiments to just mars bars. Standing in the newsagents perusing the selection, it became clear I needed to push the pastry envelope and I came home laden with Fudge bar, Mars bar, Munchies and a packet of Tooty Fruities. I decided against normal strudel and instead went for strudel packets (typically full of crushed lady fingers, almonds, marzipan and cherries), which allowed me a dazzling rainbow of sweetie experimentation. The report:
1. Ring and finger crisis. I forgot to buy lady fingers! Clearly these would be needed for moisture absorbtion, sweetness and bulk. I therefore decided to use party rings instead. Because they are sweet, they matched the theme of my experiment and I like eating them. So as not to appear prejudiced, I carefully decided to crush one party ring of each colour, instead of limiting myself to the orange ones.2. Pastry preparation. Not from a packet. Nooo. Lovingly made according to Dr Oetker's recipe and then rolled and stretched out on a tea towel.3. Filling decsions. The inside of the pastry squares was then smeared with ukky egg mixture in preparation for the filling. At this point I realised how foolish I was to have so many options. All the parcels needed to contain the almond/ party ring biscuit mix but would Marsbar go with marzipan, would Munchies go with cherries? I eventually decided on a list of varying fillings following the basic combinations shown below (notable exception being tooty fruities andthe fudge bar, which were always combined with cherries)

Sweetie + Cherries +marzipan
Sweetie + Cherries
Sweeties4. Parcel construction. This was very messy and in the process my careful planning came apart. Soon I could not remember what filling was in what what packet! Disaster? Not for the stout of heart, I decided instead that I had invented strudel roulette and the mystery(like that found in a packet of Revels) would add to the fun.
5. Baking The parcels were lovingly baked with only a few marsbarish ruptures. They were then messily dusted with icing sugar and served with a helpful warning about the contents.
Results!It didn't prove entirely impossible to tell the packets apart. To me, Munchies were pretty similar to marsbar and fudge. However, tooty fruities were very distinctive. Offering the cherries a strange fake-fruit after-taste to what was blatently real fruit. Fascinating. Anything chocolatey and cherries went well and even the marzipan seemed to work. The ringbearer complained bitterly when he got a normal cherry packet instead of a chocolatey one and offered extensive further insights into the strudel saying 'The experiment was successful', 'Munchies were the nicest' and 'Leave me alone, I'm watching the cricket'. So it's nice to know his assesments have reached 2 sentences instead of 1. Ultimately, I like fruit, so I'm not sure adding mars bar was a success, but I am apparently in the minority in this preference. But where next? An enormous Altrincham-Marsbar strudel? Or an upside down cake replacing pineapple rings with gummi snakes?

If Chins Could Kill -how to inspire the would be B list

2009-08-20T10:16:00.004+01:00

I recently finished If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B movie actor by Bruce Campbell. Hopefully Mr Campbell is known to most people as the King of the B movie (Especially the Evil Dead series) but is also a veteran of that other 'B' media: TV, in this case Xena and Hercules. The book chronicles his childhood and his erratic career, which has allowed him to cross paths with many well known names as well as be a first hand witness the elevation of colleague Sam Raimi to Hollywood 'A' director. However, as Mr Campbell is forever pointing out, his book is about the people not seen in front of the screen or at premières. It seems a shame therefore that most of his anecdotes still revolve around the more famous names (with the exception of his Evil Dead comrades). That isn't to say he panders to the Hollywood elite in any fashion. His book is both funny, insightful and quite inspired me to keep making amateur films. His tone cheerfully allows him to acknowledge his critics and his failures with both humour and honesty and it endears him to the reader. Bruce may be many things, but a writer he is not. I found the memoirs rambled around with space dedicated to not always relevant moments, anecdotes and opinions. I also found several sections quite flat, if not repetitive. The addition of photos, diagrams and lists hid quite a few of these faults and allowed the book to maintain it's cheery, non-snobbish outlook.

I enjoyed chins. It made me laugh and as the very kind person who gifted it to me hoped, it inspired me. As even Bruce would put it, 'If these idiots, can make a film and sell it, why can't I?[1]'. So, if you like films, read this book. Don't expect a literary masterpiece but rather a scrapbook of humorous anecdotes and nuggets of knowledge about the antics of Hollywood's middle-class and you won't be disappointed.

[1] Who needs 'Man with the screaming brain'? 'Woman plagued by teleporting gummi bears!' - a Chemie production!

Zombie outbreak mathematically modelled

2009-08-18T10:45:00.004+01:00

A Canadian group of researchers has scientifically analysed the living's chances against a zombie horde. They made some interesting assumptions to do this, especially that Zombies would be the slow moving stupid kind, would only want human flesh and the timescale of the outbreak would be short. This may irritate survivalists who have prepared their well armed rec-rooms with enough microwave meals and ammo for several years. The paper then compares the spread of zombies as a mathematical model is to the spread of ideas and political parties. Does this mean that if you run fast enough from a new idea or hit any sign of 'infection' with a big bat, you can save humanity from it? Well that didn't work so well for the Spanish Inquisition but it's a damn shame my pacifistic nature disallows me from trying it on the BNP. I can see it now, last known non-fascist, anti racists hole up in the Trafford Centre to face off the hordes of BNP supporteers with nothing but golf clubs and fabulous shoes from Selfridges.
pdf of research

Currywurst museum - taking the sausage?

2009-08-14T15:46:00.006+01:00

(Picture from Spiegel online)

Berlin has a new currywurst museum. Why does all the best stuff open once you've left? I loved the month I lived in Berlin but I have to admit to only having one decent currywurst whilst there and never during my 3 years in the Rhurgebiet. For those of you unaware of this German delicacy, currywurst (or curried sausage) is essentially a chopped sausage with tomato ketchup and curry powder (German standard curry powder, so not hot atall.) I always preferred a good standard bratwurst im broetchen (sausage in a breadroll), especially when the bratwurst is 3 times the length of the bun, making the whole thing comedic.

I know about currywurst from reading The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm. It's a nice novella and Lena Brueker's tale of wartime romance and survival is a touching way to introduce the birth of Berlin's culinary masterpiece. Plus any book based on the invention of fast food snack has a certain uniqueness anyway.

The question remains however, why don't we have a Fish and Chips museum? I appreciate fish-and-chip's rise to fame is not quite so linked to post-war development and east/west clashes in a symbolic city, but there has to be some information worthy of an exhibition. The kids could play on the chip-frying simulator or giant map depicting mushy pea trends across the UK, whilst the adults consider the display on changing portion size and listen through vinegar bottle shaped headphones to interviews on the environmental impact of banning newspapers as wrapping. I'll write to the national lottery for funding shall I?

The great gummi mystery - more adventures in baking

2009-08-14T14:26:00.013+01:00

A girl can only take too much chocolate brownie, so instead of continuing the brownie exper iments, I decided to try with orange cake. The ringbearer was not so pleased, he considers fruit based cakes to be 'girly and healthy'. How a cake consisting of almonds, sugar, eggs and oranges could be called 'healthy' is beyond me. One way almondy heart attack if you ask me. So everyone knows chocolate and oranges go, so I thought I'd add some minstrels (crispy shell possibly adding texture, or protection from chocolate oozing) and some gummy bears (because they're fruit flavoured too).

Stage 1. Orange and almond cake preparation. Having started on the task of grating 3 oranges, I was forced to put on a very feminine apron. This combined with my fashionable T-shirt/dress leggings combo, gave me the appearance of a medieval baker (or chorus member in the Pied Piper). Under such feudal conditions it seemed fruitless to complain about how the oranges were turning my hands well...orange.

Stage 2. Folding issues. My recipe required the eqq whites to be folded into the main mixture or almonds, eggs and sugar. How was I to add the minstrels? Would the weight of the minstrels somehow interfere with my gentle folding of the egg whites? Would all the air be lost? Could minstrels act as nucleation sites for air loss? (unlikely, I know)

Stage 3. I opted to gently insert the sweeties into the cake, with absolute minimum of stirring. Minstrels in one small sector. Gummi bears in another right next to the minstrels.

Stage 4. Baking and removal of the cake. Cake was then pierced numerous times with a kebab stick and the orangey syrup poured over. The piercing was very soothing in a machine-gunning-a-cake fashion, I might recommend it as a stress handling technique.
Stage 5. Serve

And so the mystery began. As you can see the minstrels were easy to find, although they added little to the cake eating experience, not being rich enough next to the oozy-almondy-cakieness. (Dark chocolate may be the answer). However, the gummi bears were never found. Never. They weren't where they were placed - can gummi bears swim in cake mix?. We couldn't taste them or see them (and they were pretty obviously green and red). We searched every mouthful of the cake for a gummy bear and came up with nothing. What happened? Did the gummi bears evaporate? Did they get abducted by aliens? Were they rescued from the oven by Haribo the super-gummi? Did they become one with the cake? - so great was their love for all things orange? A complete mystery so suggestions on a postcard please.

Next time, either minstrels brownies (Booooring) or mars bar strudel.

[Edited for my bad typing and grammar - pretty sure I didn't catch all of it either :( ]

Nude penguins and fetish foxes

2009-08-14T14:13:00.002+01:00

I love silly season. I also adore penguins and am therefore very concerned about poor little Ralph the penguin, who lost all his feathers and has to wear a little wetsuit to stop him getting sunburn. Fortunately all his penguin friends are still letting him join in the penguin games.

Of course over in Germany the Sommerloch, is also bustling with animal antics. The wild boars, instead of attacking churches or breaking in to hardware stores are partying on the autobahn, a fox has developed a footwear fetish ( If he was in Berlin he could attend specialist sex parties for that) and hedgehogs are becoming some sort of rescue statistic in Nord Rhine-Westphalia. Why the police are required to deal with hedgehogs is a mystery. The boars I will grant are scary porkers in desperate need of a harshly written ASBO.

Moon - keeping it retro on the dark side of

2009-08-12T21:14:00.005+01:00

Last night I saw Duncan Jones's film Moon. Set on -you guessed it- the moon, it follows single astronaut Sam (Sam Rockwell[1]) as he finishes up his 3 year contract drilling for Helium and prepares to head home. Of course nothing is quite as it seems and soon Sam is faced with the sort of booming questions that echo across thousands of sci-fi tomes. Who or what is he? Sam is accompanied by GERTY, the as-standard talking robot who earns the audience's instant mistrust by being the same race as HAL, but the film remains for the most part a one-actor film. Moon was clearly cheap to make (by Hollywood standards) and the bouncing models and limited set nicely reflect the 70s thinking-man's sci-fi such as Silent Running or Dark Star the film attempts to emulate.

Whilst Moon doesn't really have twists, you can easily spoil the plot by knowing too much about it. Unfortunately, I had sussed out the situation about 30 minutes before Sam began to get close to it and felt a little cheated. Have I read or seen too much Sci-Fi? I suspect that a gentle exposition was more in tone with the film's slow pace and implication that time was dripping past and subsequently I wasn't meant to be surprised. I loved the retro set, the inherent claustrophobia it brought and the crumpled mess of marker pens, duvet suits and post-its that was Sam's 'home'. I was also very impressed by the decidedly Amstrad looking GERTY, who managed some fine acting with nothing but emote icons.

My greatest problem with Moon is that whilst it is a beautifully shot, well acted, much needed antithesis to recent blockbuster sci-fi films such as Transformers, I can't bring myself to like it. I never liked Silent Running or it's ilk. Deep thinking Sci-fi books have annoyed me more than interested me for years and I have always wanted to fire photons whenever Star Trek brought up a philisophical episode. This somewhat dulled my enjoyement of Moon, I had a real sense of 'seen it before - got anything new to say/do?'. If you don't have such strong feelings about Sci-fi pondering, go and see Moon. Even if you do, go and see some fine film-making . Just don't think too hard about the antagonist's motives they, unlike the big philosophical questions posed by the film really don't stand up to lengthy consideration.

[1] I met a lovely man called Rockwell Flint once. Possibly the most awesome name EVER.

Penguin papers

2009-08-07T16:29:00.003+01:00

(Picture from Spiegel online)

When you see a man with penguins, what do you do? Call the police obviously. Only in Germany would someone be carrying the necessary papers for their penguins, whilst frolicking in a lake. Mostly I am delighted that one can take penguins out for R&R. When I'm a billionaire and can afford my Penguin wonderland, I shall take my penguins on many lovely trips to cooling lakes. And they'll be much better behaved than disgusterous jumpy dogs.

Wicked - Girl power in Oz

2009-08-04T17:52:00.004+01:00

Taking place mostly before Dorothy skipped across Oz, Wicked is the tale of the wicked witch of the west and her one-time friend Glinda-the good. You really should have heard about it, there are long running productions all over the world. And last Saturday as part of an extra special birthday treat I went to see it in London. I really enjoyed myself, it offers everything you expect from a west end musical, slick choreography, great performances, good laughs, expensive interval sweets, hum-along songs and lots of magic. The Oz magic even begins before the curtain goes up (and the incredibly sweet giant dragon begins to fume) as the underwater themed Apollo Victoria theatre is bathed in green light.

I have no knowledge of the book (the Oz series or the prequel the musical is based on) but I really enjoyed the change of perspective that Wicked provided. I was terrified the first time Glinda sang (No-one mourns the wicked), so high and squeaky was she that I couldn't distinguish the words. Fortunately all later songs were sung at a more comprehend able pitch and were generally awesome. The easily recognisable quotes from the Wizard of Oz that were included in the musical, really made me giggle. Glinda's comedic character makes it easy for her to steal most scenes, but I was rooting for Elphelba, which is a testament as to how she is written and performed.

Oz is apparently well known to be something of a pro-women novel and it follows through in 'Wicked'. How often are musicals written about the relationship between 2 women, with the love story in firm second place? It was no accident that all the best numbers were between the two witches rather than the love-interest(s) or the wizard. Whilst I appreciate that the film and musical never really cross , I felt that the end melting sequence was a bit of a let down. Played in silhouette on a quickly drawn across curtain, the scene seemed like a high school worthy dodge and not worthy of an otherwise very resourceful set design. But this is a small quibble, I loved the rest of the musical. Sure it only has a few numbers that really stick in the brain but the fact that I tried to sing 'defying gravity' for the rest of the evening after hearing it only once is quite a credit (And I'm really bad with music). I was also utterly dejected that I couldn't take the dragon home.

Indietracks - A brownie pack holiday with real ale and amps

2009-08-03T15:43:00.007+01:00

Indietracks is a small indie-pop festival held at the Midland railway museum. It pricked my interest thanks to it's unusual combination of steam trains and indie-pop ( although it has been postulated that the link is related to either a fascination with usable 'vintage' or real ale) and exhibiting some bands at the bargain price of £35. It is undoubtedly the first festival I have attended where I arrived by antique train, spent breaks in bands chatting to a lovely volunteer about his model railway 'My granddaughter goes to Glastonbury, she says it isn't like this' or bopped away in an engine shed. Indietracks is mercifully noncommercial (home-made is something of a theme) and not only are the sandwiches, buns and real ale (courtesy of the local CAMRA society) reasonably priced, they taste good too. Indietracks is the place for the vintage dress clad, broadsheet reading music nerd. It was possibly the only festival I have attended where children and pushchairs seemed appropriate, safe and welcome (I loved the baby ear defenders, I want some). The workshop featured jewelery making from Tatty Devine and talks on 'how not to run a music label' as well as bunting making and corsage construction. All vital indicators of the humble, twee, home-made nature of the event.

There were 3 stages, outside, the engine shed and the tiny tin railway church. Hair bow, ballet pump wearing indie fans trotted happily between the three, waiting to hear many bands who were suitably obscure. Such is the intimacy of indietracks you often found yourself corsage making sitting next to bands who had just finished playing, however this was also an indication of the lack of 'big name' bands. The names that drew us to Saturday were Emmy the great and Camera Obscura, perennials of Radio 6. Emmy the Great, following an apparently nightmarish journey gave a performance that was functional but added nothing to her recorded work. Camera Obscura were surprisingly upbeat, endearingly apologizing for one slow depressing number, as they had expected people to be sitting and chilling on the grass rather than standing and bouncing. Surprises to us were the impressive enthusiasm of Cats on Fire, and Sucrette who proved to be bubble sweet and managed to make music that sounded like it belonged on a Miss Kitty video game, pleasant summer listening. An honorable mention is deserved for Butcher Boy who utilised everything from cello to an accordion, whilst entertaining their small band of faithful fans. The Lovely Eggs also managed a strange mix between comedy, loud punky music and twee musings about fruit, cowboys and dinosaurs in the church stage. I'm not sure they have much to offer other than novelty - but they were like the entire festival, warm, unique and reminiscent of an indie band searching for a big break at a girl guide sing-a-long.

Brownie breeding-mixing chocolately goodness with sweets

2009-07-31T15:56:00.012+01:00

I can bake a reasonable chocolate brownie. They are incredibly rich and sweet and often require a sit-down after consuming. However, I feel that they could be improved by the addition of sweeties. My first effort was the inclusion of 3 pilot gummi worms, (I carefully marked their position before the mix was placed in the oven, so they could be found quickly and not give anyone a nasty shock - not everyone is as pioneering as me). The gummi worms melted and when found within the brownies, oozed out lusciously (although not leaving the worm shaped vacuums I had hoped for). The taste of brownie and molten worm unfortunately did not gel and were declared a failure.

Marshmallows seemed a more logical inclusion to brownies, but I had to question if they would form a homogenous compound with the brownie batter upon heating or would they stay isolated? I therefore pondered the question: What sweet would not melt? Flying saucers! They are made of the same stuff under macaroons, and that doesn't change shape under the influence of heat and syrupy mix. The only real question was the effect of the air. Here are the results of my first trial flying saucer brownie[1].Step 1. Take some Chemie special Brownie mix (not from a packet I might add, there are weighing scales, whisks and Bain Marie involved).Step 2. Chop Marshmallows into various sizes, so heat exposure and melting can be analysed. Realise that chopping marshmallows is an endless, sticky hopeless task. Give up and add marshamallows in various stes of chopped-up-ness to mix
Step 3. Place flying saucers in the tin and add mix. Run side experiment to see if the mix will seep into the saucer at room temperature. Proudly note it does not.Step 4. Bake with great anticipation. Note the early marshmallow rupture and worry for the safety of the flying saucers.
Step 5. Wait for brownie to cool. Under the cool kitchen luminescent light, attempt first Brownie dissection. Get annoyed when ringbearer will not hand you a scalpel or swab when told to and merely eats the extracted samples without consideration. Note flying saucers are intact, but marshmallows have merely added pleasantly to the stickiness.
Step 6. Demand critical response from ringbearer, who judges end product to taste of 'flying saucers and brownies'.

Personally I feel that the marshmallows, worked well but added little in flavour. Mini-mallows in larger quantities might help. Flying saucers work well with Brownies, the sherbet is a nice tang and breaks the heaviness of the chocolatey goodness. Next time; more saucers! Or maybe strawberry millions....

[1] Of the cake kind. I've worked with brownies fo the girl guide kind, you do not want to give them any form of unsupervised aviation equipment .

Videogame Nation - Videogaming is now exhibition worthy history and/or art?

2009-07-30T19:02:00.005+01:00

Videogame Nation is an exhibition running at the fantastic Urbis in Manchester about the British video games industry (no Supermario here). It is accompanied by several talks and events relating to the videogaming industry. The exhibition is slickly put together with many games available to play, sketches, merchandise and game cover art. Parts include actual bus shelters for you to play you Nintendo DS in or an arcade style room for the arcade games as well as telephones that play recorded interviews. The walls are covered in snippets of gaming history, anecdotes and some worryingly pretentious quotes. ''Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other,' Charles Lamb' seems to be glorifying spending 4 hours straight on Tetris a bit too much if you ask me.

I have to admit that this is a great way to spend several hours on a rainy summer's day. The £3 entrance fee essentially lets you play limitless computer games, whilst indulging in some serious nostalgia. My friends' thrill at seeing 'Elite' again was strangely endearing and it offset the upset of seeing young children utterly amazed at the modern archaeological status of their beloved 'Jet Set Willy' . (Seriously, one kids was staring at Micromachines like it was a Viking helmet). We walked through the rooms to the endless cries of 'I remeber that!' and managed to get re-addicted to Lemmings. I'm afraid a lot of the nostalgia was lost on me. I never got into our Amstrad CPC 464 and my parents neither understood it nor encouraged me. I got pretty good at anything that involved viciously hitting the space bar (Bubba Bubba and Harrier Attack) and then left the world of computer games until as a procrastinating university student we were re-introduced. However at the exhibition, I triumphed in Sensible Soccer after brilliantly coming across the notion of hitting only two buttons very quickly for 2 minutes, which is exactly how I succeeded at any videogame in the 80s.

The exhibition, laid out from conception to today, underlined the meteoric speed and development of the gaming industry. I'm not sure however, that it did much else. The art of various magazines and disc covers, were sporadically dotted about but never alluded to as being part of a greater artistic trend. A shame really because the art of video games and it's influences could have been very interesting. Towards the end the recent issues of violent games, women gamers and the health concerns relating to gaming were almost cursorily shown. Which left me feeling that the exhibition seemed unsure as to it's purpose. Videogame Nation was a history lesson, art gallery and playroom all in one but it felt like a thesis that had failed to pose, argue or attempt to answer a question. It was a lot of fun, a lot of detail and information, but I'm not sure in bringing all these games together it achieved anything except saying that videogames have developed....a lot.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - How Hollyoaks does it better

2009-07-29T11:18:00.005+01:00

I'm not sure how you could not know the plot by now, but spoilers for anything Potter

I like Harry Potter films, there is something cosy and Sunday afternoonish about them and I always get a little tingle in my spine when that melody kicks in. I even just about forgive the atrocity that was film 2, mostly because it taught all future directors and writers that they were going to have to slice and dice the books to make a decent film. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince sees Harry and friends return for another year of education, adolescent development and fighting Lord Voldemort. Film 6 is as much about the raging hormones as it is about the raging battle between good and evil outside the school walls. Large amounts of film time are dedicated to the teen-angst relationships between the teenage heroes. The problem is the actors aren't very good at portraying it. Ginny in particular drove me mad with her very strange motherly seduction techniques. Shoelace tying only works with naughty smile when kneeling down and mince pie feeding is sort of sexy if you don't precede it with a matronly 'open up'. Poor Ginny managed to exude fewer (admittedly adolescently incompetent) 'come hither' messages in the entire film than the waitress sweetly managed in 2 minutes. Quiditch and Ron's relationship with Lavender (wonderfully hammed up) is all well and good, but mentioning that people are dying and disappearing outside the walls might also have been relevant.

The relationship between Harry and Ginny was eventually OKed by Ron via Hermione as an afterthought during the Empire-Strikes-Back-window framing final scene. Why go to all that painful effort for one throw-away sentence? That among with a few other strange cuts, such as the hourglass and the burning newspaper has led me to believe that several parts of the film that were shot were edited out. Sections of the book were also cut, the Tonks subplot, the Ministry politicking, Bill Weasley and the Dursleys plus all the staring into the swirly memory bowl has thankfully been minimised. References to previous books were present without further painful exposition (Aragog, the marauder's map, Harry's parents). But two points were strangely absent: Sirius, (something of an important figure to Harry) was barely mentioned or grieved for and the fight in the castle was completely missing, having been mostly transferred to the Weasley home. The last I found to be the most confusing; it seemed that Draco had been filling his time (and a portion of the film) with his efforts around the cabinets, so that the deatheaters could arrive and provide...moral support?

Film 6 is the set up for book 7 (films 7+8 if you will) and it truly felt darker and more epic. The young cast look and act like nearly-adults (although hilariously Neville looks about 30) ready to unsteadily face the world. Broadbent's Slughorn worked perfectly and Draco's change from snide bully to a far more dangerous,clever and scared foe was well handled. So the younger actors are erratic and they could learn something about portraying teen relationships from the cast of Hollyoaks. But the cast of Hollyoaks isn't sharing a screen with the pitch perfect royalty of British acting, where nearly anyone is going to look weak. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is a solid lead into the final book, lets hope the actors practice their goo-goo eyes and body language before it starts filming.

It Felt Like A Kiss - terror and revelations in a Manchester office block

2009-07-28T18:20:00.002+01:00

It Felt Like A Kiss –How an insight into US culture, your pack mentality, human suggestibility and blind terror can be a great Birthday present.

It Felt Like a Kiss (IFLAK) was one of the stand out events of the Manchester International Festival. A collaboration between film-maker Adam Curtis (The power of Nightmares), Punchdrunk ( A theatre group specialising in walk-through theatre experiences) and Damon Albarn (the man whose breadth of creativity Noel Gallagher wishes he had ).It's officially over now and was originally slated to be a one off, although now it is rumoured to be travelling to London and Moscow?!? Because the more you know about the performance, the less you get out of it I shall keep this part brief. IFLAK is a similar to a walk-through fairground ride, which will just like Curtis's films shoot ideas past you at a rapid rate. At the centre was a 35 minute showing of Curtis's film, a documentary on late 50s/early 60s America and the power and falsehoods of dreams. The spaces you walk to to get to the film, reflect fragments of the film. These spaces are incredible in detail, innocuous discomfort or blatant fear manipulation. After the film (as you are warned at the beginning) and as you progress through more spaces connected to the film you begin to see the dream become an nightmare. And what was naggingly uncomfortable before becomes a terrifying assault. Your role as spectator changes slowly to participant and you find yourself assaulted with just how suggestible you are and how much you will obey. And after 2 hours of creeping about, with growing paranoia, it's a lot more than you think. IFLAK wants to show you that you are not an individual, that you are the same as everyone else and as you dash gasping and possibly screaming into eventual daylight and see the rest of the audience doing the same, you take the point to heart. Not bad for 'art'.

After most theatre/gig trips you can find yourselves dissecting the performance over a pint, maybe relishing a few choice memories for a couple of days. Post IFLAK most people sit in the pub, gently shaking, convinced the barman isn't real and desperately trying to process the ordeal. You won't forget IFLAK, infact most people will be having 'nam style flashbacks for weeks. I managed to get very alarmed by an empty corner of my bedroom at 3am following the show. With such a resounding impact, I recommend the performance to anyone who relishes a new experience, enjoys having the boundaries between exhibition, play and film blurred and can handle a gentle transition from spectator, to active participant. Go and experience IFLAK, sell your horror movie DVD collection, psychology, self help and history books. You'll get a more intimate understanding of yourself and your fellow man in 2 hours of IFLAK than in any of them.

It Felt Like A Kiss: The spoiler version

2009-07-28T18:08:00.008+01:00

My more detailed re-cap is below. Obviously spoilers, don't read if you think you will ever get a chance to go.

The It Felt Like A Kiss performance took place in a completely bland 70s office building. So innocuous was it, we struggled to find the entrance and with entry limited to groups of 6-8 every 20 minutes, there were no handy queues to show you the way. Innocuous on first inspection yet disturbing on the inside was a recurring theme for the next 2 hours. Fear is all about expectation and IFLAK is a masterpiece of building it. From the moment a very nice steward gave us severe warnings about unsuitability for people who are pregnant, have heart conditions or have a nervous disposition and reminded us about wearing sensible enclosed footwear (They weren't kidding on the last one), to the rooms that connect by ominous black corridors, or ominous music, to the time later on when you are issued an classic horror movie adage of 'Don't split up', expectation is a fundamental part of your experience. Hence my heart-rate was already rising as I entered the lift with 4 strangers, all of us indulging in a terribly British jokey banter to calm our nerves. By the time the lift opened to nothing but darkness and a yawning clown's face, I was already telling myself 'It's just a show'

IFLAK's walk-through sections shoot ideas, objects, sounds and fragments past you at a rapid rate,just like Curtis's films. We crept through some rooms and sauntered through others. They key is to feel, smell, touch and hear rather than to process. It really is a walk through movie. I barely noticed Albarn's soundtrack, although I knew it was manipulating my mood, just a a good soundtrack should for a film. You could touch anything except the dummies which occupy some spaces (at least you hope they are dummies and trust me you ask yourself that every time you come across one). I felt a frisson of spy like pleasure as I nosed through the CIA's filing cabinets and an unknown family's book shelves. The rooms smelled authentic and everywhere TV screens showed fragments of the documentary, often strangely at odds with your apparent location, sometimes in perfect keeping with it. For example Tina Turner's 'Mountain High', was wildly appropriate and inappropriate when wandering through a dystopian rubbish dump. At one point I thought I was George-W style seeing a young Saddam Hussain everywhere (pinned photo to a notice board, Saddam moustaches in the props department, on the bedroom TV). The rooms and the documentary have something to say about any number of social and economic points and sometimes it felt like an unprocessable deluge, so many connections were there to be made as the documentary and the 'theatre' rambled through them. It was almost frustrating to not be able to make them all. I found later that I struggled to remember a lot of these moments and connections as the events after the documentary (the nightmare) somewhat assaulted and then clouded my memory. A mistake or another way of saying 'You noticed the nightmarish fallout, but you didn't see all the signs leading up to it did you?' The film itself; an 'experience', a whirlwind of ideas and questions that was designed to feed some other part of your brain than the one Panorama normally takes up, left a strange after-taste. Certainly a desire to see it again and try and process but also a sense that maybe the message you found was just for you, More art than history lesson or political point.

You know the ending to the Blairwitch? Run up and down some empty stairs and see someone in the corner of the room. I laughed when I saw that. I didn't laugh when I was stuck in a strobe lit corridor with a dummy in the corner. Why 6 adults scuttled past something they outnumbered, but couldn't see well in the lighting, is a testament to how easily we are willing to play our part [1]. Have you seen many films where the body in the corner disappears, the CCTV shows you that something is behind you or the 'dummy' moves when you glance in the opposite direction? Dumb jokeworthy cliché perhaps but really quite scary when after 2 hours of paranoia inducing 'entertainment', you are creeping with a group of strangers, along a maze with no destination other than the one in front of you. That you have just filled out a psychological questionnaire[2] about 'freedom' and been warned that people have accidentally died in ghost rides just adds to the effect.

I always comment on how a logical person would handle a real life horror movie. (Find a makeshift weapon, pull out your mobile, refuse to enter a maze, climb things that got in your way instead of going where the resident nutter wants you to go) and in IFLAK I did none of those things. I was disappointed with myself, until afterwards when I took a good look at what motivated me. At one point I was stuck with 7 other people in a room waiting for the lights to go on in the next, so we could move on (or face a grissly chainsaw death). I didn't barricade doors or make weapons, because I knew it wasn't the point. I was on a ride, it wasn't real, there was surely worse to come but it would be terrifying, not life threatening. And I suddenly felt re-assured about my own competence but implicitly aware that I was following someone else's rules and feeling what they wanted me to. Naturally 'sticking together; didn't happen and eventually we were forced to be alone. Except I wasn't, having gotten jammed in a door, my grand moment of terrifying epiphany was shared with a very pleasant equally scared stranger. I feel awful that I missed out, that I didn't finish my ordeal properly, but also kind of proud that I did eventually buck the system (by accident). My eventual exit from IFLAK was inelegant, filled with relief, exhaustion and a desperate need for a pint and some form of group counselling.

So I refused to take a mystery pill, or put a gun to my head, but when asked to pick a door or am jostled and yelled at to 'run' from a chainsaw wielding maniac, I do it. Not the individual I thought I was. How depressing, how awesome a revelation in such an unexpected way. How badly do I want to go again?

[Edited for my grammar, which is always appalling :( ]
[1] Apparently David Dimbleby was in one group. As a true journalist and presumably used to real terror he tried to interview one of the dangerous and scary things that he came across. Everyone else ran.
[2] I didn't. It seems I have a very modern view of privacy of information irrelevant of my 60s, fascistic hospital surroundings

How to confirm that you are the youngest passenger on a cruise.

2009-07-26T20:04:00.000+01:00

Recently my in-laws very kindly took my husband and me away on a Fred Olsen Cruise to Norway and the Arctic. They naturally warned us that the average clientèle were Daily Mail reading retirees with an average age of 76 and the cruise was very much aimed at its customer base. Never being one to turn down a new experience (or a free holiday) I embarked on my first cruise. Of the nearly 900 passengers we were almost the youngest (2 single women, who had similarly been offered free holidays by their parents were also on-board and were possibly a bit younger). I thoroughly enjoyed living away from my peer group and witnessing the behaviour of the middle class retiree en-masse and I have subsequently constructed a handy checklist called ‘How to confirm that you are the youngest passenger on a cruise’.

-The duty free shop only includes anti-aging and wrinkle reducing products

-You are the only passenger who knows how to buy and wear appropriately cut trousers

- You are the only person not delighted that the comedian 'wasn't too blue'

-All the quiz questions are based on trivia from before you were born

-You don't wander where the dancing girls get their energy

-You understand the computer room

-All excursions involve less than 5 minutes walking and no steps

-You haven't heard a single track on-board from the top ten from the last 10 years

-The ship shop is better stocked with Tena lady than tampons. (Also there are no condoms available anywhere on the ship)

-You are the only one who is actively seasick. (I suspect that the senior passengers have had many years to develop fearsome sealegs or are so full of arthritis drugs anyway they barely notice the ship move)

-You are the only person who wears a bikini (or should)

-You don’t think twice about walking to the stern or require a cup of tea to recover from it

-You don't know any of the dances

-You are not under the impression that gold orthopaedic sandals and a nice cardi constitute more formal attire

-If you partook of the beauty treatments in the salon and 'took 10-20 years off' you would have to hand in your driver's licence

The cult of specialness

2009-03-30T23:37:00.001+01:00

Having spent a few hours ranting and raving about BSG to my poor ringbearer he persuaded me to write it all down.

Battlestar Galactica is one of my favourite shows, I have never missed an episode and live the nerd dream of discussing it a little too much with my friends. I have however, found the show’s last 6 episodes or so unsatisfactory and although I enjoyed seeing the finale I felt that something was missing. BSG had its strengths and most people point to the excellent characterisation and the delicate balancing of space action with political/social tension that illuminated our own. Something else which BSG did very well (for a sci-fi show) was realism. When people were injured, they stayed injured, the whole crew pretty much had post traumatic stress disorder, unhappy people mutinied, they ran out of fuel, water and food, the worst of human nature was as apparent as the best and generally if it could go wrong, it did. For a show with robots, angels and prophecy it managed to show us ordinary people doing and reacting the way ordinary people would. If a chunk of the fleet thought a woman with breast cancer was a mythical dying leader who knew the way to the Promised Land, enough of the fleet were sceptical enough to shake their heads and propose another less religious based course of action. I think that this sense of reality was starkly missing from BSG’s final season and in particular the final half of that season.

By season 4 BSG had a large cast and it would be hard work to summarise them all here. Briefly, Adama, Roslin, Baltar, 8, 6, Starbuck and Apollo were the above the title names that got their own promotional photos with every new season. Supporting characters who rose to join them in prominence included Helo, Tigh and Tyrol and to a lesser extent Dee, Gaeta, Sam and Tory. There was also a host of named recurring characters who turned up every so often to repair vipers (Cally, Seelix ), shoot cylon raiders (Kat, Hot-Dog), attack Galactica (the other cylon models), act as lawyers or rival politicians (Zarek, Romo)or tell you your cancer had got worse (Dr Cottle). All the characters were well written, developed appropriately with every new piece of suffering and many had been in the show or on the ship since the beginning. For nearly 3 seasons the supporting characters did a wonderful job of supporting the leads. From the moment the colonies were attacked, all you only needed to do was to pan to Gaeta or Dee in the CIC to know what the crew were thinking. Power grabbing as Zarek was, he made some excellent political points about the distribution of power and Roslin’s administration (Episodes: Bastille Day, The Woman King, Guess What’s Coming to Dinner). For all his suffering Tigh had a fantastic ability to bring things into perspective;

Tigh: I've sent men on suicide missions in two wars now, and let me tell you something. It don't make a godsdamn bit of difference whether they're riding in a Viper or walking out onto a parade ground. In the end, they're just as dead. So, take your piety, and your moralizing, and your high-minded principles, and stick 'em some place safe until you're off this rock and you're sitting in your nice, cushy chair on Colonial One again. I've got a war to fight

and let us really see William Adama the old war horse. Tyrol and Helo were the everyman stuck in a nightmare and trying to make the best of it.

The nature of Galactica’s journey meant that along with all the ‘reality’: politics, social upheaval and conflict both internal and external there was a sizeable element of prophecy, religion and special destiny. By the end of season 3 of the big seven characters Athena, Roslin, Caprica, Baltar and Starbuck had all been shown to be ‘special’, with special visions and destinies. This left the two Adamas, who whilst not special, were very important. But then what is the point of main character if not to be special or important? But in the season finale, 4/5 of the final cylons were revealed. Suddenly most of the cast were ‘special’ with a ‘special’ destiny or past. Of the 14 cast members who were deemed important enough to appear in season 4 promotional photos a mere 4 were non-special ( Adama, Apollo, Gaeta and Dee plus Helo if you don’t think he was anything more than a sperm donor). Less than a third of the cast were someone we the non-special human audience could identify with. As season 4 continued I found this development to be troublesome. Early episodes were nearly entirely dominated by Kara’s visions and search for Earth Faith/The Road Less Travelled and the final five’s attempts to come to terms with their cylonicity Escape Velocity/The Ties that Bind. Where were my touchstones of reality? I found that I only cared about the poor souls (the crew of the Demetrius, whiny Cally) who were about to get killed whilst these selfish special characters tried to work out their own personal glowing, vision based path and not the other way around. Sine Qua Non saw Apollo, following Roslin’s kidnap attempting to wrestle political power from Zarek. This was a wonderful reminder that the fleet reacts rather badly to alliances with basestars and missing presidents. Of course it accounted for a quarter of the episode and the results were pretty short-lived once dying-leader-Roslin returned after her special chat with a glowing lady in a bath.

In the final half of season 4, post Earth, the writers decided to trim the cast. I believe Dee died because the actress had other commitments and whilst Gaeta was given a beautiful tragic story line to go out on, the fact remained that following their deaths the last 5 episodes or so (4.15-4.19) of the show had a cast that was nearly entirely ‘special’. They tried to use Hoshi, Hot-Dog and Cottle to remind us that the rest of the fleet was out there, but it failed. And it is these episodes that I struggled with the most. Pre-Earth the cast and the episodes still contained references to the rest of the fleet and the normal humans, after Blood on the Scales they were starkly missing. When Daybreak’s opera house was finally fulfilled William Adama was left standing in his own CIC like a confused bystander as everyone else glowed or fulfilled their destinies to a beautifully constructed and prescient soundtrack. I believe he may have been just about the only recognisable *human* apart from special Dr Baltar.

For 4 seasons of the show, the scenes with Roslin reminded us that there were approximately 40000 more people in the fleet. That 40000 people had rights, had hopes, opinions and a voice that could not be ignored. With Roslin withdrawing from power, Gaeta’s mutiny in episodes The Oath / Blood on the Scales may have been the last time we saw political intrigue or in fact any thought given to the rest of the fleet. While the mutiny was clearly just as much about dissatisfaction and old grievances it was also about Roslin failing to lead and Adama acting as a military dictator. Here were the normal people who hadn’t had visions telling them to trust cylons and fate, quite rightly objecting to a weak and probably corrupt leadership. I think it is no coincidence that the mutineers mostly consisted of supporting characters and named pilots who we hadn’t seen in a while. People, who were not on the specialness loop, people who Adama didn’t hypocritically forgive and forget because they were family and/or special. The mutiny failed and the fleet and the normal people disappeared into the background. It was the last hurrah for the BSG episodes of old, the last time we saw conflict within the fleet. Conflict that had helped make BSG the wonderful strangely realistic multi-faceted show it was. In No Exit Apollo managed to become defacto president and a cylon alliance was undemocratically pushed through without another peep of objection. Following that the only time we heard from the fleet was to see them squabble over Galactica’s bones (Someone to watch over me) and to show us fleetingly that Adama couldn’t police his own ship and that special Baltar was still having visions (Deadlock). In the words of Adama himself to Kara Thrace (now extra special writer of the special notes as heard by other special people)

Adama: ‘I've had it up to here with destiny, prophecy, with God or the Gods. Look where it's left us. The ass end of nowhere; nearly half of our people are gone; Earth, a worthless cinder; and I can't even walk down the halls of my ship without wondering if I'm gonna catch a bullet for getting us into this mess’ Islanded in a Stream of Stars

But by then we knew that Adama’s love of Starbuck, Tigh and Roslin made these words meaningless. He was going to follow the special people’s special opinions on their special destiny. And at this point there was no-one left to object.

In season 2 Adama and Roslin split the fleet over prophecy and a return to Kobol. Even in the beginning of Season 4 Helo, Athena, Gaeta and the crew of the Demetrius were objecting to crazy-Kara’s less than logical destiny based plans.But by the end of season 4 the non-special characters saying the logical thing were gone. Over the series we saw any number of normal often un-named human crewmen/officers/pilots/civilians being killed, looking worried or making tough decisions. These groups were very present in person and dialogue in the mini-series, and whilst the finale tried to mirror the mini-series these groups were barely present. The space battle was awesome to behold but the people who died during it were barely noticeable. Apparently several Raptors and vipers were destroyed (only Racetrack’s was recognisable though) and were subsequently only mentioned in passing. Tigh declared there to be ‘a lot of red lights’ but gave no body count. All those dead marines littering the Galactic and the colony were pretty much just expensive stage dressing. Compare this to earlier in the series where every life has counted, when Kelly stalked among the dead carrying dog-tags or the survivor count was pretty much all that mattered. In Daybreak what mattered was that the special people all played out the special opera house. Maybe that is the point the writers were trying to make, the survivor count didn’t matter, fighting for the dream of human-cylon peace did. But who we saw driving forward this noble dream were the special people, not the destiny-less, cylon mis-trusting people who had taken everything the BSG world could throw at them and were dying in Galactica’s corridors.

From a writer’s point of view I’m sure the removal of the logical objectors and audience interest in the normal crew and people speeded up the process of bringing the season to the closure of Daybreak, but it sacrificed the realism. The wonderful realism that made the mini-series so great, which kept the fleet squabbling, acting like humans for nearly 5 years and made brilliant television. BSG stopped being BSG and became a sci-fi show about visions and destiny. It is writing 101 that you need identifiable characters and in Sci-fi that means ‘human: like-us’. But in its final season BSG killed off or elevated its audience connecting characters. BSG left us with a few ‘normal’ characters who we had seen occasionally over the years such as Cottle and Hot Dog, but no-one we had followed from week to week. It killed off it’s political/social commentary with the mutiny and left us with episodes and people overly absorbed in their own specialness. Apollo looked like a tolerated child every time he tried to discuss the other people left to humanity.

Whilst the finale was a great pleasure to see, the previous five episodes were a chore to watch. As fond as I am of these special main characters, I wanted to see ordinary people fighting to survive to the end. I wanted to see people getting to their happy ending by being normal and human and not driven by a mystery ‘It’ with an interesting choice in sexily dressed messengers. I was left happy that the characters completed their journey but less than certain that the fleet they were with had completed theirs.

The normal 30 day blog

2009-03-30T23:34:00.000+01:00

I'm told the average blog lasts about 30 days before enthusiasm wanes or twitter beckons. I reckon I might make it to 28. Mostly because I spuriously like the number. The blog title is appallingly girly, but tell me when was the last time you sniffed a snowdrop? And just how ridiculous did you look whilst you were doing it?