Lake District Vignettes: Walks, part the first.

In which Marsh and I trudge around in the wet, and the clouds lower from the very sky; spirits are dampened, but are ultimately revived by a life-changing encounter with a chicken.  


So Marsh and I spent last week in the Lake District.  It rained every day.  Even the day it didn't rain during our walk, it rained on us all the way home.  Of course I'm used to this, being Scottish most of my holidays were spent in a cagoule, often with a rolled up carrier bag on my head (-don't try this at home kids).  Despite the awful conditions Marsh and I went out wearing our cheeriest dispositions, buoyed by the promise of a pint and log fire at the end of it all. 

We had a walk each day, mostly around where we were staying in Ambleside, as we'd not explored that area very much before.  All the rain made the waters of the Scandale Beck flowing under the Sweden Bridges (two old pack-horse bridges) and Stock Ghyll Force most spectacular.  Aira Force, where we took my Dad on the Monday, was even more impressive.  Vast quantities of water spilling from a high, tiny gap, the sound, thunderous, greeted us before the sight of the falls.  My Dad snapped away with his camera, all of us bathed in spray, when suddenly the clouds opened and the sun came out.  The cluster of fully-grown adults gathered at the base of the falls cooed like children as rainbows appeared in the spray.  The clouds returned, but the moment was almost like magic.

Not all the moments were magic though. 

As a recovery aimed leg-stretcher following our ascent of Scafell Pike, Marsh and I took on the task of climbing Wansfell Pike, with afters in the village of Troutbeck. The path to the pike was essentially a rock staircase cut into the hillside, and after an hour of trudging, our empty thighs grumbling all the way, we reached what is one of the loveliest views in the lakes.  Windermere and all its islands lay before us; Patterdale to the right of us.  Well, that's what the guidebook said.  We'd been in low cloud from about 100m in.  We enjoyed fabulous views of cloud, mist, fog and an electric fence as visibility slipped to about 15m.

The next part of the walk crossed a bog: it had to be a bog, didn't it? drizzle, low cloud, miserable, it just had to be a bog.  Our guidebook told us to follow a line of cairns towards a walled track.  There were no cairns on the OS map, and I have a terrible case of cairn blindness, so prudently Marsh took a compass reading and worked out a bearing for the track at the other side of the bog.  Now Marsh as you all know is magnificent and right about everything, with the insignificant exception of rawlplugs; thus it was no trouble at all for her to lead us across a lumpy-bumpy bog, complete with streams and sheep in truly awful visibility and low spirits.

Even with Marsh's orienteering marvel couldn't raise our mood and we thumped into Troutbeck like petulant teenagers.  However the sun came out, so we scoped out a random bench and decided to eat the contents of our rucksacks.  A chicken lurked.  A hen, in fact.  She was mostly orange with some green feathers going on at the back, she appeared friendly and was very interested in the contents of our rucksacks: we had the feeling that she'd done this before.

Marsh and I had entertained the idea of having chickens, we decided that if we did we'd call them things like Mrs Featherington, the Lady Cluckington-Beake, Miss Peckworthy and my particular favourite: Dame Strut.  Please don't judge us too harshly reader, we live in the country and have limited access to the internet: we make our own entertainment.  In honour of this we dubbed her Mrs Featherington, and despite the fact that she ate a decent amount of our sandwiches and the pastry element of the sausage rolls, and that she pecked Marsh more than once, she cheered us up no end.  Traipsing half a mile through foggy bog was worth it to make the acquaintance of this rather charming chicken.

Does my blog look big in this?

If you're like me you spend an unhealthy amount of time tweaking and fiddling with blog colour and font settings.  I'm not sure if I do this to enhance either your reading experience or mine on the otherside of the keyboard.... actually I'm pretty sure it's procrastination when I can't finish a post.

Such matters aside, I've been umming and ahhing for a wee while about a makeover.  It all started with changing the black background to white, then to grey, than back to black again.  I just couldn't get away from the black: it's so cool and edgily sexy in 'we're in the Matrix' kinda way.  Well, I think it is.  I like reading white text on a black background, I think it looks good, but it's probably just a vain attempt to be different. 

The long and the short of it is that I rolled up the black background and found these lovely boards underneath.: a wonderfully 90s, Changing Rooms inspired revamp. 

Do let me know what you think. 

Bookspot: Was

This is one of the saddest novels I have ever read. No one has a good time, except maybe Bill, and even then I'm not sure.

I'm obsessed with Oz, and via Oz I'm obsessed with fairy tales and children's stories.  Stories written for kids are invariably dark: full of wicked stepmothers, ravenous wolves and toys which come alive at night.  Often this is because these stories are intended to play a role in raising the children, and are important for teaching them safety and reinforcing social norms.  Jack Zipes suggests framing the story of Red Riding-Hood within that of puberty, she strays from the path her mother warned her to keep to and meets a terrifying creature, only to be rescued by the clean-cut woodsman, who will no doubt get a good degree, become and accountant and be a decent father to all the little baby Riding-Hoods.  The wolf on the other hand was probably a no-good high school drop out, he wouldn't treat Red Riding-Hood like the lady she is, and would probably end up wrapping his truck around a tree while sipping from a hip-flask, that is if he weren't just a character and hadn't been horribly cut down by the woodsman next door.

The land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books is not directly like the dark forest off the path.  Baum is keener to make points in his The Wonderful Wizard of Oz about America, about the Gold Standard, or about things not always being as they seem.  Dorothy is in Oz not because she has strayed from the path, but to learn more about family, simple aspirations and the importance home in another setting.  Books have a habit of having a life of one's own, and that's exactly what happened with Oz; this is how the darker elements are allowed to creep in.

To begin at the most familiar point: the 1939 MGM movie.  A simple internet search will dig up a decent amount of dirt about the film: the shenanigans of the Munchkins; the silver paint poisoning the original Tin Man; Margaret Hamilton catching fire, to name a few.  Was picks up on this by allowing Judy Garland herself to be one of the characters.  Judy doesn't get the opportunity to speak plainly often about herself; it's clear that 'Judy Garland' is her own construct, a construct that allows her to get though the day, but her very presence there, the presence of this young woman shoehorned into a child's role, her breasts strapped down to aid the disguise, which allows us a glimpse into the some of the miseries on set and behind the scenes.

Judy is one of three characters we focus on, another is Dorothy herself, the third is Jonathan: a flighty actor who reveals in the first few paragraphs that he is dying.  Jonathan has made his name playing a Mort, a long running killer in a slasher series, but is unable to settle in more high-profile roles, until he is offered a chance to play the Scarecrow in an Oz production.

The 'real' Dorothy Gael described in the book, who goes on to meet L. Frank Baum and inspire his tale, does not have the simple but happy life of enjoyed by her fictional self.  Beyond their shared recognition of Kansas as the greyest of places, there is not much that Dorothies Gael and Gale have in common.  Aunt Em has married beneath herself and Uncle Henry is not the hard-working farmer of the children's story.  Dorothy Gael's life is hard, and I'm not sure after reading Was if the character Baum has done her a kindness or a disservice in rendering her story in a fantasy.  In this case the dark forest beyond the path is much, much darker in real life than it ever could be in Oz. 

The overall effect of reading Was is one of deep sadness, occasionally tinged with touches of magic.  For all the horror she lives through, Dorothy regularly glimpses moments of the fantastic, Judy Garland has her make-up and show lights, and Jonathan on his arrival at Manhattan airport is transfixed by the MAGIC DZ.  Even Bill, who may or may not be happy, is touched by it and longs to have a deeper understanding of the magic, in the way that Jonathan does. 

All of these people, all of these stories intertwined: all because of a little girl in Kansas.  It could be hokey or twee, but I'm glad to say it isn't.  Geoff Ryman will certainly be on my to read more of list, and not just because of the Oz obsession.  Although even at the age of nearly thirty, just the thought of Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West sends a shiver down my spine!

Import Week: the lost film reviews- anything with Jack Black

Another couple of 'gems' from the lost reviews.  I have an unreasonable dislike of Jack Black's films.  I'm sure he's a grand chap in real life, but on screen he's up there with Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler as things that make me go eeeugh.  Marsh quite like him, so these are revirews of movies seen through LoveFilm.  Pretty soon after that I stopped her ordering any new titles and deleted all her suggestions. 

As before I've decided not to edit the content.

Be Kind Rewind (dir: Michel Gondry, 2008)
(**1/2)

Everything I usually say about Jack Black applies, however the mere fact that he didn't completely hijack the plot made it watchable. The highlights were definately the 'sweeded' films themselves. I'm sure if I watched a shorter, pithier, sweeded version of this it would earn an extra half a star. I know, I'm too generous.

Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (dir: Liam Lynch, 2006)

Sadly half a star is the lowest rating possible.

This film is up there with Pearl Harbor in terms of hours of my life I will not get back, and with Pretty Woman as one of the movies I have foolishly allowed myself to see because a girl wanted me to.

Yet another instance of self indulgent twaddle from Jack Black: you will never be a rock god, not even an ironic one, and stop sullying the music of The Who with your cheese-ridden gyrations and wailings. The high point of their lyrical dexterity was rhyming rock with cock.

Enough.

Import Week: the lost film reviews- Once

This is one of the reviews I forgot to transfer over from the other place.  I'll be brave and not edit the content.  One of the songs from the film popped up on my mp3 player and a whole host of memories flooded back.  

I watched this with Marsh just after we got together, I think you can probably tell how happy I was by the tone.   Two and a half years later, it just gets better and better.  


Once (dir: John Carney, 2007)

Finally got to see this after two failed attempts and it was worth waiting for. First of all with my objective head on: you have to be prepared for the fact that the final product is a little unpolished, rough around the edges and somewhat plot light. But if you're not carried along by its charm, stunning soundtrack and honesty, then I worry about you. Go and watch it with someone you love, hold her close and it will be the most life affirming cinema ticket you'll buy all year.

Found myself comparing it to to 9 Songs, and it does for the emotional intensity of a relationship what 9 Songs attempted for the sex. It's gritty, painfully real and poingnant, but you don't feel voyeuristic or intrusive at any point- feels like more of an invite than a sneaky peek.

The Czech-Irish cultural divide added an interesting element, allowed more fun with the language but it didn't descend ito a tale of love across a divide. Was genunely impressed wth the conclusion: sentimental but not trite, and a genuine feeling of a new beginning rather than an ending.

A special mention has to go to the fucked hoover. Easily the most surprising comic and romantic device I've seen in years! 

Picture:  Hercules vacuum cleaner, 1930s / Sam Hood

From the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales www.sl.nsw.gov.au
Persistent url: acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=153374 

The Lovely Bones: not a review, but thoughts.

I don't want to review this film, so I won't.  But here's some of the things I thought about while I was watching it.

Parental relationship

This started off so well, illustrating the changes experienced Abigail by the book she discards in order to make love to Jack.  Take one is a philosophical text whilst in a single College bed; take two, a double bed with a photograph of a baby on the bedside- a novel (I think) is thrown away in the heat of the moment.  By take three an older version of Susie is the subject of the photograph, and the pile of books by the bed are concerned with parenting and nutrition.  This element was what interested me most about the novel: the way that Abigail has to sacrifice her identity as an individual as she assumes her roles as wife and mother.  In the novel this is something Susie discovers by accident as she snaps a photo of her mother without her knowledge; the woman in the developed photo is almost unrecognisable to Susie. 


Marky Mark and his one face

Mark Whalberg wears some excellent shirts in the film, but he only has one expression. He does do concerned father well, but perhaps he could have stretched himself a little further. 

A teenager's view of heaven

Much of the criticism surrounding Sebold's novel concerned the lack of God in her rendering of heaven, similarly the film was also criticised for its CGI-heavy paradise.  Two points: first, the heaven we encounter through Susie is the narrow one.  Wide heaven, potentially the fluffy cloud, angel bedecked place where God lives, comes once you have relinquished your ties to Earth.  This draws me into point two: this is Susie's heaven.

Susie's heaven was far too bright and twee for my liking, but she is a young teenager in the 1970s and I wouldn't have expected anything less.  What I liked were the repeating motifs which tied disparate elements of the story together.  The large coloured ball which appears in the heavenly sky is associated with another girl's heaven; I don't want to give too much away, but this one of those instances where film trumps the written word: the seemingly casual placement of an object on screen which then reappears, forever linking two seemingly unassociated persons or events.  More about motifs later. 

My idea of heaven would include armchairs, novels and a steady supply of tea and biscuits.  Just so you know. 

Recurring motifs and Jackson's style

Hurrah! We're back to the motifs.  I always say that I'm a fan of Peter Jackson, yet I've not really watched a lot of his films, what I suppose I'm saying is that I'm a great fan of Heavenly Creatures.

Heavenly Creatures is a curious mix of macabre murder, an intense teenage friendship and some amazing fantasy worlds.  The film opens with the gruesome murder of  Honora Parker, one of the girls' mother, the audience are in no way shielded from the fact that this was a horrible, pre-mediated attack, but as the plot unfolds, telling how the girls got to this point, the end seems inevitable for poor Honora.  One is unexpectedly sympathetic with the plight of the girls who merely want to be together. 

Their intense relationship includes the creation of fantasy worlds and characters, notably the plasticine kingdom of Borovnia- real in every way, and the ethereal 'Fourth World': a heaven based around their cult of popular opera and film stars. These worlds, and the objects and characters that appear in it, seem innocent, but Honora's fate is sealed when objects from the girls' fantasy begin to appear in the real world and, for them at least, the line between fantasy and reality is irrevocably blurred.  It is one of these items, the pink jewel, which allows them the opportunity to distract her as the fatal blow is delivered.

Both Heavenly Creatures and The Lovely Bones share these repeated fantasy motifs.  The ships in bottles, an important bond between Susie and her father, appear as ice sculptures dashed on heavenly rocks.  The coloured ball, the Mall's gazebo and the charms from her bracelet- giant in heaven- are other such examples.  Jackson shies away from some of the more grisly aspects of Susie's murder, her rape isn't mentioned, but he does not spare the viewer in Heavenly Creatures.  One of the inventive techniques he uses to turn up and tone down the tension is the delicate application of music.  He uses arias, themselves echoes of the girls' Fourth World motifs, to cover periods of silence which are inevitably broken by more discordant sounds and events, this technique is brilliantly employed in the final scenes as Honora is lead to her death. 

Stanley Tucci and his portrait of practiced normality

Tucci's was the stand-out performance of the film, and rightly earned him an Oscar nomination.  His portrayal of George Harvey was one of quiet menace beneath the veneer of normality.  Harvey set alarm clocks to ensure he opened and closed his curtains at appropriate times, his verbal tick of 'okay' kept conversations which must have been an ordeal running smoothly.  Narrating from Heaven, Susie tells us that she didn't notice her killer even though he noticed her- the audience scans the screen, searching for a suspicious character- I didn't see Tucci's character, but poor, innocent, Mr O'Dwyer (about to suffer his own tragedy) gets my glare as he eats his hamburger: staring into the middle distance or staring at Susie?  Good directing. 

Susie didn't notice him and I didn't notice because he blends in, he hides in plain sight.  That is what is most frightening of all: his character can move around freely, take his time disposing of the body, because he seems so dammed normal. 

Grandma Lynn

Cool, smooth, classy and with a generous measure of sass, Grandma Lynn was my favourite character in the novel, and probably in my top ten grandma list- there's an post waiting to be written!  I was pleased when I heard Susan Sarandon would be playing her: I wasn't disappointed.  Fab montage scene as she cleans the house.

Picture: Was ophangen / Hanging out the laundry
Nationaal Archief / Spaarnestad Photo, SFA003003315
Vrouw hangt de was op, gebruikmakend van een hangbakje met wasknijpers, 1965.
That's a dutch lady hanging out her washing on a balcony, Netherlands, 1965.

Bookspot: Filth

After the mild embarrassment of carrying If you Liked School you'll Love Work (pert female buttocks in tight jodhpurs) and The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (bananas and a cartoon chef riding an obscene sausage) around work, the poor wee mouse snared in the trap seemed relatively tame.  The content however, was not.

My sister, incidentally a polis herself, had encouraged me to pick this one up for years, and I'm very glad I did.  Filth is the tale of DS Bruce Robertson of Lothian and Borders Police who is working on the homicide which opens the novel.  The dislocating opening chapter describing the novel from a distorted perspective sets the mood for a novel in which sly and subtle changes of language alter the mood and sense of the events being described.  My love affair with Welsh is really my fascination with his use of language: from the use of Scots, to his games of with reported speech: 'Broooos, Broooos!'.  Changes here are much more delicate than the isolated use of standard English during the court scene in Trainspotting, the unorthodox extra narrator gently moves the focus from 'I' to 'we' towards the end of the novel, characterising Robertson's mental and physical state.

That opening homicide lingers in the plot as a driving device: a black man has been murdered; Robertson and his team are tasked with finding the killer.  This event is incidental to Robertson who is focused (if one can be in his daily state) on what feels to him like a sure promotion to DI and his 'winter week in the 'Dam'.  Robertson is your stereotypical old-school polis: a hard-drinking, coke-snorting, misogynistic womaniser who thinks nothing of abusing his position to proposition prostitutes, the victims of crime and generally, anyone he perceives to be weaker than himself.  Despite this Robertson is able  to outwit 'that dyke Drummond', and the 'silly wee lassies' from the Ethnic Minority Forum but spouting what he terms equal opportunities bullshit.  Additionally he orchestrates several adulterous affairs while his wife attends her sick mother, and excels in his 'wee games' with fellow officers and friends: playing them off against one an other for sport and self-promotion.  The promotion for the Inspectorship is all but his, truly deserved too as Lothian and Borders dismiss the experience he gained while serving with the New South Wales force.  Duly deserved.  Or is it? 

Robertson is the classic unreliable narrator: at the outset we are his captive audience, but by the end we are questioning the truthfulness of his statements.  His grip of control bgins to falter in one particularly interesting way: he lets other people speak.  The extra narrator, well, he can't help that, but he allows Drummond (Drummond! that stupit wee lassie) to tell him (and us) exactly what she thinks of him.  It is these voices from within and without which begin to pull down the facade of Bruce Robertson, revealing deeper layers of the grotesque that we've only had glimpses of before.

It was the use of the grotesque that  fixated me towards the end.  As much as you want to hate Bruce, be disgusted by him, you can't deny the fact that you're absolutely captivated by him.  He's the monster, the sideshow freak: he is everything  we should shy away from.  Yet despite all his flaws, I worried about Bruce as the end of the novel approached, I wanted to extricate him from the mess of his life.  A mess than manifests itself in the powerful, tumultuous end that seemed impossible to imagine in the first chapter.

Not one for the squeamish, bit a gripping read. 

New widget launched

Marsh made a movie!  Well, a screencast.  It is all about the new Cambridge library widget, which allows you to renew your books whilst using Facebook, iGoogle, CamTools, or any page where it is embedded- including this one.  

The screencast was put together from by an all-star UL cast: I'm hoping there will be a sequel. 

In an exclusive interview Marsh said "I would just like to thank my producer Huw Jones, my actress Emma Coonan, Anton at the SMS and my mum of course ... " 

The screencast it hotly tipped to take best direction, best original screenplay and best actress in a leading role at the 2011 Academy Awards.