Thursday 24 July 2014

Geek Outing This Saturday, Huzzah!


Come along, learn what there is to learn about board games, buy a new one, treat yourself, we'll teach you the game, sell it to you and let you buy us a beer too, chance of a lifetime!

Monday 21 July 2014

The One Plus One

It's been fun and tough, the MFA in Creative Writing. Studying again after all the years in-between took some getting back into, but at least the topic held a fascination for me, and the challenge of writing a novel was enough in itself.

 It's quite a world the creative writing world. Fitting together poetry and poets, novelists and life writers, bloggers and twitterers, never mind the strains of scriptwriting for theatre, radio, tv or film, or travel writing, children's writing, other genres, writing for work; what a mess and what an industry with the usual politics, the enviable enthusiasms and the unnecessary protectors of the art.

Strangely, one thing I've missed most is reading. Specifically, reading novels that I've been wanting to read, for a couple of years now. I thought I might 'discover' some new authors during the course and although I have really enjoyed a few - Jonathan Barnes, Kevin McNeil, Karen Perry, James Miller - there haven't been as many as I'd hoped to find. On the poetry front I've fared much better, quite a plethora in fact; Wendy Cope, Matthew Welton, Michael Surnowski, John Clare, John Redmond, Geoff Peterson, Lucy Furlong, Dave Russomano, Christina Stylianou amongst several more.

In the last week I've taken time to start reading again. I kicked off with the excellent thriller 'The Boy That Never Was' by Karen Perry - great title by the way - followed by 'The One Plus One' by Jojo Moyes. I first delved in to her output with 'The Last Letter of Your Lover', a gorgeous romance / lost love story. Following that I zoomed through the brilliant 'Silver Bay', 'The Peacock Emporium', 'Foreign Fruit' and picked up her last three releases as they became available.

'The One Plus One' is a story about two families of disconnected people with lives falling apart. It's fascinating how they reconcile some of their problems and attempt to make things work and how their relationships intertwine and will it all work out in the end? I love the characters, they are brilliantly constructed and believable. The differing points of view are written wonderfully, I went through each one with empathy, sympathy and hopes and frustrations.

At about 400 pages in I thought the book was reaching a natural conclusion and I wondered what could take me through 115 pages I had left. So often I finish a novel and wish I could have been immersed further inside the futures of the characters I'd lived with. This novel took me there. I'm so pleased that Jojo Moyes's deserved recent success hasn't affected her writing. Can't wait for her next one...

Friday 18 July 2014

It's the knowing how inhuman we are

My minor gripes reach epic proportions today as I proffer a tiny view on Malaysian flight MH17 and the current situation in Israel and Palestine.

From the comfort of my London home it's easy for me. I cannot imagine having to protect my family. And I cannot understand what I might have to protect them from. It feels as though my world has evolved far enough that I will never have these worries. Which is where MH17 comes as close as anything can I guess. From the make-up of the passenger list all those who have tragically lost their lives probably felt pretty similar. I doubt they imagined they would be at risk for one second.

The proliferation of accusations and denials already leave me with doubts over whether the truth will come out; as ever, too much at stake 'politically'. I have not followed the conflict closely enough to have anything but the smallest understanding of what is motivating both sides.

That the position in Israel and Palestine is even more complex seems clear. That so many dismiss it as a conflict between religions is all a bit lazy in my opinion. Any 'truly' religious people would not let their beliefs lead them into a state of war. For me it's pure human greed, power, any of a huge number of inhuman traits, that has been behind all of this and more.

If we could all just focus on the basic human rights of food, water and shelter, if we could treat others as we'd wish to be treated, if we could all try and do one act of kindness each day, then I believe the world would be a better place. As I said at the top, it's easy to write this, never easy to make it happen, but a damn sight easier than becoming part of ongoing power struggles.

My heart goes out to everyone in the whole wide world.

Thursday 17 July 2014

It's another little thing

Grumble mumble number two for this week. As you know I love my gigs. Over the last few weeks there have been several although I did skip one I'm afraid. Anyway, highlight for me was Polica down in Hove, very good indeedy!

Really enjoyed The Naked & Famous at Shepherd's Bush Empire and Bastille at Somerset House. Not quite as enthralling were Daughter, also out in the open air. Perhaps my expectations were out of kilter, unusual that! Never mind. It certainly wasn't bad and I still love them dearly too, probably more than the others in this paragraph.
The downside though, has been the lighting for these gigs. Some of it was interesting, new to me, different, and I can appreciate that. But on the whole the lighting was too much, too many lights, too bright. I've come to see a band play live, not a bunch of silhouettes, you know? I want to be able to see expressions of singers living their lyrics, of guitarists being carried off on their music, of sweaty drummers beating the hell out of their kit. I love seeing the knowing moments the musicians share, how they interact with faces in the crowd, damn it, even their nervousness. I love all these human elements of gigs.

Mr lighting engineer. I'm impressed at how well you've managed to use the latest technology to do a million things at once. Get over it though, or perhaps you could go into large even firework displays? Let me see the people you're supposed to be lighting for me. Give me an atmosphere, don't blind me with strobes that really add nothing to a gig. Show me subtlety, see if you do that for me, please?


Wednesday 16 July 2014

It's the little things

Minor irritations. I have a theme running for some of my poems, intolerance. It meets head on with a second theme of the 'great british isles' quite frequently. No doubt it's all a part of becoming a more opinionated person as I grow older, being more certain that I should express my opinions, whether or not anyone is interested!

So, the World Cup. What the hell was it with the abundance of single colour strips? Don't we all love seeing what the latest strips will be? Which teams Adidas had invented a new stripe for, in ALL of it's 'new' creations? As an avid collector of Subbuteo teams over the years I have to say that references 21, 41 and 42 were amongst the most boring; Leeds, Liverpool and Chelsea, not exciting in the way that a 50, 164 or even a 156 were; Brazil, France and (West) Germany.



Having grown up with black and white telly I got the fact that the strips had to be as opposite as possible to each other for the cameras. But as time's gone on it's been incredible how some strips evolved, shocking at times, wonderful at others. Within Subbuteo and table football generally this translated into incredible machine prints initially and then hand painted strips reached incredible levels of detail, I love these in particular:

Algeria '82
Belgium '82

It was weird therefore seeing so many single coloured strips out in Brazil. Not weird, wrong. For all the brilliant games and superb excitement, definitely the best tournament I can remember, there's always a niggle somewhere, this was mine!!

Another grumble will follow this one. You have been warned.


Monday 7 July 2014

Book Ends

Sometimes, things just come together. You make a little effort and the most wonderful experience results. I hadn't seen my Best Man Mick for many, many years. Neither of us are the sort to work out how long but it must be over fifteen years. He lives and works in the US and when he's back in Blighty he has that merry-go-round of family to visit. Thankfully, his lovely wife Pam is on Facebook and we work well as FB friends. She'd been posting about her trip to my home town Beccles and all the other great places they've visited this time round and I realised they must be coming to the end of their trip.

Pam had mentioned they'd flown in via Heathrow so I took a punt and dropped her a little message. If they were returning via Heathrow, and no-one else was seeing them off, could we pop along briefly?

Yes, no and yes. So we did, Cheryl, Josephine and I. We met in T5, between letter E and F, perfect!

And oh so quickly we'd caught up and were talking about all the little things that you only can with the closest of friends, even when you haven't seen them in aeons. Mick is the loveliest and funniest of people. Brilliantly down to earth, brilliantly Professorial, now an ecologist of sorts study the trees that grow under the oceans.

He'd dug out some photos of the time we'd spent 'round Garrod's': we'd meet up at Kev's house as often as we could back in our teens and that was were life was formed for me. That's where we worked out how we were going to avoid the inevitable draft to go and fight in the Falklands, stuff like that!

It was such a treat seeing Mick and Pam again, a real highlight. Life can be beautiful so often...

blue skies [Simon Calnan]