Lab Coats and Lego…

Yesterday was a Luke day. Always a fun type of day to have – and almost always full of wonderfully imaginative games to play thanks to his great ability to pretend something is a perfect costume.

Until recently, he’s been very nervous at the idea of watching a whole film. He could watch TV for hours if you let him, but films? The problem is the bit that I always laugh at on the back of the DVD case… You know, the bit near the bottom, usually colour-coded, that tells you what to expect from the film. Two words usually seem to mean he won’t sit through it: “Mild Peril”.

Anything could make him panic and ask for it to be switched off – spooky music, a meanacing-looking person, a leaf that crunched underfoot in a slightly unusual manner… anything. There are a list of films I’ve only seen half of because he wanted to turn it off…

But in the last week or two, something’s changed. He saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the live action version of Cat In The Hat (not a patch on the book, I have to say), and then Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs several more times.

So yesterday, when I picked him up, he was Flint Lockwood: Scientist and inventor. He’d even re-named one of his toy monkeys Steve, like Flint’s monkey. He’d got a long sleeve white shirt to use as a lab coat, pretended to spray on some shoes and hustled out the door for the journey to mine.

Over the course of the next 9-10 hours, we danced, built incredible flying cars with lego… fashioned spray cans (for the actual spraying on of technologically wondrous shoes, you understand) out of a piece of A4 paper and a drinking straw, we danced, I nervously kept an eye on the cricket scores while he drew up new blueprints for even more fabulous inventions.

Oh, and we watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Twice.

I think he likes that one…

Time to try Monsters Vs. Aliens again… I really want to see that!

Interstellar collisions…

I’ve neglected this blog. This is because I’m rubbish, really, at remembering I have it.  Ah well, I’m obviously having a good memory day.  Who knew I could do that?!  Hurrah!

 

Writing and working up ideas for the Ood Cast seems to take up a lot of the time I have to myself, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the two worlds collided… I have always sort of avoided writing poems about things like Doctor Who, but on the last Ood Cast (Series 3, episode 5: “Window Shopping”), I performed one I wrote about that speech in Rose… You know, the one about feeling the earth turning.  Here it is.

 

That’s Who I Am

 

I never believed the stories

of planets spinning,

like magicians’ plates.

Revolving faster than my dad could run

or my bike would go

down the hill across the way.

 

That we were drifting through space

with the stars

and the planets

and the TARDIS…

We weren’t moving.

 

But the first time I walked

to the shore on my own

and I looked out to sea,

I saw the curviture,

the bend of the horizon.

 

As the tide sneaked up the beach

I stared at the sky,

struck with awe and panic.

Which would fall first -

Me from the beach or the sky from above?

 

“So I’m basically filling in for your skull?” “Relax, you’re doing fine…”

Sherlock was brilliant last Sunday.  I’ve been reading and re-reading Conan Doyle’s stories since I was 12, (it was one of the few things that eventually did manage to plug the gap when Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989).  I’ve seen a lot of the TV and film adaptations since then – predictably I love the Jeremy Brett series.  Some I’ve watched with enjoyment, some… erm… not.

For example, the BBC filmed a new version of the Hound of the Baskervilles in 2002.  I was delighted, sat down to watch it on Christmas day…  and then spent the rest of the film wincing.  Holmes was cast appallingly.  The plot was radically altered, although still had the same basics as the novel.  The heart did not seem to be in the right place.

Sherlock, though, was incredibly good.  It was a really rather faithful take on A Study In Scarlet – although the title of the original came from a line said by Holmes, not sure what the base of A Study In Pink came from.  The colour of the tablets maybe?

Sure, there were flaws, I think – the motive of the murderer was very sketchy, and the name of his sponsor pretty predictable.  But other than that, it was marvellous.  The story was a good enough adaptation of the original, but with great little modern touches – Holmes would certainly have been au fait with the more cutting edge tech available, and the GPS, the text messages, the blogs… all beautiful touches.

The dialogue, as you’d expect from the pen of Steven Moffatt, was sparkling.  The characters (and acting) perfectly judged.  Benedict Cumberbatch makes a great Holmes, the right mixture of the cerebral and unpredictable genius.  Martin Freeman gets a proper, meaty character – unusual for Watson, it’s usually pushed towards the bumbling idiot level.  But this Watson is great, strong and intelligent in his own right.  He has an eye for the ladies too – witness his persistence in dropping hints to Mycroft’s assistant, even though she barely realises he’s there.

There’s a good atmosphere between them, especially when Watson is asked to choose a side by Mycroft (who is still a stranger to him then), and clearly is puzzled by his instinct to trust Holmes, despite just having been abandoned at a crime scene and made to limp home.

Lestrade is as desperate as is fitting, being both jealously hostile but pathetically needy towards Holmes.  Mrs Hudson is very right, too – already seemingly a natural part of the furniture at 221b Baker Street.  The Mycroft character is very interesting too – in the books, the brothers view each other in a vaguely amusing manner, occasionally hostile, but nothing to the degree of attempting to pinch each others’ new friends…

Altogether it’s one of the very best adaptations I’ve seen.  People will always return to the Brett versions, or the incomparable Basil Rathbone, but the key thing is that this is different, exciting and yet somehow the same, familiar thing.  Surely the hallmark of a great adaptation?

Despite the Torchwood connection in this, I still can’t bring myself to watch this one though:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sherlock-Holmes-DVD-Dominic-Keating/dp/B00373VA24/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1280401127&sr=8-11

It looks appalling…

The Smallest Time-Teamer?

Last weekend, I took Luke along to the Roman Bath house in St Mary Cray.  This one.

Spot the Luke...

It is not usually open to the public, but as part of the marvellous Festival of British Archaeology, it was open for the weekend.

Luke loves digging things.  And he loves (maybe strangely for a small person) Time Team.  If you know what’s good for you, don’t go mixing up your Tony Robinsons and your Mick Astons in front of Luke – he’ll correct you, and if you’re lucky, he’ll only do it with a withering glare…

I tried to get him to follow the boards round the side of the bath house first, so we could learn about the story of the site before we went and did some exploring.  But he wasn’t having any of that.  He’d seen the sandpit.

A brilliantly simple idea to keep the kids occupied, the organisers had borrowed some finds from the nearby Crofton Roman Villa (which is right by Orpington Station) and buried them in a large sandpit.  There were plenty of little spades and finds trays for them to carry what they found over to the table and identify them.  This is where Luke left several people speechless.

The item in question was a piece of black pottery.  Luke held it up to be identified:
EXPERT: Do you know what this is?

LUKE: Yes, it’s a bit of pot.

EXPERT: Very good.  Do you know what kind of pot?

LUKE: Um, I think it’s a cooking pot.

EXPERT: You’re right – that’s really good!  Any idea why it might be black?

LUKE: Because it’s been burnt on a fire, of course!

He then identified another object himself – before the experts could tell him – as being Tesserae.  They were a bit speechless – not only was he right, but that he’d used the roman term and had explained that they made mosaics with them… although the pronunciation of “mosaic” is still a bit elusive to him.

He then started leading his granddad on a Tony Robinson-style walkthrough of the bath house remains, explaining what the rooms were and what order they were in…  You ever get the feeling that fame awaits?

Absence makes the blog grow… emptier…?

Over the last few months, you will have noticed – if you have dropped by the blog – that I’ve not really been blogging.  Well, I haven’t at all really.  There has been stuff to say and things to tell about, but I’ve been a bit, well, busy with it all.  Let me fill you in a bit.

I mentioned a few months back, that I was working on a new podcast, with a marvellous group of people: The Ood Cast started its run of weekly releases in early April, and has been going ever since.  Only now, with Andy involved in a show and Chris steaming off to the Edinburgh Festival to perform in 2 shows have we run out of steam.

If you’ve not listened to The Ood Cast, please do, if you’re interested.  It’s a sort of weekly revue show about Doctor Who, where we not only discuss what happened in that week’s episode, but we have sketches and songs based on the episode we’d just seen.  You can find it at our lovely website here: http://theoodcast.com

I (and I think I speak for all of us) am incredibly proud of what we’ve done here – we were recording the episodes on Tuesday lunchtimes, having seen the episode on Saturday and written all the material in the 2 days in between.  Luke gained himself a little group of fans thanks to his occasional appearances on the show as “The Littlest Doctor”, sketches written by each of us have been performed and aired, and the production and edit of each episode have been meticulous and excellent in quality.

And no matter how good we thought the material was, to read and hear the feedback and reviews we’ve got over the course of four months is just astonishing.  It’s still strange if I listen to another podcast and hear someone discussing how good we are.

We put a lot of effort in, and it’s absolutely brilliant to see people’s reactions to it.  Being called the podcast equivalent of the Cambridge Footlights may be a little bit of a back-handed compliment, but we’ll gladly take it, none the less!

So that, and the fact that my job is a slightly stressful and scary place to be at the moment, and the excitement (and nerves) surrounding Luke starting school in September has meant that I backed off from the blog for a while.

But with the Ood Cast taking a summer break, it seems silly not to try and get back into it a bit.  So I’ll do my best!

Slowly, slowly…

Hello, how are you doing?  Lovely to see you here again, thanks for dropping by.

I haven’t written on here for a while – things, including Easter and spending a lovely week with great people down in Minehead have happened, and the blog lost out in that battle.  But I have been writing offline on a couple of things and slowly trying to keep the kids story developing…  so I thought I’d share a thing or two I’ve written recently.  These may or may not be finished versions (or very good), so I make no apologies for rough edges, things that don’t work or low quality!

The first is about Luke.  Obviously.  Its the most recent thing I wrote, and I don’t think I need to explain much about it!

Luke is writing

—–

What are you writing?

“Letters, daddy.”

Is it a story?  Or a poem?

“Of course it’s not!

It is a song without the music.”

Why are you writing it without music?

“Because that’s in my head,

of course.

Silly.”

——

Moments later, you’re dancing.

What are you dancing to?

“The music for my song.”

Why can’t I hear anything?

“Because it’s still in my head.

It’s always in my head.

I like it there.”

——

Can you sing some to me?

“Yes!”

Great, I say, settling back for my concert.

“But not now.  I’m dancing.”

Of course.

Silly.

—–

The second is from my week in Minehead…

(untitled)

—–

Today, under clear blue skies,

I threw stones into the Bristol Channel.

Each one a thought,

a worry.

I threw them one at a time.

Some hard, some not,

some flung, some slung,

some chucked, some dropped.

But in they went.

And I watched the gentle tide

wash them away.

—–

I should be back to some kind of “normal” blogging soon, so the reviews will start up again, and hopefully there’ll be some news to tell of too!

Some Thoughts: John Betjeman

When asked near the end of his life if he had any regrets, the late lamented Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman said: “Yes. Not enough sex.”

I am an unashamed fan of Betjeman – not because his carnal regrets, but because of just about everything else.  To me, he represents a huge amount of Britain that I admire and love – and miss.  Cornwall especially, but humour, long hot summers, unrequited love and desire, that one man’s beauty is another man’s revulsion.  And there’s something quite Victorian about his work, in my opinion.

His poetry is deceptively dark – and yet light at the same time, jogging along like an overweight man going for an evening run with his Jack Russell terrier.  His pace and tone were terrific – meaning that while at school, being force-fed a diet of Larkin, Wordsworth, Byron and others, his verse stood out as something I could connect with, something I understood.  Even if I never studied him.

It was accessible.  When I sat down with a Betjeman poem in front of me, I could immediately find my way into his world instead of the blind groping for a door handle when I tried to understand a Larkin poem.  (I should point out that nowadays I appreciate Larkin far more – but there’s been enough said already by far more qualified people than I about the quality of the teaching of poetry in schools.)

Most importantly, I could see how to read it out loud, when with others – particularly some of the romantic poets like Byron – I had no idea where to start.

There’s a lot to be said for simplicity in poetry.  To my mind, it’s often the more technically brilliant, scholarly works which are the ones that leave me cold.  It’s wonderful having other meanings running through a set of words – but when you have to call in a team of archaeologists and surveyors to track down the meaning… there’s clever and then there’s self-indulgent.

It took me years to understand that.  I made a lot of over-blown attempts at making things clever.  When I was a teenager, I wrote about my problems, trying to find these amazing scholarly analogies that might take thorough research to uncover the meaning.  It was either that or I was crashing through a china shop trying to deny I was in any way Bull-like – not so much searching for meaning or purpose, but rather flattening anything in my way till I got it.  A lyrical Godzilla…

That’s why Betjeman really affected me – the verse was simple to read, but deceptively more cutting than that.  But the accessible nature of it meant that nothing was there to stop you getting at what he was trying to say.  There are times – especially when writing about love – when reading or listening to poems like “The Subaltern’s Love Song” (for example) is like being at a piano recital on a summer’s night – with each syllable twinkling over the keys in the evening air:

“Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,

The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,

With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,

I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.”

“In A Bath Teashop” is wonderfully gentle and sweet:

“”Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
Let us hold hands and look.”
She such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop’s ingle-nook.”

And “Trebetherick” is so evocative you can almost feel the sea’s spray whipping over the lip of the tamarisk while you sit watching the breakers roll in:

“We used to picnic where the thrift
Grew deep and tufted to the edge;
We saw the yellow foam flakes drift
In trembling sponges on the ledge
Below us, till the wind would lift
Them up the cliff and o’er the hedge.”

But the prose he wrote about architecture, too, is wonderful.  Reading it sometimes feels a little like eavesdropping on someone discussing their first love – full of the familiar wonderful twinkling joy and the much more sad, sometimes bitter, regret.

There’s no struggling with meanings, alternative meanings, subtext or anything like that.  And while I can appreciate and love poetry which does that, I think this is where my heart may truly lie.

The last few occasions I’ve been down to North Cornwall, I’ve made sure I packed a Betjeman book.  There’s something very significant to me in taking a walk round the little headland and along the edge of the Camel Estuary – through Greenaway and down to Daymer, Trebetherick and Rock.  I climb Brae Hill, and sit at the top, taking in the view – Rock and Padstow on one side; the mouth of the Estuary, Pentire Point and the open Atlantic to the other.  And I get the book out and read.

And as long as it’s not raining, it’s a wonderful way to pass some time.

Starlings

Without doubt, one of my favourite bands over the last ten years has been Elbow.

Their first two albums intrigued me, and in the case of Asleep In The Back, held me spellbound for weeks on end.

But they’ve got even better with the last 2 albums.

I once listened to an interview with their lead singer, Guy Garvey, where he said that songs often start off as poems he writes down.  This is really, powerfully obvious at the start of Leaders of the Free World – Station Approach is a wonderful ode to Manchester, and the stomping, rocking anthem Forget Myself is littered with wonderful imagery (including one of my favourite lines of all time: “He’s so mercifully free of the pressures of grace/Saint Peter in satin he’s like Buddha with mace.”)

Their latest (The Seldom Seen Kid) begins with the most incredible, honest and beautiful love song.  So I thought I’d share the lyrics (and I hope they don’t mind if they ever read this…)

Starlings

(words by Guy Garvey)

How dare the Premier ignore my invitations? He’ll have to go

So too the bunch he luncheons with. It’s second on my list of things to do

At the top is stopping by your place of work and acting like I haven’t dreamed of you and I and marriage in an orange grove.

You are the only thing in any room you’re ever in. I’m stubborn, selfish and too old

I sat you down and told you how the truest love that’s ever found is for oneself,

You pulled apart my theory with a weary and disinterested sigh.

So yes I guess I’m asking you to back a horse that’s good for glue and nothing else.

But find a man that’s truer than,

find a man that needs you more than I

Sit with me a while and let me listen to you talk about your dreams and your obsessions. I’ll be quiet and confessional.

The violets explode inside me when I meet your eyes.

Then I’m spinning and I’m diving like a cloud of starlings.

Darling is this love?

And every time I hear it, I have one of those moments where I need to stop and savour everything around me.  And even if I did start moving, everything else would feel so much faster…

My Favourite and My Best: January/February 2010

As I missed out January’s entry, I’ll allow myself double the reviews.  But shorter ones to make sure it’s not dull and cumbersome…

So, that means four books…

Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach by Melanie Watt

There are picture books which are full of lavish, panoramic feasts of colour.  There are picture books with plenty of text and less illustration… this is more of a manual, I guess.  But in the absolutely brilliantly entertaining way.

Every time Scaredy Squirrel wants to do something or go somewhere, he has to go the long way round or do things the hardest possible way.  But not because he’s clever.  It’s because Scaredy Squirrel is so terrified of the outside world that he devises health and safety regimes that would make many local councils sigh in wistful jealousy.

This story sees him deciding to build his own beach because he doesn’t want to go to an actual one with actual real people there.  But it’s not quite right without a real shell – and he can’t avoid going to the seaside to get one.  So he makes a plan…

It’s funny, it’s very clever in the telling and the labelling of the pictures and it is not at all confusing like a real manual to the mental workings of a squirrel would be.  It’s just that side of complicated that means children will get that it’s a joke.  And we love Scaredy Squirrel!

Green Light for the Little Red Train by Benedict Blathwayt

A library discovery we made, which Luke loves…  This is a charming little story that rattles along much like the little red train.  In fact, when you reach the end of the little red train’s mammoth journey, you might feel just as exhausted as the driver!

It’s the story of what happens when the little red train is told not to stop until he gets to a red light… only he doesn’t come across a red light, so unintentionally makes a whistle-stop tour of some European countries before finally being stopped when boarding a ferry back to England.

It’s one of those perfect picture books, where the text is well-paced, and not too wordy, and the pictures are simple enough to glance at and take in, but have plenty of little details there to keep someone occupied for a while before turning over.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr Benn by David McKee

A while ago, Luke was rooting around in my things.  He does that, he’s nosey.  There’s nothing embarrassing or scary for him to find, so I don’t mind it too much (just the mess left behind).  But buried in a box, he discovered a DVD of Mr Benn.  And to my surprise, he absolutely loved it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, he loves dressing up and pretending to be other people (as Eric Morecambe would have put it, “He’s a fine actor, that boy!”)

This book is a reprint of the original form of Mr Benn – story books that came out in the late 60s that spawned the cartoon, and there are 4 here: Red Knight, Diver, Caveman and Spaceman… all with the distinctive and wonderful illustrations from the author.

They are longer than you’d expect a picture book to be, but really good all round I think – brilliant escapist nostalgia for you and a lovely chance to disappear into a world when costume shop doorways lead to adventure for the smaller person…  The stories all follow the familiar Mr Benn pattern, which is lovely and warm and friendly, the plots develop slowly and gently, which is also really pleasing to read, and the language is perfect – simple and descriptive.  It’s all very engaging, and my heart does a little leap whenever Luke picks it up to read…

Nicobobinus by Terry Jones

OK, this is one of mine…  I saw Tony Robinson read this on Jackanory sometime in the 1980s, and was entranced by it then.  But I never bought a copy – it was never in the bookshops I thought to look in, and I hadn’t thought about looking online for it.  But then I chanced across a copy in a charity shop.

Thrilled, I got it home and devoured it within a day or two.  And I wasn’t disappointed – it’s still every bit as daft, magical and thrilling (in a sort of muted, 80s children’s book kind of way).  There are limbs turned to gold, dramatic escapes into the canals of Venice, the works.  Think Alex Rider meets Alice in Wonderland.  Then take away the kind of weaponry and tech in Alex Rider…

OK, so that was still quite long.  But I get carried away, alright?!

A belated Happy New Year from me… and some news. ish.

I’ve not written on here, purposefully, for a while.  Partly because I spent a lot of time doing the advent calendar thingy over Christmas, and partly because I wanted to decide whether to keep going with it.

Also, I suppose because not a lot has happened since Christmas.

The picture book is now on hold – but for a very good reason indeed – my illustrating friend, Katie Green, has gone and got herself a book deal with a proper, reputable publisher for her graphic novel – which looks brilliant and will hopefully do very well indeed.  So the disappointment in not getting that moving is completely trampled upon by that brilliant news.  Congratulations Katie!

There is, however, the news that I’ve now completed the introduction and first two chapters of the kids novel I started putting together a handful of months back.  It’s about a 10 year old boy called Olly, his best friend OIivia, and their superhero alter-egos.

Whilst I don’t really want to start reproducing huge swathes of what I’ve written for various reasons, I do want to put something up. So this is sentence 21 of the introduction:

“I suppose you ought to meet my family too.”

Oh, now.  That’s not terribly interesting, is it?  Well, that’s what you get for picking a random number and then displaying the results.  I’ll try again.

This is sentence 14 of Chapter 1.  Which is definitely not called “Never EVER Pay A Ransom Demand When A Rescue Is Possible” (OK, it might be that.)

“Jem is our postman – I call him Jem because he’s a friend of dad’s from the football and on the sometimes that dad promises to take me to see a match usually involves going somewhere called The Bear and Pitchfork, just around the corner from the ground, to meet Jem and swap rude stories that I’m always told I should never repeat to mum.”

That’s a bit better.  Anyway, the plan is now to write a bit more, but flesh out the rest of the ideas for the book enough to go to publishers and agents with it.  So fingers crossed (but only when I’m not typing – that becomes a problem, I find…)

Also, the Ood Cast has now reached its fourth episode, had started on a weekly release run and is now a full – albeit junior – member of the Doctor Who Podcast Alliance.  Which is very Star Wars by name, but lovely bunch of people in reality.

So if you’re remotely interested in Doctor Who, or just enjoy listing to occasionally rather geeky talk while you’re doing something much more important, give it a whirl.  You can get to it all through the show’s blog – which I seem to be able to keep up to date much better than my own.  You can find that blog here: http://theoodcast.blogspot.com

I will resume the My Favourite and My Best posts soon, too.  Tomorrow, in fact.  I like doing them, and it gives me an outlet for some of the internal reviews I do when reading books with Luke.  And February’s will almost certainly feature a book about a Squirrel, which is absolutely brilliant and rather funny.