UniversalCritic

Dirty? Oh yeah baby!

2006-10-30T18:32:00.000Z

You see a surprising amount of good theatre in Australia - up to two years before you see it in the UK - because a surprising number of theatre producers live in Australia, and it is a superb test market for the USA and UK. Which is why we saw a Dirty Dancing preview two weeks ago on the recommendation of Universal Mother-In-Law, who visited recently from Brisbane.

Being male, I am a bit cynical about Dirty Dancing. And, in much the same way that Universal Wifey has never seen any of the Star Wars movies, and cares not for The Godfather I, II or III; I never bothered to see the Dirty Dancing when it was a film. Which is why I found myself standing outside the Aldwych theatre with two Dirty Dancing tickets in my hand, waiting for Universal Wifey to arrive directly from her flight from Switzerland.

First the theatre. (Well, you don't want me to ploughing straight in there, do you girls - gratification is better delayed.) The Aldwych theatre has been extensively re-modelled in time for Dirty Dancing so the steats work without squeaking, the bathrooms are functional, the paint un-chipped, the carpet not the slightest bit sticky and the chandeleir cleaned and polished to twinkly gorgeousness - so make sure you walk down the front to buy an icecream or a bottle of water from the vendors in the auditorium so you can stand in line and look up the the building - it really is fabulous.

Now the performance. I would like to trash it as "...soft porn for women..." as the Sunday Times already has, but I think that is short-changing it. Sure it is largely a platform for Josef Brown's rippling V-shaped torso to be paraded atop his thrusting, black-denim-clad groin; sure the singing is of the quality you usually expect from dancers; sure the storyline is a fine gossamer thread tenuously linking opportunities to dance, sing or see Josef Brown's rippling V-shaped torso paraded atop his thrusting, black-denim-clad groin; and sure the audience is 70% daughters of the eighties and their mothers, who become one gagging, gibbering mess by the end of it. But there is enough to keep gentlemen entertained too: first you will be surprised that the story consists of more than boy-meets-girl, they dance, they kiss, they dance, end of holiday; second you get see Georgina Rich writhing around in all her curvy, girl-next-door, innocent-yet-dirty,-teenage-sexbomb, dancing, singing glory; third, if Georgina is too subtle for you, Nadine Coote spends a good part of the performance wearing something black and sprayed on; and if that isn't enough, she dances with Georgina Rich enough for you to delude yourself that it's girl-on-girl action.

So, in sort, it's not soft porn for women. It's soft porn for everyone. It's about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on; it's a sure-thing on a first date and it's going to run for about as long as testosterone and estrogen come packaged in boys and girls.

Dirty Dancing
Aldwych Theatre, London, WC2B 4DF
Phone 020 7279 3367
Tickets £25-£55 from ticketmaster on 0870 400 0805

I would have helped if I understood all the questions

2006-10-26T11:36:00.000+01:00

Having been religiuosly confused for some time - I think of myself as spiritual, rather than pious - I thought I would have a look at Beliefnet's Belief-0-matic.

It's summary of my religious proclivities is:

1.	Neo-Pagan (100%)
2.	Mahayana Buddhism (84%)
3.	New Age (80%)
4.	Unitarian Universalism (76%)
5.	Reform Judaism (70%)
6.	Hinduism (69%)
7.	Sikhism (69%)
8.	Liberal Quakers (68%)
9.	New Thought (68%)
10.	Scientology (67%)
11.	Theravada Buddhism (65%)
12.	Orthodox Judaism (55%)
13.	Bah�'� Faith (52%)
14.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (52%)
15.	Jainism (52%)
16.	Taoism (52%)
17.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (52%)
18.	Secular Humanism (45%)
19.	Islam (41%)
20.	Orthodox Quaker (31%)
21.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (30%)
22.	Eastern Orthodox (30%)
23.	Roman Catholic (30%)
24.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (28%)
25.	Nontheist (28%)
26.	Jehovah's Witness (19%)
27.	Seventh Day Adventist (12%)

I suspect it would be much simpler if the Belief-o-matic had a setting for Lapsed Catholic.

Fetishes I don't understand

2006-10-24T16:28:00.000+01:00

I've always been a little puzzled by foot fetishes, largely because I am not a foot fetishist. Although I can somewhat see the point, because feet are rich in nerve endings and so could provide pleasing sensations of a sensual nature.

I am even metrosexual enough to have an inkling of an understanding of why girls like shoes so much, and I have certainly noticed that the right girl in the right pair of shoes can look damn good.

But this - www.wethighheels.com - puts me so far out of my depth I don't know where to begin.

Is it erotica for cobblers?

Finding a darker narnia

2006-10-06T12:43:00.000+01:00

I wasn't exactly complimentary about John Connolly's last book, The Black Angel, and I glanced into The Book of Lost Things before I recognised the author, read a paragraph and was hooked. This is so entirely different to his last book that it could have been written by a different person.

David is twelve, his mum has died and he's a little bit obsessive compulsive. He feels like is the only one grieving his mother's death, and racket from the books is irritating him. Yes, he hears books talk - hillariously at his psychiatrist's office, when they call out, "Charlatan, fraud!" or, "well done old man, good question," depending on his performance; and sadly when the obsolete reference books in his bedroom fight to be heard, knowing deep down that their autority and worth has been stripped from them.

And then it feels like someone has been in his room.

Ultimately David discoveres another world through a crack in the old sunken garden he can see from his window. This is no Narnia though - this is a world of horror, of wolves, worse-than-wolves, and other horrors. Of huntresses who cross children and animals to make better quarry; and of a dying king who is losing control of his kingdom. Every human that has entered the world has bought its fears with it, increasing the population of horrific creatures - some of which are Davids, and must be conquered before he can leave. The book is superb - I had a month to read it and finished it in four days.

When good people stay silent

2006-10-03T12:05:00.000+01:00

I forget who it was, but some wise person said that, "Bad things happen when good people stay silent."

Whistleblowers are the people of integrity who sacrifice their career, their bank balance, sometimes their life and often their marriage on the altar of thier own integrity. They are the good people who see something bad happening and stand up to stop it. You might remember them from school - they were the little person who stood up to the bully - and sometimes got their arse whipped. I know some of this because it happened to my dad. It ended-up being the best thing that ever happened to him - got him out of a dead-end job and into a high-flying executive career. And it destroyed his confidence for a long time, and it made his life difficult; but he avoided any fame and he got on with his life. His two whistleblower colleagues' careers were obliterated.

So I was interested when I found the author of this book in on Petite's comments page. I haven't read it yet - I'll write it up when I do.

Getting Sharp with Kingo

2006-09-28T13:01:00.000+01:00

I haven't seen this exhibition, but I can vouch for the artists - having spent a very pleasurable day building a large, ferry shaped sand-castle on Palm Beach with them. We won equal first prize!

Martin Sharp I have only met once - on the sandcastle day. He looks like a slightly more weatherbeaten Keith Richards. His early art is cartoonlike, vibrant, and colourful. He has matured into a smootly sophisticated modern artist.

Kingo is my friend. We met while trying to save Hegarty's Ferries, the old wooden ferries that used to ply the waters between Circular Quay and Luna Park, and I try to visit him whenever I am in Sydney. He paints wonderful sea-scapes and harbour-scapes - many from his window overlooking Lavender Bay, where he lives next door to the house of the late Brett Whitely - another great lover of the bay. Peter Kingston and Wendy Whitely still tend gardens in the public park in front of their houses, and Peter has lined the foreshore walk in Lavender bay with miniature bronze sculptures from The Magic Pudding and Blinky Bill.

His paintings are more epic than Martin's - although he does his share of cartoon style pictures too - and a very nice line in chess sets. His recent painting style is possibly more grown-up than Martin's, incorporating some abstract impressionism and elements of both Lloyd Rees - the great grandaddy of North Shore painters, and Brett Whitely. He paints water beautifully and he paints moods.

Peter, for all his enthusiasm and passion, has a slight air of sadness about him - he misses his dog, he misses his ferries and he struggles to preserve the vanishing bits of maritime herritage around Sydney Harbour. And you can feel the mood in his paintings. Especially Self-Portrait as a Rope Thrower - which unfortunatley is not in the exhibition. It depicts Peter as the ropeman, standing in the rain on The Emerald Star - the most lovely of Hegarty's old ferries - having just tied it up at the wharf. The painting is almost monochrome, with little bits of colour reflecting out of the puddles - you can see the bittersweet style at the exhibition in Shag Shed Resumes. The rain in the self-portrait is like the tears of loss, and Peter is there, like a ghost, on a ghostly boat. The painting is hauntingly beautiful, but also like a big cartoon - again Peter's mix sad and happy, all in one place, just like life. The painting should be in The Archibald Prize, because it would be a contender for victory - I have never seen a painting that captures the personality of its subject so perfectly. So if you don't ever meet Peter Kingston, find his Self-Portrait as a Rope Thrower and stand in front of it for a while. You'll have met him then.

Anti-terrorism strategies: two in the hold are worth one in the overhead compartment

2006-08-10T11:25:00.000+01:00

It's been all over the British media today that the Home Office has shifted the security alert to its highest level - a terrorist attack is imminent.

The nature of the attack is said to be a bomb carried onto an aeroplane in someone's hand luggage. There is no indication in the media that the proposed bomb is a dirty bomb, but just a bomb that goes bang and destroys things.

The recommended course of action is for airlines to ban hand luggage until further notice - meaning that people will not be allowed to carry any more than a lipstick and a piece of fruit on board, in a clear plastic bag, like a shopping bag - which seems like overkill given that they are also going to be swabbing passengers for explosive residues. Surely you could hand-search a handbag sized piece of luggage in the time it takes for the swab to be processed, and it would distract the passengers from thinking about how much they are being delayed.

Those questions aside. My big question is, why is a bomb unacceptable in the cabin, but acceptable in checked luggage?

And of course, if it's a dirty bomb, an aeroplane is about the best place for it. Everybody already has an oxygen mask, and you can remove the toxins in about a second by de-pressurising the cabin. If the dirty bomb is in the hold - which isn't usually pressurised - surely there will be bomb residue all over the luggage, which may end-up being tracked all through a foreign city by a bunch of travellers grumbling about all the dust on their luggage after being in the plane.

Film: It's a lot of shots in chronological order that ultimately say nothing at all

2006-08-08T15:48:00.000+01:00

Universal Wifey and I attended a screening of The Notorious Betty Page a couple of weeks ago. Sorry not to write it up earlier, but I have been trying to find something to say.

The film is not bad. You will not resent the ticket price. But you will leave the theatre feeling slightly conned.

The promotional literature talks about how Betty Page attracted the attention of the FBI and tries to paint her as some sort of Goodnight and Good Luck style mis-targeted threat to American morality. The film, on the other hand, portrays her as a simple country girl who just, sort of, fell into taking her clothes off for the camera. I am sure she was quite naive when she started, but surely she noticed that she was becoming famous. Surely she noticed that she had the money to flit-off to the beach when she wanted to. The film shows her moving from her, "And then my clothes just fell off!" innocence to S&M royalty, the whole time behaving as if she never realised what she was doing, "But we were laughing all the time when we took those pictures - they're not bad". The first indication that she is self-aware is when she heads home for thanksgiving one year, and has to check that her mother hasn't seen the nude pictures - only the nice ones. And the audience is there thinking, "Oh, so she did notice she was modelling nude."

We don't at any time discover whether the Notorious Betty Page was promiscuous or chaste, wealthy or poor, a real threat to the American establishment or just a girl who got naked a lot, happy or sad about her life, or how she ultimately ended-up. Not knowing much about Betty Page when I went into the screening, I would have liked to have known more about her after I left. But no. Nothing. it's like a dramatised sequence of moments in someone's life, placed in chronological order and completely failing to tell any kind of story.

Books: Essential reading

2006-08-02T12:26:00.000+01:00

I cannot claim complete objectivity with his book. If you read my profile you will see that I work in publishing. The company I work for publishes an industry journal for the structured credit and credit derivatives market, and a few times each year we publish a book about a hot part of the market.

This time we have gone educational.

About a year ago we started noticing our niche market going mainstream - our online jobs were getting masses of hits, especially for graduate positions; existing capital markets practitioners were trying to move across from other asset classes; and specialists in this asset class were better trying to understand the parts of the market that they interfaced with, but did not necessarily understand. At the same time, B&B Structured Finance was establishing itself as a leading trainer in this market, and experiencing rapid growth in demand for its training and consulting service. We got together and the book was born.

Biased as I am, I do not think that you will find a better value primer on structured credit and credit derivatives. It is cheaper than the competition by about Â£30, it is clearly written and easy to read, and you would struggle to find a better credentialled writing team than Mike Peterson, Terri Duhon and Anu Munshi.

And if you are trying to get a job in structured credit or credit derivatives, it really is essential reading before your interview.

Film: Well... Lex Luthor was great

2006-07-16T22:54:00.000+01:00

[Warning: contains spoilers, and I wouldn't want to make the film any more disappointing for you.]

Lois Lane was rose high in a an old-fashioned man's world by hiding - or protecting - something of her femininity. As a result she was in her thirties with everything going well for her, except on the man front. What man could possibly be man enough for Lois? Superman - the man of her dreams - her last chance. He made her fall in love, and he left.

Now he's back. It's five years later. Lois has a son - five years old - and a relationship with another man - for five years. Superman, Lois and the new man are all good looking with dark hair; so is the son Superman's, or the new man's?

Well, who gives a shit? Certainly not the two people who walked out before we found the answer. Nor the thirteen other people who left the cinema the instant the end was in sight - not AT the end, just when it was in sight.

The most ridiculous thing about the film is that the characters ages are all wrong. Lois looks like she is about 22, meaning, she was schtupping Superman - and the other guy - when she was seventeen; no, sixteen given the gestation period. Yet Superman's mum (well, stepmum) looks like she is about a hundred. Great face though - so expressive. In fact, the acting is all good, and the little boy does a great job. But the director should be shot for the too-youthful casting; the very recognisable and distracting bits of Sydney - including real-estate signs with buildings' real addresses on them - leaking into shot; the lack of pace; the lack of tension and the fact that Lex Luthor's boat is bigger on the inside than the outside.

Two notable mentions:

1. Kevin Spacey is brilliant as Lex Luthor. His chilling psychopathy steals the show. And you can see him having a great time acting the part. Every time he hits the screen he notches his villainy up another level.

2. Major overload of biblical imagery - "I sent you to earth, the only son of the father..."; an ark scene, where Lex's ship, carrying the future of superhumanity, is marooned on top of a mountain of crystal; and superman looking at his little boy saying, "The son is the father and the father is the son." Oh, and it just occurred to me that Superman, his son and Superdad's messages in the crystal create a neat trinity: The superfather, the superson and the super holy ghost. Jesus! It makes Narnia look Satanic!

My arse was numb after 10 minutes and stayed that way for the rest of the two-and-a-half hour long film.

Superman Returns, unfortunately
At a cinema near you. It only deserves two weekends, but given that sequels usually make 80% of the original's box office, it should last a bit longer.

Food: the quality of the food is in inverse relationship to the decor

2006-07-16T22:21:00.000+01:00

I always wondered why people made such a fuss about Sashimi until I ate it at the Sydney Fish Market, carved straight off the tuna and onto the plate. Fresh fish has some sort of reaction to the soy and wassabe to produce a fizzy tingling feeling on your tongue. Later I was fishing with some guys from work and we found a squid that another group had been using for bait. It was very recently dead, so we ate some - same fizzy tingling feeling. (It was also a bit crunchy, but that was sand.)

The tuna on our sashimi plate at Asakusa had the last remnants of that same tingly feeling, meaning that its tuna was about as fresh as it can be in London. One of our friends noticed that the rice in one of her rolls hadn't quite cooled completely - a sushi no no - but an indicator of unbeatable freshness. The tempura was light and crisp, the gyoza were soft, fluffy and flavoursome with a crunchy bit on each side where they had been cooked, the grilled barbecued steak was wonderfully rare, a little short on flavour, but also about as fresh as it could be in London. All up, the food was superb.

The decor is hideous, but you will ignore it as soon as the food arrives. And, honestly, if the decor turns you off there will be plenty more to take your place, because at 6.30pm on a superbly sunny Saturday evening, we could only get a table in the downstairs overflow section, and we had to be out by eight.

Asakuka
265 Eversholt Street NW1 1BA
(near Mornington Crescent tube)
020 7388 8533 (after 4pm)
Enough superb sushi, sashimi, sushi rolls, grilled beef, teriyaki chicken, tempura, bottled water and green tea for four people: Â£65

Books: Read it in summer, while daylight hours outnumber the dark

2006-07-12T08:37:00.000+01:00

I don't like scary movies. I was a bit too young the first time I saw Jaws, and for years afterwards I would lie underwater in the shallow end of Nana's pool, staring into the dark blue of the very deep deep end, frozen in fear as I imagined some tiny spot - probably something trivial like a leaf, or a funnel-web spider - coming closer and closer until it became a huge set of open toothy jaws about to crunch through my body. I have settled down a bit, but I still have a moment's pause for thought when I dive through a wave in the surf and see the endless green before me. And one night, marveling at the little fishies while twilight swimming at Balmoral Beach in Sydney, I started humming the song lyric, "Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water" and scared myself so much that I had to get out. So I'm not entirely cured. I am better with books, but I suppose we can conclude that when I suspend disbelief, I probably do it with more commitment than most.

Knowing my history, you will know why I was slightly nervous at the prospect of Shadow Man. But having just read Peter James's serial killer book, and having more than a passing fascination with psychopaths and serial murder, I scoffed at my reservations and ploughed in.

Whowee, this book scared me shitless! Smoky Barrett, an FBI agent scarred and bereft after a serial killer murdered her husband and daughter as she apprehended him, faces the prospect of a new killer targeting her and her team.

What makes the book so good, apart from being so thrillingly scary, is the humanity of her team. They are all real people in an unreal situation, and their coping strategies with the horror they deal with in their job gives them unique character quirks that are almost instantly endearing. It also makes it all the more scary when the killer goes after them. Although it follows the usual "agent must prove sanity to get back her gun and get on the case: but must get back gun and get on the case to prove sanity" formula, the well rounded supporting characters make this a far richer reading experience than the usual barely human hero and cardboard supporting characters.

Shadow Man, Cody McFadyen, Hodder, 2006

Books: literary ventriloquism (I wish I'd said it first)

2006-06-30T15:44:00.000+01:00

Another reviewer somewhere on the internet described this book as a feat of literary ventriloquism. I couldn't have said it better myself. So I won't. *

Matthew Keane has written a superb book about, well, the closest approximation of what it is about is to say that a three mismatched Englismen travel to colonial Tasmania to find the Garden of Eden, on a Manx smuggling ship that was chartered to them because the captain needed to pay off his debts to British customs. That's the closest approximation of the truth about 80% of the story. There is a parallel story of the Aboriginal Tasmanians who were all but wiped out in a few decades by British settlement, or invasion, of their homeland.

A lot hasn't been said about this period over the years. It is a dark stain on history, from which nobody emerges looking good: particularly the settlers. All over Australia the power of British armoury and the idea among some people that it wasn't a sin to kill Aboriginals brought out the worst in people. Aboriginals were hunted for sport, slaughtered because they were in the way of agriculture, or because they stole the occasional sheep. They were wiped out by disease and turned to alcoholism for entetainment and profit. By the mid eighteenth century, mainland Australia had matured beyond the worst attrocities - with Sydney and melbourne being quite large towns by then - and Aboriginal numbers so reduced, that this behaviour was becoming a rarity. In Tasmania, however, the horror was in full, bloody, swing.

Matthew Keane has written his story in the form of diary entries written by the key characters - including Peevay, a Tasmanian Aboriginal. The diaries are intercut with eachother, and skillfully written in markedly different voices, and with utterly different personalities. They are superb and utterly believable.

The diary of one character, Peevay, the Aboriginal, can be a bit irritating to read because his voice is not like a modern Aboriginal's. Matthew mentions in the foreword, quite correctly, that there is no way to know how a Tasmanian Aboriginal might have spoken or written English. (Comparing an 1830s Tasmanian Aboriginal's diary to the speech of a modern Western Desert aboriginal is like saying a 19th century Bedouin doesn't sound like Tony Blair - it's about the same distance in time, space and culture.)

All this is by-the-by, however. The true genius of this book is that Matthew Keane has managed to get inside the heads of people on both sides of a cultural chasm - both of whom think that they are doing the right thing, and not understanding why the other is so unccoperative. You see, the true tragedy of genocide of the Tasmanian Aboriginals and the colonisation of Australia is that - while some abhorent people did some abhorent things - most of the damage was done by Europeans who thought they were doing the right thing.

It is a superb book. I wholeheartedly recommend it, especially if you are trying to understand why Australians don't laugh at jokes about colonialism.

(The BBC Radio 4 Book Club has invited 24 other Australians and me to ask some questions of Matthew Keane tonight. So listen on September 4, or September 7, at 4pm to put a voice to the typing. I'll be the one named Damian.)

* If I could rememeber who it was, I'd offer a credit, but I don't, so I can't. Sorry if it was you.

Books: ratcheting up the criminal sophistication

2006-06-30T15:22:00.000+01:00

Crikey people, don't go to Brighton. Peter James has churned out another of his thrillers, making it the murder capital of Europe. I was barely finished reading the last one when we bumped into eachother in the foyer and he mentioned his book signing for this one. (And there is another one in the series due - probably next weekend at the rate he's writing.)

In much the same way as the writing must have done, this book starts about a week after the previous book finished. Superintendent Roy Grace is still fighting the flack from the last book's car chase when a body turns up, minus a head and plus a mysterious beetle.

The writing is a bit formulaic - as the genre tends to be - but Peter ratcheted up the sophistication of the villains in the twenty minutes betwen books. This story is a frightening adventure into international internet based reality porn rings, and their utterly ruthless perpetrators. The pace of the story rapidly accelerates until the final few chapters as Grace and his team race the clock to prevent the next murder victims facing their fate live on streaming video.

Living in the blogsphere: a secret meeting of minds

2006-06-20T22:08:00.000+01:00

Last Friday night in Paris a petite woman left her work in the hands of her mother and boarded a train for England.

Around lunchtime on Saturday a man in Norfolk left his builders, his newly acquired students, LTLP and Baby Servalan and boarded a train for London as his thoughts turned to sushi and culture. Twenty minutes later in Brighton a woman moored her Little Red Boat, put out her binvelope and boarded a train heading North. At around the same time: I was chasing sheep; there was trouble on Coffee Corner as Skippy McWonderfuck failed, and Christine quietly knitted; a finely featured, pale skinned woman looked for reasons to be happy, while wondering if she would belong; a Beautiful Revolutionary pondered garbage night; and a diva tuned her pixels.

Around mid-afternoon on Saturday the petite woman, Anna of the boat, Johnny B, the coffee man, Christine, the Cheerful Woman, the Diva and the Beautiful Revolutionary converged on a small pub, well hidden in a row of terraced houses and named after a royal appendage. I was rushing through a chat with my neighbour at our local bookshop, horribly conscious of my lateness, before riding like an overheated madman towards Westminster bridge.

Twenty minutes later, secret identities were shedding in the back of the hidden pub, and I was riding the back streets looking for it. Twenty minutes after that, Coffee Man grabbed a chair for me as Anna of the boat, the queen bee of bloggers, did the introductions.

Yes, dear readers, 'twas an informal blogmeet, such as I have heard of in the past, but never before witnessed. And alas, my time there was short, limited as I was by other commitments. But here I will divulge what I learned:

Anna - I am starting to think that if you don't know Anna then you're not a blogger, but maybe that's because I have found most of the best blogs I read through her comments page; she is gracious and unreasonably modest and the least shy of the bloggers - as anyone who has seen her impersonating a meerkat would agree

Petite Anglaise - is either less petite than she makes out, or was sitting on a high stool, for she was taller than everyone else; and I forgot to ask her about the gourmet fish-and-chips

Johnny B - is not as feckless as he appears, fortunately; and I forgot to ask if he salvaged the dining table

The Beautiful Revolutionary - is a delightful gentleman of quick wit and generous phrase, who appears to be nowhere near as suicidal as his work implies, also fortunately

Christine - is a warm voiced American with a penchant for Starbucks cookies and The Coffee Man

Coffee Corner - is not a corner where you drink coffee, but a hairy and well mannered American man with a thing for Christine

Pixel Diva - is an assertive Scottish woman named Ann, who knits, photographs and makes sites work for people who don't work as well as they might

The Cheerful Woman - doesn't seem to need to find a reason to be cheerful, for she is clever, witty and laughs easily - or perhaps blogging has done that to her

Universal Critic - well I'm not telling - I'm not that self-aware - you'll have to see if they say anything about me, though I'm sure they're much too polite

Unfortunately I could only stay for half-an-hour but in that time we discussed blog names - me asking everyone else theirs; the guilt you feel when you don't post often enough; and I dominated the conversation with my recent sheep experience, Johnny expressed surprise that we were in London discussing sheep when he expected conversation to be about Sushi recippes and the latest Loofa technology. Then I left, wanting more. Hopefully I will be invited to the next one with more than 24 hours notice.

Books: If God is in the details, then Hello God

2006-06-20T21:54:00.000+01:00

The strength of a character comes from the details, so I suppose the strength of a writer comes from the details. In The Great Gatsby, we don't meet Gatsby until we're well into the book - but we already know that he throws parties that he doesn't bother to attend. And we start to understand the emptiness of a man going through the motions when we see his wardrobe of unworn shirts.

The central character to Watch Me Disappear is an English marine biologist who lives in the United States, specialises in sea horses and has a daughter. The details of her life are superby written - how most of her time is spent simply watching her sea horses, how that's her safe place. How at sea she flashes back to memories of her lost friend. How she loses time occasionally - but not occasionally enough that her daughter isn't familiar with these little fits. So when details of her childhood seem to be missing, they stand out - and that's where the story comes in.

I'm not going to spoil the plot, but when Tina Humber returns to the flat Fenland of her youth, she returns to a life that, she begins to realise, she ran away from when she let her career drag her across the world. And when her adult eyes start to look at the disappearance of her friend, Mandy Baker, she starts to realise why.

The story is beautifully told, and the few confusing twists needed to get us to the end do not take away from the overall effort. Tina Humber is a superbly written character. The descriptions of her work are beautiful and the tie-in between the hypocampus sea horse and the human hypocampus mentioned towards the end of the book shows that Jill Dawson's commitment to details goes beyond what the story requires. Thus author will not let go until she has got it right.

Books: The I-Ching for generation Z

2006-06-20T21:26:00.000+01:00

I picked this book up on a whim. It caught my eye because the mirror writing on the cover says

Whatever you think think the opposite

and claims to be by

Paul Arden, author of the best selling book in the world

The cover was George Castanza enough to grab me, but contents is pure Kramer. Paul Arden has distilled pretty much all you really need to know about creative thinking and risk taking into 143 pages of bold print, wierd pictures, clever lines and a mirror. It's a kind of dip-in:dip-out self-help manual for the creatively disabled. You can read it cover to cover like a novel in an hour or so, if you're slow; or dip in page by page - I-Ching style - and meditate on one idea at a time.

I liked it because Paul Arden clearly thinks exactly the same way that I do. The difference is that he's had the courage to act on his ideas. That's why I had to buy his words in a shop, and you're reading mine for free.

If you think it sounds like crap, read the title again.

London life: London Architecture Bienalle

2006-06-19T19:07:00.000+01:00

Universal Wifey likes sheep. She prefers Baa-lambs, but sheep will do, so I organised for us to ride our bikes down to Southwark Cathedral on Saturday so that we could follow Farmer Smith exercise his right as a Freeman of the City of London to drive his sheep across the Thames Bridges and into the city of London. The event was tied-in with the Architecture Bienalle as a way of linking the Borough Market and Smithfield Market - the two great larders of London. It was also a tie-in with some sort of knitting promotion, and the St Bart's fair - the ultimate destination of the flock.

So we arrived at Southwark Cathedral, where the sheep were to be blessed by the Bishop of Southwark before they started their journey, and stood at the back to keep our bikes out of the way of the crowd. We saw a small pen of sheep - somewhat less than the proposed 66. We craned our necks as some sort of street theatre event began to unfold, until we realised that it was a bunch of rabid anti-meat protestors shouting murderer and hypocrite. As members of the public, the protesters were with us, behind the crowd control tape, but they had arrived early and had the spot closest to the sheep. So every time the protesters shouted murderer, or hypocrite, the sheep would hear their loud, violent braying, and move as far away as possible - which was not very far to the other side of their pen. Some children were also frightened, but on the whole, they were harmless. Because nothing else was happening, they got a lot of media attention.

We also saw a clergyman in purple robes who we took to be the bishop, a short man wearing a suit and a large gold chain who we took to be the mayor, or someone with a very expensive bondage fettish, some people in extremely vintage floppy pom-pom hats and black coats who we took to be alderpeople, or fellow freemen of the city, a man wearing a flat cap and carrying a shepherd's crook, who we took to be farmer Smith, and some younger men and boys wearing flat caps and carrying shepherd's crooks who we took to be shepherds.

And so the blessing blessed. The pen was opened, the shepherds began shepherding, two sheep escaped, farmer Smith shouted shut the gates and the crowd scrambled to untie the crowd control tape from the gates so and shut the heavy medieval gates with a shriek. The remaining sheep were shepherded through the end-gate, into the market and we followed intending to cut around the back past the Golden Hind in order to get ahead of the flock. Suddently there was a excitement behind us as a girl in jeans and a t-shirt dragged a sheep out of the bushes and off towards the pen.

We took a short cut to and waited on the Millenium Bridge hoping to see the sheep pass us on the bridge. In the distance we saw the people in black caps, we saw the shepherds, and we saw a gap in the crowd where we assumed the sheep were, and a Policeman moved us on so that the bridge would be clear for the sheep.

We passed a woman wearing lots of velvet who was defending her vegetarian Doc Martens to camera.

We stopped on the other side of the bridge oppisite Salvation Army headquarters where the band was to play The Lord is My Shepherd. The band didn't show. We stood on a fire escape and waited. We saw the people in black caps, we saw the shepherds, we saw a gap, and in the gap, we saw wool. We heard the violent braying and yelling of the anti-meat protesters. They were immediatley behind the sheep. The sheep at the front of the flock were walking normally - just a sheep out for a walk in the city, what are you looking at.

Now if you have spent anything more than a moment with a flock of sheep you will have learned that sheep don't like being startled. The are calm and placid creatures who like to find a nice grassy field and eat it. They are not political. They are not particularly assertive (although there is always one...) and they do not speak enough of any human language to tell the difference between one loud, murderous shout and another.

The protesters were following the sheep closely - very closely. They were, in fact, directly behind the sheep. And they were screaming and yelling with a frightening violence and vitriol. The sheep at the back of the flock were tightly bunched together, pushing their faces between the shoulders of the sheep in front, climbing the flock from the back. The protesters may have had all meat-kind on their minds, but the happiness of these sheep was sacrificed for the cause. The sheep - what we could see of them - were terrified.

Disgusted at riding so far to see very little, we left the sheep to walk across the western steps of St Pauls Cathedral (not the northern, not the southern, not up or down, but across the western steps) and rode through the back-streets to Smithfield, where we found the market not quite ready, filled-out a London Energy questionnaire, collected a bunch of architecture brochures and a free high-efficiency light bulb and set off, slightly disapointed, to see the knitted house and the solar powered kinetic sculpture on Clerkenwell Green.

Suddenly a Policeman strode towards us, "Stand aside please!" and we barely had time to pull our bikes onto the footpath when some people in black caps, some shepherds and a whole happy flock of sheep brushed past our legs heading towards the sheep's pen for the afternoon. The protesters were gone. The sheep were gamboling happily along the road, and after a twelve mile round trip we finally met the sheep as soon as we gave up.

So the moral of is... I don't know, perhaps that animal-rights protesters are just as willing to sacrifice individual animals for the common cause, and that sometimes you have to give up looking to find the thing you are looking for.

The internet: A disturbing turn of events

2006-06-15T07:57:00.000+01:00

There is a phenomenon described in the literature which details the disinhibiting nature of the internet. I experienced it yesterday, and thus it came about that I discussed underpants gussets with another man, in a public forum. The conversation continued by email where we discussed our own specific underpants gusset attributes, and in passing I discovered that he is a runner, and he discovered that I am a cyclist.

The entire event was perfectly innocent - hell, I'm a married man - but somehow I still feel slightly soiled.

Damn internet.

Politics: groupthink

2006-06-12T11:03:00.000+01:00

Just how deep into groupthink do you have to be to interpret suicide as a publicity stunt?

London life: the big wheel keeps on turning...

2006-06-08T15:54:00.000+01:00

...but they don't tell its direction.

Not every evening, but often enough to make it seem regular, a man rides past my window on a unicycle. He's not a clown, or a juggler, or any kind of entertainer. His unicycle isn't a ridiculously tall one. It's not painted a primary colour. It has no stripes. It's just a unicycle. Judging by the 20" wheel it's not a stunt unicycle, and judging by his backpack and cycling clothes he's not a stunt unicycle rider. He looks just like every cyclist commuter, except he's riding a unicycle.

You have to respect a unicycle commuter.

London life: Is there a doctor in the house?

2006-05-31T14:59:00.000+01:00

I originally posted this as a comment on Dr Jest's caseblog, then decided that it was so long I shoudl put it here. He was talking about the new NHS computer system, and his own computerised records in his office - saying that most surgeries used computers now...

Speak for yourself - our local GP in Notting Hill still uses little library card sized pieces of paper in envelopes. We tried to make an appointment once and I was told that Universal Wifey was not registered. I said she should be, because her registration appointment was straight after mine - I even held the door open for her. They came back on the phone and said that actually, she had emigrated. I said, "Why would she have done that, we've just emigrated here." Receptionist said that she'd told that doctor that and that it was written in the records. I said that sounds unlikely, given that we had never actually met the doctor - having only just registered. (They made her have a pap-smear before they would re-register her - some sort of punishment we assumed.)

Most recently she needed more Clexane (she gets DVTs) before a long haul flight. She sat down and asked for the prescription, in single dose syringes, and reminded the doctor of the dose. The doctor said, "You've only had glandular fever - you don't take Clexane for that." She agreed, and said she was recovered from the glandular and that the Clexane is for DVTs. He said that there is no record on her record. She said that there should be, because she had given it to them - about fifteen pages of letter, test results and medical history. He said she didn't, and he wasn't giving her the drug. She reminded him that Clexane is not exactly a party drug, and asked him how many people had casually requested it over the course of his career. He said none, and he couldn't just give it to her. She said he'd better, because she wasn't leaving until she did.

At that point, a stare down ensued. Now Universal Wifey is not your average Notting Hill yummy mummy. For starters, she's not a mummy. She is a hardcore investment banker, and you don't get there without being able to stare someone down. She sat across from the doctor, wearing her smart work suit, and stared. Slowly the rustling from the waiting room became louder and louder. She stared. The clock ticked towards hometime. She stared. His phone rang with and enquiry from the desk to see if everything was OK. She stared. He picked up his men and doodled on her card. She stared. She clicked his pen a few times. She stared. He may even have perspired a little. She stared.

He stood up and walked over to the cupboard. She turned her head so that she could keep staring. He grabbed a handful of samples. She stared. He said, "How much do you need?" She smiled, and told him.

She thanked him, placed the syringes into her handbag, zipped it shut and left. Honestly, it's easier to get the stuff through customs.

So I say bring on a system that doesn't rely on the ability of three dessicated, resentful, old biddies who prefer to gossip about the patients than manage the records. Bring on the professionals!

How do you hold a baby's coffin?

2006-05-19T18:37:00.000+01:00

I have always thought that Funerals are quite fun affairs - death and loss aside. Sure, the whole mourning thing is very upsetting, but it is also cleansing and cathartic, and leaves you feeling better afterwards. And there is also the celebration thing: celebrating a life lived, hopefully well. I have thought this since the first funeral I attended - my Grandfather's, or my Great Aunt's, not sure - which united cousins and friends who I had not seen for years. It was, ultimately, a reunion party that left us feeling more positive, like the worst was over.

I thought that I was alone in thinking this. Or perhaps that it was just my family, because we were having a laugh in the funeral car about some of the ridiculously funny things that my Grandfather used to do and say. Some of these had names - "The Toilet Seat Incident"; or was it Aunty Thelma's epic travels in her own train carriage, or when she thought her nurse was a gypsy because he had an earring. It doesn't matter, really. The point is that all the stories were infectious and pretty soon we were in the comedy car. At one point I apologised to the driver for our extremely bad taste. He didn't mind. He said that the biggest emotional struggle for a funeral car driver is keeping a straight face when the rest of the car is laughing. He said they are usually quite funny drives.

And funerals can be quite sexy: everyone wears their best clothes; the women look all flushed and vulnerable; the men look all stoic, while betraying an emotional range they usually conceal; and of course teenagers discover a whole new set of adult emotions to experiment with. This I also thought was my own idea until I found thirteen films that agree with me.

Having made these observations over the years, it took today to gel them into the single idea that ultimately a funeral is a positive experience. Because today was the exception that proves the rule.

This morning I held Universal Wifey's trembling hand at the back of a crematorium, tears rolling down our cheeks to the droning lullaby of a Hindu Priest. The casket was ridiculously small - like a dolls-house toy - and it occurred to me that with something so small the usual funerary pomp just doesn't work. You can't have many flowers, because the casket is smaller than the bouquet. The coffin is too small for pallbearers, so it has to be carried by one person, awkwardly. A hearse is a ridiculous conceit when the coffin fits on a lap. And without the formality the whole event becomes horribly personal and intimate. And when there is only fifteen minutes of life to celebrate, nothing can offset the gutting misery of lost hope and shattered dreams.

Again, I thought that this might have been my own observation, until we were waiting to pay our respects to the parents and I saw the undertaker crack. Have you ever seen an undertaker cry?

Also published on www.acouplepfounters.com.

London: Aaaaarrrsenallllll

2006-05-17T16:10:00.000+01:00

Just after I left school I worked with Digby, a guy who had returned to Australia from the UK an obsessive Arsenal fan. We were moving office furniture and files and it became our mission to write Arsenal FA in ridiculously inaccessible parts of the items we moved - a calling card, if you will. And so it was that, for about a decade, when the MCS Partners at Price Waterhouse, Sydney opened a desk drawer, opened a filing cabinet, reached into a cupboard, or drank from a suitably inscribed mug, they inadvertently exposed a small Arsenal FA to the light. Our challenge was not to write it, but to write it somewhere wierd - like the top of an office door.

To me this was but a merry jape, something stupid, invented by a couple of bright lads to occupy their minds while doing manual labour. Digby, on the other hand, saw it as a vocation. At the time, and until today, I thought that perhaps Digby's devotion to the great club involved a little more affection than that of the average punter.

That was until today.

You see, my office is above a popular London nightclub. And the popular London nightclub is on a popular London road. And today - right now, in fact, as the hometime traffic is thickening up - the popular London nightclub on the popular London road is hosting an event for Arsenal. There are people in Arsenal shirts queueing outside, and there are Arsenal flags on the front of the building.

Well, the commotion! You see, not only are Arsenal fans driving past and shouting brief messages of support to their fellow gunners, but fans of every other team are also driving past, and they are shouting messages of, well not support, to the same gunners. These messages, shouted as they are from moving vehicles, tend to sound alike, and the closest comparison would be the noise a donkey makes.

Meanwhile, beneath the window we have bouncers chatting to echother, gunners chatting to eachother, gunners and bouncers arguing, one man crowing like a crow. I can hear a lot of Anglo Saxon language, particularly from one man who seems to have a problem with his ticket.

It's a very passionate scene and I suggest that anyone who accuses the Brits of being dispassionate and aloof should first sit above the entrance to a popular London nightclub, on a popular London road when it is hosting a football function.

Uh oh! I hear sirens....

Art: Would't you be pissed off...

2006-05-12T16:45:00.000+01:00

...if, somewhere on your travels, you lost your luggage.