Sherlock

I really didn't think I was going to enjoy the new series of Sherlock, which is set in present-day London. Although it stars great actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman), and has both Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss producing, I thought it would be pointless update. I'm glad to say that I was very pleasantly surprised.

It has a few rather preposterous plot points, but then Conan Doyle's original stories also occasionally stretched credibility. For the most part, it's great fun, and both the main characters have survived a 21st Century update rather well. Some aspects of the original stories still apply, unfortunately: there is still a war in Afghanistan, so Dr John Watson's original backstory fits in perfectly. Other aspects of modernisation have been dealt with quite cleverly. Sherlock makes fairly extensive use of email, the internet and text messages, and I like the way that these appear overlaid on the screen as a kind of visible manifestation of Sherlock's thought processes. Even Mrs. Hudson's character now has a clever twist, as their landlady ("I'm not your housekeeper, dear").

It did leave me wondering what Sherlock (yes, I do know he isn't a real person) would have thought of the internet. On one hand, I could imagine him relishing the ease with which he could gather information instantly. After all, in the original stories, he keep extensive collections of newspaper clippings and other information, which he would refer to in the course of his cases. On the other hand, perhaps he might regard it as cheapening the deductive process, by making information too readily available. I'm sure that the Sherlock Holmes obsessives will be arguing about it, but meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the last episode and hoping that they make another series.

Benjamin Zephaniah

A couple of weeks ago, we attended this year's Baggs Memorial Lecture on the theme of Happiness, delivered by Benjamin Zephaniah. I'm fond of the series (I think leaving a bequest for an annual lecture on Happiness is a brilliant idea), and I really enjoyed the lecture in 2008 given by Andrew Motion. Despite both being poets, Motion and Zephaniah couldn't be more different. While Andrew is quiet, cerebral and extensively educated, Benjamin is exuberant, political and self-taught, having left school at the age of 13. I love the work of both poets, but it's a particular treat to hear Zephaniah perform his poetry because of a lot of the art of Dub Poetry is in the rhythm.

He seemed pretty amused to be giving a 'lecture', given his rather curtailed contact with formal education, though he does now have an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Birmingham. He decided to just do it his way, and talked very engagingly about his life, what had made him happy and unhappy along the way, and interspersed this with poems.

It's funny how what can seem overwhelmingly daunting to one person seems natural and easy to others and vice versa. He read out the first poem of the night from a sheet of paper, explaining before he did so that he doesn't like to read poems, because he's quite severely dyslexic and he ends up getting anxious about stumbling over the words. He read it beautifully, but then later in the evening he performed (without notes) a long and very fast poem called Money, which was word and rhythm perfect. Reading out a written poem wouldn't worry me too much, but I would never be able to remember such a long poem and deliver it so smoothly, and the prospect would terrify me.

It was a really entertaining evening, and certainly made me happy. At one point, he even managed to get a bit of audience participation. He performed De Rong Song and got us all to call out the 'Don't worry/Be Happy' refrain. And sound like we meant it! On a Monday!

He comes across as the kind of guy who would be very interesting to talk to. Along with good vegan food and making other people happy, he said that one of the things that he most enjoys is good conversation. Most of what he has learned has come through talking to people, and that he particularly enjoys conversations with those who disagree with him: he doesn't always change his mind (or theirs), but he likes to hear the other side of the argument.

LibraryThing

I've been using blippr for a while to record what films I watch, what music I listen to and what books I read, displaying the most recent in the sidebar here. However, I've found that it simply doesn't list a lot of the books I've read (films seem to fare better), and while you can add new items, it's a bit of a chore, and I've had one or two books that I just could not seem to add to the system.

I started looking around for alternatives, and came across LibraryThing. It may not be the prettiest site in the world (though it's not bad by any means), but it is really full of features. You can add books in multiple ways (the easiest of which is to type in the ISBN, or buy a cheap USB barcode scanner from them which integrates with the site), and it pulls in full details. There are no end of customisation options, including choosing which of the localised Amazon sites to pull information from¹, and the ability to add books to different lists such as Currently Reading or Wishlist. The blog widget is also highly customisable, and I chose one showing my reviews.

The social aspects of the site are very impressive: it can generate recommendations, you can join groups with particular reading interests, and the sheer number of reader reviews (many of which are very detailed and thoughtful) provide a lot of scope for future reading matter.

Using blippr was convenient because I could log all my watching, reading and listening in one place, but LibraryThing just seems a better choice for my reading style. Though the short form 160 character reviews of blippr good in many ways because they are easy to write, it's sometimes nice to write a longer review, which you can do on [LibaryThing][]. You can view my catalogue here, though it is currently rather small. I'm not planning on going through my bookshelves to add things, but I'll add new reads (and items to my wishlist) as I go along. If any of you are LibraryThing users, do let me know what your username is, because I'd love to look at your catalogue.

¹ It may be borderline obsessive, but it irritates me when sites which find cover images pull up ones from US releases, because then it doesn't feel like my book, film or CD. LibraryThing can use a UK site so you are likely to get the right cover, but you can also easily choose alternative covers. Why yes, I do organise my CDs and vinyl alphabetically... ↑

Grave of the Fireflies

There are some films you watch and think that they are very good indeed, but you then more or less forget about them a few days later. Others stay with you forever, etched on your memory. Grave of the Fireflies is one of the latter kind for me. I had heard that it was a very depressing film, but actually, I think it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. That isn't to say it isn't sad — if you sit through the whole film without crying or at least feeling very moved, I would be amazed (and secretly suspect that you have no compassion for others).

Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka) is a Japanese animated film set in the Second World War, and is about two siblings: Seita (about 14 years old), and his 4 year old sister Setsuko. They are left on their own, homeless, after an American bombing raid on their town, and the film is really the story of their relationship and the way in which Seita tries to protect and care for his sister.

There's the spoiler of all spoilers in the first few minutes of the film, but in a way that sets up a kind of happy-sad ending for the film at the start, and you are no longer tense, wondering what is going to happen, but just sit back and watch how it happens.

The animation itself is gorgeous and quite realistic (no huge-eyed animé munchkins here), but the characterisation of the children is even more impressive. They act exactly like real children of their age, and that makes it even more heartbreaking. I loved the way that Setsuko swung her legs happily while sitting on a chair or bench or crouched down to inspect ants on the ground. Similarly, Seita is every inch a teenage boy, albeit one who shows incredible tenderness towards his little sister. At several points throughout the film, Seita opens a tin of fruit sweets for Setsuko. It's such a simple thing, but she adores the sweets and her little fingers can't open the tin, so it's the perfect symbol of his love for her. Actually, just thinking about those scenes again brings a lump to my throat now.

Despite having a rather tragic theme, Grave of the Fireflies manages to steer a very delicate line, and never stoops to exploitative horror (though it is frank about the results of war), nor does it ever resort to sentimentality. Difficult scenes are handled very sensitively and the emotion comes from small details or juxtapositions, rather than dialogue or from either of the characters crying.

I could pick out many wonderful scenes (burned on my memory after only one viewing), but I will mention one that particularly struck me. It is the first night that Seita and Setsuko spend alone in an old bomb shelter that they have made their home. Setsuko has already fallen asleep, but Seita is lying awake. You can see that after all the activity and even excitement of settling in to their new home, he suddenly feels the full responsibility and loneliness of his position. He may try to be a big tough man, but he's only 14 and he misses his parents and his home and feels very alone. Seeking comfort, he rolls over to hug Setsuko, but she sleepily and grumpily pushes him away and tells him to get off her, so he rolls back and curls up.

That — and several other scenes — broke my heart.

Hadestown - Anaïs Mitchell

Just over a week ago, Steve Hodgson (@BestofTimes on Twitter) recommended Hadestown to me. I'd seen a good review of it in The Guardian and been intrigued, but a personal recommendation from someone that you know has overlapping musical tastes is worth ten good reviews, so I eventually took the plunge.

I was gripped from the first time I heard it, but I've enjoyed it even more with repeated listenings. It manages to pack in many different kinds of things that I love: roots/folk music, New Orleans jazz, a 1930s theme, great lyrics, Greek mythology, and a guy with the deepest voice I've ever heard — what more could I ask?

The album (a 'folk opera') was written by Anaïs Mitchell (who sings Eurydice), but also features many other talented musicians like Ani DiFranco (Persephone) and Justin Vernon (Orpheus). It retells the story of Eurydice lured down to the Underworld by Hades, and her lover Orpheus who follows her to try to bring her back, but sets it in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Orpheus and Eurydice are in love, but penniless, and Hades seduces Eurydice with a vision of prosperity and security in the Underworld. Once down there, though, she finds it a dark and joyless prison, and misses flowers and sunlight and — inevitably — Orpheus.

I don't think that there's a single dud track on the album, and they are all as catchy and singable as any good folk tune should be, but there are one or two tracks that I particularly like. 'Why We Build the Wall' is done in a country style with slide guitar, but has a call and response format that reminds me of a sea shanty or the kind of work song that slaves might have sung on a plantation. It is also somewhat timely. Do these lyrics remind you of anything?

Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

Another great track is 'Hey, Little Songbird'. Steve mentioned in his tweet that the album featured a guy with a voice that originated "somewhere about his ankles". That man is Greg Brown and Anaïs describes his voice as "subterranean": that's highly appropriate for someone playing Hades, the King of the Underworld. It's a glorious voice — deepest, darkest, 85% cocoa solids bitter chocolate, dangerous and seductive. Despite the warning, I wasn't expecting his voice, and the first notes of 'Hey, Little Songbird' pinned me to my chair, his basso profundo giving my woofers a good workout¹ and making the dust dance on the floor.

Then there's the great New Orleans jazz blast of 'Way Down Hadestown', and the slinky, prohibition number 'Our Lady of the Underground' featuring Persephone as the owner of a speakeasy. I could go on, but you should just go and listen to it yourself. I also found myself thinking again about one of my favourite Jeff Noon books, Pollen. Though it is set in a weird, psychedelic future Manchester, it also features Persephone and Hades (disguised as John Barleycorn) in a skewed and mixed up version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and it somehow fits well with the feel of the album.

¹ Not a euphemism. ↑

Welcome to Lagos

I nearly didn't watch the first episode of the BBC Two documentary, Welcome to Lagos. I saw a bit of the trailer and thought it might be a bit depressing, and while I often watch depressing things if I think I might learn something, I have to be in the right kind of mood to deal with it. But I did watch it and I am incredibly glad about that: Welcome to Lagos was fascinating, intimate, sobering in places, certainly, but uplifting and life-affirming in others.

The first episode focussed on the people living and working on one of the city's rubbish dumps, picking over each new delivery of trash for anything they could reclaim and sell. They collect plastic, fabric, metals, batteries, wires (for the copper) and numerous other items you wouldn't think are worth salvaging, swarming gracefully over the slithering piles and pouncing on treasures with their metal hooks. Many of the workers there also live in shacks on the dump itself (for at least some of the time), and a impromptu town has sprung up to service the workers, with cafés, shops, mosques and barbers interspersed with the housing shacks.

It's a very dangerous environment and — it goes without saying — a dirty one. You can just imagine what the dump smells like in the heat, or when it floods in the rainy season. For that reason, I was fascinated by their clothes. While they were working, their clothes were obviously dusty and dirty, but when they finished they showered (still amid the rubbish) and put on spotless, beautifully pressed clothes. As someone who makes clean clothes look dirty and rumpled about three seconds after putting them on (in a clean environment), I was full of awed respect for how they managed to keep even one set of clothes clean on the dump.

{Read more...}

A new Doctor

I watched the first episode of Doctor Who with Matt Smith as the Doctor with a pretty open mind. I loved Christopher Eccleston so much in the role that I was dreading the transition to David Tennant. Tennant very gradually grew on me, but it took a long time, and there were still moments when his over-the-topness got on my nerves a bit. In many ways, I think that having a Doctor (and for that matter, a companion) who is relatively unknown is a good thing, because they bring less baggage from previous roles.

I really enjoyed Matt Smith's version of the Doctor. There was a bit of the inevitable wackiness that is written in to explain the Doctor getting used to his new body and new personality, but he does have the indefinable oddness that, in my opinion, made him a natural fit from the start. It helps that he has a striking and rather odd-looking face. I don't mean that as an insult: on the contrary, I find people of both sexes with conventionally beautiful faces really dull, and I love people with unusual faces. He also seems to have understood the mercurial nature of the Doctor, switching in a (double) heartbeat between deadly seriousness and child-like enthusiasm. I hope that in time they bring out more of the darker side of the Doctor, along with the playfulness, because that was something I thought Eccleston did very well. The Doctor should make you a bit uncomfortable at times, and I think that you should never forget for long that he is not human, whatever his appearance.

Karen Gillan, as companion Amy Pond, was also very good, and the lack of screaming is encouraging¹. The young Amy was absolutely adorable and totally believable. I think that Amy's independence, scepticism and refusal to be too impressed by the Doctor should be a good foil for him. However, Stephen Moffat should be ashamed of his transparent ploy to get the Dads watching: a kissogram Policewoman's outfit for Amy, complete with micro-miniskirt and seamed stockings? Really? I'm relieved to see that she doesn't wear that for the entire series.

The new TARDIS interior is also brilliant, and rather steampunky, I thought, with old typewriters instead of computer keyboards, brass taps, levers and a gorgeous blown-glass thingy² in the middle of the console which goes up and down when the TARDIS operates.

My only complaint about the new series is what they've done with the theme tune. The previous 'remix' was just about OK, but this one is a truly pale and lifeless imitation of Delia Derbyshire's original theme. I recently heard a wonderful documentary on Radio 4 about Delia's work, and it struck me again how futuristic that version sounds even now. The slight roughness and variability that comes from the way she had to slice up tape with a razor blade and stick it back together to create the loops makes it live and breathe in a way that both I Brian Eno love. I don't know why they can't just reinstate her theme — I think it would actually go rather well with Matt Smith's new Doctor.

¹ I'm sure that all of us old enough to remember were scarred for life by Bonnie Langford's Mel. Sorry, I didn't mean to rake over old pain. Just go to your happy place, and hopefully the memory will fade again in time. ↑

² If I was a paid up member of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, I'm sure that I would know the proper term for the thingy. Please let me know if you know what it's called. ↑

Pop-up shops

If there's a possible bright side to the recession, it's the phenomenon of the pop-up shop: local people take over a vacant shop in an otherwise bland and homogenous shopping centre, and suddenly there's a place where you can buy lovely, quirky, one-off, hand-crafted things made by local people.

If you're in Birmingham over the next few weeks, there are two pop-up shops to visit. First there's the Pavilions Pop-up Arts Shop in the Pavilions Shopping Centre, which will only be open 5 days from 2nd-7th April, and features Mr. Bsag's prints, if you'll forgive the obligatory spousal plug. Then there's the Created in Birmingham shop, which is in the Bullring Shopping Centre. Both are fine places to have a look at interesting things made by talented people.

Listen yourself warm

I've had a request from James. He enjoyed my snowy photo from a couple of weeks ago, but it's making him feel cold. He's had enough of the winter and wondered if I could post some 'summery music' to warm things up a bit. Well James, your wish is my command. It's a great idea, and I've had a blast putting together a summery/warm playlist this morning.

Rather than risk the authorities taking me away for posting tracks without permission, I thought a Spotify playlist might be the safest bet, so I hope that the majority of you have access to Spotify. If not, you should be able to hunt down the tracks elsewhere. I present — with great pleasure — the Summer Heat playlist.

1. Ma'Africa - Mahotella Queens and Ulali (from 1 Giant Leap). This had to be the first choice, as it warmed me up very effectively on a snowy walk recently. It's a great, bouncy, sunny track, which will put a spring in your step.
2. Night Scented Stock - Kate Bush (from Never For Ever). It's a short, sweet gem of a song, and other than the title, it isn't obviously summery. But somehow I always think of a hot, midsummer night in a secret, moonlit garden when I listen to this. YMMV.
3. Psychedelic Shack - The Temptations (from Psychedlic Shack). Party music! You will be dancing by the end of it (or at least jigging in your seat) and that will warm you up.
4. Firefly - Michael Franti (from Songs from the Front Porch). I find Michael Franti's voice wonderfully warm, and the atmosphere of this song just says warm summer night to me.
5. Plastic Factory - Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (from Safe As Milk). What would a playlist be without Beefheart? This is another that might not scream summer to everyone, but for me it makes me think of driving off on holiday, windows down, yelling the line "Factory's no place for me, Boss Man leave me be!" at the top of my voice while drumming on the steering wheel. It also has a lovely, dirty, stomping quality to it that somehow says summer freedom to me.
6. Marieta - Ibrahim Ferrer (from Buena Vista Social Club presents Ibrahim Ferrer). A deliciously lively, infectiously upbeat track. In contrast to Plastic Factory, if listening to this doesn't immediately conjure up images of hot, Cuban nights, dancing your flip-flops off in a sweaty, smoky club, you have a faulty imagination. I particularly love the bit near the end where it all kicks off.
7. Mustt Mustt - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (from Mustt Mustt). I could have chosen any of the Sufi master's music, but even though this is one of the most well known of his works, I really love it. Nusrat's voice a source of warmth of its own, and that's reason enough to include it.
8. Nocturn - Kate Bush (from Aerial). The song is actually about skinny dipping in the sea on a midsummer night, so it's very appropriate. Plus, it's a great song, and her voice has the same warmth inducing properties as Nusrat's.
9. Summerfield Avenue - Chris Wood (from Trespasser). This makes me remember playing in the garden in the summer when I was a kid and splashing about it the paddling pool.
10. Sankofa - Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (from Hypnotic Brass Ensemble). Brass — I have decided — is inherently summery, and this is just the right music for sitting in the sun and drinking a beer or two.
11. Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd (from A Retrospective). More, 'going away on holiday in a carefree mood' music. Also, classic track.
12. One Day Like This - Elbow (from The Seldom Seen Kid). This is one of those songs which is in danger of over-exposure, because it seems to be used as background music to just about every TV programme. However, it's a lovely song — uplifting, life-affirming and sunny.
13. Bonus track! Sexual Healing - Kate Bush (B side of King of the Mountain). I had absolutely no idea that Kate had covered Sexual Healing until I found it by chance on Spotify. It's hard to compete with the Marvin Gaye original, but this is pretty special. I'm including it because a) it's Valentine's Day and b) if this doesn't warm you up, nothing will!

Enjoy.

The Imagined Village - Empire and Love

Mr. Bsag recently saw The Imagined Village play in Birmingham. I was intensely jealous, because I couldn't join him due to a work commitment. However, he brought me back their latest album — Empire and Love — which I'm really enjoying. The Imagined Village are a kind of folk/world music collective, involving several talented musicians including Chris Wood, Eliza Carthy and Martin Carthy, along with parts of Chris Wood's 'Best Band in the World' (Barney Morse-Brown and Andy Gangadeen).

Here they tackle a wide range of songs, some traditional and some modern, but they manage to give each a unique and fresh feel, combining traditional English acoustic instruments with Indian sitars, tabla and dhol. I've listened to the album a lot recently, and I love all the tracks, but I'm particularly fond of 'Space Girl' (sung by Eliza Carthy) — a cautionary tale set to 1950s sci-fi sounds, and 'My Son John', sung by Martin Carthy. The latter is a traditional song about a young man losing his legs to a cannon ball, but they have very cleverly updated it to weave in references to Iraq and Afghanistan, and John getting a set of carbon fibre 'blades' to replace his legs. This works very well and reinforces the sad point that young men continue to lose life or limb while fighting other peoples' wars.

Chris Wood sings 'Scarborough Fair', rescuing it from folk cliché, and also leads on the lovely track 'Sweet Jane', accompanied by Indian instruments. However, the standout track for me is a cover of Slade's 'Cum on Feel the Noize'. A folk version of Cum on Feel the Noize? It seems like (and for all I know was) the outcome of a somewhat drunken bet to see who could come up with the most unlikely song to cover in a folk style. However, much like Apple products, it somehow Just Works™.

Martin Carthy sings the lead vocals, and the whole song is taken at a much slower tempo than usual. This makes it sound like a sad, regretful lament, rather than the roaring party track that Slade recorded. I was so struck by this complete change in tone that I started imagining the music video that might accompany it.

Scene: Interior. Night. We are in a very gloomy, down-at-heel, shabby pub: the kind of place where people go to drink and try to forget their troubles.

We focus on Martin Carthy, dressed and made up to look like someone down on his luck, oppressed by his life. He is staring into his pint disconsolately, then looks up and starts to sing:

You think I've got an evil mind I'll tell you honey
I don't know why
Don't know why

He could be addressing us, the viewer, or alternatively complaining to someone who isn't there. The pub is the kind where people tend to have conversations with invisible interlocutors, so it's not clear which it is. At any rate, his voice is querulous and indignant. He can't understand why he has been so misunderstood.

He sings a brief, quiet version of the chorus, in the manner of someone who knows he will never get wild, wild, wild again, or — for that matter — ever feel the noize.

Then the camera pulls out to reveal the other band members occupying the pub. All are seated at separate tables, nursing their drinks and not looking at one another. As the next chorus begins, they join in, quietly:

So come on feel the noise
Girls grab your boys
We'll get wild, wild, wild
We'll wild, wild, wild
Come on feel the noise
Girls rock your boys
We get wild, wild, wild
Til dawn

Every 'wild' is sung slowly on a sad, descending intonation, like a sigh or a dying breath.

Later, the barman picks up his sitar from behind the bar¹. There's an instrumental bridge, and everyone has that unfocussed look of people remembering their past glories and knowing that they have gone, never to return. No one smiles.

FIN.

Seriously, it's a cracking track, and has reversed my hatred of the Slade song, which is no small feat.

¹ Did I mention that there's a sitar? Well there is, and it rocks. \oo/ \oo/ ↑

Give me heart and soul and error

I was watching an excellent Arena documentary the other day about Brian Eno. Eno is a fascinating person, and would most likely be at the top of the list if I ever got asked who I would invite to a dream dinner party. He is one of those rare and precious people who think quite deeply about both art and science, and manage to combine elements of both in new and interesting ways in their work.

There were lots of great bits in the documentary, including a flick through one or two of the hundreds of notebooks he has filled throughout his life. He said that he writes things down so that he can think about them properly (not necessarily to remember them later), and he had notes on everything from mundane reminders of dental appointments to elaborate pictorial representations of the events of a day.

But what really caught my attention was when he was talking about how he dislikes over-precise music. Music has become rather standardised and polished. For example, drummers now routinely record to a click track, so while their drumming sounds very precise, it doesn't necessarily sound 'right', and has a tendency to be have a bit of a cold, antiseptic feel. He said that he preferred a bit of surprise and variability in music — something that doesn't sound exactly the same every time it is performed.

For probably the first and only time in my life, I thought, "Brian, I was thinking just the same thing myself this morning." I had been listening to a band called Sym who play a variety of unusual instruments like the Swedish nyckelharpas (no, I've never heard of it before either) and the hurdy-gurdy. I love anything with a hurdy-gurdy in it, and I was wondering idly why I'm so fond of the sound it produces. It gradually dawned on me that I love it precisely because it never quite sounds the same twice. It's a gloriously 'dirty' sound, with scrapes and squeaks and buzzes and multiple harmonics, and I doubt that even skilled hurdy-gurdy players can play it with absolute consistency. All of these faults just make it sound more real and alive, and that makes it a joy to listen to.

You can take the same approach with electronic instruments by adding back the variability in various ways (like Eno's keyboard which plays a different sampled sound on each key), so the warm and fuzzy feel isn't necessarily restricted to acoustic, analogue instruments. But that feels a bit like cheating, somehow.

Walking songs

The recent snow has made cycling to work impossible. Some brave (or foolish) souls have been cycling along the main roads, but my route goes through parks and other open spaces where it's certain that very little gritting will have been done. I'm also a total coward when it comes to riding in icy conditions. I have a Weeble¹ like ability to stay upright — despite slipping — when on foot, but I crash to the ground on a bike at the first wobble on ice.

Usually when I can't ride to work for whatever reason, I take the train, but I decided (for reasons of economy and fitness) to try walking at least one way to work this past week. The plan was to walk the 4.8 miles to work² in the morning, and then catch the train back again. It isn't a huge distance, and it ended up taking me an hour and 10 minutes at a brisk pace, even negotiating the snowy pavements. I had to get up earlier, but it was really pleasant getting into a good walking rhythm, watching dawn break, and having the route mostly to myself for the first part at least.

On Friday afternoon, there were signalling problems at Birmingham New Street, and consequently much of the local network was thrown into disarray. Mr. Bsag called me to say that there were cancellations noted for at least the next hour, so I decided that I might as well walk home too.

I had been quite cold in the office during the day, and the chill persisted despite the exercise, so half way home I felt rather weary. I was listening to my iPhone on shuffle, and just at that moment, the track Ma' Africa by Ulali and the Mahotella Queens (from the album '1 Giant Leap') came on. As soon as it started, I felt instantly warmed, thinking about hot, African landscapes, and within a few minutes I was almost bounding up the hill, a spring in my step, admiring the way that the setting sun was washing the snow with pink and smoky grey.

If the snow continues, I can see I'll have to put Ma' Africa on repeat, particularly when travelling home.

¹ Thank you low centre of gravity! ↑

² A different route to the one I cycle, which is longer, but more cycle-friendly. ↑

The campaign against pink

I was reading The Guardian a while before Christmas, and came across an interesting article about a campaign called Pink Stinks, started by two sisters (Emma and Abi Moore). They were sick of the lack of choice of clothes (everything pink and sparkly) and toys for girls, and the fact that toys which should be gender neutral (like globes) were being marketed towards girls by being manufactured in pink. The kinds of toys and activities marketed towards girls also seemed designed to restrict them to 'feminine' roles. Those of you who have read this blog for a while will know my hatred of pink gadgets marketed at women, so this campaign struck a chord with me.

The article had a wonderful advert for Lego from the 1970s, which features a smiling girl (wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, as it happens), proudly holding out a wonderful, wild Lego construction. What I like about the picture (apart from the lack of pink) is that it is genuinely gender-neutral — you could substitute a picture of a boy, and it would have exactly the same message. I also like the fact that the Lego construction doesn't look like anything in the real world, but is the joyous result of seeing what happens when you put loads of Lego bricks together, quite unlike the restrictive Lego sets you get now which have lots of shaped, specific pieces so that you can only make a house, or whatever it is.

In the article, Emma and Abi said that they were amazed at the level of criticism they had received. People seem to think that girls are genetically pre-disposed to love pink, and that to say that there's something wrong with everything for girls being made in pink is somehow denying girls' human rights. Well, when I was a kid, girls liked lots of different colours. Some liked pink, it's true, but we all wore lots of different colours ¹. I also think that girls played with a greater variety of toys. I was a real tomboy (I'm sure that surprises no-one), and although I did have a few dolls, I also played with Lego, Meccano, my brother's toy cars and planes, and I made tree-houses and go-carts. I find it a bit creepy that some people seem to think that it's perfectly normal for little girls to be obsessed with only one colour.

Of course it's true that boys and girls are different and that there are some differences in what they like, but should we decide for them what kinds of things they should like, based on their gender alone? Should we restrict the kinds of activities and roles that girls (or boys, for that matter) are supposed to enjoy? Apart from anything else, it's fairly obvious that toy manufacturers are trying make more money by getting parents to buy the same tat twice over (if they have sons and daughters), by making them buy it in both pink and blue.

¹ In fact, it being the 1970s when I grew up, we wore some revolting colour combinations: mustard and purple, anyone? ↑

Post-Christmas pre-New Year round up

I meant to post just before Christmas to wish everyone a good holiday, I really did. It's just that I was so exhausted from a very busy period at work that I just flopped as soon as my holiday started, and did practically nothing. Doing nothing has done me the world of good though, and I feel much revived. So much so, that I took the big step of upgrading ExpressionEngine (which runs my blog) to the beta version of 2.0.

As it often is with these things, it didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped. For some reason, one of the templates (which are kept in the database itself by default with ExpressionEngine) got truncated, so I had to delve into the backup of the database to find the original. Thank goodness for backups! I've also got a slightly odd installation because I have all the ExpressionEngine files in a subdirectory, but then fiddle with the URLs so that the directory doesn't appear in the permalinks. So I had to try to remember what the heck I had fiddled with last time to get it to work properly. Anyway, it all seems to be working now, and the new control panel is a great improvement. There are huge architectural changes under the bonnet (it now uses the CodeIgniter framework), but until I have time to delve around a bit more, the control panel is the only visible thing which has changed. I'm sorry if the feed has suddenly updated with lots of old articles. I've been converting all of the articles from their mixture of Markdown, HTML and Textile format to be HTML (partly because the Markdown plugin hasn't yet been updated for version 2.0). I've worked back to articles originally published in 2004, but haven't quite had the energy to do the final two years, since nobody probably looks at them now anyway.

As I said, apart from some intensive tinkering, I've done very little: a bit of baking, a lot of reading and a fair bit of film/TV viewing, and that's it. I did sit down and watch Hamlet on the TV — all 3+ hours of it. I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays at one time or another at the theatre, but for some reason I've never seen Hamlet. I don't think I'll be posting any spoilers if I tell you that it's not the cheeriest of the Bard's productions. Almost everyone dies, or is miserable, or goes mad, or — for the most unfortunate characters — suffers all three.

The thing that surprised me most was that it was all so familiar, despite the fact that I've never seen it before. I don't just mean the "To be, or not to be" speech or the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" one, or even, "Alas poor Yorick". So many of the incidental phrases have become an embedded part of the English language, that it almost feels as if Shakespeare is dealing in clichés, but of course it was Shakespeare who created the clichés. There was "to the manner born¹", "hoist with his own petard", "brevity is the soul of wit", and so on. It's pretty impressive that the words of one man, writing plays in the 16th Century, are still in such common usage in the 21st Century.

¹ I was convinced that this was "to the Manor born" until Wikipedia put me right. Penelope Keith has a lot to answer for. ↑

Chris Wood gig

Last night, Mr. Bsag and I went to see Chris Wood play the All Services Club in Moseley. We had been looking forward to the gig for ages, as we are both big fans, but because of various other circumstances, we were exhausted after a very hard and busy week, and wondered if we were going to be in the right mood to appreciate it. We needn't have worried: it was fantastic, and the warmest, most intimate and spellbinding gig I've ever been to.

The All Services Club is a funny venue. The decor is a two or three decades out of date, and the main room contains a tiny stage of the kind that looks as if it is more used to hosting small children wearing tea-towels on their heads and pretending to be shepherds than world-renowned folk musicians. However, the tiny venue gave the event a very intimate feel. Since there is no stage entrance, Chris and the band had to wander through the audience to mount the stage. Near the end of the show, he was talking about encores, and how the accepted procedure is:

1. Band sing 'last song'
2. Audience applauds
3. Band goes off stage
4. Audience applauds
5. Band comes back on stage
6. Band plays encore

Given the stage, step 3 was impossible because there was nowhere to go (he put it a bit more strongly than that, to a lot of laughter), so they would just play two more numbers and end. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I adore Chris Wood's voice, and I love his style of guitar playing. When he sings, I hang on his every word like an utter fangirl. It helps that he is a consummate storyteller. Telling stories is a very old craft (and one of the original functions of folk songs, of course), but it's difficult to do well. He pulls you in to the story from the start, so that you can't wait to hear what happens next. There are emotional highs and lows, twists and turns and unexpected and beautiful turns of phrase that make you laugh or make tears come to your eyes, so that you have to pretend you've got a bit of dust in them.

On this tour (and on the new album, 'Handmade Life'), he was playing with a fantastic band comprising Robert Jarvis on trombone, Barney Morse Brown on cello and Andy Gangadeen on drums. They were terrific, and enhanced and complemented his sound, without overwhelming the words in any way. Robert also did an uncanny impression of a Merlin-engined Spitfire on the trombone (during the song 'Spitfires'), which made plane-mad Mr. Bsag¹ go a bit misty-eyed.

They played many of the songs off the new album (which we bought — and got signed! — at the gig), as well as a scattering of older favourites. Sometimes that can be disappointing if you haven't heard the new material yet: artists are understandably keen for you to hear what they have just been working on, but audiences like to hear what they already know and love. But in this case, it was wonderful. His songs are stories, and it was a priviledge to hear them for the first time live, rather than recorded². 'Hollow Point' was a great example of the thrill of hearing these things for the first time (though I'm sure that the experience will deepen with repeated listens). It starts off describing a beautiful summer day ("Awake, arise, you drowsy sleeper"), and sounds like a traditional folk song about pastoral pleasures with some sinister undertones. But then we find out that the person in question is getting on a bus. Gradually, it you realise that it's the story of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station in 2005. It's a lament for him, and the feeling of doom, sorrow and inescapable fate is incredibly powerful.

I also loved 'Turtle Soup' — a song about Darwin's time on The Beagle. The tune is a great, sea-shanty-like thing, but the lyrics are very evocative too. There are a couple of lines at the end ("'Cause the church may shout but Darwin roars/At the age of twenty three") that made me covertly raise my fist in a Darwin Power salute (Biologists in da house! Reprazent!) and mutter an exultant "yes!" under my breath.

There were lighter moments too. Chris described 'My Darling's Downsized' as a love song for old gits, but that's fine by me. It's a lovely, warm song about the pleasures of cooking rock cakes and watching your potatoes chit on the allotment, and contained a lot of lines that made me laugh:

I light the touch paper but I don't retire
Because my love for her cannot be overstated
It's deep and it's not final salary related

As Chris said between numbers, folk singers have always sung because they felt that something need to be said. He upholds this tradition by championing the cause of people who are little-known, quiet, everyday heroes, from history to the present time — just don't get him started on David Starkey or Henry VIII. He also comments on the social and political situation, so there are quite a few tracks on the album about the credit crunch. He's certainly a man worth listening to, and I felt very lucky to be able to do just that yesterday.

¹Well, OK — me too. ↑

²Doubly so, because only those going to the gigs have access to the album until it is on general release when the tour ends. ↑

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