The First Sign

Shiny and Chrome?

2016-03-09T21:54:28Z

This was the next icon up and I was trying to remember where I had heard 'shiny' recently, and it was Max Max: Fury Road!

Which is somewhat opposite to darling Kaylee, but I guess there was a love of engines involved on both sides.

The hilarious thing about MM:FR is that it wasn't a film I would have chosen to go to in the normal run of things. Car chases? Explosions? But the MRA twits were criticising it, so I thought I ought to support the film by buying a ticket. And I really loved it! Read masses in the fandom for a few months afterwards.

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... and old enough not to care!

2016-03-08T18:15:56Z

I'm actually more of a Duncan fan, but that is just such a cute expression, and a useful quote for posting as well.

Just been looking at the Saint Laurent Fall collection and ra-ra skirts are back! OMG I remember when they first came round. I am old!

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Voyage to the stars

2016-03-03T14:23:28Z

Well, I did want to be an astronaut when I was growing up.

I did get to work for L'Agence Spatiale Europeene for my sandwich year, so got closer than some.

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A fishy in a little dishy

2016-03-01T13:35:35Z

And this icon is another rather Art Nouveau style. Fishes because I'm a Pisces.

"A fishy in a little dishy" reminds me of "When the boat comes in". That was must-see TV back in the 70s. I remember being surprised at James Bolam being such a good dramatic actor since I'd only known him from "The Likely Lads'. I hadn't realised he and Susan Jameson were married - certainly explains the onscreen chemistry!

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The writer icon

2016-02-29T13:15:01Z

Just renewed my membership and I was admiring my collection of icons and thought I would try a bit of small and slightly more frequent posting by writing about them.

This one is fairly straightforward, it's a writer in an Art Nouveau style. Suitable for use when I was posting fanfic or just writing a post.

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The Thing from the Ice Age

2015-08-28T10:19:29Z

Soooo ... 3 years since my last update, and it may well be 3 years until my next one, but a friend of mine recently asked me to list 5 books/movies that I enjoyed recently. And I thought that would actually make a good post, it means I don't have to think up original content, and for those few people who are wondering it lets you know I'm still around.

i) Mad Max: Fury Road. I had no plan to go and see this, but the backlash from areas like the MRA saying that it was too feminist meant I felt I ought to support it. And I just really enjoyed it, there was a good story, lots of interesting characters, you could see who was doing what to whom in the action scenes, and at one point I got really excited about big cars to the extent I could understand why people go to truck rallies :-)

ii) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I like sixties era stories, and I thought this was a mostly successful update to the original. I loved the humour and could have settled for a film where all the protagonists just spent the time insulting each other!

iii) Knight's Shadow (Book 2 in The Greatcoats trilogy) by Sebastien de Castell. I loved the first book in the trilogy which I bought as a Kindle Daily Deal. It's very similar to The Three Musketeers and I was quite easily able to cast the three protagonists using the actors from the current BBC musketeers series. I was waiting for Book 2 to come down in price and then I missed the train to go to my brother's so treated myself to the book to make up for that. There's humour, sword fights, myths, unexpected plot turns, and an appealing narrator.

iv) The Craft Sequence series by Max Gladstone. I've read several of these recently. They have 'god wars' where the gods have been defeated by mortals who have become powerful enough in magic (or 'craft' as they call it) to be able to kill gods. The interesting thing is that it's set in quite a modern backdrop, but with epic legends not being far away, and although it seems like a good thing that the gods are defeated it's looking like a balance between gods and craft might be the way the series is going.

v) on DVD: Live, Die, Repeat (also known as Edge of Tomorrow). This is the aliens invade and time keeps resetting as in Groundhog Day with Tom Cruise. It's good if you like Tom Cruise since he starts off as a non-hero character and transforms over the film. And it's good if you don't like Tom Cruise since he gets killed … a lot … in many inventive ways :-) Also a good female lead in Emily Blunt and a plot which is a bit of an unfolding puzzle which I like.

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Amazing serendipity

2012-03-07T14:26:41Z

I was just wondering when the next Temeraire book was coming out and went off to check, and it's today!!

Since it's my birthday this month, I might even treat myself to it now and not wait until the price comes down.

Yay!!

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Over on poetry

2012-02-04T18:36:09Z

Occasionally I post a poem over on poetry and yesterday evening I posted an unexpected poem by Philip Larkin. Unexpected in its tenderness: Born Yesterday.

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From U.N.C.L.E. to Corrie

2012-01-13T19:30:57Z

For some reason, this news strikes me as ridiculously charming: Robert Vaughn Hustles his way into Coronation Street

I love that he even wants to appear in it :-)

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Appreciation of a writer

2012-01-03T12:59:23Z

As usual at the beginning of every year, I think, I must post more! So something about writing:

I've been re-reading Rosemary Sutcliff's 'Eagle of the Ninth' books for the first time since I was a child. The Eagle of the Ninth was my favourite book when I was young, and I still found it an excellent story. But now that I'm older I can appreciate how skilfully she crafted her words.

( Here is an extract from The Silver Branch )

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Shakespeare - my favourite movie adaptation of a play

2011-07-16T20:19:46Z

Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play

The one that immediately came to mind was "10 Things I Hate About You" which I guess is more of an 'inspired by' than an adaptation, but I came across it one evening and was pleasantly surprised and then highly entertained. I was thinking 'typical teen comedy' but because of the story it was based on, it was able to colour outside the lines, and it made 'The Taming of the Shrew' more palatable for modern sensibilities. Now, of course, it has the added poignancy of being one of the few films that Heath Ledger completed in what looked like being a long career.

When I was thinking about this question I had a hunt around for 'Shakespeare adaptations' and have to list a few 'Honarary Mentions'
- Kiss Me Kate (yep, still a bit misogynistic, but singing gangsters!)
- Forbidden Planet (classic of sci-fi)
- Carry on Cleo (Infamy, infamy. They've all got it in for me!)
- A Double Life (with a stunning performance by Ronald Coleman)
- West Side Story (still love the music in this)

( the rest of the questions )

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Why I can't write long.

2011-07-14T09:38:14Z

I haven't read George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books or seen the series, but I've followed some of the discussion here and there on the chance that I might pick them up in the future. There was a very interesting interview with him in The Atlantic and part of his response to a question about sexual violence included the following:

... And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.

A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things—whether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous.

And that was kind of a revelation about why I could never manage the art of long stories. I wasn't able to include the details. In a way I wrote the Cliffs Notes version of my stories. I could sometimes manage details in vignettes and shorter stories since I was trying to capture a small moment in time so needed to make it more of a immersive experience. But when it came to longer pieces, I kept skipping to the next plot point.

Of course, you can go overboard with description and lose the plot as it were, but you do need that local colour which was something I wasn't interested in. Which is why drabbles were my crowning glory :-)

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Shakespeare - my favourite movie version of a play

2011-07-12T20:34:59Z

Day #19: Your favourite movie version of a play

At last, an easy one! And it's Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing". For me, it's just a delight, and one of the few DVDs I own, since I have to take it out and watch it every summer. Actually not sure why I watch it in the summer, since it's like condensed sunlight so I should save it to the winter. I think the relationship between Beatrice and Benedict has rarely been portrayed better. Denzel Washington is to the manor born as the Prince, and I liked Keanu Reeves as the villain (particularly with his shirt off!)
And it was beautiful, from the sunlit slopes of the hills to the torch-lit shadows of the night.

( the rest of the questions )

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Shakespeare - my favourite dialogue

2011-07-11T20:21:36Z

Day #18: Your favorite dialogue

I quite like Romeo And Juliet's first conversation, with Juliet being all practical, and Romeo having the common sense of a gerbil. There's a sweetness about it which I think is due to the youth of the characters, particularly Juliet. If it hadn't been for the Prologue, this could almost be the start of one of his comedies, and we'd be smiling at how young they are.

( the rest of the questions )

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Shakespeare - my favourite speech

2011-07-09T11:09:37Z

Two posts in one day! My tiny reading list keels over in astonishment :-) Perhaps I should try reverse psychology and tell myself NOT to post for a month.

Day #17: Your favorite speech

As I ran through speeches that I liked, I found that I'd already referred to them a lot in other Shakespeare posts. Richard III's opening speech is such a masterpiece of sarcasm and unabashed villainy. The Agincourt speech from Henry V is the quintessentially rousing speech, even when you have no liking of war. I admire all the great monologues from Hamlet, but not enough for them to be a favourite. Claudio's little speech on fearing death is very moving, but also very short!

So I'm plumping for John of Gaunt's sceptred isle speech, I think it's the line "This precious stone set in the silver sea" that always gets me.

( the rest of the questions )

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The heart of the matter

2011-07-09T10:49:02Z

I like the Longreads site, and have subscribed to their Top 5 of the week mailing list. Today I skimmed the list, and had read or seen them all except the last which turned out to be an article on fanfiction.

It was The Boy Who Lived Forever By Lev Grossman, starting with Harry Potter and branching out from there. I braced myself before reading it, but IMO it was a good non-sensational overview of the subject, and satisfying to read in a mainstream magazine.

ETA. Ha! Now I scan back through my Reading page, I see it mentioned everywhere. At least, other people think it was good too!

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Shakespeare - The first play I saw

2011-04-21T18:40:53Z

Anybody remember I was doing this? Thought I'd try to finish it off over the next few days since I have some holiday.

Day #16: Your first play you saw

I think this question may be why I stopped, because I'm racking my brains trying to remember what it was. (Aside: Why racking? Why not twisting or stretching or eviscerating?)
I don't think I'd have seen any when I was at primary school, and I think for this question I shouldn't pick seeing one as a movie or on the television. Although this would have been at the time that the BBC Shakespeare were coming out. Nope, just looked that up and they started in 1978. I'm seeming to recall 'Midsummer's Night Dream', an open-air production - perhaps at the Minack Theatre, or am I confusing that with Canterbury Tales? Okay, I think we can assume it was not an earth-shattering production whatever it was.

( the rest of the questions )

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An Admirable Gift

2011-04-08T20:19:57Z

Since it was just before the end of the tax year this Tuesday there were lots of retirements at work. One was a woman who'd been working for the company for 38 years, starting as secretary then going on programming courses and ending up in technical jobs. (A career path that was possible back in the early days of computing.) Over the later years she's usually shared her office with new recruits to the company.

She was obviously well-liked by them since 12 of the men got themselves photographed and made up a spoof James Bond calendar for her. They all looked very good in tuxedos, and villainous suits, but the highlight was the bloke who emulated the Daniel Craig coming out of the surf shot, by rising out of the fish pond in the ornamental garden - particularly gallant considering the calendar was shot in the winter!

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Two Fantasy Novels

2011-03-25T22:00:35Z

So back in 2009 I listed six fantasy novels that I was going to read, and this is the post to say I've read another two of them.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter was an excellent read. As the title suggests it was a combination of fantasy and mechanical, spells and factories, which I particularly enjoy. Sometimes I found the change of scenes a bit abrupt, particularly at the end, but at the same time that made it challenging to catch up with the rules of the new scenario. Definitely worth my time.

The other book was Lud-in-the-Mist which was a delight. I never knew that I've always wanted a fantasy book with a staid, middle-aged, portly mayor as hero. I don't often come up with actors for characters in books, but I quickly decided that I wanted Chanticleer to be played by Jim Broadbent, and his wife by Zoe Wanamaker. What really surprised me about the book was how much I loved the descriptions. I have to admit that I'm one of those people who speed read over descriptions, in a is there anything I need there for the plot? No. Skip it way. But I lingered over these and re-read them, they were just so exquisite. Here's just a small sample:

And there were ruined castles covered with ivy - the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets.

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A Merlin drabble

2011-02-05T23:04:26Z

I found this drabble on my disk and don't even remember writing it! Gaius and Uther speaking.

A Lost Cause

"You should be kinder, my lord. Show him your love"

"I will not have him learn love, since that knowledge ruined me. I would have been a great king if not for love. Can you deny it?"

"No, my lord."

"Then I will hide my love, and guard him from it with all my power."

"You hurt yourself by doing so."

"So be it. My son will not know sorrow and he will be great. Ygraine would have wanted that."

"She would not."

"Do not cross me, Gaius. I have nothing left to lose."

"True, sire. You know only loss"

The end

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11/11

2010-11-11T11:05:16Z

We've just observed two minutes of silence since it's Remembrance Day. It's the first time I've done it in this large open plan office I now work in, and it was well-respected without even the sound of typing. Quite moving to be sharing the moment with so many other people.

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Talk like a Quaker

2010-10-25T13:42:04Z

Although I missed it this year, October 24th was again celebrated as International Talk Like a Quaker day. Which gave rise to the wonderful first quote in this article.

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Shakespeare - first play I read

2010-10-07T20:15:40Z

Day #15: The first play you read

This would have been at school. We read a couple of plays aloud in class, with people assigned to different parts. I can't actually remember if we read 'Romeo and Juliet' or 'Midsummer's Night Dream' first. I do remember that I was Benvolio, and one of the rude mechanicals - not Bottom. It was fun because it was different to the usual run of classes, and since we were all sitting down and not acting it wasn't embarrassing. The fact that I still enjoy both plays suggest it was a good teaching method!

( the rest of the questions )

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Back to Shakespeare soon

2010-10-03T15:26:47Z

Yes, yes my thirty days are spread over a wide timescale, but I will get back to Shakespeare soon.

In the meantime it was my week for posting at poetry and I went with an English theme, and English poets. Nothing too exciting, but some old favourites and perhaps some things you've not seen before.

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Shakespeare - favourite fight scene

2010-09-05T20:39:07Z

Day #14: Your favorite fight scene

I suppose my favourite scene was a fight scene, or at least a battle scene. And although I like the famous fight scene in Romeo & Juliet, I think I prefer the skirmish that opens the play since there's something realistic about it. Sampson and Gregory ambling along, punning for all they're worth, and then egging each other on, and sparking off the Montague servants to work themselves up for a fight. Starting the fight when they see an advantage in numbers, poor old Benvolio - who I always feel sorry for - trying to stop them, and Tybalt "Yay-a-fight" Capulet

( the rest of the questions )

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