Walking down to the town today, Em and I were staggered to see so many lights left on at, I presume, not inconsiderable public expense. The alien landing lights I’ve blogged about previously were among the worst offenders, all but one blazing away into a bright April afternoon (I presume the bulb has already gone in that one).
Lighting Column
To deal with this sort of environmental thoughtlessness, a school in Boston installed animated polar bears to show how well students were conserving energy:
I rather suspect that, between ET’s landing zone and the purple squid tentacles, Basildon Council’s polar bear would have come to a distinctly watery end a long time ago.
With some gusto Basildon Council announced that the Clock had been returned to the town. It was erected where The Woodsman stood – and whilst I can accept that the clock is a piece of artistic engineering, I find it hard to think of it as public art. It certainly wasn’t created for the space in which it now stands.
But that is by-the-by.
The Council has determined this is the structure that will preside over St Martin’s Square. (Actually, I am a little confused as to whether or not we still call it St Martin’s Square, since it appears to have been arbitrarily renamed Compass Square. Clearly, whichever fourteen-year old PR whizz thought that up hadn’t looked closely enough at the stone-set round in front of the Towngate. It is actually a sundial.)
It had been taken down from its original location because it was not working and was repaired by the Cumbria Clock Company.
However, you might be a little confused if you take a look at this picture, snapped earlier today.
I am not sure how most people define a working clock, but I am pretty sure that it has hands… Still, I guess I might have been expecting too much.
As Syria prepares to celebrate 64 years of independence, the European Union continues to work towards cementing relations with Syria through its EU-Syria Mediterranean Association Agreement. Maureen Thomas, however, has alerted me to a demonstration outside the Syrian Embassy to remind the world that despite its reformist rhetoric, peaceful and democratic reformers such as Kamal Labwani, Anwar Bunni, Haithem Maleh and Muhannad Hassani are still locked up on trumped-up charges in defiance of Syria’s commitments on civil and political rights.
In an email to Maureen, Iyas al-Maleh, son of imprisoned human rights champion Haitham al-Maleh, thanked her for mobilising support for the demonstration, to be held at 3pm on Saturday 17 April, 8 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8PH. Similar demonstrations are already planned for Brussels and Washington, with work ongoing to organise similar protests in Berlin, Geneva and Paris.
If you are a friend and supporter of Kamal, and his fellow prisoners, please see if you are free and visit the sign-up page to register:
News of the proposed demonstration comes at the same time as the UNHCR reports that the Syrian regime continues to harass its political internees. It makes for upsetting reading and you are left wondering at the strength of men who still find the courage to defy the authorities even in Adra prison, preferring to surrender their visiting rights instead of succumbing to the indignity of being forced to meet family in prison garb.
So please see if you are free on 17 April and make a standard for freedom of conscience and human rights.
It’s rare for Em and I to have the time or energy to go out in the week.
Every now and then, though, browsing around the net late at night, you stumble across something at exactly the moment you need it. At a pretty low point, I noticed Paloma Faith had added an extra concert to her sold-out two-gig finale at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I snapped up a pair of tickets to the very last night of her month-long UK tour.
I don’t think I had been to see a gig in Hammersmith since I saw Queensrÿche on their Operation: Mindcrime tour in November 1990 (remember that, Stringbean?).
So going to see Paloma Faith was part of my on-going campaign to ensure I don’t slip back into a nineteen-year bad habit of not enjoying live music.
Hammersmith is a great part of London. It feels edgier and grubbier and more alive than the museum space of Westminster, a feeling heightened by a sharp March wind, soft rays of light from a setting sun and the collision of sharp scents – ozone, grilled and spiced meats, exotic tobacco and patchouli.
In a confident gig-going frame of mind I led Em purposefully through the streets of Hammersmith, having chosen to get out at Goldhawk Road tube station (I didn’t even know there was a Goldhawk Road tube station until we were sitting on the District Line at 6.15pm!). Having a pretty good head for directions, I found the Empire quickly and we joined the queue, feeling a little smug that we had found the place with little fuss. Unfortunately, I found the wrong queue, and on reaching the door we stepped out of the one for the stalls and joined the back of the one on the other side of the building for the upper tier.
It was well worth the wait.
The concert opened with Josh Weller, an indie popster with the most incredible hairstyle who previously collaborated with Paloma Faith on the single It’s Christmas (And I Hate You). His band were tight and their songs polished, though most of his set was ruined for me by the woman behind who insisted on talking (read shouting) to her friend through the entire performance (it was nearly a Jack Reacher moment). It was refreshing, too, to see a support act talking so fondly about the head-liner – he clearly has a huge amount of respect for his headlining colleague.
When Paloma Faith finally appeared, a few minutes after 9pm, we roared our approval.
I couldn’t get my head around the fact that this was her first UK tour.
She had energy and confidence and polish in spades, each number note perfect and delivered with phenomenal passion. With a dry and kooky sense of humour, she was backed up by a band of extraordinary talent, who were able to heavy-ify and disco-ify her songs according to Paloma’s mischievous wishes. Introducing her songs with a humorous and relaxed delivery, she was beautifully blunt about the journalist who had accused her of insecurities for highlighting her influences, saying she simply believed in saying “thank you”. She then launched straight into a superb rendition of Billie Holiday’s God Bless The Child.
And how did she bounce around the stage in what looked like four-inch heels? That is definitely a girl mystery.
If you know her debut album, Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?, you’ll know that each song is a creative juxtaposition of melodic even jaunty pop and haunting, occasionally heart-breaking, lyrics. For Romance Is Dead she selected a gentleman from the audience to serenade, hamming up her weary resignation to a love-life of plastic flowers and greasy fingerprints. Later, She poignantly reminded us of the loss of her friend that inspired My Legs Are Weak.
At the very end, closing the formal set list with Play On, and teasing her audience over the possibility of an encore as only someone with a working knowledge of burlesque could do, she had, by dint of omission, left us in no doubt as to her final number – the sing-along pop anthem New York. As the band struck up and Paloma pointed her mic to the audience for the sing-along choruses, it was great to know we were indeed at the start of something beautiful.
I was reading tips recently on how to write reviews and an “expert” writer cautioned would-be reviewers against describing something as “brilliant” or “fantastic”.
Well sod that.
It was a fantastic night out and Paloma Faith was simply brilliant. She will play on for a long time to come – and we can be grateful for that.
Like everyone, I have a secret vice or two. One of these is a penchant for airport thrillers, the sort of unputdownable page-turner that lets you be the bone-crunching, Glock-packing loner-hero you always intended to be before discovering computer games, cheese sandwiches and DVD box-sets.
The apotheosis of this page-projected fantasy-self has to be Jack Reacher.
There are moments on late night vomit-comets out of Fenchurch Street when I consider swinging into action, despatching anti-social hoods left, right and centre. Then I remember I’ve only got a handful of shirts and that, combined with a pathological fear of getting my nose broken, lead me usually to consider waiting until I am more suitably attired.
Andy Martin, writing in the Independent, sums up Reacher brilliantly: “Reacher is a moody, modern outsider figure, one of the great anti-heroes. He is anti-capitalism, anti-materialism, anti-religion, with a fondness for anarchy and revolution: a liberal intellectual with machismo, and arms the size of Popeye’s.”
I am sure those who know me can spot the similarity.
It is more than a little ironic that Jack Reacher, the all-American action hero, romantic loner and chivalrous sharpshooter, is actually the creation of a Brit, Lee Child, who turned to writing at forty after losing his job with Granada TV. David Smith’s 2008 profile piece in the Guardian gives hope to all of us who are still nurturing hopes of becoming international best-selling authors.
So why my puppyish over-excitement?
Last weekend I happened to pass by Waterstone’s and discovered that Lee Child’s latest Reacher book was out: 61 Hours. And it’s brilliant. As friends and family can testify, the Smallest Room in the House doubles as the Lesser Library – and I am locking myself away in there with Jack Reacher on a regular basis.
There are rumours, too, of a Jack Reacher film, though nothing more recent than 2008 (on a cursory trawl). And whilst not strictly in keeping with Child’s description of Reacher, I can’t get away from the idea of him being played by the brilliant and chiselled Christopher Melloni, better known to many as Elliot Stabler in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
So if you’ve not done so already, and enjoy a pulp read with plenty of action and fast-plotted twists, introduce yourself to Jack Reacher and check outThe Killing Floor. And if you are a UK inquisitive, you might want to check out Jack Reacher’s official UK fan site, too.
And one final warning.
If you are a lager lout on a late night last train out of London and you see me wearing jeans… Watch out.
Political parties rarely do internet humour well. The infamous Jib-Jab virals of 2005 set a high benchmark and British politics has rarely attempted to emulate them. Surprising then to find a political party making a more than half-decent stab at a bit of internet humour. Even more of a surprise to discover it’s my own. If you missed them earlier in the week, meet the Labservatives. They’ve launched a website which I’d encourage you to check out. As for their manifesto, meet their would-be PM… Gorvid. 🙂
I meant to write this some days ago, but I am discovering that work is eating the hours as never before. It’s not only when you are having fun that time flies…
But last Sunday afternoon was perfect for late March. I spent the best of it at The White Lion in Fobbing, drinking jars of ale with my cousin and enjoying bright sunshine, being the only two sitting out in the garden. There was something timeless about enjoying a beer, surrounded by violets, the stone tower of the church behind us and it was impossible not to feel the history.
We were joined on the bench by a craggy wildfowler and the conversation turned to trees and birds, the durability of fence posts hewn from different hard woods and a reassuringly rural challenge to burn chestnut without it spitting (apparently if it is seasoned after a natural dead fall it doesn’t – in any other circumstances it does). So very good to be reminded that there are still folk around who really do understand the way in which our lives are bound up with the countryside – and not in a soppy, sentimental way, but one that recognises the co-dependence of different habitats. It’s not many afternoons that I get to discuss the impact of plastic fascia boards on the nesting potential of houses and their contribution to declining garden bird populations. We left giving merry assurances to investigate the re-siting of owl boxes.
I then went to his parents to collect a book by local historian Randal Bingley. In return for ten pounds I received a copy of Behold The Painful Plough, Country Life in West Tilbury, Essex 1700-1850. (For those interested in obtaining a copy, drop me an email or contact Thurrock Museum Services who singularly fail to promote this brilliant book – which they publish: ISBN 0-9506141-8-1.) I was gobsmacked to arrive and find Randal Bingley there, drinking tea at a picnic bench under an apple tree, and talking about political anscestry with my uncle. We joined them and spent a pleasant hour discussing the value of the written record, the folly of reliance on digital information, East Tilbury’s Bata shoe factory and Sir Peter Scott on Nature Parliament, part of Children’s Hour.
There is only one description for this whole project:
Fragments and Reflections 