April 2, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Boys, Beer, Birds and Bingley: the randomness of a perfect afternoon

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.

It was wonderful and random.

As life should be.

March 25, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Super Ellie Sis gets the blogging bug

It would seem that my super-talented arty sis has caught the blogging bug. She is just starting out and has decided to share her thoughts as she works on The Enchanted Palace (and using WordPress just like her older bro).

Take a look and give her some encouragement!

http://eleanorlucy.wordpress.com/

March 14, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Cervical cancer: a colleague’s appeal

A colleague of mine in the Liberal Democrats recently sent me a message regarding the death of her cousin. A few hours before she died, her cousin’s daughter took a few private minutes to record Paolo Nutini’s Autumn into her mobile phone, without accompaniment. She forwarded the following email, I presume from another close relative:

A few hours before Debbie died, Sarah went into her bedroom and recorded a song onto her mobile phone with no music. A few days later, Charlie Mole added an accompaniment. As many of you saw, it was played as we carried Debbie into the Church and it was part of the video tribute to Debbie.

Sarah’s song, with its film tribute can now be seen on You Tube. This is the link:

Please go to it, listen and enjoy.

We have set up the Debbie Phillips Cervical Cancer Research Fund under the UCL Cancer Research Trust. In terms of research, as we found out during Debbie’s illness, cervical is the “poor relation” to many other cancers, and we want to change that. The more people who listen to Sarah’s song, the more likely that we will receive some money from YouTube. With that in mind Please, Please, Please forward the link to all your friends, workmates and colleagues wherever they may be. We are looking for millions of hits here, so help! There is also a link enabling people to make donations directly from Sarah’s page. If we can, we want to make this a tool to raise a lot of money.

I am sorry that there are so many addressees to this e-mail. I did choose you all individually – I didn’t hit the “send to all” button. I think that what happened with Sarah that night was very special. I hope you agree.

Thank you.

Mark

If you feel moved to, please make a contribution to the Debbie Phillips Cervical Cancer Research Fund. And tell as many people as possible.

March 7, 2010 by bpwilliams72

For those that think that cats are dull…

I share a house with Em and a large, black Norwegian Forest Cat.

He is going through a relatively cute and fluffy stage at the moment.

I may have a fresh set of lacerations on my left arm, but they are the first in quite a while and those who have encountered the beast will not be surprised to learn that he has chased a dog or two in his time. There’s something quite hilarious about the pomposity of a cat, puffed up, predatory, silently surveying his domain, before realising that the lack of prehensile thumbage means he needs to squeak for his supper.

Anyway, for those that think cats lack in the personality department, here’s one of many cat clip compilations – some of which show the sheer brutal CUNNING of the feline mind. Others simply made me giggle. I am easily amused!

March 7, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Wildworks transform Kensington Palace: Sis and Myth cast their enchanting magic #wildworks

Kensington Palace is being transformed

In association with WILDWORKS (including Ellie and Myth!), featuring Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmont and Echo Morgan

You may recall I wrote previously about my super-talented arty sis Ellie, and her mad creative genius house mate Myriddin Elliot Drualus Wannell (Myth), and their involvement in a project to transform Kensington Palace. Well, the pair of them are are hard at work at Kensington Palace as part of Bill Mitchell’s Wildworks team and, from what I’ve heard, loving the chance to work in a historic building that is steeped in intrigue and that has so many dark stories to tell.

The Enchanted Palace will run alongside a programme of major renovations that will commence in June and run until 2012. These works will see new public gardens created, as well as the introduction of new education and community facilities. The Kensington Palace redevelopment is a £12 million pound project that hasn’t been entirely without controversy (planners rejected the original proposals for the new entrance). If you are interested in the scheme, there is more information over at Museum Insider.

However, whatever the ins and outs of the wider development, The Enchanted Palace will open on 26 March 2010 and is already capturing imaginations across creative disciplines.

The fashion world has been particularly excited by the involvement of designers like Vivienne Westwood (and Ellie and Myth!), and a quick Google will show that Ftape, the online fashion resource, is just one of a large number of fashion sites with a piece about it on its site. Superbreak’s blogger Sarah is recommending The Enchanted Palace on her pages and exemplifies how travel and tourist companies have picked up on the fact that The Enchanted Palace will offer a unique experience to visitors to the capital.

Perhaps the best description is to be found on the pages of Kensington Palace itself:

“From 26 March 2010, Kensington Palace will become The Enchanted Palace in a unique multisensory exhibition combining fashion, performance, and dazzling spectacle to reveal Kensington’s magnificent State Apartments in a magical new light.

In the sumptuous State Apartments, leading fashion designers Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmont and illustrator/set designer Echo Morgan will each create spectacular installations in collaboration with WILDWORKS, taking inspiration from Kensington Palace and the princesses who once lived there – Mary, Anne, Caroline, Charlotte, Victoria, Margaret and Diana. These extraordinary contemporary designs will be displayed alongside historic items from the Royal Collection and Kensington Palace’s Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, together with two dresses worn by Diana, Princess of Wales and Princess Margaret.

The complex and mysterious world of the royal court will be opened up through spectacular installations, interactive theatre, intimate storytelling, soundscapes, haunting film projections, and a series of intriguing clues hidden throughout the historic rooms, revealing tales of love and hate, surprise and sadness, secrets and jealousy.

Each room will have a powerful story to tell about Kensington Palace’s former royal residents and the life of the court – a world within a world, with its own time and rituals.”

For more information, please take a look at Kensington Palace – and consider treating yourself to a completely different sort of experience…

March 6, 2010 by bpwilliams72

A familiar ache… And so a ranger prepares to return to Norrath #eq2

“He is as Autumn shadows, stealing soundlessly beneath the vaulted arches of the Moon-burnt sky, the deadly promise of a winter’s blade in the dark watches of the night. Relentlessly he pursues Her. Defiantly he loves Her.”

Keredh Windryder, Ranger

Gaming is either something you get or something you don’t.

For some of us, the prospect of immersing ourselves in the LCD glow of a world constructed from bits and bytes sets our pulses racing. Our imaginations can spend all day rehearsing the moment we turn the lights off and sit down to lead our friends and guild-mates into battle.

For the rest, the prospect leaves them cold. The world of the geek gamer is a dark and alien place, strewn with the detritus of a life lived online: cans of coke, empty coffee mugs with a crusted sediment deep inside, discarded crisp packets and sweet wrappers – and the musty – occasionally rancid – smell of immobile, sleepless concentration.

I suspect most of my family, friends and colleagues fall into this latter category, bemused at the hours of life that Em and I can spend in these virtual worlds, each with its own lexicon, politics and social mores.

Computer gaming, though, has been a huge part of my life for almost thirty years.

As technology has developed, so the boundaries between real life and virtual life have shifted and blurred. Sometimes this has had catastrophic personal consequences – and on other occasions it has resulted in moments of sheer serendipity. I can honestly say that gaming, specifically the two incarnations of Everquest, has impacted my life in far more significant ways than I could have ever envisaged.

Amiga nostalgia – one for Stringbean if he’s reading… #amiga

So there I am, thinking about a post I want to write on my imminent return to Everquest 2, when absent Googling throws up this little gem. 100 Amiga games in ten minutes. What a trip down memory lane!

February 28, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Solomon Kane – an amateur’s faux pas

If you are going to get picked up for amateurish over-enthusiasm, best that you get picked up by the experts.

Alexander Harron, a regular contributor to the fantasy blog The Cimmerian, has pointed out that I’ve read a little too much back to the original Solomon Kane from Michael J. Bassett‘s film interpretation. It’s a more than fair cop as I readily admit to not having read the original stories.

What his comment has done is prompt me to take a look at The Cimmerian and discover a wealth of interesting fantasy-related writing. Describing itself as “A webshield and firewall for Robert E. Howard, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Best in Heroic Fantasy, Horror and Historical Adventure”, The Cimmerian is a place for experts and specialists in a niche genre of literature. It is well worth a look and fans of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series or Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga will find plenty of information on older masterpieces that helped inspire these later works.

Alexander Pope said “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” When it comes to Heroic Fantasy, angels are amateurs – and you can say the same thing.

February 28, 2010 by bpwilliams72

Movie magic: Solomon Kane, Precious and Born of Hope (again!)

Between work, casework, Council meetings and campaigning, Em and I like to pretend that we can do normal things.

Occasionally, this means doing something wild like going to the cinema at Bas Vegas (yes, there is a place – and to prove it, Jedward came). We benefit in Basildon from a luxury 12 screen Empire multiplex and so last night we decided to be very wild indeed and see two films back-to-back.

Both depict a battle between good and evil.

Both have their main protagonists wrestling with their conscience, searching for a very personal salvation.

Both are daring in their use of Christian symbolism.

Solomon Kane

Solomon Kane is one of the lesser known creations from the pen of Robert E. Howard, the pulp-era writer who created Conan the Barbarian, and first appeared in magazine stories in the late 1920s. In the 1970s and 1980s he appeared in several comics published by Marvel Comics and in 2008 Dark Horse Comics began a new run of Solomon Kane comics. How on earth he has escaped Hollywood until now is completely beyond me:In Kane, Howard has the perfect anti-hero, a black-clad, sword-wielding soldier of God, attempting to atone for his murderous past and redeem his soul from the pact with the Devil that his past has created.

I’d not read the Howard original, nor seen any of the comics, and you can well imagine there is plenty of scope for movie-going pain in adapting a fantasy story for cinema. Cringe-worthy efforts that briefly topped my “Oh wow that is just the greatest film ever!” list during those teenage years of hormonally-challenged fantasy addiction include The Sword and the Sorcerer and Hawk the Slayer. (I have absolutely no idea how The Sword and the Sorcerer scored 80% on Rotten Tomatoes – it stars Lee Horsley, that bloke from Matt Houston, and is utter tripe!).

Solomon Kane is nothing like that.

Instead, in an England where it is either permanently raining or snowing, James Purefoy, turns in a brilliant performance as the brooding Kane, taking on the role of an avenging angel when the family who rescue him from brigands is ripped apart by Malachi’s evil henchmen. If you are unconcerned about spoilers, you can read the synopsis here.

Once again, the Czech Republic doubles as 17 Century England and if you have missed The Prancing Pony since it vanished from our screens, then you’ll be reassured that Solomon Kane pays due respect to the role of beery, shadow taverns in the fantasy genre with one brief shot that could almost be an homage to the appearance of Aragorn in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. (I don’t ever remember GMing a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay without a tavern – perhaps Stringbean will remember if he looks at this – and certainly inns and taverns are to be found dotted throughout Norrath, in both its Everquest and Everquest 2 incarnations). There is plenty of ferocious sword play, a reassuring absence of naked slave girls (you know the storyline has gone to pot when the producers rely on this device for a distraction) and titanic battles between good and evil.

It is interesting, too, to find a main-stream film so willing to display an overtly Christian symbology, even if some of its theology is distinctly shaky. Perhaps religion is the new rebellion in movie-making? In which case, expect lots more of Kane’s ilk in the months to come.

So Darin, if you are reading this, Solomon Kane is one for you and me – when we want to exorcise our darker sides and pretend we are sword-swinging avengers of Truth! In the meantime, just enjoy a well-made sword-and-sorcery romp which really does get your heart fluttering.

Precious

You could not get a more opposite film to Solomon Kane than Precious. Looking at its stellar cast list, including Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, and the sheer star-power of its executive production team (it includes Oprah Winfrey), it is difficult to believe that when this film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival it had no distributor.

You should know from the outset that Precious is not an easy film to watch. Its themes of deprivation, abuse and hopelessness are shockingly realised in a grainy, realist style that strangely had me thinking of Taxi Driver in the way it suddenly exploded with rage and emotion.

Precious follows the story of an obese, illiterate 16-yr-old called Claireece Precious Jones, about to be a mother for a second time – impregnated for the second time by her own father. Living in Harlem with her abusive, repulsive mother, and suspended from school, Claireece grasps an alternative education opportunity to escape the circle of despair that is her life experience to date – and the experience of all those in her life to date. The film is unabashed in its determination to demonstrate the power of education as a tool for overcoming poverty and serves as a sombre reminder to those of us who take reading, writing and blogging for granted that there are millions even in prosperous Western countries who struggle to make sense of notices and signs, let alone comics and magazines.

But Precious stands out for one thing in particular.

Gabourey Sidibe, as Precious, gives one of the most astonishing performances I have ever seen on film. Bearing in mind that this is her début feature, I am not sure I have ever seen an actress more capable at conveying an appreciation of her circumstances. In a performance that juxtaposes the steely indifference necessary to survive her daily humiliations with the colourful energy and radiance in the fantasy sequences that Precious clings to, Sidibe is broken, proud, humble and funny. From the culinary horror of deep-fried pig feet which her mother forces her to eat, to the friendships she tentatively forges with other broken women in her special classes, to her glamorously spinning and glittering like Aretha Franklin, she mesmerises in the way she captures the duality of life lived and life dreamed.

In one moving sequence, she gazes in on a neon-lit church and the worship team rehearsing. She imagines herself singing and dancing with the others, her face alight with a sense of belonging, before realising that even the Church, with its messages of hope and invitation, is beyond her reach.

It is hard stuff. But worth every penny.

Born of Hope

And finally… For all you hard-bitten cynics out there, I am going to give you another chance to click through to watch Born of Hope.

Get over the weirdness of watching a movie on YouTube.

Get over the fact that it’s British.

Get over the fact that it’s made in Epping Forest and that the same woman stars, directs, produces, makes the costumes, runs the budgets, makes the tea and biscuits etc.

If you are a fan of the fantasy genre and you don’t watch Born of Hope you are missing a chance to watch something truly special: a fan-made film that should embarrass the producers of the likes of the “Sword and the Sorcerer” and “Hawk the Slayer” with its ability to transcend the limitations of budget, set and location. “Born of Hope” is a very worthy addition to the fantasy film genre.

I know some of you out there simply don’t believe me, or think that video on the internet is only for posting japes and the antics of exhibitionists. So go on… Be a little wild on a wet Sunday afternoon!

February 27, 2010 by bpwilliams72

New look to “Fragments and Reflections” – please vote!

Dear Reader,

Several people have indicated that whilst they liked the dark and brooding look of the theme I had chosen, they found it hard to read. I was a little loathe to part with the ChaoticSoul theme as it gave Fragments and Reflections a distinct feel. However, I would rather it were read!

I’d be grateful if you could take a look and let me know if the new theme look is an improvement.

Best wishes,

Ben