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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!

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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…

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Fearing franchise change: why it is a mistake to ditch C2C

As a commuter and regular weekend passenger it is very easy to vent about the state of the railways.

Make that rant about the state of the railways.

I have always resented the insidious shift in terminology that, over the years, has seen me redesignated as a customer. I can choose where I buy my fruit and veg. I can’t choose who provides the train I get on. (More on that another time).

My family will have lost count of the number of occasions I have erupted on the phone about the basket-case services provided on the railways at weekends. Why is it that in one of the most prosperous Western countries, in the 21st Century, we still can’t run a comprehensive week and weekend service? It is a pathetic indictment of our national capacity to organise.

Taxi drivers will know my outbursts about the fact that the Germans appear to be able to run (and maintain and repair) a huge national rail network, with far fewer problems than us Brits, and with timetables that link in buses and trams. To the minute. It is astonishing we cannot, bearing in mind our national readiness to computerise and database our entire existence. (Sod the ID card database – lets try and get our buses to meet our trains!)

And on various occasions Em and I have cursed the running of short trains at busy times and the resultant cram into trains which simply aren’t designed for standing.

As I said. It is very easy to rant.

Much harder is crediting rail companies for their successes. And some, with the unlikeliest parent companies, have successes in abundance.

C2C operates the busy commuter line between Shoeburyness and London Fenchurch Street. There is a further loop line from Barking to Pitsea that runs through the old towns along the north flank of the eastern stretches of the Thames. These include the vast industrial wildernesses of Rainham and Dagenham, as well as Tilbury Town and East Tilbury, both of which have extensive maritime histories of civil and military significance, and the towns of Grays and Stanford-le-Hope, each home to a rapidly expanding commuting population.

I use Basildon, Laindon and Pitsea and, on the fastest trains, am a mere 25 minutes from central London.

C2C is owned by Network Rail, the company that ruined the East coast main line. I’ve always been a little schizophrenic on rail privatisation. To me, the railways as a service industry, unlike say HMV, but – as we have privatisation – I have wanted to see healthy and sensible competition to drive up standards. When Grand Central appeared on the scene, challenging National Express (the then principal operator on the East Coast Main Line), Em and I cheered, loving their livery, the uniformed presence of enthusiastic staff and the refurbishment of the well-designed intercities, with seats that line up with windows. Even now, Grand Central are going from strength to strength, introducing refurbished Class 180s and committing to re-engineering their existing High Speed Trains.

The Government were right to strip them of their franchise on that line.

I don’t know much about the East Anglia routes and how they operated. All I know are the anecdotal complaints from friends and colleagues bemoaning the state of their trains and stations. They suggest, unscientifically, that the decision to remove that franchise was justified.

C2C is different.

C2C is one of the very real success stories. And yet the Government has decided, apparently, that National Express will not be allowed to bid to retain the franchise. To my mind it is madness to punish the franchise operator, and a clearly able and committed management team, because of the various sins of the parent company.

When C2C announced that it was to change its livery from the distinctive purple and yellow to National Express’s bland white, I wrote to C2C expressing my dismay. Why on earth rebrand as failure? Why spend tens of thousands of pounds of commuter cash on making yourself look like a company that is despised? It was the most peculiar piece of PR – unless of course you were the owners of C2C and desperately wanted to repair your reputation by having it more closely associated with success.

Unlike the rest of the failed National Express rail enterprise, the team that manage C2C has shown a very real dedication to their passengers and services.

Unlike many lines, C2C manage all the stations as well as the trains. The only station managed by Network Rail is Fenchurch Street. (West Ham is managed by London Underground.) The difference between the investment at Fenchurch Street (minimal) and elsewhere on the line is marked.

New doors, stairs, waiting rooms, information systems and security systems have all been provided by C2C.

The management team engage passengers regularly, with meetings between a representative passenger panel and C2C – and C2C actually respond. C2C produces Commuter News, a monthly ad-free informative newsletter that explains the causes of problems, highlights coming improvements and draws attention to the engineering works scheduled for weekends.

C2C modernised its entire fleet of trains – yet retains a sense of the old romance with trains named after those who have worked their lives on the railways. They have won awards for introducing regenerative breaking across the entire fleet – something that has made them one of the most environmentally-conscious train-operating companies in Europe.

Most ironically, whilst the Department for Transport rail against National Express and C2C, both the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office point to C2C as an exemplar of a UK train success story.

It would seem that this tired and failing Labour Government is either ideologically sclerotic or determined to prioritise a petty retribution over genuine achievement in the passenger’s interest.

If there is any sense left in Government, Adonis and his crew will at least allow National Express to bid. Regardless of their other failures, National Express/C2C know this line, have shown commitment to their trains, stations and passengers.

They have transformed the “misery line” into one that regularly tops the customer satisfaction surveys and became the first in the country to achieve a punctuality score of 96%.

Ditching C2C would be a big mistake.

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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.

More on that another time, perhaps.

So it was today, sitting at work, that I felt a familiar ache. A longing for a place I know better than the back of my hand. A place that most script kiddies and World of Warcraft fanbois have never known – but a place that makes Azeroth look as exciting as Tellytubby land.

Norrath.

Sony’s Everquest is the Great Granddaddy of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs). Everquest 2 is its electrifying reinvention.

On and off for the last seven years, Everquest (Everquest 2 for me these days) has been a way of escaping from the stresses and strains of an exhausting day. But how did I reach a point in life where I can see a point to investing hours in the development, customisation and manipulation of a virtual avatar, a wood-elf ranger that specialises in striking down his enemies with a blow from the shadows or a bow-strike inflicting massive damage from afar? (And believe me,  I can!)

That is a story that takes me from Mazogs on the ZX-81 in 1982, to Sentinel of Fate, the latest EQ2 expansion, in 2010. In an occasional series of pieces in the coming weeks I will explore that story. I want to reflect on the friendships forged in huddled hours around the screen – and remember the computers and the games that have given me so many fond memories.

In the meantime, take a look at where it started in 1982:

And see where that story is now in 2010:

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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!

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The Woodsman Poacher galvanises Basildon’s creative communities #woodsman #toryfail

With delicious irony, the spirit of Wat Tyler has been stirred in Basildon’s creative communities by the way in which Basildon Council dumped Dave Chapple’s Woodsman Poacher sculpture at the park that bears Tyler’s name. I am sure Wat Tyler, who led a peasant army in revolt against financial dictats from the King (a poll tax, actually), would smile at the way Basildon artists are speaking out in opposition to local politicians who are quite happily rake in our taxes, but appear to have no respect for what the community actually wants.

Yesterday, The Echo reported how on Monday “More than 50 painters, sculptors, performers, heritage bosses, and other members of the arts community gathered for their inaugral meeting.” Liz Grant, who worked with other local artists to convene the meeting, describes it brilliantly:

“We had lots of people from across the arts spectum, which is fantastic for a first meeting.

“The Woodsman has been the catalyst for the group’s formation.

“We see it as a symbol of how the artistic community and the public feel about how the arts are being dealt with by Basildon’s current council and the previous one.

“It’s a symbol of all that’s wrong with how the council is operating.”

To my mind it is quite incredible how the plight of a single wooden statue has brought together Basildon’s creative communities in a way nothing else has. Steve Waters is one of the artists behind Old Man Stan, and his quote in The Echo captures succinctly the way in which the treatment of Dave Chapple’s creation has caused people to take a stand:

“We now have one united voice for the arts community in Basildon.

“The Woodman is what has brought us all together.

“We don’t want it to happen again, or ever be forgotten.”

Too damn right we don’t.

There was unanimous agreement on a motion of no confidence in the way that the Council currently engages those involved in the arts – and the way it looks after Basildon’s valuable collection of public art. As someone who has blogged variously about The Woodsman, public art in Basildon, the Wat Tyler sculpture trail and the Motorboat Museum, it was truly heartening to learn that all these issues were discussed.

What is particuarly exciting about this venture is that it is professionals and amateurs alike who are involved. Quite simply, it’s local people saying they want to have a say in how their public spaces look – and how their interests are supported – in just the same way that sport and other leisure activities are supported.

Politicians might think they can shrug this off. I don’t think they can.

Many of those who enjoy participating in the arts – creating things, making things, acting things, singing things, watching things, listening to things – get fed up with being treated as the Cinderella sector, left to sweep up the crumbs whilst the ugly homogeneous stepsisters “Sport” and “Leisure” receive the funding and the attention.

My own view, as someone involved in local politics and the local art scene, is that we attempt to tell people what they want at our peril. For me it comes back to the “raucous, unpredictable capacity of people” that lends our communities power and vibrancy and which, when untied in a single shout, demands attention as the voice of local people that help pay the Council’s way.

Being involved in the arts, involved in Basildon’s creative communities, is about being involved with each other, in all its glorious messiness.

Some things we’ll love.

Some things we’ll hate.

Some things we’ll think are pointless.

And some things we’ll disagree on.

But some things – like The Woodsman Poacher – will make us realise that we have much more in common than we think.

If you want to get involved, the next meeting is on Monday 22nd March at 7.00pm, St Martin’s Church Hall. Please call Elizabeth Grant on 07939 122864 for further details.

If you think Basildon deserves better than bulldozers and excuses, come along.

And finally, for those politicians who still think that all this really doesn’t matter, there’s a salutory lesson on Facebook.

Friends for the The Woodsman Poacher? 1,651.

Friends on the campaign page of Basildon’s Tory candidate? 150.

The Woodsman Poacher rests his case…

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Music video madness with OK Go

Music videos are close to an art form in themselves, mixing very different media to startling and stunning effect. The band OK Go have had some fun with their latest for their song “This Too Shall Pass” and I thought it worth sharing here, in case you’ve not picked up on it elsewhere.

If you are interested in the way they put it together, they have a second video in which they discuss making it:

There are also some interesting articles on OK Go’s video on LA Times blog pages, Buzznet and Alt Press.

Enjoy!

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We breed ’em tough in Basildon… Chickens that is

Coming from a farming family who, in latter days, have kept chickens and ducks, whilst growing large quantities of over-sized vegetables, I have always taken a philosophical view of nature’s brutalities and the fact that foxes are a constant threat.

In my youth I was a fan of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox, which I regard as a witty and subversive take on things agricultural. They are very easy to over-romanticise, with their handsome looks and lithe movements, and you can forget that actually they are cunning little devils capable of slipping bolts, climbing wire and flicking hatches. when it comes to chickens, they’re not above killing the lot and taking only one or two.

Funny then (though not for the fox), to read in Metro about a very different turning of the tables.  Chickens lend themselves to groansome puns, so the journo has some fun with “a murder most fowl”.

Anyway, it would appear that chickens in Basildon are made of sterner stuff than your average Rhode Island Red. Dude the cockerel, Izzy, Pongo and Pecky clearly had other ideas than becoming the latest take-out meal for a passing fox. I can only imagine what Michelle Cordell feeds them on. (I have a sneaking suspicion that I know where these chickens hang out!)

Hats off to Basildon’s tougher breed of chook.

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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.

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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!

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