Urban Magic

River Thames

Posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 in London | No Comments

I’ve been building up to this entry for a while, because there’s too much to say.  And in fact, I don’t intend to say very much on the subject of the Thames now, as it’d take many many hours and thousands of words to really cover anything.  My cunning plan is to try and break it down bridge-by-bridge, but this is more of a River Thames 101 introduction to that great and sweeping topic of Why The River Is Cool.

I was asked a few months ago what traits I had in common with my main character in the urban magic series, Matthew Swift.  Since I am not male, magical or in a complicated, semi-schizophrenic relationship with mysterious forces from out of the telephone lines, I was forced to go back to basics and admit that our main shared interests were Thai food and the river Thames.   Whenever I get too tired, stressed or upset, and if I have the time and am within easy reach, the river is always the place I go to calm down.  You can begin to smell it a few streets away, a colder wind that smells of whatever the nasal equivalent is of the moment the engines go out on a ship, and are noticed for the first time only in their silence.  In quiet parts of London, away from traffic, you can hear the river.  Stand by the riverside in Limehouse on a clear day, when the tide is turning, and it sounds like thick yoghurt slurping away.  In Hammersmith when the tide is high you can hear it slapping against the embankment walls; in the middle of town, its sound is mixed with the traffic noise across the bridges and the engines and announcements of the tourist boats.  A magical, if slightly pricey experience is taking the Millennium Clipper from the Millennium Dome to the London Eye by night.  Pack thick clothes and a camera!  In the relatively recent past, the Thames was toxic.  In the more distant past, the Thames flooded everywhere within reach, until the Thames Barrier was built a few miles past Greenwich.  Even now, the water still submerges foot paths in places like Richmond and Twickenham on a regular basis.  London Bridge was the first bridge built over the river, and you will be hard pressed to find a single Hollywood movie set in London which doesn’t require a journey between Westminster and Chelsea to take in a double-decker bus ride over Tower Bridge.  The Houses of Parliament sit on the river front, opposite St. Thomas’ Hospital.  In the 1860s, the river was so toxic from the sewage draining into it, that parliament had to close while lemon-soaked curtains were put up in the windows to keep out the stench.  In 1864, parliament authorised the building of a modern sewer system that still serves parts of the city today…

Serenity/Star Trek

Posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 in Misc. | 1 Comment

A confession to get the ball rolling - I don’t like Star Trek.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can see the appeal – from a narrative point of view, it’s pure genius.  You’ve got a premise which allows you to go pretty much anywhere, meet pretty much anyone, with a diverse and potentially interesting range of characters from all sorts of background.  And even if this wasn’t a good start, you can then lock said crew of interesting characters inside a tin can, alone in the vacuum of space, and turn out the lights.  All this is a Good Thing.

But, as established, I didn’t really enjoy the TV series (however many they’ve been).  I’m afraid that next to Dr Who and Farscape, Star Trek’s approach to going anywhere in the known/unknown universe just didn’t catch me.  Which made it all the more surprising for me to find myself at the cinema watching the new film. 

First thing to be said about the film is that I saw it with my Dad.  I suspect that a lot can be inferred about this film from the fact that it’s the kind of thing you see with your science-fiction-loving Dad, but hell, maybe that’s just me.   I told myself that I was going to see it because my Dad wanted the company.  I told myself I was going to see it because it had Simon Pegg in it, so how bad could it be really?  But let’s face it, I went to see it because it had a lot of very big things blowing up at great heights, and I’m not alone on this count…. 

Second thing to say, is that I really enjoyed it.  And I am naturally ashamed of this.  But I am forced to give it full marks for sheer roller-coaster preposterous energy and splunk.  Don’t get me wrong, the plot was beyond daft, and the last 3.5 minutes were a hopefully unintentional lift from Galaxy Quest.  I don’t really know what to make of a film that is parodying the parody, but I guess Star Trek can claim that honour and carries it off with (some) dignity.

Third thought – you gotta respect the whole cunning resurrection of a franchise thing going on there.  I mean, a lot of people have talked about reviving Star Trek and how the film was little more than a cunning attempt to make decades worth of dosh out of a continuing commercial franchise.  And yeah, it is.  And it does all of the above with class.

My final thought was this – ‘Blimey!  Star Trek was nearly as good as Serenity!’

Which again, is high praise.  Serenity once again ticks every box on the page for daftness, explosions and things being dropped from great height (mostly crashing space ships), and like Star Trek manages to throw in sexual tension, kung fu and utterly spectacular, eyeball-rattling set pieces, but… and here’s the bit that just sets it apart… it does it with wit.  Very very few films where such a high percentage of the budget has gone on pyrotechnics usually have any budget left for wit, but Serenity pulls it off.   It manages wit and emotion and drama and kung fu simultaneously, which probably prevents it from ever being broadcast on Channel 5 on a Friday night.  Don’t get me wrong – do not sit down in front of a screen with a DVD of Serenity expecting to come away reeling from the scope of its imagination and the profound insight it delivers into the human spirit.  But do sit down with it.

In conclusion…

If you enjoyed Star Trek, you’ll love Serenity.

And if you loved Serenity, you’ll enjoy Star Trek.

Embrace the inner geek!

In Praise of Raymond Chandler

Posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 in Writing | 1 Comment

A while back, I started in on a list of my favourite writers, and got as far as Roger Zelazny before becoming distracted by the usual plethora of Stuff and Things that keep on cropping up.  But I figure now is the time to remedy that and get onto Great Hero No.2 – Raymond Chandler.

And yeap, he’s not a fantasy writer.  And yeah, even if you haven’t read him, you’ll have read someone trying to be him.  Every edgy, witty, sharp-tongued noir crime thriller you’ve read (or seen) since 1945 is either consciously or unconsciously pinching from Chandler, to varying degrees of success.  A quick sum-up for the uninitiated…

Raymond Chandler got scribbling in the 1930s, and his main character, Phillip Marlowe, still remains one of the most famous fictional detectives of all time.  A private eye in Los Angeles, Marlowe was on perpetual edge of almost being paid for his time, a man of battered but decent principals in a town without any.  The plots clock up a respectible body count, but are very rarely kicked off by anything other than a passing act of pettiness or an accidental moment of compassion on a night like any other.  What sets Chandler apart was the way the stories were told – Chandler could to more with 5 words than most other writers can say in 50.  There’s been numerous films of his work made, ranging from the Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, to some really, really iffy adaptations set in the 1970s starring bad hair, dubious trousers and not much else of note.  The Singing Detective also borrowed (lovingly) from Chandler, in ways ranging from the obvious to the geeky that you’d kinda have to squint to spot.

A legend, probably a myth, relating to Chandler’s approach to plot, relates to a phone call he received from the director working on the film adaptation of one of his novels.  The director complained that he just didn’t understand what was going on at this bit of the film, to which Chandler’s reply was ‘just have a guy come in with a gun’.  While not exactly a solution Jane Austen would have gone for, it has a lot going for it…

My other, favourite Chandler quote, and a slightly more pretentious one, relates to an occasion when Chandler was asked by his publisher to review another author’s book and give him a favourable quote.  To my annoyance, I can’t find the exact words on my bookshelf, but his essential reply to this request boiled down to, ‘I’d love to, but I can’t.  The writer has craft, he has skill, he understands character, he understands plot, he’s got narrative and rhythm.  But I can’t give me a good review, because he just doesn’t hear the music.’ 

Now, while this is, from a technical point of view, pretty harsh, anyone who’s spent more than a few chapters in the company of Raymond Chandler’s prose will fairly quickly work out what he’s talking about.  It’s not the characters, and certainly not the plot, that sweeps you along when you read Chandler.  It is a sense of momentum, an immersion into something which cannot be described as anything more than absorption into a story, can’t be broken down into any more nor less true than to say that the writing has a kind of music, that catches you and pulls you along, whether you meant to go or not.

Chandler would probably resent being told that he was also the master of the one-liner, so I’ll put in several lines instead.  This description is on page 1 of Farewell My Lovely, and was the first taste of Chandler I ever had….

‘He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck… His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgotten cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers.  Slim quiet negroes passed up and down the street and stared at him with darting side glances.  He was worth looking at.  He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes…. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them.  Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.’

Blink

Posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 in London | 1 Comment

This post is going to be nearly all photos, since the subject of statues in London is something that I will need years to ramble about.  But it is thrown in here for anyone who has ever crossed Holborn Viaduct without really paying much attention, and all those who made the fatal error of watching the Dr Who episode called Blink while alone in a dark house…

St. James Park

Posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 in London | 1 Comment

So, circumstance conspired to take me into the City of Westminster.  This is not somewhere I regularly visit, but a trade show at Victoria showcasing all things theatrical and nerdy, combined with a tube strike, took me off my regular travel patterns.  I had to get from Victoria to Euston, and hadn’t packed an A-Z.  Needless to say, I thought it would be a really good idea to try navigating by a combination of the compass on my keyring, (since I knew Euston was vaguely north eastish) by the London Eye (vaguely southish) and the BT Tower (somewhere reasonably close to my final destination).  Armed with this infallible plan, I set off.

There is a lot to say about Westminster.  For a start, there’s a lot to say about why it is the City of Westminster, as proclaimed proudly on every street sign.  But there’s a lot of history involved in that, enough to justify its own blog entry at a later date.  However, my first clue that the nature of the streets I was about to change was when, passing New Scotland Yard, I ran into St. James Park station.  I looked for a park, and couldn’t see one, so considered it a geographical blip and kept on walking.  A few streets later, I turned a corner, and bham, a park seemed to have popped out of no where.  Let me repeat – I don’t know this part of town at all, I’d just wandered past the Ministry of Justice and then whoops, a park.

And not just any park.  St. James Park is the first royal park, which, while perhaps it doesn’t hold as much significance now as it did once upon a time, still suggests more than your usual ‘council green space’ of sad withering grass.  Once upon a time, it was a place for kings and queens to flirt recklessly while wearing very big wigs and recklessly tight trousers.  The wigs grew shorter and the trousers remained tight through the Victorian period, when St. James changed into a place of flirtatious meetings and sly understanding exchanged between members of the upper middle classes and aristocracy out for a ride on a fine day.  Even when it became swallowed up entirely by the rest of the city, it still retained those characteristics that let you know about its history.  A lake runs roughly down its middle, and from a bridge in the middle you can see both Buckingham Palace and Westminster, which could perhaps give the misguided impression that the Prime Minister canoes to his weekly visit with the Queen.  (Perhaps he should?)  The trees are old and tall, the grass is well tended, there are great fat flowerbeds of foxgloves drooping under their own weights, ducks and geese and ladies willing to feed them.   At the top of St. James is The Mall, which runs from Trafalgar Square to the front door of Buckingham Palace and is one of the few places in London where you can regularly see both horses taller than a grown man ridden by coppers or occasionally the royal horse guard, and dozens of British flags being flown as something other than an ironic or politically dubious statement.

As well as its royal history, St. James Park has a good fictional history.  Its served its time mostly as a setting for various spy thrillers; from John le Carre via the Ipcress File to Spooks, various generations of dark-jacket-wearing spies have held mysterious and secretive meetings on the benches of St James.  Tourists and civil servants are the main visitors, and you can see as many big blue umbrellas bearing the stars of the EU on their top as you can t-shirts saying ‘I Love London’.

Strike!

Posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 in London | No Comments

An individual who shall remain anonymous, as we walked together across Waterloo Bridge a few nights ago, had a rant that went something like this:

‘I hate tube strikes day.  I hate the way everyone in London talks like its the worst thing in the world, they just moan and moan and it’s like ‘oh god, this is the worst thing ever, Jesus, it’s so unfair’ and everyone becomes like a fascist and goes ‘I hate the tube drivers, they already get 40 grand a year, they should all be put in prison, I can’t believe they’re doing this’ and everyone piles into the buses and all they talk about is the strike and everyone goes home at 4 p.m. to ‘beat the rush’ when what they’re really doing is going home because they don’t like it at work and it’s just an excuse and you can’t move anyway because everyone drives and moans and moans – I hate strike days.’

Or words to that effect.  I might have glossed it up a little in the name of narrative zippiness, but the gist remains sound.  And while I’d love to disagree just to be annoying, strike mania did indeed have London in its grasp for a good week and a half.  Not just the two days during the strike, but for days and days before and probably for a few after as people raved about ridiculous demands, outrage, horror, despair, torment etc.. ’Strike Chaos!’ was headline banner news across London on the same day that the U.N. declared its first global pandemic since 1968, and Iran voted in a Presidental election.  Inside comment pages across every freebie newspaper chucked across the back seats of the buses were pictures of members of the public by statements like ‘The drivers are striking like every other month, I can’t believe it’s happening again’ or ‘They don’t have anything to complain about, not while our soldiers are fighting a war!’  - and so on.

I should admit my own bias.  I walk everywhere in London anyway, so when the strike hit, it didn’t really effect me, as I could fairly easily make any distance in 40 minutes on foot that a bus could do in 20.  Through unlikely circumstance, I ended up walking from Victoria to Euston to avoid the strike.  I walked through Westminster, an area I barely know at all, and navigated by the dodgy expedient of keeping the London Eye to my right and the BT Tower in front and leftish.  This precarious wander took me through streets I had never seen before, little markets wedged between fat concrete Ministries and glass-walled office blocks jutted up against pompous Victorian stone.  It was an eye-opener, and one I probably wouldn’t have had, if the tube had run.

Ironically, the best way to bypass tube strike chaos was to stay in South London, on the basic principal that South London doesn’t really have much of a tube to be effected by.  South Londoners have the just right to complain that they have very few reliable transport options to them; ironically, tube strike days are among a select few where this lack of option becomes an advantage!

Another view, in the interest of balance.  The day I was at Victoria, a friend of mine was supposed to meet me .  She left her house, between Aldgate and Wapping, at 9.15 a.m., in pouring rain that made every window clatter between Sidcup and Walthamstow, and looked for a bus.  2 hours and a half later, she arrived at Charing Cross Station, five and a half miles away from where she had begun.  Bear in mind that average walking speed is around 4 miles an hour, and she walks quickly.  Retrospectively, it’s kinda easy to say ‘maybe you should have walked…’ but strangely enough, with the rain pouring off her, the A-Z back in her flat, a deadline of 45 minutes to get to her destination, and a travelcard in her pocket, it becomes easy to imagine why she might be just a little annoyed by the day the tube shut down across London.

As one final thought – crossing the heaving junction at Kings Cross Station, every bus stop bursting with annoyed commuters, a man in a suit proclaimed, ‘curse the tube drivers’!  A sentiment I am sure that most travellers in London shared that day.  But if the 48 hours of the strike showed us anything at all, it was that the last people in the city we can afford to curse, are the tube drivers…

The Miracle of Wordpress

Posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 in Misc. | 1 Comment

Firstly, it’s been, as always, an age since I last posted.   More over, it’s taken me an age to work out how to read the large collection of very nice comments that have been left on the site - I wish there was some handy excuse for why I don’t know how to work my own blog, but since there isn’t, I’ll apologise for having to taken so long to finally figure it out…

Secondly, in the interest of explaining why I haven’t blogged for an age, I thought I might fall back on my usual (and true) explanation and, as always, blame RADA. 

I have in the last six weeks been in the RADA Lighting Department, and let’s not beat about the bush here, lighting is cool.  We’re dealing with wattages to make your eyes water, some deeply shiny and ridiculously expensive equipment, movers and colours and washes and lenses and gobos and shutters and cabling!  God, I had no idea how much cabling! 

More interestingly, and with my writer’s hat on for a moment, people who are involved in lights speak a foreign language known only to the mysteriously initiated.  For example, a conversation between a lighting designer and his/her in-house electrician could easily go something like this:

Designer:  Have you rigged the VL6s?

Electrician: Yeah, but we need to daisy chain the DMX up to the smart repeater before I can give you patch channels.

Designer:  I want the soft patch to go to 13, 16 bit extended.  There should be enough left in universe 1.

Electrician:  Sure, lemme grab the dimmers for blue off the plan.

Designer:  You’re using blue phase?  [Designer then turns to board operator, looking bewildered in the darkness...]  1 @30!  ‘40!  Which lens has that source 4 got in it?  I wanted 60s, not 62s!  Prod LX!  In colour palette 5!  4!  Update cue only!  Block!  Mark!  Next!

Now… you, dear reader, may be able to comprehend all this and even know which button to press without having to think too hard about all this.  But if you have, you may as well accept right here, right now, it is because you are a ridiculously well-informed individual with geeky inclinings.  Six weeks its taken me to vaguely grasp the lingo, and finally I almost understand 16 bit motor jokes.  I almost get why it’s funny that someone got a T29 for a cantata fresnel when actually he was only after a T27 for a rama PC (raucous laughter) and can almost but not quite sympathize with the pain of a dodgy pacific profile microswitch.  Almost… but not quite…

That said, I love lights.  Without wanting to wax too lyrical about it, a good bit of lighting can make a play, complete the illusion, trick the mind into wandering into a story without letting the body remind the brain that it’s wedged into a chair smaller than a Ryanair Economy Class seat, listening to a man in a silly moustache talk about incest in a living room made of plywood.  But since good lighting is in itself by definition not really noticeable, being part of the illusion, it’s much easier to say that bad lighting, when it’s bad, is really really bad, and can destroy an experience just by being noticed. 

I have been programmer and board operator for the last three weeks, which has meant three weeks in a darkened room listening to the foreign language of lighting design and eating just ridiculous quantities of smarties.  (I am a sucker for supermarket 2 -for-1 special offers.)  13 hours a day, six days a week in semi-darkness plays merry hell with your body clock, but it has been well worth it.  I was lucky in that my designer possessed infinite patience, humour and good will – but to cut a long story short, this has been the cause of my absense, and because 99% of my work was carried on in darkness, I have nothing but this one crummy photo to show for it….

… and the chief wisdom my lighting designer had to impart at the end of three weeks of ‘cue, update, enter’?

‘Don’t ever try eating peanut M and Ms and talking at the same time…’