It begins: The Malice of Fairies

This post is borrowed from the Only Writing blog - the one no one reads.  

Well - I have been researching, and reading and getting involved in someone else's project, and generally being dissipated in the last two weeks - no submissions, no writing, no "progress" and I have felt thoroughly at a lose end... I know I am happiest when I'm writing... and so, although I didn't intend to think about writing "The Malice of Fairies" for a while, I was at a thoroughly loose end this afternoon - and as a result, thought I might just try a scene - so now I have 2,500 words - which might be the beginning of the book.  Writing is an excellent cure for boredom, although it has the negative effect of sometimes making other things seem boring.

I like the words  I am pleased,  starting GATD was a slow business, and no reason why this shouldn't take a while to get going either...Actually, damn it - I am really excited and happy and feel like proclaiming it to the
world....

I am also pleased that I am not repeating the mistakes of other books (writers):if at first you don't succeed, try again with something similar... I suppose my heroine Deidre is like Anastasia a bit - not as nasty though - differently neurotic!

Very happy making - and I don't HAVE to do it, since I have the other prospect to console me - but I am not discussing that here until I know for sure.

Northern Soul: the movie

Having seen and enjoyed Pride enormously, I was really looking forward to something of the same warm glow from Northern Soul.  Although far from being a hardcore fan, there are some fantastic tracks that are among my favourites (few of which featured in the film).   However, I once had a Lancastrian boyfriend who used to go to all-nighters at the Wigan Pavilion.  He was an object of some curiosity at Oxford - where he was seen as a stand-out from the other guys, who were mostly afficionados of "Public School Rock" (Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd et al).   We used to sing soul songs to each other during our brief relationship.

I'd guess Northern Soul was a slightly less well funded film than Pride although costumes and hairdos made me almost nostalgic, while the factories and domestic interiors were every bit as dull and grubby as I remember them being.  The story was very different - it had all the "coming of age" elements, betrayal by friends, (both features of Pride) plus a bit of violence, estrangement from parents, lots of drugs, and massive amounts of dancing.  I would have enjoyed it more if (a) the hand held camera shots hadn't made me sick, (b) the female lead had been a better dancer  (c) they had paid a little more attention to correct language - "soz" was not in use during the 70s (unless it's a Lancashire thing), and there were other phrases which grated.   But I'm old, this film was not made for me.

The dancing, on the whole was great - and that strange male look - the skinny torsos above the wide kecks was extraordinarily evocative of the aforementioned boyfriend...

Wonder if the ex-boyf ever danced like this?

On the whole, pretty good - very gritty and realistic and a great way to enjoy Northern Soul music.  It doesn't end quite as sentimentally as Pride - but then again, it was the story of individuals rather than a movement - and set in Lancashire (which I have little connection with) rather than S. Wales - which is heaving with distant cousins. And I wasn't involved with it, whereas I was with the miners.  So my feelings about it are very much more stunted.  

Romance, uber Babes and other Sunday afternoon thoughts

While prepping the dinner, I was listening to an ancient cassette, called "party tape".  I don't know exactly when it was made - some time between 1988 and 1993 I guess.  I was listening to is and suffering the usual waves of nostalgia for things I shouldn't be nostalgic for at all...notably a bad friend of my ex-husband's who made a pass at me over the washing up.  I don't really like him, haven't seen him for 20 years and don't in any way yearn for him, so perhaps that wasn't nostalgia - just an ambiguous memory.

The playlist included

Katrina & The Waves: Walking on Sunshine
Isley Brothers: This Old Heart of Mine
Supremes::  No matter what sign you are
Gaye & Terrell ?  - I'm going to make you love me
Wet,wet, wet  Temptation
Simply Red:  Infidelity
Hall & Oates:  Camellia
Grace Jones Warm Leatherette  etc. etc.

Not my usual romantic sludge... but oh so bloody 80s...

It is mostly fairly danceable to - but my sudden overwhelming thought was "Who was I in love with then?"  It was sort of pre-Mark, post James - the inter-war period of my superb singledom.  I was "in love" with about 3 or 4 people during that period - and there were people I was in relationships of a sort with...I don't remember dancing with any of them to any of these (except the bad friend, and that was earlier). I just couldn't imagine who this music was for, who was I yearning for, who was I going to force to love me, who would I go back to 1000 times...

It was a rather regrettable thought - I know I've always had a habit of being "in love with" someone - but why?  In theory this period of my life was my "searching for suitable husband material" phase - yet I spent it mooching after completely unsuitable unhusbandly material - I suppose the Toad was wealthy - so he might have passed, but the others, well, I dunno... too short, too unstable, too drunk, too gay, take your pick.  Certainly weren't being chosen for their superior genetic material.  What does this say?   That Romance is not about the search for a mate?  Perhaps. I know when I discouraged K's marriage thoughts that was a very considered decision, based on his genetic material...longevity, etc. yet I was amazingly in love with him.  This is a mystery I cannot resolve,.  After all, surely the function of romance is to sugar the pill of the permanence of a relationship - so that several kids and rows later at least you can look back and remember when you did feel romantic about them.

Shirley Conran quoted a friend of hers the other day, saying "After 50 it's not about getting the man you want, it's wanting the man you've got."  This is only tenuous linked to the foregoing - but it's true!

The next thought about it all was that a lot of that 80s music was about the uber Babes - as Mark persists in calling them... and that neither Ned nor Finn, in their trawls through the musical past has landed on the 80s as offering any music worth while!

The Rich: Kampfner & Deller

We went to hear a discussion at Turner Contemporary between John Kampfner and the artist Jeremy Deller - who is not an artist in the conventional sense, so his exhibition is really an installation of various artefacts and a couple of paintings which he has conceived.  The topic "English Magic" might have been subtitled "Only Connect" since that is what visual art is all about now - pointing at something and making the audience do the work.  So he has taken a number of diverse items: painting by ex-soldiers in prison, Russian share certificates, paintings by Turner and Ruskin to make a point.... about?   Well, wealth - the coruscating effect of it on UK society?  Except I don't think it did -  there are attacks on the rich - perhaps they are thought-provoking for people... but I guess if you've been thinking about if for nearly 40 years...

Deller in front of one of his conceptions - a hen harried clutching a red Range Rover

Frankly I think one would get a better idea about this in a well-argued article of say, 3,000 words maximum.  But then...

Kampfner is an ex-editor of the New Statesman - he has written a sort of history of the rich which does sound very interesting.  My only complaint against him is that he isn't particularly left-wing.   The discussion on wealth was well-structured but disappointing - reportage rather than critique.  I suppose unless I hear an analysis of the problem and some idea of how to start a solution I don't really see the point.  K did have some ideas that were interesting - "reputation laundering" and of course the fact that when money is concentrated in so few hands, they cannot actually spend it, therefore it ceases to be of use in the economy.  Perhaps we should start a fashion for the rich to invest in small UK manufacturing industries - they can all boast about it "My gasket manufacturer turned over £137m last year"  "Really - you're in gaskets - I've got a printed circuit board manufacturing start-up..." "Well, I'm heavily into renewables myself"  and so on.

Jeremy Deller was pleasant and mildly amusing - but not especially radical or exciting in his thinking - given that this exhibition "represented Britain" at the Venice Biennale, he presumably wouldn't bite the hand that feeds him.

I have just discovered - thanks to the wonderful Wikipedia - that JD actually trained as an art historian at the Courtauld - so he is the perfect conceptual artist.  I should applaud him for applying his skills so successfully.   We were there with two friends, who both asked questions of a political nature - but they were not satisfactorily answered - I was left with a mild sense that they did not want to upset UKIP... but perhaps I am being unfair.

It was interesting, but curiously unsatisfactory and at one point I stopped listening - apparently during this point Kampfner said "there is not going to be any state funding of art - so live with that!."   He is heading up a thing called the Creative Industries (dread word!) Confederation which is about to go public. As Mark says, this is a sort of Thatcherite thing - where miserable funding decisions made by the government are spun as interesting new opportunities... what does he mean, there will be no state funding?  Have they disbanded the Arts Council?  Or have they announced that its budget is reduced to zero?  Well, no doubt there will be future revelations.  But is it worse to artists to depend on the whim of some Russian Maecenas?  Or some civil servant with an art history degree?

It was unsatisfactory because there was nothing that made me catch fire - inspired me to research, thought or further interest.  I will probably be reading the book and seeing the exhibition, but it all has an air of "same old, same old" to me.  I suppose it's interest lies in that K has created a bit of public/media (which is what it really means) discussion about the rich, but this is as old as Croesus - didn't someone say "the rich you shall always have with you"?   (I know, I know.)

Full Moon again - Astrology not always wrong....

Well, no - like a stopped clock, it will be right twice a day.   However, this month I had been promised that a Full Moon (tomorrow) in my 7th house would bring some news about a partnership - either emotional or business.  I was rather excited - thinking that perhaps one of the US agents would finally say "Yes" - on the other hand, Full Moons often bring a swathe of rejection emails (I had one on Tuesday).  Whether that happens remains to be seen.

I always think of Full Moons as a time of culmination, when matters come to a head, Often astrologers say that something will go out of one's life - I haven't found that to be true myself, and what has happened here is more in the nature of a "follow up" to something that happened near a previous FM six months ago (May 10th). The astrological convention is that something that begins in a New Moon will culminate when the Full Moon is next in the same house... again, that doesn't always follow, nor does it follow that the whole thing (whatever it is) will only last 6 months.

Six months ago, just before the Full Moon in Scorpio (these things are often said to be linked) - I met - well, met isn't the word, encountered, at a scriptwriting session, a real scriptwriter! Woo.  I do actually know a couple of other script writers - so no big deal.  Anyway, apart from getting a good, if distant, vibe, off him.  I was amused to discover later that one of the group was getting rather excited by him.  Anyway, I never met him again, but I discovered my policeman chum was working/writing with him on a tv series.  I thought very little of this, although I hoped for PC K---'s sake it would come to something.  Today this man got in touch with me, said he'd liked what he'd heard of my writing and wondered if I would be interested in joining a script team he was forming, since he had had two series accepted and needed to write more episodes.

Wow and double wow.   This is certainly about a partnership - not a 1:1 but a one to several.  How exciting and how unbelievably astrologically correct.  It is of course, pretty rare for such an accurate prediction to occur.  Most predictions that come true usually have some elements that are possible but a certain amount of tugging is necessary to get them to fit.

Needless to say, I am not completely sanguine about this - many, many things may prevent this being the beginning of a fabulous period of success and income, but it would be wonderful if there was some income from it.

The Folkestone Triennial 2014

I cannot believe it is 3 years since we went to the last one... that was the day we took the boys and they discovered the joys of a cafe which sold Nutella flavoured milkshakes - and other delights.... next time we went it had stopped doing them - and this time it had closed down, replace by a very basic looking tapas bar.

There is something wrong with Folkestone - a writer I met last week at a party was agreeing on this - she was largely brought up and educated there - it hasn't had the big wash of DFL's that Thanet has had.  It is also very large and spread out - full of enormous Edwardian houses - not a lot of the sort of comfortable domestic buildings that appeal to retired groovy people, in the case of the Regency ones, or growing families in the case of the Victorian ones, in Ramsgate.

There is also the topography - somehow the lower town and the harbour seem very separate from the upper area with the Leas etc.   Of course they are not, but they still feel like two different places.

We arrived about 11.30 and got a map and went to see the sights, and very underwhelming they were too...the map is a rather confusing one - some of the things were simply marking places where various things were happening - or had happened, since this was the penultimate day.  We saw the exterior of an Andy Goldsworthy installation - cracked mud on a shop window - delightful. I love his work - but this was a disappointing example.  Not sufficiently transient!  We spent time looking at statuettes of people made with a 3-D printer... interestingish... which had attached wishes on them - all virtually identical, which I suppose should tell  me something about human life, but it seemed a rather banal project.  Since when did every art project have to have wishes attached - I've seen 3 or 4 of these all over the place - and we've even had a thing like this in Ramsgate.  Why wishes?  Is this the only way we can get people to engage...

There were various series of things - Yoko Ono ladders - which we couldn't find easily, so didn't bother, a nice little shelter called Steve, another site marking the River Pent (5 of these, we saw 1),another site where there was nothing.   And the Ian Hamilton Finlay words on the lighthouse

We couldn't see the lighthouse up close - because it is not accessible - but it looked quite nice.  We could see it as we had lunch at the bar in Rocksalt.  IHF is a household god - although I think he was probably a bit of a bugger - any one who can apparently idolise Saint- Just the way he did must be slightly deranged. However his work is aesthetically pleasing and there is no nonsense about "narrative".  He also wrote books - he knew where narrative properly belonged!

I rather object to the way that visual culture is trying to muscle in on literary culture - it wishes to claim "narrative" for entirely unmoving and unchanging objects.  I suppose objects "tell a story" - but it is not enough to plonk an object down and expect it to do so.  The "narrative" is in they eye of the beholder... the artist isn't really doing much except pointing.  Blimey - I am in the wrong job - I spend all this time and energy writing a blog that "points" at things - when really I ought to be a conceptual artist.  I say a dozen amusing and thought provoking things a week to various friends and family members, and no one pays me a penny for this.  If I could learn to create a visual equivalent I could be quids in!   Maybe it is time I became a conceptual artist!

One thing I loved was a shop devoted to the Stuckists - I don't think it was part of the triennial... someone had plonked an old "safe" (geddit?) outside the shop - safe art!  Well, hardly.  

The final part of the venture was an installation called Vigil. You can read about it here http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/artist/alex-hartley/ because I can't be arsed to describe it.    What is amusing is our slightly literal take on it.   Mark assumed that since the thing was situated high up, part of the experience was a wonderful view... we both supposed that one could go and visit it.   This was extremely difficult and challenging.   First we had to enter the hotel - I was going to ask how to reach the site at the reception desk but it was full of rather poor looking pensioners.  Also Mark urged me into a lift.   I was subsumed with a sort of scent-memory of cheap hotels I'd stayed in.  The glorious red carpet with its gold braid pattern was also familiar.  I was back in the now demolished Hotel Esplanade in Bournemouth in 1963...The smells were institutional - not dissimilar to a care home... i.e. stale mass catering and a sort of musty, mouldy human smell.  It appeared that a lot of people could actually be living there.  The entrance hall was filled with slot machines, and building works.  There were signs to different "wings" giving it a prison like feel.

The lift went to the 6th floor - we got out and walked to the 7th floor.  I went on strike while Mark explored - he found a different lift that went to the 12th floor - from there we walked up to the 13th floor - saw the tiny cramped lobby with four doors - each labelled "Premier Suite" - one had a notice about the Vigil installation and said "No admission to unauthorised personnel"... we knocked on the door a few times, but there was no payoff for our persistence.  M had really only wanted to see the view.  There was a good view from a window on the next landing.  We enjoyed that for a while, until I was distracted by two young girls wading around the harbour - despite the incoming tide.  The water was below their knees when they left the edge of the harbour, and headed out to the area beyond the viaduct - it was harder for them getting back, they were doubtful about getting around the buttress which marks the spot where the River Pent goes into the sea.   This time the water was up to their waists as they tide had come in a great deal in the ten minutes or so since we'd been watching them from the hotel tower.  This was quite a dramatic incident - another middle aged couple were watching them with anxiety too.  They were clearly local girls - no parents around - but not very aware of the tide - or perhaps they were and that was part of the adventure.    Neither our visit to knock the door, or the girls jeopardy around the harbour got a mention in the Vigil blog.  Unimpressed!

Then we went home - lay on the sofa, drank tea and read the Guardian... a pleasure!

Saint-Just - quite a looker really.  

I want the Natural History Museum back!

Yes, it's still there - and it's cleaner than it was, and you can see the terracotta creatures much better but inside...

An uncharacteristically deserted view of the ichthysaurs

I told Finn it would be hell on earth - full of kids, crowds, no natural light and very very claustrophobic.   Once upon a time the NHM had large spacious galleries that proceeded across the building from the centre, each with a different theme.  There were dinosaurs, but they were not there as an attraction to be queued for, and the blue whale was in a quiet place - probably the place it still is approximately, but now the interior has been buggered about.  There are fragments of old corridors and displays - but elsewhere partitions and false ceilings and vinyl floor coverings abound.  I sigh for the huge mahogony doors that a child found it hard to push open, and the long, wooden floors, which creaked slightly.   We used to play behind the heavy curtains that shielded the dioramas from the light - and stand on the brass gratings where the hot air circulated.

The place is now unbearably hot - but the brass gratings have been covered up in many places... the gentle creak of the floor is gone - and so of course is the peace and quiet.  I imagine there was a quiet area yesterday - but we didn't find it.  It is poorly signposted - and the whole zone thing is annoying (although probably useful).   The map shows that whole galleries on the first floor have simply disappeared from use.  I wish now that we had gone to look and see if the geology room with all the crystal specimens was still there - I set a scene in The Ash Grove there - which may be the last record of it.   I have been to the NHM several times since the rearrangements of the 80s - in the vain hope of recapturing some sense of how it was - a place where you could go and marvel and learn - in peace.

Of course museums have to be popular and accessible but must they do so at the expense of their architectural beauty, of their educational function?  There is only time to gawp at things - no time to stand and contemplate and discuss - because one is endlessly battered by other people, and kids and pointing and buggies and yes, of course, museums are a great place to take children - and I was very privileged to be able to go there as a small child and enjoy it in relative peace.  What I wish is that NMH would set up a "Dinosaur Theme Park" somewhere - where everyone could have the "Oooh-ah!" experience and thrill seekers could be thrilled - they could put the volcanoes and the earthquakes there too... and then may be we could quietly enjoy the opthalmosaur and the giant sloth in relative peace.  And perhaps they could restore the dioramas...