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Tuesday 26 November 2013

Sister act

I popped over to see my elder sister earlier.  It was her birthday last month, so she was due a visit.

Personally, I’d say she’s a miserable mare – and that’s on a good day – so I was unsure of my reception, and whether I should survive that without the need for a plaster or bandage; and should I receive a hospitable welcome, how many seconds or minutes to pass before she launches into one of her soap opera meltdowns:

‘You ripped the head off my favourite doll, you little bastard!’ she’ll blast, with her eyes firmly set on the best Daytime Leading Elder Sister in a Cosy Sunday Afternoon Family Reunion Award.

She’s jealous of our mother’s staggering collection of melodramatic awards during her long lifetime.  None of our siblings has the guts or heart to tell her that their own kids as nippers scooped more of those sort of awards almost in their sleep.

When you’ve been brought up watching the late great Pat Phoenix or the fabulous Anita Dobson, elder sister or not, she’s got no chance of awards coming from this direction.

Now my younger sister is a different matter.  She was a bit grumpy as a kid but as soon as she found herself a decent husband, she became a laugh a minute.  However, she was the long-suffering favourite of Mummy Dearest. 

If truth be told, elder sister is a tad jealous of the long-suffering favourite younger sister.  The younger sister had far more time observing the genteel art of getting the last word, as performed by Mummy Dearest, and long-suffering grandma, who never could abide being told how to suck eggs.

My younger sister, unlike our elder sister or Mummy Dearest, doesn’t have to throw a wobbler or even say a single word.  She just has to dart you a warning glance and the accolades fall at her feet.

Anyway, saw my elder sister who, surprisingly, seemed in rude health and civil tongued.  We ripped to shreds our several siblings and surviving parent; and she enjoyed a good whinge about her kids and grandkids, and quite a pleasant few hours it was.

I’ll have to check my diaries for the 1970s to see if it was the most pleasant of few hours spent with my elder sister.  If so, we must do it again just as soon.


Elizabeth Gaskell; Mary Barton

Hopefully later today I will find some time to catch up on Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell’s debut novel from 1848.  I’m up to chapter 10.

According to the back cover blurb of my Oxford World’s Classics edition, Gaskell’s first novel introduced the fiction-reading public of the mid-nineteenth century to aspects of the contemporary world it knew little about.  Part tragedy, part romance, passionate with anger yet touched by humour, Mary Barton remains the major novel acclaimed by Charles Dickens on first publication.

I’ve read nine out of thirty-eight chapters and it is very good.  There’s an unsettling increasing and causal body count with each successive chapter one could be forgiven for thinking it was penned in the mid to late 20th century (yes, I mean you, but not exclusively, Brett Easton Ellis).

However, Gaskell is noticing the effects of acute poverty during the ‘hungry forties’.  If heavyweight essays such as Friedrich Engels The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) isn’t your thing, Mary Barton may be the novel for you.  The social realism is stark, but the romance at the centre of the novel is traditional and very amusing.

In chapter 9, which I recently completed, Mary’s second love interest and their go-between makes an appearance, and very satirical the episode is, so it’s a fairly safe bet my previous sentence is accurate.

I’ve read all of Gaskell’s shorter works, Cranford, included, and a very sharp and sophisticated satirist she is.  Admittedly, she is the only novelist who has reduced me to tears at times, but usually she very swiftly turns the mood around with some witty turn of phrase and I’m chuckling away calling myself a silly sod for shedding the odd tear in the first place.

As an introduction to Gaskell’s style, I can recommend highly the short stories Christmas Storms and Sunshine, Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras, and The Crooked Branch.  The novella A Dark Night’s Work is also worth a tear or two.

Anyway, it’s midday, and I’m off to the library to update this blog and do my jobsearch.





Lucubration

As I sit in contemplation of what to write, I often reflect over life experiences, which accounts for the occasional memoir recently.

I don’t particularly like recalling my childhood as for all the occasional laughter there were several moments of unhappiness, being bullied for one thing or another, usually, though not exclusively, by a permanently angry big sister; and a rather heated cold shoulder from an estranged parent if ever our paths chanced to cross.

However, these drama queens aside, there were other problems that grew worse upon attending secondary school.  On the one hand, all had viewed me as black, and on the other, the black kids I met up with at secondary school considered me somewhat ‘white’. 

The bad dream of childhood became the nightmare of adolescence.

I was glad when my schooldays were over.

About fifteen years ago, I wrote a few pieces about growing up in the city, which were published by my local newspaper, but I had to keep them light for a mainstream provincial readership.  Besides which, as cruel as they can be, at the end of the day, kids are kids; with time, one can look back in languor.

However, kids are as much a part of society as adults, and society was different back then before political correctness had been as current a concept as today.  Attitudes were not as enlightened; admittedly nothing as retarded as say America or South Africa in the 20th century, but well, excuse me if I sound like a grandparent at Christmas, the kids of today don’t know that they’re born – hopefully.

Anyway, enough of my sombre lucubrations.  Coffee doesn’t make itself.


Library net cafe

I recently re-joined the library.  It’s cheaper than an internet cafĂ©.  In fact, it’s free.

My personal advisor at the job centre suggested it, so after inquiring if I had any outstanding fines, I re-joined.

I’ve got books on PowerPoint and Excel, and on copywriting.  At present, I apply for some jobs that requires one to have knowledge of PowerPoint and Excel. 

I’ve never before used PowerPoint, and several years ago I done a course on Excel, but I’ve since forgotten everything.

I’m finding the PowerPoint easier to get to grips with.  I think I need to attend a refresher course for the Excel, so I can have one to one help rather than plough slowly through a book without advice or help.

I’m sure if I had a physical tutor I’d get to grips with things far quicker.

I’m sure the charts and graphs are interesting, and I’d hedge a bet that spreadsheets could be interesting too, if only one could do them competently with confidence.

I’m not sure if I’d enjoy a job as a number cruncher or a data input what-have-you, but that could depend upon what input and numbers one would be crunching.

I’ve also borrowed an excellent book on rhetoric, which is so short and small, I am transcribing it onto my laptop.  I’ll probably save up or budget to buy a copy.  However, I’ll continue transcribing it as it helps me practice my touch-typing.


Wednesday 13 November 2013

A Dilettante's dilemma

If I am to be brutally honest, I am a dilettante.  I learned early in my teens to have a Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable at hand when reading.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your general knowledge grows and expands over a short period of time – or instantly, depending upon your learning level and how easy it is to retain what many would consider trivia.

My Brewer’s was a godsend before I discovered Penguin and Oxford World’s Classics, with their annotated notes which elucidates on classical allusions, foreign words and phrases and other matters concerning the text which modern readers might be unaware of.

I used to astonish parents and myself with what I knew when we would watch quizzes on telly.

And when I started performing my poems people would assume that I had a university education or at least read deeply of the classics.

Recently I have been dipping into Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Samuel Johnson and Thomas De Quincey.  I had intended to read one author in the morning and another in the afternoon. 

However, I dip into them randomly, which is pleasing at the time but nags at me later.  It is my usual method for reading.

I am hoping to be more disciplined in my reading, and hoped I would be able to read an author’s work of essays in chronological order.  But after running one’s eyes down the contents, I cannot help but dip in at whatever has caught my fancy.

It is the dilettante in me.


Tuesday 12 November 2013

Tits - And How to Get On Them

My dear friend and mentor Tyrone Temple has promised more memoirs following the brief glimpse into his childhood he gave us in The Life and Times of Mrs Joan Clarke.

Currently Mr Temple is enjoying his retirement soaking up the sun in Barbados.  He intends to remain there until late December, returning to England shortly before Christmas.

The Bajun sun, he informs me, is so hot that he is barely able to pick up a pen to sign for the tonic water he is force to sip to keep hydrated as he lounges beside the pool of his luxury villa.

His laptop, he explained, when we spoke on the phone recently, has not taken well to the Caribbean heat and unfortunately is on the blink.  He promises to delight us with more of his memoirs in the New Year.

In the meantime, Mr Temple’s secretary has rummaged through the archives and delivered to us a vintage article from the pen of Tyrone Temple, first published in 1993, which cast a penetrating eye over the state of British press during the last decade of the twentieth century.

Tits - And How to Get On Them!

And what's the point in glorifying names?
That's no sure escape from life's sordid shames;
'Spite being either cabbages or kings,
We're merely puppets on Dame Kismet's strings!
                                                                   TEMPLE

Ruth Fortune is 16 and wants popular stardom.  Personally, I can't understand it what with the media and unpopular stardom.  You only have to look up the Annus Horribilis of our own dear royals, and at the occasional governments to see my point.  Or more to the point, you only have to look  at a newspaper, not necessarily read  it.  It's scandal after scandal after scandal - and much of that condoned.

Recently, Mr Tony Parsons, snapped, crackled and popped on in his regular weekly column in the Telegraph, bemoaning the fact that nowadays pop stars are not what they used to be; that when drugged-up they're too chilled out to hang loose with the hype pack, or make a name and nuisance of and for themselves cluttering up the bedchambers at Claridges.

His attitude seemed so sloppy it was as if he were trying to appeal to the average Star or Sport reader, or those who are "into" the new musical press which we have nowadays.  He began his journalistic career, I believe, as a hair-stylist on the New Musical Express, pontificating whether the trend of the charts ought to be the Mr Rotten look, or Mr Numan, or Ms Oakey, or Ms Boy George, or what-have-you.

Now I like the Telegraph, and I like the Spectator even more, but recently, both organs have an appeal which seems positively tabloid, as if their writers have a fixation with speed freaks, just as the more popular "family" newspapers did with the craze for acid and ecstasy a few silly seasons of love ago, making it seem that nowadays the gospel according to journalists is the opiate of the masses - but I digress.

'I'm thinking', said Ruth, shocking me into alertness as she gobbled down a flake and tossed her head of shoulder length hair, 'Of having my tits done!'

Of course, I blame these newspapers she reads around her mates pads - they're all silicone tits and sex-lines!  Is that what your average British family are into nowadays?  I say "average" as I'm talking tabloid, therefore mass circulation, and I think that means "the masses". 

In that case, why do journalists pick on social workers merely for doing their jobs?  And our own dear royals?!  They hack on about them complaining about the size of the Civil List until it shrinks to the size of a teenager’s giro, then when the royal family behaves exactly like your average British family, they get told to pull their jock straps up!  What price royalty, eh?  I don't envy them the job.  What was it Shakespeare wrote - "Easily balds the pate that wears a crown!?".  I take my hat off to them.  And Fergie.

'You don't want to do that just yet, Ruth!', I told her, 'You ought to marry that Prince Edward, or at least get off with him.  See what fame's all about first, my love, then get your tits done if you think you can handle it!  Besides, you don't want to go to bed a showgirl only to wake up the next morning and find yourself on page three with a caption something like: "Cor!!!  Look at Teddy's titties.  Ruth, we think they're fantastic, but that's only because they were fashioned from plastic!" Do you now girl?'  And she said that I must remember that she wanted to be a pop star and not a "modoll".

'Pop star or model', I explained, 'It's all the same thing to the media and public alike.  Besides, you'll get paid to wear nice clothes and see the world, earning more money in a year than a student nurse could ever dream of earning in a life time!'

And anyway, wasn't she forgetting something such as her gender?  Pop pundits would only be interested in her if she can behave like Sinitta and sound like a synthesiser!  To which Ruth called me a "cube" and said that I was "living somewhere in the Eighties", and to remember that she wanted to be an underground pop star, leaving me wondering if she was trying to be either ironic, oxymoronic or both.

'Ruth dear', I pointed out to the dream child, 'if the "underground" was truly underground, it wouldn't be so popular; and the money to be made would be far more dangerous and a lot less lucrative!'

'Square!  Square!  Square!  Square!  Square!', she screamed like a Gatling gone wild.

'O go on then, get your tits done!' I said, 'but mark my words, you'll have two false tits, one wondrous hit, and end up being sampled by all and sundry from KWS to raregroovedom!'

And then I put it to her straight: 'Popular stardom or "fame" as it's more colloquially known, lasts fifteen minutes.  The average attention span is but three.  For the unfortunate audience, this leaves twelve full minutes of absolute ennui while you attention seek, either in the movies or pantomime, only to be told by the critics that as a singer you were merely "crap", but as a starlet you're about "as entertaining as a colostomy bag".  And the only thing that they considered either "talent" or "personality" in the first place, were the tits you had implanted with silicone as a stargazing, gutter-press reading teenager!'

Saturday 9 November 2013

Literary adaptations


Why is it that when television and film production companies decide to adapt a nineteenth century novel it tends to be either Charles Dickens or Jane Austen?

I know there has been countless adaptations of Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, but in most cases, they stray from the originals outrageously that they are almost not worth one’s notice here.  And to notice them would only add weight to my argument anyway.

The countless Dickens and Austen adaptions there have been have kept closely to the originals.  And when they do adapt Dickens, it is usually the same half dozen or so.

If adapting a period drama they should broaden their horizons.

Mary Braddon and Ellen Wood equalled Dickens in sales and popularity (and possibly eclipsed him, if truth were told).  If either of them are adapted, they rather lazily opt for Lady Audley’s Secret or East Lynne.

I am really surprised no one has bothered to adapt Benjamin Disraeli’s Coningsby or Sybil, for instance.  Not only are they powerful dramas and fluffy romances, but the satire is savage and sophisticated and the humour hilarious.

Likewise the tales and novels of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.  If you ignore the trifles concerning leprechauns and fairies, much of his other works would make brilliantly dark dramas and sparkling comedies.

And as for Maria Edgeworth, isn’t it about time someone adapted her Castle Rackrent, or Ennui?

I am sure many an actress would kill to portray a character like troubled socialite Lady Delacoeur or independent-minded Belinda Portman, from Belinda.  Both of them are groundbreaking characters; one for making breast cancer a central feature and topical subject in a romance novel; and the other for seriously contemplating an inter-racial marriage as late or early as pre-emancipation 1801 (more groundbreaking, however, was the inter-racial marriage between a footman and a maid, which the author played down as to be practically an insignificant incident hardly worth notice except as perhaps a binary opposition to the central characters).


I could add other authors to this, but I have already exceeded the word length.