Et In Arcadia Ego

The Penatium are taking solid shape, todays musings sparked off by "which member should we be invoking to save us from swine flu?". If you missed the earlier post, the Penatium is a mythic cycle we are constructing around the Campus. The seven buildings here are named after the seven chief deities (well, strictly the other way around...) Our patron deity is the Dude in Brown, who you will have heard me speak of in tones of awe and respect: I adore him! But read on for more Heavenly Creatures goodness.

Vapilla noted we'd missed a building out - the Queen Mother. We're envisaging the Queen Mother as a dark, Hecate, pre-goddess - though no one really knows much about her as yet. Perfect target for mystery cults.

Lord Cameron, the head of the pantheon and father figure, has not been much further investigated, except that over the door of his Hall is a curiously wrought symbol of iron: a castle, flanked by two flying birds. Either geese or swans. Or ducks. When we decide which, doubtless it will become his symbol.

We decided that in some form, the state of the halls were a combination of the deity's interest in house and home, and the devotion of their followers. We surmised our kitchen problem hasn't actually been noticed by the Dude yet, as he's a wandering, disconnected sort of fellow - and Ellison's state of disrepair was due not only to Ellison's commitment to higher levels of thought, but also the lack of work being done on campus. Curiously, Calypso visited the Hall of Lady Chapman last week, and not only confirmed it was green, but also immaculate. The kitchens are clean, the buildings new and well kept - and no one has locks on their cupboard doors. The Lady obviously keeps good watch of her temple, which makes a sort of sense considering her vague matriarch role. Green is the colour of the lady, and her servants and messengers are squirrels.

Their daughter, Rosalind Franklin has taken on a curious turn. Calypso has pointed out, quite correctly, that though she is a maiden archetype she has people fighting for her hand - there's the feeling that one day she could transform into something new. She won't - the battle of Maynard and the Dude is eternal - but she is waiting and willing, unlike how Artemis or Athena would react, by frying them to a crisp at the very suggestion. And plus: how many demure virgins do you know on campus? Thus where is the wellspring of her power, to govern one of the larger houses? The answer lies in the idea of blossoming potential: Rosalind is the nurturer of Freshers.

The Dude too has taken on a more detailed role, as patron of student angst. There's a lot of it about. This fits with his evolving role as a guardian of travellers, and onwards to those of us still up at 4 in the morning making toast and worrying about essays - the antisocial and the morose.
True, he's our trickster archetype, but more dark and cunning than fun loving: he might play jokes, but he's the only one laughing. And I bet he doesn't even laugh, except on the inside. Naturally, he also whispers in the ear of every student pranker. Even though the Dude is, by his very nature, stubborn and untrustworthy, not a deity quick to love or be loved, nevertheless I adore him unconditionally. True, I gripe that he's ignoring the ant invasion in our kitchen, but wouldn't have him any other way. I'm also starting to wonder whether he governs, has kinship with or actually is the fox I've met on campus twice. He is armed with a staff - not openly martial, but just as deadly.

Hmmm, I wonder if it's the Dude we should be placating to help us with the London transport network?

Maynard has not evolved much since last time, except the suggestion that he should have a chariot: emphatic yes! He and his brother are the classic duality, brains vs. brawn, the party animal vs. the committed loner, openness vs. secrecy, optimism vs. pessimism, noise vs. silence. I suppose he too has a secondary role, after Lord of War and Sport, as the overseer of student parties and good-natured booze ups.

Chesney and Ellison remain problematic - they're twins, but less human than the rest, more etherial. We've brainstormed - are they remnants of an older pantheon, or invaders from a new? Are they children, or are they simply childlike and actually older than the rest? Whatever it is, they are something different - they don't interact with the other, bickering half of the Penatium in quite the same way. They are being identified with the sun and the moon, which again makes them...less earthy, more spirity glowy than the others. You get the feeling that, like Kronos, Zeus or Odin, Lord Cameron could be threatened or overcome - he's set himself up as a god and aquired power. They argue and relate on a familiar level - those five are the same, whatever that might be. But I wouldn't know how to begin on the defeat of Ellison and Chesney - can it even be done?

Finally, we've started scraping out the wider world they inhabit. Lord Maughan is a guardian of the underworld sort. I don't have time now to find my notes, but I think we hypothesised that there was a Book of Ultimate Knowledge in the centre of the Maughan, of which he is the guardian. Sometime, there will evolve a travel to the underworld myth which requires this book be consulted or stolen. We are also not agreed on whether Cameron has read this book, or whether he is forbidden to see it - in other words, is Maughan's guardianship decreed by Cameron, or by some higher source - possibly the Queen Mother herself?

The first heroes have also been developed - Ras, guardian of the harvest, wielder of the great trident, beloved of Lady Chapman - a mighty folk hero who defeated the ruthless Skeelings when they came to steal food. He is still invoked as a patron among us, to guard the fridges from wandering fingers. The second hero is yet to have a name - she is an archeress, and hunter of mould-monsters. These fiendish beasts cannot be killed, but by a special tincture with which she anoints her arrows. Rumours this substance is called "Fairy Liquid" have been exaggerated. I haven't discussed this yet, but I presume she would be governed by Maynard?

Very weird dream. I can appreciate where elements of it came from, but others have me competely confused.

I don't actually dream about Lord M as much as you might expect: perhaps twice in my entire life. And one of those was two weeks after it all began, and dead creepy at that. It involved Amador and I rushing off to rescue my future wife, an event which hadn't occurred yet in real life but ultimately happened all the time. But I don't think anyone suspected M. and Autumn would end up married, not least me, and at the end of the dream we were dancing outside, with Amador looking on in disappointment, which is something which actually happened some six months into the future.

The other involved me standing Viminalis outside and telling her "Lord M's last secret". No one in real life knows it, and the idea of it has always terrified me, in that "never means never", because it's so huge, and because if it did come out - the repercussions would be as nasty in real life as within the game. It's also not the only secret I am aware of with that magnitude. I came closest to telling Viminalis, and we did numerous deals and trades which one of us always backed out of. So maybe this was wish fufilment, telling someone - and getting to enjoy her reaction.

So the suprise comes in actually having a full, coherent dream about three other characters from the game. Not that Oscar, Anna and dear Scarlett aren't special, but Lord M. does occupy alot more brain space in real, daily life. The story of Oscar and Anna is, to my mind, one of the Flame's most tragic - but then, I was at the epicenter. The pair were fire and water - he was all angst and drama, and the local Mafia never let him escape from it's finger - she was quiet, restrained, cold even, and possibly the only Flame character ever to be concerned about public decency.

The pair met and fell in love, but Anna heard several nasty rumours about his behavior, so turned him down because it was simply not proper to do so. When they met again ten years later, he did ask again and she couldn't make the mistake a second time. That's Anna's tragedy, that she turned him down to spend a life half-lived, and then accepted to be in a situation almost as miserable, because all she had feared first time were true. All she wanted was a nice life, and he never made good on his promise to get on the straight and narrow, always vanishing for days on end, or turning up covered in blood, and not explaining what he was doing in those strange hours. He loved her, but just couldn't change for her. And that's his tragedy.

So the pair were, intermittently, very happy together, but in time this wore her down, and her inability to have children contributed to her sense of bitterness. She did, eventually, adopt a daughter - who curiously enough, was called Emily. Things kept happening - Oscar's old, dead wife Scarlett turned out not to be dead, Ivy claimed to be the mother of one of his bastards, which was extremely cruel at the time, Oscar turned out to be having an affair with his cousin. That was the one that killed her. From an authorial standpoint, I can appreciate Oscar's actions as tragic, and that fierce love for his cousin as a very interesting character point when you examine his whole life: I confess, the two were always in love, in a special way no one else could understand. But at the epicenter, it's harder to be reasonable, as both were married to my characters at the time!!

The pair have recently died: Oscar of a drawn out illness, and several months after that, Anna was found shot in her parlour and her daughter abducted. This series of events is one of the most genuinely upsetting in the Flame to me, because Anna had spent her whole life hating Oscar's criminal world, so to be finally taken away by violence is just not fair. And the overkill: Anna is not a woman who needed to be murdered, there was never a character more normal. It upsets me that Emily is never going to know, now, who she really is.


In any case, the dream was in a city, and we could see fires on the horizon. Everyone was trying to escape, so Anna and I tried too. That was the weirdest part, that I was Oscar for the dream - and a very accurate one at that - not Anna. We roused her to trek to safety, in a really Oscar-ish manner. We travelled through a deserted opera house, and I found a friend there who had resolved to stay and meet death. We caught a bus, we kept travelling down chaotic streets. At some point, Anna's shoes were stolen. Oscar, furens, went to retrieve them.

Scarlett Skye turned out to be behind it, dressed as I had always imagined her. The Skyes always had an agenda. They were overcomplicated, had a strong sense of self-denial and duty, and usually ended in tragedy, but hey - I loved them. And as I mentioned before, she was Oscar's wife-from-the-grave. If you just imagine a femme fatale, then you're a good way to understanding what I mean by "Skye".

So he challenged her about it, and the whole situation got quite violent and nasty - again, I'm amazed just how Oscarlike I was in my dream. But then she revealed her master-stroke. While he had been searching, she had found Anna and again, very Skyeishly, had worked on her fears. They had left Emily at home, Oscar had said there was no time to go back - and was probably right - but Scarlett played on that, and Anna had left to retrieve her. At that point, things looked like they were to get even more unpleasant for Scarlett and Oscar - and I was glad to wake up.

Obviously, the apocalyptic London comes from the sheer amount of War of the Worlds I listened to last night, and the disturbingly rapey overtones in some of those threats doubtless stemmed from a tenser-than-usual episode of The A-Team. But I have an Anna day maybe once a month, and less often now she's gone, so the fact I dreamed of her was odd - especially because I was Oscar in the dream. He's not a character I have ever empathised with, I even for a time played his arch-enemy. But weirder still was how in character the three were - it's a situation I can easily believe, with all three acting as they did. And I'm still a little weirded out.

Today has been horrible. I think this may be death: that's how rough I feel.

Woke up nice and early to finish my essay, then moved to the PC room to print it off - for want of a nail the shoe was lost - but my account refused to log in, and half the computers were broken. It was OK, once someone else left but then my files crashed at least three times - for want of a shoe the horse was lost - and then, when I tried to print, the printer sulked for ten whole minutes. Then I ran out of printer credits - for want of a horse the rider was lost - and after a kind donation by a friend, the printer ran out of paper - for want of a rider the battle was lost - and only then could I get on the road.

I hate the film studies department. Their room is five floors up, and hard to find - and they set their deadline at 12, not a minute later. I should have anticipated printing my essay and cover sheet would require some 45 minutes, leaving me only 20 minutes to get from Hampstead to the Strand. It can be done. Unfortunately, this work had left me no time for lunch and a very slight breakfast - so every time I launched into my Run Lola Run impression, my legs siezed up instantly due to having no energy. It was OK once I was on the road, as I couldn't control the speed of that except in the in-between bits, when I happily barged and trod on people to grasp back a few minutes.

I hit Charing Cross at 11:45. The plan was to run down the Strand, which again can be done, but not on a small glass of Honey Loops. So I hopped on a bus down the Strand, which for the first time EVER had a traffic jam - for want of a battle the kingdom was lost - so I hopped off before the stop, and staggered as fast as I could to the university. I wanted to die by this point: running was out of the question. I absent mindedly thought about Caves of Androzani, which I always do when something nasty happens or am required to do a stupid amount of running against a ticking clock, which happens tends to happen to me a lot. I can't explain how, why, anything now - got to get to the Classics department, not much time - save that it's an brilliantly cruel episode of Doctor Who, and in my brain, it's become a sort of subconscious litmus test of the last things in the world I want to do. You'll be amazed at the things which seem to me like a good idea in comparison. It occurs to me out of the blue at times such as this - "well, you're about to fail Film Studies - but hey! It could be worse! You could be rewatching Caves of Androzani..."

Mercifully, I didn't get lost in that maze of tunnels - by this point, running was out of the question - and made it to the film studies department - up those stupid four flights of stairs because the lift feels very dangerous and the emergency telephone is broken - and staggered back through the door, dropping my burdens to the floor in an exahusted slump, and then I checked my watch.

11:58. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The Queen Bat who was overseeing the submissions gave me a very funny look. She said it was fine that I didn't have a word count, mercifully as I didn't have the time - or, indeed, strength - to go find it out.

Yes. I know. Never again.

It was comparatively relaxing getting my Classics essay in. I returned to print cover sheets at a leisurely pace, sweet mercy I ate something, which felt marvellous. I chatted to the nice receptionist who always takes in the essays.

And then I attempted to relax. Reason number 8 why I hate my University - nowhere to rest. London is tiring, and students keep unreal hours - yet it's unreasonable for me to go home between lectures for a nap. Yet in all that huge building, nowhere. I finally curled up in the Compass, on their lovely sofas, removed my shoes and attempted to recoup from the morning's stress. Sorry, no feet on the sofas. Fair enough. But I didn't appreciate being interrupted half an hour later, once I'd used my coat to cushon my feet. I wasn't dirtying it at that point, and furthermore, the Compass is meant to be a student support centre where people can go for quiet time. Sleeping should be within that, surely? There are plenty of other places to study. I got thrown out for some arbitary, stupid rule. So I asked - they are meant to be student advice - whether they knew anywhere I could rest, and they recommended Chapters. The cafe which throws you out if you don't buy their coffee every ten minutes. And they looked at me sympathetically, and I wanted to scream let me sleep here then!

Ultimately, I didn't get my rest. I stayed through to Latin, didn't pay attention due to exaustion and the niggling urge to watch Caves of Androzani (brilliantly cruel, but also brilliant full stop - you could watch it three times in a row and still be ready for more. If you hadn't topped yourself.)

The trip home was also pretty funny. The Tube carriage doors shut prematurely in our carriage. I'd just let a man with a bag go in front of me - he got trapped in them, struggled through and tried to hold them open for me and an older woman. No joy - but another group of men in the carriage, seeing what was going on, opened the doors between the carriages so we could move to one with open doors through those "DANGER OF DEATH" doors. We moved as quickly as we could, but didn't get through before they closed too. I thanked them. It reminded me a little of the doors shutting on Journey's End Donna: these things happen for a reason. So I assumed it was a sort of fate, as the doors worked perfectly well at the next station, from where I walked home via the library.



Last night my dad sent me an email entitled "if the flu panic takes off", then followed this "if" with a detailed 10-point email on how not to get it, which struck me as very strange. It was all sound advice, and thank you for it, but it struck me as weird considering he'd never thought of it before. Flus happen all the time, right? Until I typed "flu" into Google and discovered a

MASSIVE KILLER PANDEMIC AAARGH!!

about to conquer the Earth. I'm a bit out of the news loop here, and suddenly Richard Burton started rumbling through my brain:

"It seems totally incredible to me now that everyone spent that evening as
though it were just like any other. From the railway station came the sound
of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the
distance. It all seemed so safe and tranquil. Around me, the daily routine
of life, working eating, sleeping, was continuing serenely as it had for
countless years." (War of the Worlds, musical)

Suddenly, and I think it was point 6: try and come back to Eyam Guernsey as soon as possible, I anticipated waking up in the opening scenes of 28 Days Later. I've wondered before how it would be to live in impossible times, such as a world war. I'm not sure how anyone can comprehend Total War who hasn't been through it: the terrorist thing occasionally looked like turning that way, but I was always sure things would be fine. I'm pretty sure things will be fine this time around, but I'm following the list of paranoid instructions just in case. If things do get that bad, then I am guiltily looking forward to the fiction that will emerge from the experience (if I do, that is). The only noticeable difference in my daily activities is getting wrapped sandwiches instead of loose buns for lunch, and an urge to indulge in post-apocalyptic fiction. Anyone want to join me for a War of the Worlds-28 Days Later-12 Monkeys marathon and end-of-the-world party?

This includes 9: if you feel unwell, see a doctor immediately.

Now don't laugh. I wouldn't have dreamed of being so daft, if not for a chance encounter with Metro magazine this morning listing the symptoms of the beastie. Curiously, it turns out I've had almost all the symptoms of flu in the last week: I was hit out of the blue by a droopy, sleepy thing at my grandma's house, which at the time I put down to misery and stress, and then this weekend I lost my voice. Both of these were weird enough, because I get ill very rarely. The third symptom on the list was loss of appetite, which I do periodically get every few weeks, but I happen to be also having a spate now. I'm only missing fever.

So I did attend a Kings drop-in session about it, as I had three hours to kill. I was virtually positive that, had I a killer flu, I'd be feeling properly ropey, and she confirmed whan I already knew: it was just a nasty series of coincidences. And then she nagged me about whether or not I needed an MMR jab.

Tonight the, headline on Voice magazine read the End is Nigh...

...but fortunately, it was talking about the family unit. Phew. I think.

Incidentally, have you all heard the Jeff Wayne War of the Worlds? Narrated by Richard Burton's addictively velvet voice, it's HG's classic story - progged up. I'm reminded just how good it is on a relisten. "Forever Autumn" is the famous single, and NOTHING beats "The Eve of the War" and "Horsell Common". It does trickle in the second half, true, but "Spirit of Man" is also an awesome progballad to scream along to. There's a great album of remixes and dubs based on it too, thank you Spotify. Spielburg's adaptation chose, smartly I guess, to use very very little music. Unfortunately, the record is so iconic in my brain at least, that it kept playing over the images.

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century..."

The films are good, HG's a classic, and Welles deserves a prize for cheek. But this is the definitive version.

Dump-du-dump-dididi-dump-di-dump -UUUUUUUUUUUUUU-LAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Every time I have a holiday with a friend, I don't have time to blog it, and lose the strength to afterwards. I am resolved to finish this one. I'm also sick of referring to everyone at home by number. It was fine for Cinecism, when I didn't need to mention them often, but now it's getting irritating. Plus, there are other people I need to abbreviate to numbers. In consequence, they're being renamed as Aventia, Caelia, Capitolina, Palatina, Quirinala and Viminala - and the first person to get the reference gets an imaginary cookie. No, I haven't attributed all the names yet, but today's story is about Palatina and Caelia.

Because this is a monster post, I'm actually going to use subject headings. It's worth reading.

Day 1

...began with me arriving an hour early at Waterloo to pick Caelia up. I got my times wrong, but it was nice in a way, because it was the first time off I'd had all week. I'd even brought my Iliad in case there was a place to work. There wasn't. I love the Southbank area, so I went for a walk. I had twin aims: I wanted to visit the BFI, just because as a film student, it's my spiritual home in a sense. I like to touch down there every few months, purely for supersticious, sentimental reasons. And I like ambling about there. My second aim was to buy an ice cream. No idea where that came from, but I wanted ice cream. So I ambled off, and was amused to find an ice cream van on my route. I hung around for a bit, as it was across a busy road, but decided my life wasn't worth it - and as I turned around, I spotted my salvation.

The Topolski Century, or, my first loving brush with splatty art

I was through the door almost before I'd read the words "free art gallery." Under one of the Southbank's many arches and bridges, they'd snuck in a huge art installation. It was love at first sight.

Feliks Topolski is one of those people you hear about and think "how do I have your life?" He was born in Warsaw around the turn of the century, and transformed himself into the journalist Forrest Gump. He was in Europe for World War 2, London for the Blitz, America for the race riots. He witnessed the Chinese Revolution, met the Black Panthers, and visited Bergen Belsen after the end of the war. And he drew. For much of his life, he hand-printed the "Topolski Chronicle" - a broadsheet of doodles from wherever he was or whatever he was doing at the time. A bit like me, in a way - except typically, Topolski was off meeting Evelyn Waugh, George Bernard Shaw, Ghandi or Martin Luther King. The George Bernard Shaw is one of my favourites, it's so darn cute.

Topolski's Century is the final product of this marvellous life. He's transformed his experience of the world's hugest events into one ongoing mural, 600ft high, winding it's way around two huge spaces. It's in that splatty, expressionist style I hate hate most of the time, but this is staggering stuff. I'm very, very close to voluenteering to man the door next term, because I think it's a cause worth hours of my time every week. I've found images on the web, but they don't do it justice - everyone who comes to visit me, from now onwards, will be my excuse to visit the Century again!

Among my favourites were "100 Hippies", which is what it sounds like, and the terrifying one of the Black Panthers. You had to pass a door from Newgate Gaol, which already had me creeped, and the mural itself was black and huge. But you kept picking out faces. I bought a postcard, I had to - true, it didn't convey being there, but the point of souveneirs is to remind you of good times, plus I want to support it. This is my postcard:

http://www.felikstopolski.com/chicago20.htm

It's of protests at Grant Park in the 60s, and I love the way the Riot Police form this unreal swarming wave over the picture.

Caelia arrives

The postcard did not leave me much for lunch. It's a travesty that you can't get a drink and a snack in central London for less than £5. I went to Cranberry, which is like pick'n'mix for adults/hippies/health-food-freaks/borgeosie, and was pestered by the girl behind the desk while I tried to assess the huge range of options. She finally ended up bullying me into getting a bag of honey-cashews, an act I only half resented - I'd intended to get something anyway, it was just the choice which had me stumped.

Caelia arrived about ten minutes later, and was quick to compliment my coat. Meeting people in public places is hard, so I tend to dress even more outlandishly than usual - and I'd promised to meet her dressed as Colin Baker's Doctor. We ambled across to catch a bus home - it's cheaper and nicer than the Tube, plus the 13 goes via Oxford Street, Baker Street, Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus. Caelia has never been to London, which resulted in me drowning her with my love for the city. Apparently, it's not like she expected - but she couldn't quite define what that was. More windey streets. Which struck me as so instinctively bizzare, because London is so much that gothic Victorian brickwork for it's underbelly, and that overwrought neo-classical Victorian architecture up top. We crossed Waterloo bridge, and I got excited for the both of us that we were passing Big Ben and the London Eye. Caelia was thoroughly absorbed by people-watching on the bus, and I can't blame her: it's one of the things I love best about the place. She later remarked that everyone seemed to be exaggerated types. She's right, but I wonder why? Is it because there are so many people that the real cliches stand out, or is it just this place?

Back with the Dude

Once we got home, I had to do the dishes then tidy my room. I'd been too busy working to do it before, and I'm ashamed to note both were in a state. Well, not that ashamed. Not ashamed at all. I had done my dishes, of course, before leaving Uni - but then we'd had an "end of term" party, which instantly undid my good work. Caelia looked through my drawings file while I did this, and then we played the Game.

This was, predictably, very funny, devious and overcomplicated. Tea was what could be scraped together - I produced Baileys, Peanut Butter, rice, dark chocolate, veggie sausages, smoothie, cereal bars, peas and egg fried rice, from which we made a nice dish. She was very enthusiastic about my new smoothie.


Watching a bit of Who
And then we trekked off to the TV room. Doctor Who is an infinite format, moving from space opera, via comedy, to gothic opera or pure science fiction. Four to Doomsday is the ultimate demonstration of this - it's completely and utterly nuts. It features repeated scenes of Chinese Dragon-dances and Aboriginal customs, on a spaceship orbiting Earth, ruled over by an incompetant space-frog named Monarch who thinks he is God - and whose master plan, by the way, is to travel faster than light so he can go back in time to the beginning of the universe, believing he will meet himself there. And there are robots. If you can handle all that - and it's easier than you think, as it's very well done on marvellously convincing sets - then this is a genius episode.

And it's got very good characterisation for three of the shows most misunderstood companions, which is why we watched it - Caelia loves Adric, and he's great in it. After that, we watched the Trial of a Timelord deleted scenes. Those for the awfully convoluted Terror of the Vervoids were particularly amusing, as taken out of context they made no sense at all. You could even have reinserted them at random, without making the plot any more clear - or any more confusing. I've always kidded that you could skip the third episode without losing anything from that episode. The whole Trial is 14 parts long. Vervoids part 3 is Trial episode 11, and by that point you really do want to get on with it. The idea of the episode 15 minutes longer causes me pain.

Two in particular, both Valeyard related ones, did not deserve to be cut. In those cut pieces, it appears one of his eyes is blue and the other brown. Not that there's a problem with that disability, but in context I found it very creepy. I do draw Valeyards, mossy with ink and shading - but when I got back to my room, I tried my best to draw him again: insane, with mismatched eyes, and totally Topolskified. Didn't wholly work, as my style is neat, precice and detailed - I can't bear to risk ruining a perfect work enough to ever be an impressionist. Even though at that moment, a portrait in thick black brush was exactly what I wanted to draw. I might practice this when I get home, because Topolski is my new hero.

We left after that, as poor Caelia had been travelling all day. We talked weddings, for a long time: dresses, bridesmaids dresses. Even though I'd rather not have a flashy wedding, I do know how I would have one. I don't like the cost, and I don't like the responsibility, and in all honesty, I'm not sure I could ever stand up and be that romantic in public. If I do marry, I want to know about an hour in advance. You're all invited to the party afterwards.

But it was fun to discuss colours and cloths for a bit, and Caelia explained her design for a subtle Dalek-inspired bridesmaid's dress. This blossomed into us trying to convert every Doctor Who villain into a wearable outfit, and some of the sketches will be on Deviant Art, once exams are over.

Day 2

SHOPPING SPREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We started on the Strand Stamp Centre, and Caelia thought I was joking when I said I had a local Doctor Who shop, but if you've been there you'll know it's heaven, more or less. I'd decided to buy, at long last, the 1986 Annual. I've looked at it longingly for several months now, and I was out of Colin Baker signables too. I'll discuss this more later, but it's not just about having an autograph - it does matter what gets signed, and I correctly decided the annual would be worth treasuring. I later saw the same annual for £10 cheaper at the convention, but didn't feel too bad about it. A shop wholly dedicated to Doctor Who can't be making that much, so a bit like buying at your local coffee shop instead of Starbucks, I feel duty bound to buy from there if anywhere. I always check there before Forbidden Planet, because I do want to support it: it feels like family. And the guy at the desk said hi, as always, and asked how I'd enjoyed the Easter special. I asked about the next signing, which I won't be going to, and he asked if I had a new hat. Hell, the shop is between my bus stop and my university - so if I get into London early, I always go in for a browse. It's a sort of home.

From there we moved up and onwards to Covent Garden. I've loved it ever since reading The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, a regency novel set there. It was part of my Jack the Ripper phase, and gave me a real sense of the age and history of the place. We watched the usual string quartet play Mozart, Purcell and the like, and then witnessed an appalling magic trick. We found a perfect 6th Doctor waistcoat for my costume, in multi-colour checks - but in £60 pure silk, so we passed by.

By that point I was feeling quite ill: I had the misfortune that the Dread Monthly Misfortune struck on two days in which I had to do a lot of walking. By the time we reached FCUK, I was feeling really queasy and had to sit down. Caelia had spotted from the bus that the brand had a tie in with the new Wolverine film, and she's a huge Wolverine fan, so we were there to look at their T-shirts. Wow - there was about 6 or 7 very nice designs indeed, the only problem being that they were naturally only men's styles. But she found a few she liked - helped, she says, by a very nice male shop assistant who assumed she was buying it for someone else - and with a little encouragement, tried them on.

I am staggered by how good it looks. I'm still staggered - it was a nice design, but you wouldn't see it and think "thats a men's tee" in the way one usually does with the nicest cult t-shirts. Plus, they were giving away free Wolverine dog-tags with them. Result = one very happy Caelia.

We then went next door, which had gorgeous dresses in a fantastic sale - one of the times I was glad I don't buy clothes unless I absolutely have to. I also kept an eye out for my green trainers I intend to buy, but saw nothing totally suitable.

From there onwards to Forbidden Planet! I'll never tire of that shop. Having Caelia there made me feel like I was on holiday, so I did indulge. In retrospect, I probably should have talked myself out of buying two packs of Watchmen armbands. I hated the little rubber band fashion, hated the hypocracy. Sure it was a great way to donate to charity, but once it was a fashion item I had six months of people proudly wearing their good deeds on their arms. Then the big brands noticed, made fashion variations without the charity element, and - oh, thank goodness that's gone.

But I want to wear a band reading "Rorschach is my hero" on my wrist, because he is, I love him to bits and want the world to know. Unfortunately, there were about 10 designs, but in pre-packaged packs, so you couldn't mix and match. A pity, as I'd still have bought 4 - but 4 I really wanted. I picked up a second pack, because there was one reading "I trust in Ozymandeus", and I simply couldn't resist it. They will probably end up in the sale, ultimately, in which case I'll hope that the third one I really wanted - "R.I.P. Edward Morgan Blake", with his dates - is still there.

I was also sorely tempted by the Rorshach steel lunchbox. Think of the versitility! By day, you can store your sandwiches and snacks - by night, perfect for transporting hacksaws, thumbscrews and other toys for punishing wrongdoers with! But I resisted.

In any case, Caelia also managed to find two of the Doctor Who Telos Novellas which had been mega reduced. The damn things are about £20, hardback and mega-exclusive, so I've never bought one, but she somehow managed to find two reduced to £6 which had been under my nose for months - both signed by the author, the editor, the artist and Sylvester McCoy. I find it hard to say no to Doctor Who books as it is, but the potential value of the thing in 20 years - the Telos books all had a limited run of 2000 - was a lovely excuse. Mine is number 1335.

Caelia spent more than I did. At this point, it's still within my memory to calculate how much that was by the end of the day - but I don't really want to do that, so I'm going to let myself forget. The only other moment of comedy was passing an item I've intended to get her for her birthday for over 8 months now, and managing to stand in front of it before she spotted it.

We broke for lunch at this point, at a lovely Indian restaurant which mugged Caelia with it's gorgeous smells as we walked past. I had a salad, she had a mini-curry, and the entire serving staff were apparently very amused that we'd both asked for tap water: on top of my salad were two green chillies. As if to say, if you're going to ask for water, we'll give you a reason to need it. Not in a nasty way - they made fun of me every time they passed, and I did give one of them three or four experimental nibbles. No way could I eat the lot! We shared ice creams for dessert.

Caelia decided she wanted a TARDIS key from the first shop, but I planned a roundabout route back. So we went through Chinatown, Leicester Square, Soho - my good work at persuading her that the area was fine, and I'd never seen an instant's trouble walking through there was spoilt for actually seeing trouble and feeling slightly endangered there for the first time in my life. Down via the joys of Berwick street, where Caelia picked up a Marvel heroes bag. I discovered that the corset I'd fallen in love with was still in the shop, and at a bargain price of £60. I may still return for it. The problem is my propensity for fainting - I'm not sure if I could ever wear it in public for a long space of time and be sure of being fine. Yet it does such wonders for posture...!

I need either Calypso to come with me and talk me into it, or my mum to come to London and give it the OK.

Back down Oxford Street, in and out of Dorothy Perkins, Marks and Spencers, all the way to Hamleys. Mainly because I wanted to show her the Narnia staircase. We also found a nice young man doing some brilliant magic tricks there. Outside we got ambushed by a fantastically cheery young woman, promoting Victoria Jackson products. She's the consultant on America's Next Top Model - possibly my favourite reality show, by the way - about to set up shop in London, and was doing some market research - which involved a truly awesome make-up deal. The fact her little bag of goodies was reduced all the way to £25 was not as shocking as the fact it would be £260 in stores once they opened. But apparently, according to Caelia, £25 for that amount of make-up full stop was a bargain. Let's put it this way: the girl told us the deal was £25 instead of £30 because they'd lost the gift bags. Caelia did go for it, although she later told me she'd never ever buy from the shop once it got going. For a store which marks it's prices up by £5 for a bag - well, I'm inclined to agree!

It was that that threw my schedule off - I was sure we'd make it back to the Strand in time, but that fifteen minutes were the deal breaker. It doesn't seem far to me, in my mind - but it is, and it was shut by the time we'd route-marched back. From there, we got the bus home - via the supermarket, where Caelia put herself in charge of tea (thank goodness) and we later made a cheap chillie. My part of the cooking was producing two Oreo shakes, and we discovered by chance that the perfect way to stop the biscuit settling at the top was to give it a stir with a Pocky stick.

Vapilla had returned by this point, so she joined us for three Games - one of which she won, the other two went to Caelia. We called it a night pretty early - both had to shower, I had to plait my hair, and we had to plan our bags for the Convention tomorrow.

Did we sleep, for excitement? Did we hell...

Full post on that coming shortly!

Just adding my voice to the vocal internet outcry about the Pirate Bay trial.

It's not just that I feel strong sympathy for the people involved, there's something not quite right about it. It reminds me of Al Capone. Everyone knew Al Capone was breaking the law - but no one could prove it. Ultimately, they arrested him for tax evasion, which they could make stick.

The Pirate Bay is legal...ish. All it does is provide a linking service to where other people have uploaded music. So while it's blatantly facilitating illegal behavior, it's not illegal itself. I'm not a lawyer, not even close - but my understanding of the situation is to have convicted them would require some enormous smudging and squeaking on behalf of the prosecution.

It is not the fault of those four men, personally, that $3.6 million has been ripped off from companies - had they not been there, someone else would have. There's a lie at the heart of the trial, because they are being prosecuted on behalf of every single user of the Pirate Bay. Is this fair, I ask? Yes, they are at fault, and yes perhaps a large example needs to be made. But are the Companies going to hunt down Demonoid, Isohunt, and all those ones not famous enough for me to know the name of after this?

I'm not saying they weren't doing something wrong - but I don't think they should have to pay $3.6 million of damages either. It's like arresting a knife manufacturer, because people have used his products in a murder. Forgetting that it is not his fault how customers use his service, and that knives do have an important and useful part in our society.

And there are ways of using it legally. I've never downloaded anything I would have been willing to buy. I have a pirate copy of Warriors at the Edge of Time, so I can put an album already posessed on LP onto my MP3 player. It is legal to change the format of things you own, and I consider the royalties already passed on. Is it fair for the company to make me buy a product twice, because formats have changed? The same goes for my DVD of King's Demons. I own a video, but can't play it on my laptop at university. When that appears legally, does the BBC want me to pay for it a second time? With format changes, the companies have a real trick: the potential to sell us the same album on record, tape, CD, i-Tunes download, and whatever comes next. Within fifty years, my video collection will be useless and I'll be forced to upgrade.

At it's purest level, I see the potential of web download as redressing this balance. Another way I have used it is for collecting outdated Doctor Who memrobilia - books, magazines, novels. Strictly illegal, but if you choose to think of purchasing a product as a method of paying it's creator, then it is morally fine. There is no way I could aquire, say, So Vile a Sin and get any of the proceeds to Orman and Aaronovitch. Instead, the winner would be the unscrupulous former owner, charging anything upwards of £100 for the damn thing. It's like an unofficial public domain. I can get it for free, or get it off eBay - the original company and creator will still not see a penny of it.

Of course, this presupposes that everyone will consider the morality of downloading, and the majority of people probably do not. This is a shame, because the internet is a fantastic tool, and we need the companies to see how great a way it is of distributing media. Piracy will not be stamped out - instead, it should be integrated. Spotify, iPlayer and 4OD are three examples of the pirate ideology - being able to find and consume media online - being adapted to a legal framework. And they're brilliant!

The way I percieve the legal-piracy of the future - let's call it privateering! - is the internet as
a repository for the lost. If the privateer wants to buy the latest James Bond movie, then he should stop being a cheap bastard and buy it. If he's interested in an avant-garde movie he saw twenty years ago, that's never been released on DVD - that he should be able to find on the web. TV shows which were never released. Books long out of print. With an effective indexing system, copyright authors could even withdraw such materials from the program if they ever wanted to rerelease them.

I'm a romantic - art and knowledge should be free. As Freeware Genius puts it, and seeing the motto gives me an inner boost every time I open the site, "SOME DAY ALL SOFTWARE WILL BE FREE". But I recognise the piper must be paid, and so he should be. The internet is an oppertunity to free up media. Perhaps the companies are just running scared because it also gives individuals chance to liase directly with the artists and cut them out altogether. Take Bandstocks - fans invest £10 or more in an album, to enable it's release, not the companies. I'm so tempted to get involved, because the idea of it is just so beautiful: rum and grog for everyone!
So I'll leave you with the uplifting words of Patrick Wolf, and I'll see you in this future:

"My roots in the music industry have always been firmly placed in
independent music. As a teenager I was inspired by visionary labels such as
Digital Hardcore, Fierce Panda, Planet Mu, and Tigerbeat 6. As an 18 year old, I
was given full creative space by the small label Faith and Industry to grow and
to make the records and sounds I had to. After two independent releases I
decided to experiment to see what would happen when a major label and my third
album collided. It was very beneficial and a great learning curve for me, but I
am very happy to be back in the creative, free world of independent music; on my
own label, Bloody Chamber Music (A bloody chamber being a heart, a tribute to
the book "The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter), started earlier this year.

So, here I am. Album four with my own record label. With the old world
recording industry a rapidly sinking ship; recording studios closing weekly,
free downloads daily, more musicians hitting the long road than ever before to
feed themselves, I am happy to have come across a new intimate system of
audience and artist participation called Bandstocks. This will be funding Bloody
Chamber Music, and the international physical and digital release of my fourth
album, Battle, and its collective singles. It’s an exciting game we can play
together; you get to be an investor and stakeholder in the album. You will get
special editions, first copies of the album, private privileges and mixes... and
we get to conquer the world together and show that independence and self
sufficiency are the two ways forward and out of the mess the industry is in.

When I pressed my first EP we made one thousand vinyl copies. We sold these
at friends’ shops across the UK, and with the money made we funded the mix of
Lycanthropy. The music industry needn’t be so complicated or Wizard of Oz. It’s
time to drop the curtain and stop relying on a stale patriarchy. I'm excited, I
hope you are too. Welcome to the future!

Patrick Wolf. 9th.December 2008

According to today's Tarot reading - I'm trying a small one every day, just to keep in practice and get the hang of the cards, and let me repeat my disclaimer yet again that my mind is not going to be taken over by a cult just because I'm having fun with some very pretty pictures which have a practical application in problem solving - there is no way I can finish my essays before the deadline. And finally, I'll add, it's my blog and I'll blog what I want to without worrying about your disapproval, thanks.

According to the Two of Cups, this is because I've been overconfident for weeks about how well I'm doing, and also because I can't make my mind work past the brain-fuzz. Apparently, the best I can do about this situation is to trust in the wisdom of the Nine of Cups - but unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly what it means. It's traditional meaning is indulging yourself, wish fufilment, enjoyment, which doesn't seem at all what I need to be doing.

Maybe it's a mystical message from the beyond that if I spend tomorrow in a mega Doctor Who marathon, I will return to find four neatly typed copies of my essay on my pillow. Tempted to try this. Apparently, this card is known as the "Wish Card" - which is really, really unhelpful considering the Magician Reversed has already given me a good heads up that my wish may yet crash and burn. Maybe it's a sign that all things are still possible - "Time is in flux!" ~ the Doctor - and that I can finish my essay after all.

Having had a peek at what I can do about this dyre situation, I laid out an extra one to represent aspects of this situation I have no control over - and recieved Judgement Reversed. Reversed, I discover after research, isn't necessarily the direct opposite - maybe it means the same as the normal card, but subverted or diminished somehow. The only judging going on in the next few weeks is that of my essay, and I'm tempted to think together this means "you can still get them in, but don't think you've any chance of a good mark!"

What, both of them, I moan to myself, and throw in a fifth card for good luck (the first card was a Querent Card, i.e. one to represent myself. I got the Queen of Cups, which is perfect and obvious). Five of Swords, it says. Hmmm, thanks. It doesn't look like good news to me - I'll look it up. Bollocks to that, then, it's a terrible card: indicates bad times ahead, and seems to think I'm lazy and selfish into the bargain.

I wonder, would the reading appear to be positive if I were more confident about my writings?


Disclaimer for parents: this is an outdated divination method which is not real. Probably. There is no reason to panic. Probably. This message will now self-distruct. Probably.










Ticka-boom!!!!!!!!!!

I just found this unpublished from the 24th Feb. My new annotations are in blue.

Kuleshov is a famous name in film studies, and it's hard not to talk about him. He cut together a short film - a man with a neutral expression, a crying woman, same man same expression, an empty bowl of soup, same man, a folorn child, and so on. Audiences praised the actor's ability to express paternal pride and sorrow. But his expression never changed. It was the audience imposing their own narrative on the images.

Avant-garde cinema knows about this, so it deliberately seeks to be "indeterminate", the keyword of the lecture. In other words, they're tricky just to wind you up - you get no clues, you have to make your own meaning, and interpretations have the habit of disintigrating.

Because it's art which makes you think. Not necessarily because there's something deeper going on, but because of the human urge to assign meaning to meaninglessness and see patterns when they're not there.

So when my mum, say, who freely admits to being artistically low-brow, a fan of landscapes and flowerbowls - when she says it's pointless because it's complicated, perhaps she's wrong. There's nothing complicated about the Pony Glass, just repeated images. But we ask why it's being shown to us - we can't handle the simplicity. And there's the dichotomy of avant-garde cinema, using something which is on the surface very simple (say, repeated black and white screens), yet the artist or audience overlaying onto it their own complicated understandings.

This hit me with a flash of light during The Flicker, and instantly converted me from a hater of experimental movies into a passionate fan. I've always thought them pretentious, in a word - but presented as we watched them tonight, not backed up by artistic rhetoric, they can be enjoyed as beauty for beauty's sake. Like any other artform, we can see it as honest or ironic, as allegorical - or, and this is a massive leap for film which has always been a narrative art - we can see it as just beauty.

It's an idea I've always loved. A lot of people gave up on LOST because they didn't understand why there was a polar bear on the island. "I don't like this because it doesn't make sense". I loved the concept on it's own merits, and the same goes for the Prisoner - I think "this is cool!" first, and rarely consider why or how something works. I never notice plot holes either.

I've even come close to expressing this about film before. You might recall when I discussed genre how I defended Pride and Prejudice against a collegue who hated the artificial setting, neat framing and general cleanliness of line and colour. I like looking at beautiful people, in beautiful places and beautiful costumes, while they amble about to beautiful music. This in itself is a pleasure, never mind whether or not they serve the narrative. People arranging themselves into paintings is pleasing to me.

So experimental films, as I understand them (remember what I said about us providing our own meanings...?), are as complicated as you make them - and if you choose to reject meaning entirely, they can be purely sensory experiences. Just as it doesn't necessarily* matter what a song is about, but that the melody alone can still move you, nor do you have to recongnise and understand the subject matter of a painting to admire the skill of the artist. Art for art's sake. Film can be like this - it can stimulate all the senses, without actually making sense. It can be as primal and pointless as modern "blotches on a canvas and a can of baked beans" art, and can still mean something when detatched from meaning.



*I say "necessarily" because Friend 2 has always strongly disagreed with me about this. She doesn't understand how I can not pay attention to the lyrics, and I do see where she's coming from - the meaning, if it has words, or the intention, if it doesn't, can be vital to your appreciation of music. On the other hand, I maintain you can get an equally valid appreciation without them. For example, "Trains to Brazil" is an uplifting song about the train bombings, and how wonderful today is as you could be dead tomorrow. Yet those soaring trumpets at the end are also uplifting on their own, even without being twinned to the lyrics.


You can, if you wish, now point out that that's the most pretentious attack on pretention and most complex defence of simplicity you've ever seen. Whatever. I'm an academic now. I even wax lyrical about how I conform conventions of gender identity in the way I make breakfast*



*(cereal, the fruit of human labour and derived from fertility goddess Ceres, milk and empty bowls waiting to be filled being three examples of strongly feminine-charged iconography, yet it is consumed with a spoon, an obviously phallic symbol, and then if you relate that to the work of five long-winded French feminists, dream analysists and sports commentators, add paprika to taste and leave to stand for thirty minutes, you have the beginnings of an excellent PhD...)






I wonder what would be the effect of showing Experimental Film to babies and toddlers, before they've got a grasp of stereotypes, narrative expectations and filmmaking cliches? Because once I grasped that there didn't have to be a meaning, it was like being a child again - just colours and sounds and pretty things.

This was certainly the case for the first film, Our Lady of the Sphere. Made of Terry Gilliam-Monty Python style cutouts, there was maybe a story of sorts going on - repeated imagery of clocks and luggage, something about a baby in a well, fish in space. But really it was that sensory experience I'm talking about. Why does the lady have a bubble on her head? I don't know, and furthermore, don't care. But I am enjoying looking at it, both from the aesthetic "this looks good" and the anarchic incorrectness of the image. Probably my favourite, too, for the whimsy of the imagery.

The second one, Pony Glass, had more of a story - though no clear resolution - and also, apparently, an agenda. You don't turn squeaky clean Superman sidekick Jimmy Olsen into a cross-dressing homosexual without inferring some definite subtext. Made entirely from comic book cutouts, it was a cheeky and good natured story (apparently) about love. Jimmy is tormented because his old girlfriend is dating some new guy. He goes to a magician who reveals the only way to get over her is to dress up as a girl, which after some angst Jimmy embraces enthusiastically and shags anything which passes his way. This goes on for some while, presumably saying something about America's loss of innocence, and it's sufficiently long that you assume there's going to be a plot twist or resolution. But there isn't. Then it ends.

Passage a l'acte wins the artistic Stockholm Syndrome award of the night. An 18-second shot from To Kill a Mockingbird, stretched out over an interminable 12 minutes, by repeating every minescule movement over, and over, and over again, so the whole thing judders forward in pain. If you've seen our Lord of the Rings, there's a bit where Friend 2 leaps towards the mushrooms, crying "mushrooms!", which seems OK when viewed as part of the film. But on the gag reel, we looped it - now, she's trapped leaping and leaping and leaping, the soundtrack stutters "shroomshroomshroomshrooms", and we've put a rabbit-style boing effect in time too. Which is pretty funny, for fifteen seconds. Passage is 12 minutes long. It repeatorepeats the first syllable, then the next, then the next, in a very irritating frustrating manner. But soon you abandon the conventional narrative of the scene (why are they arguing, where is he going et al) and understand your own. The repeated movements are sometimes hilarious - at one point the girl appears to repeatedly spank the boy, and the slammingslammingslamming door is also neat. You read dance into the jilting movements and sometimes, the stuttering text takes on almost musical qualities. Again, you make your own meaning, and although sitting through this was often agony, I can't deny it was good. It made something of cinematic "dead time", forced you to focus on every little action and movement and expression. But it still made me want to die.

At times it reminded me of Mr Brightside - yes, the Killers song. Didn't like it at first. Then they played it a million times on the radio and I loathed it. Got sick of hearing it. In my last four weeks of school I was constantly bombarded with it on a daily basis, and now it's among my favourites. The point is, anything endured for long enough will seem like a good idea. Artistic Stockholm Syndrome.

The same goes for some Experimental Film, and this one in particlar. Stage one: this is boring. Stage two: this is really boring. Stage three: right, I've had enough now. Once it's over: bloody genius!


I have since watched some more Martin Arnold films, in the same style. One was 15 minutes of a man coming into a room and kissing Rita Hayworth. It was very boring. However, Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy was just wonderful - he uses that style of repeat-o cinema to read a deliberate narrative where none is there into some innocent Hollywood movies, reinserting sex and Oedipus where surely it was unintentional. For example, there is an image of a son kissing his mother. But looped, looped, stretched, repeated, it becomes increasingly downright twisted, as you are forced to take account of every facet of the scene, such as nods of the head and closing eyes.

While Passage was torture for the audience, Tscherkassky was torture for the film itself. Not much to say about Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine, except that it was intense - imagine Good the Bad and the Ugly, in black and white and given the Planet Terror treatment. He'd ripped out some bits of that movie, and literally tortured the actual film. Very loud, very trippy, and it gave me a headache. But again, there was a wonderful sense of pace. There was no story, true, but the violent bits were violent, the running away was exciting, even though you had no idea why these things were happening. For example, the "hanging scene" - which any GBU fan can tell you is hardly intense - when repeated again and again over two minutes becomes truly horrific. Then, when it falls to the ground it cuts straight to him lying by the graves; and then again, his run through the graveyard which is originally sweeping and exciting, is turned into a nightmarish desperate dash running away from something appalling.

According to the lecture, in the early 1920s it was believed avant-garde was the future of cinema, and these things would be adopted into the mainstream. And indeed these films were the future, when compared to films of parades or daily life which made up the other half of cinema. The advent of sound killed the dream - because only major companies could afford the new technology. Amateur experimentors were still producing silents, and so naturally they fell by the wayside. Seeing Instructions has made me want to revive that dream - that avant-garde filmmaking can be readopted into the mainstream, and that the experimentation integrated into everyday film. A whole movie, with narrative and character, with elements shot like this would be stunning.

I've since seen more of his films in the Maughan, and they absolutely terrify me. Dreamwork was one, and Outer Space was the other. I almost had to switch Dreamwork off. Can't define his style without showing you - but fortunately, someone has uploaded my favourite to youtube. Hurrah! The uploader notes "its supposed to look like it was put through a meat grinder then fed into a pain amplifier."

So put up the volume, and watch the whole thing - preferably with the lights off - and prepare to have your mind expanded.

And then there was The Flicker. At the start of the lecture, the guest lecturer said she always insists on taking this lecture because every year there are three or four converts, and she likes to be there as it happens. Her enthusiasm was obvious, and I warmed to her at once. There was an obvious catch in her voice, a tremor of emotion, when she informed us that The Flicker had not come. She explained it was a half hour long succession of flashing black and white plain screens, and conceded that we were probably all breathing a sigh of relief (I was, for my part, because I was missing an interesting lecture about 50s pulp fiction on the floor above and wanted to be there for the second half).

And then, she explained what we were missing out on, and conducted the lecture referring it to it often, and her enthusiasm for it was irresistable. Some people even saw it in colour, apparently. But before the lecture was over, the tape was discovered after all - my film studies friend suggested this mysterious absence means the orignal had been replaced by the Master, and we were about to be hypnotised.

They were both right. The former that the Flicker was actually a film well worth going through. The latter that perhaps we've all been turned into sleeper agents.

I could see the vortex - you know the rushing 10th Doctor title sequence? Staring at the screen was like swooping down that tunnel. Which might just prove that I can read Doctor Who into anything, even a completely blank screen. It reminded me a little of Donnie Darko, the cinema scene - "have you ever seen a portal?", and then the screen ripples open to reveal...I was expecting some enlightenment at any moment. Because the subject matter wasn't instantly interesting, I became more aware of the cinema and the people around me - appreciating the way the flickering white coloured the people and room that lovely garish gray. "The cinema glow", as Al Stewart would doubtless say, is as much a part of the cinematic experience as the popcorn, the single tear running down the flawless cheek, the nostalgic stories and the bastard in the row in front who won't stop explaining the plot to Marge Simpson and the Pope who are blocking your view. You really appreciated the experience of "being at the cinema" more, because you weren't being distracted by narrative.

That must have been the first few minutes, and I was internally impressed that somehow I wasn't bored. It operated just as the earlier narrative-less films had, in which the lack of solid things to process allowed my mind to wander, but always with reference to what was on screen.

And that was when things started getting weird. Out of the blue, the white screen widened first sideways, making it a stretched rectangle instead of a square. And then it started getting taller as well, and for a moment I felt as if it was going to break off the screen entirely and tower over the room. I felt sick, like I was sinking backwards. I'm sure you must have had this experience too - you're sitting or lying down, then out of the blue you suddenly feel a falling sensation, which after a terrifying instant you rationalise and come back to reality. Well it felt like that - and after coping with the swooping shock of this, my logical mind kicked back in and ensured me it was an optical illusion - after which any visual weirdness ended for the rest of the show.

I said "visual", not "weirdness". I was still enjoying the film when I started falling asleep. The screen was naturally very bright, and we'd already been informed that while viewing, audiences tended to blink less frequently. This seemed to be true - and at this point, whenever I blinked or closed my eyes, I fell asleep. My theory on this is that maybe the pulsing on the screen hit the right frequency to send me to sleep, or something - like accidental hypnotism. But every time I pulled myself and woke up. In retrospect, I should have just gone with it and seen what happened. I had some very weird, brief dreams which won't be repeated.

The only explanation can be that I experienced the final twenty minutes as a series of micronaps, because it didn't seem half an hour long. Half an hour is the length of a Doctor Who episode, so I'm almost a perfect judge of how long 25 minutes is now. Seemed like only ten or so. I suppose the lack of identifyable points of reference also made it seem more timeless than it actually was.

The moment the screen went black, I lost all my tiredness and was totally conscious, confirming my suspicion my drowsniness was a result of the Ipcress experience. Bit of a headache though. Also, an inexplicable urge to assassinate the president of Malaysia.


Oh, I want to be an avant-garde filmmaker when I'm grown!

I thought about the short films I'd almost made a few years back, one called Spider. My animating and illustrating talents weren't quite up to it, but it still plays in my head sometimes. I drew all the key shots, but linking them together was insurmountably huge. The story, and warning, do not read this if you don't like spiders, because it's a bit grossifying:

This all takes place in shades of grey, brown and scratchy black. A miserable author is trying to write, but the camera isn't interested in him. Instead, there is a spider - one of the long legged ones - gliding down a thread. It stops near his ear and, after a moment, crawls inside.

The author doesn't notice, so he goes outside for a walk, and walks morosely down the street. Suddenly, he feels a yank inside, then another - he falls to the ground, in pain and choking. Close up, and you see his eyes widen as, slowly, a huge hairy black leg winds out of his mouth, then another, then another. He struggles and panics, but the Spider keeps coming - until finally he coughs up the whole thing, in a ball of mucus and pus.

He just stays there on the ground, watching in freaky wonderment as this thing jerks around on the pavement (it's a little larger than an average computer monitor), escaping it's mucus-y
prison - and then, once it has struggled and scrambled up, it rushes away down the street, skittering off on it's slippery newborn legs.

The end

God knows how I came up with that one, but there you go. Don't psychoanalyse me. It's far from avantgarde either, with a fixed narrative. The point is, I came up with a short idea, and intended to film it, either animated or with stopmotion cutouts. Never had the time. The other idea is far less organic, far simpler to achieve. I think I'll try it once I get home.

This is genius. Like always, I try to pluck a name based on what I was doing at the time - so this was almost called the Jimmy Olsen, the Lewis Klahr, the Pony Glass, the Andy Hardy, even Cold Fusion considering the contents - but when I saw it's colour, a line jumped at me from Cold Fusion which I, er, no, haven't been reading when I should have been working. In the opening scene, there's a robot band singing about how "they'll always be together in electric dreams" Naturally a Blade Runner tribute, but this smoothie looks like an alien sunset and tastes like liquid joy.

The Electric Dream

Freeze six blocks of either cranberry or pomegranite juice in advance. I'm pretty sure it was pomegranate. It was red in any case.

Throw three of them into the blender, and cover them with pineapple juice. Blend till pink and frothy. Then add the other three blocks, followed by a compensating amount of pineapple.

The pink will rise to the top, and the orange to the bottom - so have a straw, stick, tentacle or laser spanner on hand to keep giving it a stir. Serve in a clear glass so you can see the pink clouds gather over the artificial, neon sky, as you wax lyrical about the nature of man.

Tell me how it goes if you try it.

I currently have more names than smoothies, though. In my head, there are several names which I'm waiting for the right candidate. These include The Smoothie of Truth and the Smoothie of Lies (have to be a pair), The Whole Shebang (should contain EVERYTHING) and Cold Fusion (should, like the book, be a icy clash between two entirely alien substances. Might contain WKD blue or Smirnoff ice, for the colour)

More outlandish ideas involve the smoothies themselves. Considering that my most recent Gallifreyan Sunset, I achieved a...well, brainlike effect, with layers and shadows, I know it'd be possible to make a proper Rorshach-mask smoothie. But I'd need the juices to be black and white. I could get black from coke, coffee, at a push blackcurrent. But it does still need to taste nice - and I don't know any white or black fruit at all. And in my mind, I'm trying to compose a rainbow. Red, then yellow, then orange, then green, then blue. Could be done. If the bottom three layers were decreasingly packed with slushie ice, green was an actual juice on top, and blue floated as a froth on top of that. But it's going to need a stroke of genius. I'll call it Paris is Burning if and when I achieve it, in tribute to that heroic movie.

I've found some Martin "artistic Stockholm Syndrome" Arnold on youtube! Enjoy!



The end of the one I'm doing for my essay, Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy.



Here's HALF of piece touchee, which I could have done for my essay. if I'd fancied going nuts. I don't recommend you watch it all, just a bit to get the idea.

You might enjoy passage a la'acte more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drDPbKquQVw

An apologia regards my fondness for Celine Dion. Not that I'm embarassed - my music taste is weirdly nebulous, in that I actually like some things from most genres - I like romantic slush, and I like experimental weirdness, I like dance-rave-repetitive-noise, some rap, some classical, some Britpop, some blues. I've got one of the widest music tastes I know - and it's probably because I'm not a terribly discerning listener. I have favourites, naturally, but I can listen to pretty much anything and enjoy pretty much everything. No, this is not a challenge. If you interpret it as such, then I have four candidates for the most irritating songs of all time waiting in the wings. For the record, "Dodo/Lurker" by Genesis, "Games Without Frontiers", Peter Gabriel, virtually all Mike Oldfield, and "It's A Lie, It's a Fake" from a weird music site. "It's a Lie" is the worst, because not only does it get in your head - it's appallingly out of tune, so you can't even hum it.

Or maybe, as a musician, I'm drawn to weird stuff like chord sequences and interesting production values, and not artificial ideas like genre - I tend to describe most things I like as "a bit prog"...

So I'm not ashamed of Celine Dion, because even though she's cheesy, she does occupy a hole in the market for cheese - and does it marvellously. Her voice is great, and her fans are terrifying. The real question is how I became a Celine Dion fan, and I'm going to recount it partly as defence for people not convinced, and also because it's quite a good story. 7/10 at least.

I can't remember exactly when it started, but it involved a very vivid memory from childhood of a music video from Top of the Pops. I could remember the plot, more or less: it starts with a man on a motorbike being crushed by a burning tree, and then his ghost wanders around this huge empty house with a woman in a white dress wailing about it. Over the years, the memory got a bit messy - there are scenes I remember which didn't ultimately turn out to be in the video, and in the weird way of childhood memories it was all tied up with Princess Leia and the three times table - no, don't ask, because I have no idea. I was only six at the time. Now I think again, perhaps it was No. 3 on the TOTP chart that week?

Anyway, flash forward to about three years ago. I brought the memory up - and my dad, who I clearly remember was serving us a TV-tea when we were watching it, obviously had clearer memories of it. We spent about an hour on the internet, and he worked out that yes, it was a Celine Dion song. Amusingly enough, it was called "It's all Coming Back to me Now"...

Youtube didn't exist back then, in the Dark Days, so I had to wait till Christmas when he got me her "Best Of" DVD. Watching it was uncanny, and terrifying in the way revisiting childhood things are, but it's also a great video in it's own right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPUIXWg9-Dw >

You can see why it might really stick in the mind of a child. And in the past few years, I've wondered how much it has influenced my thinking. To go back to Lord M, he has this intense problem with two women in white dresses in his past, and about which the sheer iconography of a fleeing blur of white fabric is the most striking thing. Which, one can logically infer, means that I have a very strong image of a Woman in White - and there are other ones in other stories, or films and books I've enjoyed or been scared by. Lucy in Dracula, for example, I always concieved like that. It's an image that just instantly sticks with me. My art project perfume was called White Lady, and even my pseudonyms - Ninquelosse - are the same idea. Maybe my entire love of the Gothic genre started there. Alternately, it happened the other way around, with Lord M. being obsessed with Silver, and his Lucy in the 1700s, and that's why the video struck me...but that bends reality a little far for my liking.

It's a possibility. It was only after I got madly into The Picture of Dorian Gray that I remembered the first time I had come across the story, also as a small child, in a big encyclopedia of weird things. There's a truly terrifying illustration of the painting. For literally half my life, I'd always been genuinely worried by oil paintings and portraits. It was only discovering the original novel which unlocked the memory of the first time I read it, and solved why I so strongly disliked them. They still scare me, but now it's an enjoyable type of terror.

Again, I wonder whether I like the book so much because I had discovered it so long ago, or whether the discovery was a sort of prefiguring of the later love. When I re-read the synopsis-story in the encyclopedia, I even remember the images which occurred to me on reading it so long ago. They're different to the ones the book leaves me. For example (pardon the minor spoiler) the synopsis only mentions that Alan Campbell kills himself, not how - and I always knew that he drowned by a foggy river: very vivid image indeed. Actually, he shoots himself. In his lab. And if we're going to get all circular about pre-occupations and imagery, Lord M has some very interesting things to add about foggy drownings - but it's far too late for that worrying line of questioning. And by now you're probably all thoroughly confused.

Back to White Ladies: Cathy Earnshaw, for example, and Wuthering Heights is a funny one. Wikipedia didn't exist in the Dark Days either, but apparently the song was based on it. What goes around, comes around. A quote from the song's writer:

The scene they always cut out is the scene when Heathcliff digs up
Catherine's body and dances in the moonlight and on the beach with it. I think
you can't get much more operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write
a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about
being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It
was about the dark side of love; about the ability to be resurrected by it... I
just tried to put everything I could into it, and I'm real proud of it. It's
about obsession, and that can be scary because you're not in control and you
don't know where it's going to stop. It says that, at any point in somebody's
life, when they loved somebody strongly enough and that person returns, a
certain touch, a certain physical gesture can turn them from being defiant and
disgusted with this person to being subservient again. And it's not just a
pleasurable feeling that comes back, it's the complete terror and loss of
control that comes back. And I think that's ultimately a great weapon.

I've never actually thought the lyrics were that good, actually, but the funny thing is, I've always had those sort of strong associations with the song. And I didn't even know that scene happened, though I've read the book. Once. Too scary.

Wikipedia also tells me there are two other versions, an earlier one by Pandora's Box, a later one by Meat Loaf (unsuprisingly, considering how Meat-Loaf-y it sounds), who saw it as a duet - and Spotify turns up a few more. I'd listen to them both, but I've already pointed out how the song has it's creepy clutches into my psyche - I'm on my own, and it's dark. Apparently, Meat Loaf's video also uses a very Gothic aesthetic, with dead lovers and all: it's going to be fascinating to watch.


Anyway, to circle around to my original point: this is how I came to have a whole DVD of Celine Dion music videos, and after I'd watched mine once or twice, I did watch the other videos. Pure cheese, but enjoyable - and I particularly like that you can switch on the subtitles, and effectively sing along. So I have got pretty fond of all the reasonably decent songs on there. And I really love "Then You Look At Me". I found the sheet music for that and all. "Live for the One I Love", "Because You Loved Me" and "To Love You More" are also pretty good. Girl with a one track mind, but some times you do need that, like after a whole evening of Ovid. It never did the Beach Boys any harm.

I think I've finished my long, long, long work on my Lord M. "fanmix". And for people who weren't paying attention (where have you been?!), he's my worryingly persistant roleplay character from some years ago, and solid evidence that I may be nuts.

I'm posting it here, because I feel accomplished, and so so proud because it's perfect. But I can't exactly launch it at anyone in particular. People who weren't part of it would need it accompanied by a long commentary-come-life story which I don't, at present, have time to write -people who were a part, there are things I still can't talk about. But it's here for the record, so envisage me grinning like anything as I post this.

Because it's mine, it's terribly 80s - I'd never noticed how 80s my music tastes were until finishing this - but every song is perfectly satisfying in meaning, and mostly in lyrics. I like most of the songs on this list - two I'm not so fond of in normal life, three are complete favourites - but their right-ness is such that that's irrelevant. Plus, it fits together well - the progression from female voices to male, the progression from an external viewpoint to an intensely internal one, and the arrangement of piano-y ones with piano-y ones, synthy ones with synths. It's not meant to be a collection of great music, so don't bother with crits from that corner.

That was aimed at you, Friend 2 :p Feel free to listen, but I'm not expecting you to go wild over my choice of music...

I've started working on a mk. II album, for the songs which didn't quite fit, and to rectify problems like the fact massively important figures like Lucy and Lancaster don't figure on this album at all. But enough gushing for a something which is going to be appreicated by, well, just me really. If anyone wants a listen, it's on Spotify here:

spotify:user:unmutual:playlist:7szvbcXq5Rc5PPAwDjolFI <------put that into search bar

And Spotify has just been opened up for everyone to download. Hurrah! So barring ethical quandries, you've no excuse! You might still enjoy it as a music collection, even if you miss the story connections. And if you do want a proper commentary, explaining what goes where, I'll be happy to provide one - post-exams.

Note: they've weirdly removed Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love", which is why the Futureheads cover is there instead. I don't mind the cover usually, but Kate Bush is important for the album...

Seasons Change

1 - Thunderball, Tom Jones
(Nice dramatic and definite opening. It's an external view of the character, all the judgements easily made by other characters. The one problem is the "Bondness" of the tune, those very iconic riffs. But I don't think it hurts to identify the two characters. Also, for people keeping score, this is the underwater Bond film.)

2 - Moonlight Shadow, Maggie Reilly/Mike Oldfield
(The words are fantastic, particularly the colours: if you know what you're looking for, I guarentee you'll catch some really alarmingly suitable lyrics in the background here. The folk feel reflects the distance - he can't entirely remember what happened, which is nicely mirrored in the genre of a folk song recalling a generic memory. Plus, the contrast between such a powerful male voice to a female one seems significant. Somehow.)

3 - Hounds of Love, Kate Bush
(a "17 years later" song, covering the entire period in between that and the Pub. I had to have some Kate Bush on here, for weird reasons involving the way my brain works. First pick was Running up that Hill, but the words here are apter. Listen out for the obligatory watery reference.)

4 - My Immortal, Evanescance
(Yes, I know. Leave me alone. I didn't want to get into the emotionally heavy stuff until later on, which is why the first few are quite musically unemotional. They set the scene and tell the history. The piano feel is nice for the entry into the Pub too. It's emotional frankness and openness is a direct contrast to Hounds of Love's running away approach.)

5 - The Rose, Bette Midler
(this and the above two are the really important tracks for me personally, for various complicated reasons I'll explain one day if I've got time and you're drunk. It's another nice contrast - My Immortal is heavy stuff, so this female-with-piano song lifts the mood into hope. It's another solid song, nice to mark both the centre of the album and entry into the Pub)

6 - She's Like the Wind, Patrick Swayze
(see above. Only, I adore this song and always have, forgetting momentarily it's from Dirty Dancing. The piano sound again links this to the previous. The deep emotional hopelessness of it all, and nature imagery: this is the first of the romance songs. It's a shame it all gets so 80s at the end, but it's close to what we mean. Suitably, the next few songs are all male vocalists.)

7 - Memory of Water, Marillion
(the most recent addition, and the one which made me go "yes, it is finished". Although this one may be substituted if I find something better, as it's the title which stood out more than the content. But the tone change is nice, and it segues into the 80s-ness of the second half. Some very important things happen here, and they have to be marked. They are not good things. Time to play spot the water reference...!)

8 - Don't Let the Sun go Down on Me, Elton John
(the ultimate Lord M. song, every single word of it, particularly for this period in time. The piano thing wasn't deliberate, but I suppose I am the one picking the songs, and it links them both together and to the Regency period. I like the light/dark images, especially in light of the next few songs. Even though this is romantic, it's still rather hopeless.)

I'm not happy with the segue here, it doesn't work - but there are no other natural events here to provoke a song. Perhaps I should put on a piece of Vivaldi? It sort of works if you substitute the cover from Lost Boys (can't remember the band right now). It also works if you move it before "Memory of Water" - but as the two songs refer to very specific events, that screws up the chronology. If more work is done, it will be done here.

9 - I'm Not in Love, 10CC
(don't take this literally: this is a song about someone who is very much in love, and the terror of really needing someone. It's also one of my favourite songs - but it's also apt in several different ways. Not to mention taking the edge off the obnoxious 80s-ness of...)

10 - Lament, Ultravox
(hate the tune, had to have the lyrics. Like "Sun going down on me", it's amazing how close this is to his actual thought processes at that moment. I suppose these songs are fairly universal, like the way love songs seem cheesy and OTT, until you're actually in love and you think "weird, this is exactly how it feels")

The temptation to add "I'm getting married in the morning" from My Fair Lady was unbearable.

11 - In the Dark, Tony Banks
(You didn't think I'd let him have a happy ending, did you?

A strong contrast to the opening, In the Dark is a very ambiguous and subdued ending. The proggyness softens the shock of Lament, and of course we're back to gorgeous pianoness, and that cathartic organ. Less vitally, I also love Tony Banks. No, it's not to be a sad end - but it is uncertain. Who know's what's going to come? In fact, the future turned out to be irritating and far from content, but not too bad either)

It was great getting back on my beloved Metropolitan line, great going back into the O2 centre and enduring trial-by-fire in the temptation of Waterstones. In fact, I almost bought the traditional Tarot pack because it was just sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo gorgeous, but decided against it (I've given my defence of Tarot elsewhere on this blog, no time to repeat it: in short, I don't believe they literally "tell the future", but I am learning it because doing card readings would be a fun party trick, I like the ooo-err-mysticism of it, and I do think they are a good method of analysing and thinking around a problem)

Back to the embrace of Sainsburies for shopping, and an onslaught of post - staggering up the hill, having Doctor Who lols on the red London bus, and joy of joys, to pick up my post.

My Doctor Who books have come - I'll tell you the story later, I have to tidy now. My "Easter Suprise" Graze box have come, which is a pretty pleasant sort of suprise, when you're not there when they send it and you specifically asked them not to send you anything, and they charge you for it anyway. And yet...I was terribly excited to have it waiting for me, and am currently tucking into the dried bananas, roasted pistacios and ethical smarties with some enthusiasm. Maybe I'll continue my love affair with Graze for now. In the unexpected post, I got a message from the Give Blood people thanking me for joining the bone marrow register.

More than one person has winced and shuddered at the idea of bone marrow donation; I for one have no idea what it entails beyond what I read in their booklet, an all-expenses-paid week off work and feeling pretty grotty. It didn't say "PS - this really stings", or I'd probably have chickened out: I like pain as much as the next man. The way I see it is this: it'll probably never happen, many people are never called. If it does, then be it terrifying and painful, there is no way it can be as unpleasant as actually having leukemia, lymphoma or many of humanity's nastiest nasties. It's also probably significantly less horrid than watching a parent, friend or child go through the aforementioned diseases. It is literally life saving, and I don't think anyone has the choice to opt out of that - or, far be it for me to judge others, I don't think I have a choice.

That's what being a global community really means. If someone said to you, right now, do you want to save this child, few people would say no. I'm just putting myself on the list of people to ask.

The bottom line is, I'm back in Hampstead. But working. I have 2 essays to do in as many days, more or less, so if anyone is around I'd love to say hi - but for 30 minutes "visiting time" to break up my day, after which Kubrick and Virgil will decend from on high to march you out, with Cerberus and Lassie snapping at your heels. Thursday and Friday I am free-er: friends are over (3 and 4, if you want to know), but they've told me they'd love to meet you. They've no idea what they're letting themselves in for. Be nice.

So Thursday or Friday is the day if you want to go to a restaurant for a pre-exam party. Friday evening, we're planning a marathon Doctor Who board game, to which everyone is invited. It'll be easier to pick up the rules with more people who know how to play. Saturday is my Doctor Who convention, but I'm free again on Sunday, and on my own, if you want to restaurant.

Yesterday my dad suggested I translate The Picture of Dorian Gray into Latin, instead of the Silmarillion. I've no idea what inspired that, because the great genius of translating Tolkien is that it's exactly the same vocabulary as Latin epic - Nautae incolas pugnant, soliders and islands and battles.



But it stuck in my head, and a few minutes later I came up with this epigram:

"in sole te sedento sedebo in tenebris - sic vitae nostrae"

Which isn't even in the finished book, it's a deleted line. "You will sit in the sunlight, and I will sit in the shade - it is like our lives". Dorian to Basil. Or possibly, it's Dorian in the sun and Basil in the shade. Both make a sort of sense. I tried to look up the correct version on google, but the only other occurance of it on the entire web is on my Deviantart account...

As Latin, I am very satisfied with it. I can translate stuff into a sort of pigin Latin, the words and cases are all right but I doubt it'd convince a Roman. For the same indefinable reasons my Latin usually sounds wrong, that sounds completely correct. I'm convinced it's 100% correct.

I've never understood why it was cut - I mean, it's very artificial dialogue, but it's not like Oscar Wilde ever had a problem with that! It'd be my favourite line, were it still in the book. As it stands, I can't just call one great line to mind: my favourite scenes tend to fluctuate. Once, it was the descriptions of the jewels in epic chapter 12, then the end of that chapter; then it was the scene when Dorian wakes up, then his blackmailing Alan a few pages later. It will change again, and my bets are it will change for Basil. I've been going through this period of Basil love for more than two years now, and I can barely bear to read the second half.

Even if to fufil my dream of translating The Silmarillion, I should really be working on it without distraction, I would love to translate maybe one of his poisonous little fairy tales into Latin. The challenge, however, would be this: I love the story of TS, but the style I can take or leave. There are some great bits, but I worship Oscar Wilde's style, so translating it is instantly more daunting.

Time for a digression on Oscar Wilde's short stories. Oscar Wilde is most famous as a creator of witty epigrams, and author of Importance of Being Earnest. Is that his greatest work? Quite possibly. His other plays are more serious, certainly melodramatic, but I'm fiercely fond of them all. It's a pity they're forgotten. His poems, I've talked about before, and I feel they're rightly not talked about. Cruel, but true.

For me he is a storyteller, of which The Picture of Dorian Gray is naturally the finest, but his hordes of short stories are well worth reading if you're a fan of sticky Gothic prose and a fine turn of phrase.

The first was The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and the only one you'd remotely consider handing to a child. Broadly speaking, all these have a solid moral to them and have fairly realistic settings - and endings which satisfy, even if sad. Pomegranates endings are just as good, just as suitable - but they remind one of snatching you in an alleyway and beating you to a grubby pulp. Pomegranates takes no prisoners. It contains:

The Happy Prince - the famous one, and oh is it lovely. I have a friend who, I'm told, cries when attempting to synopsise it.

The Nightingale and the Rose - this is my favourite from the collection. It has the ability to go from "happy" to "bawling eyes out" within 6 pages.

The Selfish Giant - one of the more child-friendly, you might have heard this one repeated by your local church. Like the rest, the imagery is gorgeous.

The Devoted Friend - my least favourite of this set. Like many Wilde works, the irony is in the title - substitute "devoted" for "doormat". As a Doormat Friend myself, I can't really find it all that amusing, as I'm just as much of a sap as Hans.

The Remarkable Rocket - the other one you'd give to children, if only for the charming personifications of animals and fireworks. I love the herald, whose pay keeps being doubled by the greatful king - even though his pay was nothing to begin with.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories was the second set, firmly based in contemporary reality and evidently for an adult audience. They don't hang together so well, and all are sort-of forgettable. They certainly have less of the OTT Gothic orientalism and fantasy which makes me love the other two. This collection reminds me strongly of Friend 5, I've always thought some of these would really amuse her.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - the most "Dorian Gray"ly of any of the short stories, this is fairly long. It is a wonderful black comedy about a man who is told he is fated to murder one of his relations by a palmist, so sets out to satisfy destiny before he gets married to his beloved. Hilarity ensues in the shape of a gunpowder packed clock, poisons and other wonderfully hammy murder methods. There's a nice twist too.

The Canterville Ghost - the second one reminding me of Friend 4, especially now she is in America. This is a delightful comedy relying on Victorian stereotypes of Americans, of being all new and efficient and not understanding tradition, as an American family inherit a haunted English home and drive the poor Ghost half mad by their practical refusal to be spooked. The American aspect doesn't work quite as well today, but there are still plenty of people who would take no-nonsense cleaning precautions to spirits!

The Sphinx Without a Secret - very short, and to say any more than that is to spoil the twist.

The Model Millionaire - like Sphynx, too short to discuss, but it's a really sweet story.

The Portrait of Mr. W. H. - half tale, half essay, it's vital you read this with a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Mr Exposition explains to Mr Audience Identification Figure why the aforementioned poems were actually written for a Mr W.H., the picture of which has been found. There's a great story lurking under the surface here, but as it stands the evidence overwhelms the plot. Still, like the final character, I can't help but wonder...

The year after all this, out comes The House of Pomegranites - and you can tell from the title you're in a different realm altogether. Oscar Wilde claims it was "intended neither for the British child nor the British public", and you can see why. As promised above, by now he'd perfected the gut-punching twist (although arguably, he never produced anything as shocking as Nightingale again), and the following just drown in superfluous description.

The Young King - This is another story where you can smell Dorian Gray down the corridor. It always amuses me that though the moral is about rejecting luxury, how much darn fun he has describing it all anyway. You also get an interesting depiction of faith, that fine line between uber-Catholicism and outright paganism all his books tread. I find the end of this story hugely powerful.

The Birthday of the Infanta - Another story you might know, this is a giddy romp around the splendour of the Spanish court, with a cruel ending typical of this collection. It's also very, very beautiful. Cruelty-Beauty would be one way to sum up the whole Wilde thing anyway, it'd be an interesting line of investigation. Like The Young King, the covert moral seems to be "Morally, these beautiful things are evil. But they are still beautiful". Same goes for Dorian Gray, with evil hidden behind beauty - but the beauty is still well worth celebrating.

The Fisherman and his Soul - if you only read one Oscar Wilde short story after this, make it this one. The end is very moving, and the intervening story has all the elements of a fairy tale, but distorted. The individual passages are gorgeous, and it takes time to detour through Witches dances, distant gods and all is wonderful. If you're not a fan, then maybe this'll be the very antithesis of what you can stand - but from my perspective, it is the ultimate.

The Star-Child - similar to The Young King, and possibly the most overt fairy tale ever written by him, complete with talking animals, kind shephards, beggars and magical transformations. Not to be mistaken as one for the kids. Yeh, kinda hackneyed - but pulled off with Wilde style, and it's worth reading the lot if only for the final line.

And that's without discussing his "Poems in prose", or his dinnertime stories which were preserved by the listeners, some of which you may have heard me repeating. I'll talk about them when I don't have coursework. So I leave you with my current favourite lines from Dorian Gray:

"There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either
after one of those dreamless nights that make one almost enamoured of death,
or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the
chambers of the brain sweep phantoms moreterrible than reality itself, and
instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends
to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy,
especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady
of revery.Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they
appear to tremble. Black fantastic shadows crawl into the corners of the
room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the
leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, orthe sigh and sob of
the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house,
as though it feared to wake the sleepers. Veil after veil of thin dusky
gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colors of things are restored
to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.
The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand
wherewe have left them, and beside them lies the half-read book that we had
been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at theball, or the
letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often.
Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes
back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left
off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the
continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or
a wild longing, it maybe, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a
world that had been re-fashioned anew for our pleasure in the darkness, a
world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or
have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place,
or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the
remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain."