Booker



The longlist for the most prestigious literary award in the UK has been announced - 22 titles on the longlist for this year's Booker Prize. Actually I am surprised to see so many of the big players being passed over this year in favour of new blood - I approve of this and certainly the stuffy old Booker does need a fair old spring cleaning and updating. Prestigious perhaps, but also often pretentious - I get the impression as both a reader and a bookseller that this is often a judging panel which picks 'literary' fiction of the sort that will make them look ever so clever and cultured for picking it. There have been some more interesting, fresher and - gasp - more popular choices in recent years, with DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little or Arnudhati Roy springing to mind.



However once more the unspoken rule of the literary snobs has been enforced - there are no genre titles in here. There are, as pretty much always, no Science Fiction, Horror, Crime or Romance novels. Why is this? The Booker is set up to select from the last year's FICTION, looking for good writing. It does not proscribe the genres in the rules, yet every year it discriminates against them.



Now, I am not calling for an opening of the floodgates - plenty of genre titles are workmanlike at best and not worthy of consideration - but then I could say the same of bestselling and 'literary' fiction (what do they mean? No-one can properly quantify this but they still use it. I think they are afraid to explain it because it reveals that the only distinction is one of snobbery). However, if you set up a fiction prize to pick the finest writing then why do you discriminate automatically against so many genres and authors (and by inference their millions of readers)??? This is the literary equivelant of apartheid and is despicable and indefensible. Why, for instance, is Neal Stephenson's stunning piece of prose, Quicksilver, not on the list? In my professional opinion it could trounce most of the books on the longlist for style, wit, invention, erudtion, scholarly accuracy and wonder, easily the equal of Umberto Eco. Yet this literary masterpiece is not in there, because, I believe, it is tarred with the genre label. No wonder the genre fans and writers have their own awards, such as the Edgars or CWAs for Crime, the Bram Stoker or the Arthur C Clarke Award (won of course by Quicksilver this year).



I have made this speech and many similar ones on far too many occasions. I'm tired of having to make this argument. I'm tired of arguing for something that should be obvious by rights. But I have a Dream.



(apologies to the great Martin Luther King)

Liberation

No, not the dodgy use of the word in Iraq but the Real Deal – Paris celebrates the 60^th anniversary of the liberation . Certainly a great event to celebrate, not least because of the bravery in liberating the City of Light but also because the German commander refused to follow Hitler’s demand to fight a useless battle so this ancient city escaped much of the destruction that other European city’s suffered. However, along with many other British people – not to mention Americans, Canadians and an awful lot of others - I am more than a little disgusted at the way the official version of events has airbrushed the Allies out of the history so it now reads that ‘France liberated France’. This is not new – it is a form of revisionism that began right after the liberation when De Gaulle, showing his normal gratitude to the people who had sheltered him for years and equipped the Free French forces he commanded, declared to the Parisians that the French had liberated themselves. Presumably this was because of the desperate desire to overcome the shame of their rapid defeat four years previously and the even more shameful collaboration by many, including many in the government, with the occupying Nazi forces (although many brave Maquis risked capture, torture and death to fight on – supplied of course by the Allies and organised by British Intelligence). Well, it makes a change from Hollywood airbrushing everyone but the American GIs from the war. Did I imagine it, or did we actually fight that war here? I’m sure someone once told me the British had a pretty important role in the fight against fascism (nothing big, we just stood off the entire might of Nazi Germany by ourselves for whole year without breaking, but hey, why mention it?). Perhaps I imagined it.

Rather curious behaviour from one of the EU nation’s who is often the loudest in calling for more integration in European brotherhood

Let sleeping cats lie

As I type this Pandora is curled up on the sofa, slumbering away as cats are wont to do. Little meows are to be heard occasionally while her huge, creamy white paws keep moving and her whiskers are twitching. What do cats dream about? Milk? Mice? Mice in milk? Or maybe she dreams of dangling a length of wool and watching me bat it and chase it for a change.

What a coup

Can I just take this opportunity to remark about today’s story about Mark Thatcher’s arrest for allegedly taking part in an attempted coup in an African country? I would just like to say a heartfelt and considered HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Yes, I know it may well be the sign of a poor man to laugh at the misfortune of another, but frankly it’s just too fun to pass up on seeing this man who was referred to as ‘Thicky’ by his school chums at his posh private school and who has traded on the name of his evil former prime minister mother and used her links in a way that would make a Bush family member proud to make more business.

Sounds good too

From experimental innovations by musician Evelyn Glennie to straightforward heavy metal, rock’n’roll. Took my mate Vegar’s recent advice and treated myself to a copy of Contraband by Velvet Revolver. He was spot on the money when he said it was just straightforward heavy rock of the old school variety – no fancy tricks, not pretending to be some cutting-edge new wave, just honest-to-Zarquon rock and roll as you’d expect from some of the better elements of G’n’R and Stone Temple Pilots (who my chum Stephanie in Florida, currently picking up pieces after Hurricane Charley tell me are awesome live). After being forced to sit through the dreadfully dull, sub-Spinal Tap warblings of the Blandness – sorry, the Darkness – this was just what I needed and in no time I was in classic rock pose – feet as far apart as possible, crotch out – and air-guitaring my little, black heart out. Bloody brilliant – good call by the V-Man. Now, where did I put my leather and lace? And can someone give me a hand to get those multi-buckled biker boots on? I want to rock and roll all night and party everyday. But most days I settle for coffee and a muffin. Mmmmm, muffin....

Pretentious? Moi?

Well, I have on occasion been accused of certain Frasier Crane behaviourisms. But no, I’m not talking about me, but about the truly dreadful movie I saw on Monday evening as part of the Film Festival: Process. A film so bad that even the sex scene with Beatrice Dallé and two guys failed to engage my enthusiasm (arthouse and therefore uncut, like a porn, but rather un-erotic, unlike a porno) – and you have to remember that for men my age Beatrice Dallé will always be a sex goddess because of her role in Betty Blue, possibly the mainstream film release with the hottest shagging scene ever (the opening few minutes – ‘I had known Betty for three weeks. The forecast was for storms.’).

The film, Process, is supposedly following an actress who has had a breakdown and embarks on a sequence of extreme experiences – her ‘process’ – before committing suicide. Things did not start well. As a crowd of cinephiles sat reeking of dampness in the Filmhouse auditorium on a soaking wet night the producer came forward to explain to us all before the film began that due to a mix-up we had the French version, sans subtitles. However as the film had only a few lines of dialogue this shouldn’t be a major problem, but he would explain a couple of scenes with dialogue just so we knew what was going on. He proceeds to outline several key scenes in the film before we see it, prompting one audience member to shout ‘can we just see the film?!?!?!?’ – and rightly so. Subtitle problem aside I don’t want someone telling me the key scenes (including some of the final ones) before I watch the movie. Hell, I don’t even like to read the text on a work of art in a gallery until I have had a chance to look at the piece myself and place my own interpretation on it.

The film is non-linear and is, frankly, a bloody mess. In fact, if the producer had not told us about some of the scenes I wouldn’t have known what the hell was going on, and I’m not exactly a person who struggles in the language of cinema (the cynical may think they deliberately engineered the non-titled print so they could explain this badly edited film). The non-linear chronology of the scenes would have been fine if there was sufficient anchorage to let the audience know what was going on. Instead we had effectively a pile of montages, overlapping scenes which were largely disconnected. I realise this may be to suggest the mental state of Dallé’s character, but as we have no emotion or characterisation it is impossible to give a damn what is going on. Some of the images are nice to look at, but the entirety looks very like the effort a 2^nd year art student with more pretensions than skill would produce. It raids the French cinema cliché cupboard. Everyone is immaculately dressed, lives in designer apartments and smokes and pouts in silence, or with only the plinky piano accompaniment. And the frequent flashing up on the screen of the Process logo just re-enforces my impression of a dreadful student film. Truly awful and exactly the sort of pretentious and interminably tedious film you should avoid at all costs. Also exactly the sort of film where the makers will no doubt react defensively and say ‘you don’t understand it’, which is the defence of many poor artists. I do understand it – it’s just so badly put together and awfully edited that is utterly awful. Doesn’t help that in one scene in the designer home with the floor-to-ceiling windows framing our heroine (the director obviously wants to be Michael Mann here) you can clearly see the reflection of the camera crew. And free tip to the director: if you are attempting to show a specific ‘process’ the character has decided to go through deliberately, regardless of whether it is eating powdered glass or degrading, dehumanised sex, you need to show the choices and reasons, not just the scenes of the actions – how is the viewer to know she has chosen these? And as for the frequently over-long single-takes – have you never heard of the Miracle of Metonymy? Avoid.

Far finer was the low-budget horror Skinned Deep by Gabriel Bartalos. Made over a fair old length of time by Gabe and a bunch of friends whenever they had the time and the money this is, at it’s heart, an old-fashioned horror of the type I adored back in the original video boom of the early 80s, before asshole MP David Alton rode the popular tabloid folk devil of ‘evil video nasty made kids kill’ sensationalism to censor them into extinction. The all-American suburban family on holiday driving across the land break down in rural America. Now all of us know that this is trouble because Rural America is full of cannibalistic, chainsaw-wielding in-bred families (this may be part of the classical rural-urban binary opposition mythology, except in Missouri where it’s all true) and so will end in tears. The ultra-sweet old lady who runs the local diner – how lovely and polite, if a little backward. Come back to her home for dinner? ARE YOU CRAZY?!?!?! Of course our nice family are and soon we are being introduced to her family – Brain (dungarees wearing hick with, well giant brain; Plates (a plate-throwing deadly dwarf!) and the Surgeon General with his huge metal jaws. And an oldster gang of Hell’s Angels called the Ancient Ones who get involved later on (including SF fan legend Forrest J. ‘Forrey’ Ackerman).

Yep, it doesn’t take itself too seriously – this is a labour of love. Gruesome and mutilating love perhaps, but love nonetheless. It’s the proper old horror which actually has HORROR in it, as opposed to the toothless ‘horror’ films we’ve been fed by Hollywood studios masquerading as ‘independents’ and giving us post-modernist, slick films which pretend to be horror but are barely thrillers and so tame to those of us who grew up watching I Spit on Your Grave, Cannibal Ferrox, The Hills Have Eyes etc (and grew up to hardly mass-murder anyone at all, thank you Mr Alton – gee, think maybe it wasn’t the movies which twisted us kids?). Made by begging, borrowing or stealing this is a hugely fun film, following in the fine footsteps of Sam Raimi, both in some filmic touches but also in the way it was made (Sam working with friends, selling is car to raise money etc) or Romero when he made Night of the Living Dead (give me some money and you can be a zombie!). Take the word of an old gore hound – those of you who loved Evil Dead and the others of its ilk will love this. Horror and humour well mixed and with plenty of nods to other films and to the dedicated horror audience.

Better was to come though. There was a Q&A afterwards, as is common in the Film Fest. Gabe regaled the audience in the lovely Cameo cinema with tales of how the film came together over a couple of years (the branding session at the start is apparently real) and how the actor playing Brain didn’t hold it against him when they shot the scene of him streaking down a busy New York street. Alas, as underground movie-makers they had no film permit, they just drove to a location, quick shoot, grab him back in the truck and off to the next. Except as he streaked along one street he was nicked by the local coppers and huckled off to the clink! Trust me, if you only see one movie with an inbred, murderous hick with a giant external brain streaking joyously down a NY street, make it Skinned Deep. I joined a few others and the very friendly and extremely approachable Gabe in the Cameo bar afterwards and had a good old chat with him. He’s a lovely bloke who basically has the philosophy of making the film you want to see yourself, not one which will ‘make your name’ or whatever, which I respect enormously. He’s worked with Tom Savini and a host of others (including Warwick ‘Willow’ Davis who stars as Plates – a wonderfully funny but nasty camp turn played straight). No British distribution deal yet, so you’ll have to watch for film fests around the country to have a chance of seeing it. Hopefully it will get a deal and a DVD release – it deserves to be a cult hit. There is a section on the film on this website here.

Gabe talking at the Cameo after the screening of Skinned Deep

Afterwards I was somewhat hungry after all the exploding heads, removal of limbs etc and ambled across the road to a nearby café for a late lunch. A gorgeously bright Sunday afternoon, sitting at a table outside a nice café, idly flicking through the Sunday papers, sipping coffee, munching on a lightly toasted Panini and basically watching the world going past – a very simple yet very great pleasure. Good movie, chat with a really nice director and a relaxing lunch. Sometimes life is a pleasure. Finished it off with a nice ramble round some second hand stores and picked up a cool Blues anthology for four quid, with Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson on it.

Tuesday night saw Gordon and myself off to watch another almost home-made movie – the ultra low-budget ($7000!) SF film Primer. A bunch of geek engineers (who obviously buy their clothes at the same store as Dilbert) tinkering with gadgets in their spare time in a garage (Linus, I’m thinking on you here, for some reason!). Two of them finish tinkering with a device – unsure as to what exactly they have built and what application is may have if they sell it they experiment. Eventually they discover that the machine is having a temporal effect of some sort. How could they use it? What effects would it have? Okay, so some images are not the best – evening scenes are grainy because they didn’t have access to the right equipment for night shooting and some indoor scenes have everyone in a blue or yellow-tinged light because the chum shooting obviously hasn’t been trained on how to use the white balance settings on the camera – but for a movie, again shot over a fair old period of time by mates, made for $7k it’s impressive, if sometimes confusing (but anything to do with temporal tinkering always is confusing).

Congrats



Belated congratulations have to go to Padraig, Irish SF supremo and fellow TAO crewmember on his wedding. Rumours that Padraig wrote his own wedding vows using a selection of dialogue culled from the works of Alan Moore are unsubstantiated at this time :-).

Vampire melody



Somehow news of this endeavour slipped past my normally excellent vamp-radar: a Broadway musical adaptation of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat. By no less than Bernie Taupin and Elton John!!! I thought this sounded a bizarre combination until I thought more about Lestat's character on stage (in both the 20th and 18th centuries) and realised perhaps Elton might be right for it. According to this old article I dug up it isn't going to be a rock opera at least. I only found out about it when Neil Gaiman mentioned in his blog that the excellent Dave McKean was off to NYC to oversee artistic work for the production. Well, unless I suddenly come into some money and can take a wee holiday to NYC I think I'll have to wait for the touring production. In the meantime I think I'll start work on my very own Reduced Vampire Company's production of the entire Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles in 15 minutes for next year's Edinburgh Fringe. Don't shake your heads like that, it would probably be better than half the stuff which appears on the Fringe! Gothic ladies, I am holding open castings and am amenable to bribery. I have no casting couch, but I do have a very comfortable futon. I am indeed a thoroughly stylish and domesticated - if perverted - vamp about town.

Sounds good

Friday has arrived and I am up to four films since Monday. Last night was my first screening of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival as Alex and I made use of my two-for-one deal to go and see the anime feature Tokyo Godfathers by Satoshi Kon (of Perfect Blue fame). Highly enjoyable movie about three homeless folk – the grumpy old guy, a cross-dresser and a teen girl runaway – who find an abandoned baby in a back alley on Xmas Eve. Hana, the ‘homeless homo’, in her cross-dressing clothes thinks this is a gift from God because he’s always wanted to be a mother. Although the simple story which follows runs through a range of occasionally predictable adventures and misadventures, it is wonderfully handled. It is an anime which can appeal to all ages and will leave you with a smile on your face – especially when you hear Beethoven’s Ninth having the Choral section sung in Japanese! Good start to the Film Fest, followed by late night, open-air ale quaffing after midnight (yes, I do put that bit in partly to tease my chums in England who would have been kicked out of their pubs long before this time, poor things).

Another day, another film; this afternoon it was off to the fabulous Filmhouse (where I practically lived as an undergrad), home of the Film Festival and the city’s major arthouse cinema (off to the Cameo on Sunday, which is half arthouse, half commercial) and one of my major stomping grounds in my student days. After a nice relaxing beer and soaking up the atmosphere it was in to a totally packed house to see Touch the Sound, a movie exploring the nature of sound, music and how we perceive them by following the Scottish musician, the delectable Evelyn Glennie. As some of you may know Evelyn is the world’s only solo percussionist, playing to sell-out concerts all over the world. She’s also one of my musical heroines; I’ve seen her live several times and she is an astonishing musician, a veritable dynamo of rhythm when you see her perform.

Evelyn is the perfect person to explore this theme of sound. Not only is she a gifted performer, a graduate of the Royal Academy and a woman who has made a traditionally male-dominated sphere – percussion – her own she has also been deaf since before her teens. Sound, says Evelyn, is a series of vibrations (hence the name of her autobiography, Good Vibrations). She already played piano as a child when her hearing started to fade. Abandoning the hearing aids she was given she and her music teacher in Aberdeenshire learned to listen for those vibrations with the rest of their bodies instead of their ear drum. In effect, she quite literally feels the music. In a beautifully touching scene she returns to her old school and has a musical session with a hearing-impaired young girl. Inspired by Evelyn she takes off her hearing aids as she is encouraged to try the instruments and to feel them. Then Evelyn makes her turn around and proceeds to play a variety in instruments from the mighty timpani through to a tiny, windup music box, which she places against the timpani skin to make it vibrate. The look of utter delight on the face of the young, deaf lassie is fantastic and would melt the heart of any cynic (yes, even me).

Evelyn is fascinated by sounds of all sorts and the movie is littered with quite wonderful scenes. An experimental improve jam with composer Fred Frith in the acoustically amazing disused factory in Germany is the main anchor to which director Thomas Riedelsheimer returns throughout the film as both artists use this enormous, derelict space through a variety of instruments, then playing with found objects as the mood takes them – anything which they can use to make music. Following Evelyn around the world as he interacts with other musicians and artists it is easy to see the child-like joy as she finds fascinating new sounds to try out, quickly integrating some old pieces of metal and a stick into an energetic melody. In one fabulous scene she is performing in a small club/restaurant in Japan. Borrowing some items like plates, a glass, empty bottle, beer can – basically the detritus of a meal really – and some chopsticks to play them she rapidly improvises an amazing jam with the other musicians. In another scene she goes from playing a snare drum in the middle of New York’s Grand Central Station to jamming with a young street performer, a young woman tap-dancing. Evelyn joins her and as the woman’s hard soles mark out a staccato beat in her dance Evelyn takes her snare drum and a plastic bottle of mineral water and deftly interplays with the dancer’s rhythmic sound. Its one of those qualities which mark out the real artist – the ability to improvise from almost any materials and to make your art from them. It’s not different from sculptors who create something from found materials or a writer like Harlan Ellison creating short tales in a bookshop as people throw ideas at him. Kudos also to Riedelsheimer who uses his editing to mark out everyday sound and rhythm, taking in the rhythmic bumps as cars go over the joins in the road, or the sound of pedestrian’s feet on a glass floor in a shopping mall.

This was a film of pure delight. Obviously as a huge admirer of her work I am biased and I realise Evelyn’s music may not be to everyone’s taste (I suspect those of us who enjoy jazz may have the right ear to listen to it) but this should appeal to anyone interested in music, in perception and in art – its even humorous in places and warmly human. The afternoon just got better for me though. Before the film began a representative of the EIFF told the audience there would be a Q&A after the movie with the director. There was a further surprise when Evelyn herself was revealed to be in the audience and joined the director on stage. Before the movie I had a half-inkling of what may happen if I was lucky when I noticed one of the Filmhouse staff with a snare drum. I hoped my assumption was right and was duly rewarded when the afternoon ended with Evelyn giving us an impromptu performance – just her on the stage before the screen curtains with a single snare drum, uplit with a spot below it. Now you may be forgiven for thinking that you can’t make much up a solo snare drummer. Well, this isn’t some heavy metal drum solo, this is the world’s only solo percussionist showing how it is done. We were treated to the full performance of the snare composition she had been playing in scenes in Grand Central in the movie. I’ve done some drumming in my time and on the snare I’ve done rat-a-tat-tat sounds and the occasional adventurous rim-shot (that’s not rude, you filthy people, it’s when you clock your sticks on the metal rim rather than the skin). Evelyn used an amazing variety of techniques to coax a range of astonishing sounds from a simple, single snare drum. I haven’t seen her live in years and this was just fabulous and the fact that things like this happen is one of the things I so adore about the Film Festival.

I very much agree with a lot of what Evelyn says in the film about enjoying and interacting with sound. I may not have her gift, but I love picking out different sounds and am as likely to stop to listen to something interesting as I am to stop to look at an interesting image, be it the differing sounds the breeze makes through different trees or the sound when I bop an empty poster tube at work against something (or someone). I love the different sound the waves make on a sandy beach then a rocky piece of shore. I love the way the seasons sound different; street sounds are different in the summer – pedestrians sound different, windows are open and sounds of conservation, dining and music drift out and echo among the walls. In winter the windows are closed and the streets are quieter, mist and snow soften every sound. In the rain the passing cars make a totally different sound. I adore the sounds crisp, dry leaves make when you kick bundles of them in the autumn. So I guess she was preaching to the converted in my case. I think it is vital to keep that child-like, simple joy in your life. Too many people will tell you to act your age (whatever that actually means) but why listen to someone who let that sense of delight atrophy inside them?

Suffice to say I walked home on air, utterly, utterly delighted.

When Evelyn suddenly appeared I whipped out the wee digital and snapped these off - not the best quality as I was right in the front and didn't really want to set of a flash in their faces, especially when Evelyn was playing her solo in the dark. I am still so buzzed from this whole afternoon!

Suffer the little children



I was moved by Vegar's ruminations on the paucity of childcare facilities in the UK. Although normally a typical bachelor who enjoys kicking small infants, stealing their candy and generally rating my cats to be more important than children I was moved by the eloquence of his plea for more childcare in the UK. It is to this end and in the spirit of helpfulness that I say we should look to the glorious history of our Sceptred Isle for an asnwer to this problem.



Therefore as a student of history may I suggest the immeadite re-instatement of the grand old tradition of using small children in factories and mills to nip in-between the large machines. This will ensure they are occupied while parents are at work and as the small infants can run in between moving machines industy won't have to shut them down for maintenance, thus boosting British productivity and making us more competitive with Third World nations who still practise this form of childcare. No, don't look at me like that, you buggers - just think who made your shirt or sneakers before you get all high and mighty on me! If it's good enough for the poor kids in Indonesia who made your GUP shirt or Nookie trainers surely it's good enough for your children? If this is too much for you we could use some small children as chimney sweeps once more and unscrupulous circus owners will rent small kids to masquarade as dwarves in the Big Top.



For those parents still unconvinced by my helpful suggestions there is always the miracle of ether. And if you still insist on expensive private care then remember your kids can be a resource: sell the stem cells from your newborn to some genetic scientists for hard cash to pay for the nursery care. I hope I have done my little bit to help in the struggle for better childcare in the UK. Anyway, when you think on it the lack of nursery care in the UK is a way of preparing the children for the day they are old and realise their pension is worthless and they lack care facilities once more - thus is the circle of life complete.

Word association



This week's word association from Subliminal:

1. Server:: crash
   
   
2. Charlotte:: Queen
   
   
3. Jackson:: Mississipi
   
   
4. Resentment:: I hate that
   
   
5. Controlling:: interest
   
   
6. Intense:: passion
   
   
7. November:: fireworks
   
   
8. Donkey:: dick
   
   
9. Weave:: web
   
   
10. Satisfies:: naughty woman
    
    

OLYMPICS ROUNDUP

With the games of the 2004 Athens Olympiad well underway we at the Woolamaloo Gazette – official sponsor of the Marsupial Olympic Squad – thought it was time to update our readers on the state of play. Friday’s stunning opening ceremony set the stage for this return to the Game’s ancient homeland. Actors, musicians and dancers re-enacted many of the aspects of Greek culture, from the ancient period – sculpture, democracy, leaving unwanted babies to die on hillsides – through to more modern times, culminating in a bunch of paunchy, middle-aged men drinking five bottles of Ouzo then dancing on the tabletops to the strains of Zorba the Greek while seducing foolish and drunken British female tourists (Shirley Valentine, we’re talking about you, you slapper!).

As the Games get into their stride this week we realise our readers will want to know who the hot favourites are. As the other world media are already covering the major tournaments in great detail – especially the BBC with their ‘interactive’ coverage, which allows you to press the red button on your digital remote to check on the drugs testing of any contestant – we at the Gazette thought we would give you the low-down on some of the less well-known events.

Wednesday sees the Salted Herring Hurling heats. The previous world record for hurling a salted herring was set at the 1996 Olympics with Hauver Grundkinson of Bergen, Norway successfully throwing the herring some 23 metres. Nils Borgen of Denmark did manage a throw of 24 metres, but failed a drugs test afterwards when he was found to be sucking on a Fishermen’s Friend (an old sailor’s trick, popular with seamen) and was disqualified. This year’s Danish team is much weaker than before and it is thought that the only real challengers to the Norwegian’s attempts at herring Gold are the Icelanders. Meanwhile the Danish team are still thought to be the hot tip to win the Lego freestyle construction tournament. The Norwegians and Swedish teams will go head-to-head for the Raiding, Burning and Pillaging events, with most experts claiming it is too close to call this year.

The Haggis Hunt first became an Olympic sport ten games previously and has never been won by anyone other than the Scottish members of Team GB, although competition has been growing in recent Games. The wild Haggis is released over a form of steeplechase-like racetrack while the team of four hunters pursue it, stun it and capture it using only hand-woven netting made from thistles (most teams wear gloves, the Scots are too macho too do so, or perhaps just too tight to buy the gloves) and throwing heavy, shaped stones which evolved from Curling stones (this is another reason why the Scots are so good at this sport). Their main rivals this year are the Canadian team, who are also favourites for the 50-metre Otter Race.

The Spiff-smoking events are often the domain of the team from the Netherlands. With large government support for the sport in Holland the Netherlands team – Lurgen, Rolf and Papa Smurf – are easily the best equipped and trained team of tokers on the planet, although the US team’s Californian reefer merchants – Dude, Big Dave and Lili – may well surprise the complacent Dutch team. The Jamacian team are likely to be too stoned to turn up once more.

The tea-drinking championships this year are already underway with Team GB, China, India and Russia all through to the semi-finals. The French team were disqualified for drinking from bowls instead of regulation China cups and Team USA lost humiliatingly early in the tournament due to the fact that they simply don’t know how to make tea.

On the track and field front the kangaroos of the Marsupial team are hot favourites for the hop, skip and jump event and long jump event while the koalas should reach for Gold glory in the Climbing and Eating Leaves event. This may well humiliate the sports-loving Australians they share their continent with, but as they stole the marsupials land and kill many of them (giving rise to the KLF or Kangaroo Liberation Front) most of our pouched brethren will view this as a bonus and extra incentive to go for gold. We at the Gazette salute our marsupial cousins and wish their plucky team the best of luck, although realistically we don’t expect too much from the koalas in the javelin events. Still, they will likely do better than Team Antarctica; their plucky penguins may have taken gold at the belly-toboggan slide and the Orcas at the seal-tossing, but they are really more of a winter Olympics squad and will struggle in the blistering heat of Athens (most of the penguins have done little so far apart from sit around the pool in Hawaiian shirts drinking ice-cold margaritas.

And now a word from our sponsor, Renault:

Buy our Renault Megan. It looks like a giant arse. Neighbours will point and shout 'hey, youve' got the Arse Car!' 'Vouz avesz le voiture de la derriere!'

Good start

I had a nice start to my two weeks off – two weeks away from Bastardstone’s, hurrah! – by having a fun weekend. Unknown to me some of the old gang from back home (very old gang – we were all at school together and that was so long ago we used slate notebooks and wrote in Latin). Mostly unknown to me because Gordon forgot to tell me that Colin, Malcolm and Rhona were coming through for the day until he remembered to phone me while indulging in some open-air, boozing al-fresco at the Pleasance. Caught up with them after fighting my way though enormous crowds of tourists, Fringe goers and the early evening Tattoo crowd near the Castle.

Those of you who don’t live in Edinburgh can’t imagine how busy it is right now – most city centres are busy on a Saturday, especially on a warm, sunny evening, but this is something else during Festival time – there are actually queues of people trying to get into dozens of restaurants while you have to push your way through lines of people waiting to get into Fringe venues who appear to have forgotten that other people may want to use the pavement. Polite behaviour goes out the window at this point and having to employ rather rude pushing techniques of the type favoured by young Italian tourists is required in order to get more than a few hundred yards in an hour. Met up with the gang at the Pear Tree eventually and through the miracle of mobile phone text messaging my beer was waiting for me when I got there – isn’t technology wonderful?

I hadn’t seen them for ages, so it was a nice surprise to meet up and, well, frankly, get utterly pissed with them all. With the massive lines at most diners and restaurants we were getting perilously close to just getting a bag of chips and a bottle of wine from the offie and sitting out in the Meadows, but we moved further down the South Side near to my last student flat (a previous lifetime it seems now) and eventually found the Sombrero, which, as you may imagine, was a Mexican restaurant. We got lucky and managed to get a table, fortunately not too close to a rather ebullient group of very large, blonde men from Sweden, who our gorgeous waitress told us had been there for three hours of eating and drinking! Still, they were the happy drunks rather than the annoying or nasty ones and didn’t bother anyone. Big Mexican meal (loved the tricolour on my food made out of salsa, guacamole and sour cream – neat) with plenty of chilled margaritas later and we’re feeling pretty good and ready for more drink. Whistle Binkies is very central so you’d expect it too be over-burdened by tourist and Fringe groups but as it is a tiny entrance leading down under the Old Town most don’t know it is there, so down we went for more subterranean boozing. We saw our chums off on the last train home, skirting the huge groups of teenage Goths (I should say pseudo Goths as most of these pretty but pouting teens don’t even know who the hell Andrew Eldridge or the Sisters are and certainly can’t wear a puffy-sleeved pirate shirt with the same panache I can (but who can, eh?)) milling around Waverley station – it looked like a Slipknot or Manson junior concert had hit town. After 11, so still early for Edinburgh and off Gordon and I go as the gang leave on the Glasgow train and hit the nearby Malt Shovel for more drinks and finally the rather good night bus service home in the wee small hours – Edinburgh has a good night service for piss-heads and as the entire double-decker is full of drunks entertainment is all-but guaranteed (and the drunken antics of fellow passengers at 3am are often more entertaining than many Fringe shows).

After sleeping off my hangover Gordon called to say he was taking his dog for a walk down the beach at North Berwick on Sunday, so I hitched a lift. At this time of year we often discard our shoes and have a nice paddle as we amble for miles along the curving beaches, but with the recent huge storms which hit all over the UK (and indeed are still hitting even today – my poor cousin June has had her lovely old thatched cottage ruined by floods) things were a trifle stirred up – much of the beach was festooned with huge amounts of stinky seaweed, massive amounts obviously brought in by the storms. Worse still there were dozens of those evil little bastard jellyfish marooned on the beach and more driven into the shallows of the surf, so paddling was not really an option. Damn those pesky jellyfish for ruining my paddling plans! I stopped at each beached critter and berated them at length. Some people think this is odd behaviour, but then my colleagues thought it odd that I was singing ‘blue cheese’ to the tune of ‘blue moon’ (Blue cheese, you saw me standing alone, you made my breath so stinky…) as I sliced up the offending smelly fromage for my lunch last week. Odd is good and I doubt I am the only person who sings to my lunch. And if I am I think that’s to the detriment of those who don’t.

On the way home in the evening we took a detour down a side road in East Lothian and visited Chester Hill Fort, an Iron Age Celtic hill fort. It’s rather odd as you have to go down a small road and walk past a farm house to get to it, then through the stile and past the grazing cows to get to what is left of the hill fort. From a distance it looks like an overgrown small hill, albeit with less vegetation than the larger one next to it. When you get closer to it you can see the shape of defensive ditches and earthen ramparts beneath the grass and large amounts of cow dung which I believe was of comparatively more recent vintage than the Iron Age (phew, stinky). It’s a little odd as the location is next to a much higher hill, so archaeologists are puzzled as to why they Celts of the time chose to build on the lower hill, leaving the settlement overlooked by a taller piece of nearby terrain. In addition to the multiple ditches and ramparts and the steep slope the fort would originally have had a rough, wooden stockade and probably a palisade around the buildings inside. Now only some loose stones and rocks from the foundations are visible and the undulating outlines of the earthen works, still clearly showing the outline of this fortified dwelling. It may not look much – and perhaps you can’t make out any of it in this picture – but considering that this has been here for more than two thousand years I think it is impressive that our long-departed ancestors have still left their mark in the very soil of the land for us to gaze at.

From the top the view is clear across the relatively low, flat fields right out to the nearby River Forth and down to the hill outside North Berwick. Any raiders by land or from the sea would be spotted miles away. Little wonder that this style of fortification would be employed for thousands of years, right up to the medieval period – with mot and bailey constructions on similar sites throughout Britain for thousands of years until they were replaced, often on the same strategic sites, by the mighty stone castles which also litter our landscape. I think we are incredibly lucky to live in a land which offers us so many millennia of history right there on our doorsteps – I can pass a 19^th century home where Robert Louis Stevenson lived or an Iron Age fort all within a few miles of each other.

The only fly in the weekend ointment was a call from the Film Festival to tell me that 2046 had been pulled at the last minute as the director wanted to make further edits. He’s already done this at a couple of other recent film festival abroad, which is a bit worrying. So the last night film has been replaced with a movie whose name I can’t recall, but is an Asian take on an old film Noir, so I reckon I’ll just hang on to those tickets and go along anyway. To make up for it on my visit to see I, Robot this afternoon (actually quite good – better than you may think, but not up to the standard of Alex Proyas previous efforts such as the superb Dark City) I booked a pile more Film Festival tickets. It kicks off in a couple of days and my first Film Fest screening is Tokyo Godfathers on Thursday night, a feature-length anime from Japan. As I get two-for-one discounts I picked up a ticket for Alex, who as we all know, is actually an anime character himself (hence his terrible phobia of erasers and white spirits). So I now have a goodly number of flicks from around the world to watch in the next couple of week, on top of the regular releases I’ll catch too – may the Great Penguin rain down her blessings on the person who invented my film pass

Self-portrait with beer



I don't normally like pictures of myself and try to avoid being in most photos, but this came out rather well I thought. Portrait of the artist as a drunk man. Taken sitting outside the poet's bar, Milne's.







This is, of course, a rare thing. No, not me drinking, the fact that my pint glass is almost empty... Slainte!

Dragon’s Breath

Soooooo misty here in old Edinburgh. Hot weather meets pouring rain drifting over from Hurricane Alex (he denies all responsibility, predictably, but I note he has shaved his bouncy locks and assume this is because he is fed up being recognised from this week’s weather forecasts) and voila Mr Heat and Miss Rain get together, they love each other very much and they have a little baby Mist…

Actually, I’m not complaining – Edinburgh, which looks pretty wonderful in all weathers, looks astonishing in the mist, like something from a piece by my dear old RLS. I took this quick snap on my way into work, with Calton Hill almost invisible (only a few hundred yards away) in the mist. The Castle is glimpsed through drifting haar, it’s immense rock solidity permeated by the mist until it seems less real, a flickering dream image of a castle. On the way home from an excellent meal with some chums the other night it looked quite remarkable. It is Festival time in Edinburgh – the city has doubled as the Fringe, International Festival, Film Fest, Book Fest and Jazz Fest all hit town, the biggest arts festival on the planet. From Princes Street you can see the stadium seating erected on the esplanade of the Castle for the Military Tattoo.

For the evening performances, as the late summer sun sets they light great, flaming braziers along the ancient battlements. It looks fantastic normally, but in this summer mist it was like a scene from 400 years ago. Mist curling around the extinct volcano of Castle Rock, around the immense stone walls, glowing a deep orange-red as the flames flicker through the haar. Add the faint sound of the pipes and drums from the show and it’s one of those sights that even a jaded native has to just stop and stare at, drink it in. On nights like this in this city you could almost believe that Burke and Hare will come looming out of the mist, carrying a body off to Knox, down a winding medieval close. At the West End of Princes Street are the mock-Gothic Victorian (therefore modern by our standards) Saint John’s Church (the one with the often thought-provoking artwork I’ve posted before) and the unusually-shaped (for Scotland) Saint Cuthbert’s. Both have lovely, overgrown old boneyards (in Saint John’s the café opens out onto the graveyard and you can drink your fair-trade coffee among the tombs). Looking down into them from the top of a double-decker bus it looked as if the mist was growing straight out of the ground, as if the damp tombs themselves were bringing forth this murky whiteness and I couldn’t help but imagine what sort of odd creatures came out with it, shielded from curious mortal eyes by twin blankets of mist and night, cavorting safely past the tomb of James Hogg. Silly? Oh, so you say, but were you there you too would start thinking ‘did I see something strange move in the mist? There by the tomb?’ You too would listen closely, your sense of direction confused by the haar – did you hear something scratching? Like something with large nails or claws on old stonework?

As always when the mist curls its lazy tendrils around Edinburgh I think on Boorman’s excellent Excalibur and Nicol Williams rather fun Merlin, summoning the Earth Dragon.

Uther Pendragon (awakening with a start in a mist-covered stone circle): “I dreamt of the Dragon.”

Merlin: “I have awoken him.” (gestures to the surrounding mist) “Cannot you see, all around you, the Dragon’s breath?”

I know the scientific rationale behind the formation of this type of weather. But I prefer the notion of the Dragon’s breath. A creature like no other, a part of the very Earth of Caledonia. When I was a little boy I used to dream sometimes that the many hills and mountains of Scotland were covering sleeping dragons and dinosaurs. I wondered what would happen should they awake, shaking off their rock and soil coverings and stomping across the modern world. I think I still like that idea and perhaps that’s why I like the idea that this pervasive mist is the warm breath of some great creature of the earth, stirring in it’s sleep beneath the Castle.

History

I’m about halfway through reading Medieval Scotland by Alan MacQuarrie to review for History Scotland at the moment. The title is misleading as the book is looking at how the various disparate tribes and groups came together to form what we know as the kingdom of Scotland, so it goes from the Roman period up to almost the Renaissance. My good mate Vegar would probably enjoy the chapters on the 8 and 9^th centuries with all his Viking ancestors running around pillaging right, left and center (in between being rather nasty and violent to each other as well on many occasions!). Just reached past that and got up to the historical Macbeth (as opposed to Shakespeare’s enjoyable but as accurate-as-a-Hollywood-movie version), by which time the Picts have vanished from history, leaving only their beautifully carved standing stones and a mysterious legacy in our Celtic bloodstream (some medieval scholars thought them mythical). A few hundred years earlier than this and mention is made of the brave warrior-king of one of the many small kingdoms of that fragmented period of Britain’s early history. The king is called Urien and he inspired other leaders to form a great alliance against the waves of invaders from across the North Sea. Alas, Urien was betrayed to death by his kinsman Morgan, although his son Ywayn took up the fight.

Urien. Ywayn. Morgan. Sound in any way familiar? Trying to unite the tribes to resist the brutal invaders? Betrayal at the final battle by a blood relative? Little is known about the events – they aren’t called the Dark Ages for nothing – little more remains apart from king lists and the occasional short history normally written centuries later. The book here is traversing the edge of known history. No straight-edge here; it is a nebulous, ever-changing line, it is the shifting border-lands where our history meets our myth and collective folklore. We can’t have one without the other – even a well-researched historical narrative is still a form of myth-making, partly in the grand sense and partly in the modern, scholarly Barthes sense. It does rather reinforce my point of a few days ago that to look for one single source for Arthur is a pointless endeavour – how many tales like that of Urien and Morgan must have been told back then? How many were sung by bards and recorded by monks in Iona and Lindisfarne, being mixed and re-written as the long centuries past? How many of our tales came from those early, dawn-days of these islands? Our version of the Australian Aboriginal’s Dream Time. In a place like this it is easy to see both history and myth each and every day. They both embroider our nocturnal slumbers, decorating our dreams by night, these stories still work in us, inspiring us, defining us. The telling of stories is one of the characteristics that defines every human culture throughout thousands of years of history. These are ours. Perhaps at night we tap into the dreams of the slumbering Dragon, listening to his tales in our sleep. That’s a nice thought to go to sleep to – good night, folks.

misty Edinburgh - compare to this clear-skied, shimmering sunset across the River Forth only a few days ago

Spargo II

The sequel to the hard-ridin’ adventure taking the Wells Fargo across the Nevada deserts and the occasional bit of high plain driftering too. Or to put it another way, I had a very nice email from Tamsin Spargo, who, behind the outlaw bandana mask and clinking spurs is actually a lady. This makes the sequel fare more interesting of course, as Spargo II has a woman making her way in an outlaw-man’s world, holding up trains (they do that themselves in modern Britain), stampeding the townsfolk, robbing the cattle (the cattle were often wealthier than the townsfolk of the frontier), wrestling the natives (a girl needs some fun on the trip you know) and dodging those pesky Pinkerton’s agents, all set to glorious cinematography. Where’s my agent? Get Clint on the phone, see if he’s free to direct our fabulous new Western!

An address to the City of Edinburgh

Received a package of books at work this week from one of our American suppliers addressed to Warterstones of Endionbuirgh. Amazingly it still got here. God knows how they came up with this address – at first we thought it may have been some dim mid-Western shipping clerk spelling phonetically as he drawled out the unfamiliar city name to spell it out (but then for most mid-Westerns any word with more than two syllables if automatically unfamiliar – I would apologise to any mid-Western readers for this slur, but… Well, it’s kind of true… But at least unlike your Southern state cousins y’all have opposable thumbs) but this doesn’t account for it either since 80% of Americans pronounce the city either as Edin-burg or Edin-burrow, being incapable of saying ‘burgh’ (burra), so how they came up with Endionbuirgh I don’t know… Then again it’s no worse than British tourists who routinely mis-pronounce New York as New York instead of the more proper Noo Yoik enunciation (right, PJ?). Than smeg we don’t do business in Auchtermuchty... Still it gives us a chance for some humour in between the monotonous job in the goods-in bay and the never-ending complaints of various managers who all give a dozen priorities each, rank them all equally, expect us to stop what we're supposed to be doing to do those tasks (which they or floor staff should be doing) - all to be done at the same time of course - and will then still complain if our average number of received packages goes down while were were otherwise occupied.

Confronting on assistant manager over this when he waited until 4 minutes before finishing time to ask the goods in people to go start a large 'rush' job (which task isn't a rush one???) I blew a gasket and let him have a verbal broadside. Since I was there late as it was trying to finish the task he wanted me to stop to do something else I wouldn't have had time to do before finishing I feel justified. Knickers to 'em, this psot I've been pushed into is unfufilling enough as it is without yet more crap from managers who are unable to lead staff through inspiration and rely soley on complaining and chiding. Numpties. Needless to say when I eventually finished late on Friday I got no thanks for finishing off my task rather than just jacking it in and leaving it for Monday as I could well have done, so being a more inspirational person than our managers I took myself off to Milnes and there inspired myself by awarding myself a chilled beer. Now that's inspirational leadership! Caught my mate Gordon on the way home from his nearby work and we later ended up in Teuchters in the West End drinking super-chilled Czech beer and trying to resist the urge to pinch the cool glasses they came in.

Yes, I know - shock horror, Joe ditched his beloved real ale for lagers, albeit very good (if pricey) ones, but when it is this hot you need your beer seriously chilled (Hoegarten wheat beer is finest for this - chilled seriously and served at the Golden Rule in thick tumblers kept in the freezer so you can actually feel ice crystals in the beer - its this close to a beer slush puppy!). However, worry not about my real ale credentials since the wonderful Caledonian Brewery, whose holy chimney stack I see from my window and face towards to pray to the Holy Hops, sent me a kind invitation to join their new and limited 1869 Club. I don't know really what it is all about, but why not? Anything to do with this more wonderful brewery in the galaxy must be good...

Spargo

I came across a new paperback at work this afternoon called Wanted Man, which was about a – at the time – famous outlaw of the Old West, Oliver Curtis Perry, who held up a train for a fortune then a few months later robbed the same train. He became a folk hero and a media celebrity (a century before Olly Stone would flirt with the idea of criminals as celebrities in America). It looks rather interesting but truth be told the thing that most impressed itself upon me was the quite magnificent name of the author: Tamsin Spargo. Isn’t that the most fabulous name???? I had to share it with you all. Gee, I can feel an E.G. Thribb bad poem coming on…

Oh Tamsin Spargo,

He rode the Wells Fargo,

Across the Wild Frontier.

He put a lid

On Billy the Kid

Then went on out for a beer.

e.g. thribb, aged 73 & ¾

Spargo

I came across a new paperback at work this afternoon called Wanted Man, which was about a – at the time – famous outlaw of the Old West, Oliver Curtis Perry, who held up a train for a fortune then a few months later robbed the same train. He became a folk hero and a media celebrity (a century before Olly Stone would flirt with the idea of criminals as celebrities in America). It looks rather interesting but truth be told the thing that most impressed itself upon me was the quite magnificent name of the author: Tamsin Spargo. Isn’t that the most fabulous name???? I had to share it with you all. Gee, I can feel an E.G. Thribb bad poem coming on…

Oh Tamsin Spargo,

He rode the Wells Fargo,

Across the Wild Frontier.

He put a lid

On Billy the Kid

Then went on out for a beer.

e.g. thribb, aged 73 & ¾

Alternating the past



Just reading me old mucker Ariels' blog on the Alien and seeing he's just reading the excellent Pavane by the troubled soul who was Keith Roberts. It is a fantastic alternative history from a few decades ago, re-issed by the rather fine SF Masterworks range from Gollancz and I too highly recommend it. Also on the same imprint is the great-grandaddy of the alt-hist novels, Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, which I will need to suggest to the SF Book Group for a future subject (July's meeting last week was for the Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, ana amazing obok as many of hers are and we were delighted to have some new members turn up to discuss it).



Bring the Jubilee, written many decades ago, is, like Pavane, a slim volume (especially by today's standards where too many writers and indeed publishers feel books - of all genres - must be big wrist-breaking tomes). It tells of an America ruined by the defeat in the Civil War of the Union by the South. Now only a few states are left in the Union, impoverished, resentful of black people who they have turned on as to blame for the whole schism, with a powerful South beneath them and a rampant British Empire above them in Canada. Late 19th century New York is a small town, not the powerhouse we know. Streets are festooned with telegraph poles and rich households have telegraphs in the home - there was no great USA for Alexander Graham, Bell to leave Scotland to finish his invention in, so no phones... It's a very clever novel which deftly avoids the obvious traps and cliches a poorer writer would fall into and it finishes with an intriguing twist which I shan't describe - read it instead.



Of course, there are still some good alt-histories out there today and one which is enormous but nevertheless fine is Kim Stanley 'call me Stan' Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt which follows a world for centuries after the plague wiped out all of Europe in medieval times, using notions of Buddhist reincarnation to follow a group of characters in different centuries as the history diverges from ours. It's a fabulous read and also quite enlightening on the customs and religions of other cultures. I'm not sure Neal Stephenson's wonderful Baroque Cycle falls into this genre or not to be honest - it's almost impossible to qualify, which is something I love about it, but it often gets hooked into the sub-genre for want of a better label.

Sniffle’n’sneeze

Yes, today I am playing the role of the children’s picture book character the Sniffalo, the cold-ridden and less well-known cousin to Julia Donaldson’s more popular Gruffalo. Colds and flus suck, but summer versions come with the added twist of making you have to drink boiling hot LemSip on a bloody roasting day when actually you want to be guzzling something with lots of ice cubes in it. And there’s just something weird about having to go to the pharmacist and ask for LemSip when it’s so hot you’re wearing shorts and your darkest shades. I suspect this also means I will have the unbounded joy of our wonderful ‘welcome back’ talk our new boss does (apparently been on the company rule book for ages, just no-one ever bothered with it before).

This is where if you are off ill, even for a single day, the manager takes you in for a quick chat where he asks why you were off (gee, for the same reason as I told you when I called in sick!), what medication you took, if any (and what I wonder, business is it of his? He’s not a doctor). And then they like to casually mention how many sick days you may have used over the last year or two. All supposedly to make you feel the company is looking out for you and is concerned about your well-being but actually I suspect strongly it is designed to make you feel guilty for being ill and not at work so next time you are ill you will struggle out of your sick bed and come in rather than put up with another of these sodding welcome back talks. Nice bit of nasty psychology – the company gets to look like its being caring but actually they are having a go at you. Of course, such little talks never take into account all the times you were feeling ill and struggled into work for an entire weekend shift because you knew you were in charge and had to lock up and being off would be a nightmare with some other senior forced to work longer to cover you. But of course, you get no thanks for that kind of thing, just grumblings at being ill and a never-spoken but rather implied feeling that you are some sort of malingerer. It’s a great place to work, Waterstone’s.

Stoned swords

Caught the incredibly disappointing King Arthur this weekend; a truly dreadful, mess of a film. I didn’t have the highest hopes to begin with really – it was, after all, a Jerry Bruckheimer production. And the PR for the movie kept pushing it as the ‘real’ and ‘historical’ Arthur. As there is no real archaeological or historical evidence for King Arthur, this should set off warning bells in any discerning person’s head right away. The lengthy preamble claims that modern historians believe that the version of Arthur they are selling is accurate. What historians? Who are they and what is their evidence? Once again I state the obvious – there is no evidence. Our only trail to Arthur, if he existed, is in the intertwined realms of oral traditional tales and mythic folklore, both of which have mutated over the millennia, being added to and altered by the tellers for their audience. It seems unlikely to all but a few blinkered people (normally not historians or archaeologists) that there was no one Arthur and that the tales are a general amalgamation of various folk sources, half-remembered and continually embroidered by balladeers until we reach the apex of this process with Mallory’s magnificent Morte d’Arthur.

However, this could still have been a good film – there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of having one of the gritty versions of the Arthurian sources; a real man, not one picked by the gods, no magical sword or kingdom, no court magician. It could have worked as a reasonable slice of heroic fantasy.

Alas, the film is an utter mess. I mean this literally – the editing is so awful that the narrative is entirely muddled. We have scenes which do not connect correctly with each other and sudden jumps. One minute the gorgeous Kiera Knightley is in drab rags then suddenly joins Arthur in a flowing Roman gown to do archery battle in the middle of a winter mountain-scape (naturally you’d wear a flowing gown to a winter battle). Where did this come from? Where the hell are these mountains they suddenly had to run through? They are heading to Hadrian’s Wall from the North, fleeing Saxons who have landed in the East, so where are these huge mountains? There are no mountains like this unless they travelled all the way up to the Grampians… Yes, like the execrable Robin Hood of Costner this movie has no understanding at all of the actual geography of the British Isles. Likewise the natives – referred to as ‘Woads’ are north of Hadrian’s Wall, which is fair enough. But when the big battle comes there suddenly appears piles of Picts behind the Wall. How did they get there in big numbers? When? How did they get through the Wall? How did they get past the vast Saxon army on the other side? And there’s Kiera (in a fetching, if painful looking set of tiny leather straps) in war paint to lead them. Except the previous scene had her getting jiggy with Clive Owen’s Arthur in his quarters in the Roman fort. How did she get from there one evening to leading a large Pictish army the next morning?

Now I can handle playing with some accuracies for a movie like this, but I do demand the film have its own, consistent internal logic. It looks quite clear that despite the 2 hours plus running time huge chunks of exposition have been excised when the makers decided that their ‘historically accurate’ flick need to be faster and more action packed so cut linking scenes to speed up the narrative. This has the side-effect of breaking the narrative cohesion and destroys any (already weak) attempt to build characterisation; everyone here is a clichéd character. I simply didn’t care about any of them since they never developed, not even Arthur – his motivations seems totally muddled throughout and it is hard to understand let along empathise with why he does what he does. I don’t even recall the names of half of his knights. The Saxons are cartoon bad guys – they kill every person them meet and burn all towns, kill all livestock. Now the Saxons were brutal warriors and conquerors, but you don’t conquer by destroying everything and everyone in the land you are trying to take – how are you going to live there afterwards? And if you have a large professional army and intend to assault a large Roman fortification wouldn’t you bring some siege equipment? They don’t even have scaling ladders – how exactly were they intending to breach the Wall?

And while we’re at it, if this is a ‘historically accurate’ re-telling then why is it so utterly rife with inaccuracies? Romans using long swords, wrong armour for the period, Saxons facing off the Romans, Saxons invading Pictish territory… Oh, face it; it is as historically accurate as Braveheart. Indeed it is 1/3 Braveheart and 1/3 Gladiator and little bits of Seven Samurai, Xena and who knows what. During Arthur’s pre-battle speech he comes this close to the ‘what we do echoes in eternity’ and ‘frreeeeeeedddddddooooooommmmm!’. There’s also a scene take directly from Boorman’s far superior Arthurian film Excalibur; the final battle against Morded when Arthur’s knights use the mist to their advantage against a superior force – ‘they won’t know how few we are in the fog… We’ll use the old ways; speed of horse.’ Except here it is a mess again – even the battle scenes are chopped up and messy with only the predictable but well shot battle on the ice being worth watching.

My advice is to avoid this mess of a film – it wants to be gritty and down to earth and ‘realistic’ but then it later also tries to make a play for the mythological Arthur too; you can’t have both. Boorman’s Excalibur, which is also rife with inaccuracies (medieval plate armour and castles in the Dark Ages?) understands Arthur far better – Boorman, realising there is no real history to base this on, uses Tennyson’s and Mallory's epic poems as the basis of the narrative. He uses and glorifies the myth of Arthur to great effect (and still has some gritty realism; the battles are bloody and brutal, far more so than King Arthur manages on a far bigger budget and bigger cast) and has the bonus of Nicol Williams and his wonderfully eccentric Merlin.

And in this I think Boorman gets it right – looking for the one, real Arthur is always going to be a waste of time; it is the myth of Arthur which matters. He is the quintessential British mytho-heroic archetype. Whether he actually existed in any form or not really doesn’t matter, it is the inspiration of his myth which is the important factor. The dream of Camelot is what is important, not trying to excavate some 6^th century hall which may or may not have been the real Camelot. Hell, we can't even agree where he was bron (if he was) - Cornwall? Scotland? As Boorman’s Arthur puts it before his final battle, he was not born to be a man but to be the stuff of future memory. The Fellowship was a brief beginning, a fair time which cannot be forgotten. And because it cannot be forgotten that fair time may come again. And so I ride out one last time to defend the dream of what was and what may be again.

The Arthur we know in folksong and poetry will always be more important than any historical figure; it is a mythic type built into the very psyche of the people of these islands. He doesn’t need to have existed at all in any form to be the inspiration he is and has been for centuries. When cynics say that Arthur was supposed to rise again in our time of greatest need but has never been seen when Napoleon or Hitler threatened, so obviously all is nonsense they miss the point. Arthur may have no physical basis in our world; it’s a question of spirit. Like the Red Dragon he embodies the spirit of both the people and the land. And who is to say that spirit was not present in an immaterial but highly effective form in Britain’s time of greatest need? The poetical amongst us may argue that Arthur does rise when we need him, that the spirit of Arthur was there amongst the young Spitfire pilots of 1940 and in every other time of need. All of this is missed by King Arthur, a muddled film which completely fails to understand what Arthur represents. Forget this movie and watch Excalibur instead or read Mallory or Tennyson or the wonderful Mabinogion, an ancient collection of tales from our Celtic ancestors which most scholars believe are instrumental in the early Arthurian legends. They are also great tales on a par with those in the Iliad, Beowulf or the Icelandic Sagas.