It has been quite a busy and cultural couple of days for me.
On Thursday, the local Worthing Lions were sponsoring a performance of Oklahoma! at the Pier Theatre in the town, a production performed by the local amateur operatic Society.
Now, because I have worked for a professional opera company, Opera North, as their education officer, I have been in the habit of avoiding amateur performances like the plague. In other words, I am a cultural snob.
I suppose this is a consequence of having for five years having had the opportunity to see as much opera of the highest standard as I could have wished. When rehearsals were completed, a typical season would consist of at least three shows, performed in repertoire, so that in the course of a week there would be two performances of two different operas, and a third performance of some lesser-known or less popular work, that would not merit more than two performances in any one week.
You could say that it was my professional duty to see the work of the company for which I worked. Of course, I never had to pay a penny for my tickets, and I would always get good seats, often in the stalls next to visiting members of other companies or singers popping along to see the work of a professional colleague, or sometimes agents checking out the work of someone on their books already, or potentially so.
It is easy to take this kind of thing for granted when it is so readily available.
But my visit to Oklahoma! by the local Worthing players was a pleasant surprise indeed, it was performed with gusto, and the voices were surprisingly good. Perhaps I should not be so surprised, as in so many small towns around the UK, it is the amateur companies that provide a substantial quantity of the cultural opportunities available to local residents.
That tickets were made available to me courtesy of the local Lions organization is thanks to the fact that as a disabled person I was one of the target audience for this charitable sponsorship on their part. As it happens, it was a wonderful experience, and literally just minutes away from where I live.
My carer Linda came with me, and the person that provided me with a complimentary pair of tickets made a third available so that Linda’s partner Ray could also attend.
And so it was an evening out for all of us, and all I had to do was avoid breaking into song throughout the evening, which would have spoilt the event for everyone.
And it is of course so full of tunes and songs to which one cannot deny that one knows the words.
I took the trouble of viewing my own copy of the Hollywood film version recorded from the television, which I suppose makes me someone unafraid to admit that I like musicals.
In some respects, there is nothing finer than a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and there are so many to choose from.
And so in future I shall be less snobbish about what I go and see in my local community, and who knows, next time I might even pay for a ticket. It will be worth it.
Monday 26 March 2012
Sunday 25 March 2012
Into The Woods (And Out Again)
I went to the theatre last night. Not quite so straightforward as once it was, as the journey to Brighton, just 15 miles or so from where I now live, might as well be a journey of 1000 miles. For me in my wheelchair.
But for this expedition, more than worth it, I had the special services of my own taxi driver.
He is mine in a very special sense, because we have become friends, in a way that is perhaps less usual than simple acquaintance might imply.
In December, my first article for Care Talk Magazine was a profile of my taxi driver, and the way in which he has set out to provide an accessible service to people just like myself at reasonable cost.
An honorable intention, it is easy to see. But the reasons for this were arrived at out of dissatisfaction with what was available to his own mother-in-law, who is in fact cared for at the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home just across the road from me. She is not an ex-serviceman, but then no institution is an island in these days.
Her disability arises from the fusing of hip bones that these days would have been avoided shortly after birth, and now as the matriarch of her family she has lost the use of her legs.
It was the desire of her daughter and her husband to help her retain the capacity to travel in the world that led them to set up their own taxi firm, because in spite of legislation under the Disability Discrimination Act, taxi drivers have been slow to fully embrace the possibilities of the ‘disabled pound’.
Len is not a by profession a taxi driver, but he has become one, and a very good one. In fact, he has changed the whole way in which taxi registration takes place in the small town in which we both live.
Any taxi seeking registration that is accessible to a wheelchair user must now receive some basic training in the needs of wheelchair users, and this training is delivered by Len himself.
He has a strong commitment to fair pricing for journeys undertaken by wheelchair users, and this has been an important aspect of his business policy. One that has been needed in the marketplace for taxi journeys undertaken by wheelchair users in this town.
In London, recent legislation has required every Black Cab to carry ramps to enable access, and most modern taxis have special ramps built into the structure of the cab. Great. But London does not extend beyond the boundaries of the capital, and in the provinces taxi registration is up to the local Town or Borough authorities.
Therefore, excess to taxi transport outside London is a hit and miss affair.
My article was based upon a simple interview which I undertook in a local restaurant, which had the benefit of a single Michelin Star. We then made a visit, last Spring, to a local woodland, to see the bluebells. From this came a poem which was published with the article.
Len has been my favored driver to enable me to see the theatre produced by my best friend, who is now a Senior Lecturer at a local University, one that is highly thought of by way of its Performing Arts courses.
And thus we have attended a number of student shows together, and yesterday we saw a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, performed by the year three students from the performing arts degree. It was the penultimate performance of an extensive tour of Sussex, and I suppose one of the most ambitious projects for the University to date.
It was a stupendous experience, and Len brought along his wife, Pauline, as she has heard such positive things about the previous shows that he has taken me to. Len and Pauline are emigrating to Australia in the summer, where Pauline will take up an interesting job as a charity fundraiser.
I will be sad to lose my taxi driver, but pleased to keep in touch with their new adventure, beginning a new life in a new environment.
We were all profoundly moved by the production and the quality of the student ensemble, in this piece which I have never seen before. When it was performed professionally in the West End in London, it won an Olivier award, one of the most prestigious awards for theatre in London.
It is an impressive musical work. Encompassing all of the emotions that we must all go through as we become independent adults. In outline, the characters are all of the fairy-tale characters that we have grown up with as children, like Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. They must all face up to their lives beyond the wood, in the real world post-fairy-tale.
It is perhaps a fitting piece to see when such important changes are afoot for my taxi driver and his family, as indeed all of their children will be emigrating to Australia as well.
Bluebells In The Azured Wood
a tribute to A.E. Houseman
A memory of old England, perhaps
impossible to find on any maps
a sign of spring, less common now
with so much land beneath the plough.
With forests so much under threat
by developments not built as yet,
still they grow in fragrant splendor
in woods in which we still remember
the carpet of blue beneath spring green
as trees awake, and life is seen
to come upon the Winter's bough
and birdsong fills the silence now.
Previously published In the December 2011 issue of Care Talk Magazine and in my second collection, No Particular Order
But for this expedition, more than worth it, I had the special services of my own taxi driver.
He is mine in a very special sense, because we have become friends, in a way that is perhaps less usual than simple acquaintance might imply.
In December, my first article for Care Talk Magazine was a profile of my taxi driver, and the way in which he has set out to provide an accessible service to people just like myself at reasonable cost.
An honorable intention, it is easy to see. But the reasons for this were arrived at out of dissatisfaction with what was available to his own mother-in-law, who is in fact cared for at the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home just across the road from me. She is not an ex-serviceman, but then no institution is an island in these days.
Her disability arises from the fusing of hip bones that these days would have been avoided shortly after birth, and now as the matriarch of her family she has lost the use of her legs.
It was the desire of her daughter and her husband to help her retain the capacity to travel in the world that led them to set up their own taxi firm, because in spite of legislation under the Disability Discrimination Act, taxi drivers have been slow to fully embrace the possibilities of the ‘disabled pound’.
Len is not a by profession a taxi driver, but he has become one, and a very good one. In fact, he has changed the whole way in which taxi registration takes place in the small town in which we both live.
Any taxi seeking registration that is accessible to a wheelchair user must now receive some basic training in the needs of wheelchair users, and this training is delivered by Len himself.
He has a strong commitment to fair pricing for journeys undertaken by wheelchair users, and this has been an important aspect of his business policy. One that has been needed in the marketplace for taxi journeys undertaken by wheelchair users in this town.
In London, recent legislation has required every Black Cab to carry ramps to enable access, and most modern taxis have special ramps built into the structure of the cab. Great. But London does not extend beyond the boundaries of the capital, and in the provinces taxi registration is up to the local Town or Borough authorities.
Therefore, excess to taxi transport outside London is a hit and miss affair.
My article was based upon a simple interview which I undertook in a local restaurant, which had the benefit of a single Michelin Star. We then made a visit, last Spring, to a local woodland, to see the bluebells. From this came a poem which was published with the article.
Len has been my favored driver to enable me to see the theatre produced by my best friend, who is now a Senior Lecturer at a local University, one that is highly thought of by way of its Performing Arts courses.
And thus we have attended a number of student shows together, and yesterday we saw a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods, performed by the year three students from the performing arts degree. It was the penultimate performance of an extensive tour of Sussex, and I suppose one of the most ambitious projects for the University to date.
It was a stupendous experience, and Len brought along his wife, Pauline, as she has heard such positive things about the previous shows that he has taken me to. Len and Pauline are emigrating to Australia in the summer, where Pauline will take up an interesting job as a charity fundraiser.
I will be sad to lose my taxi driver, but pleased to keep in touch with their new adventure, beginning a new life in a new environment.
We were all profoundly moved by the production and the quality of the student ensemble, in this piece which I have never seen before. When it was performed professionally in the West End in London, it won an Olivier award, one of the most prestigious awards for theatre in London.
It is an impressive musical work. Encompassing all of the emotions that we must all go through as we become independent adults. In outline, the characters are all of the fairy-tale characters that we have grown up with as children, like Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. They must all face up to their lives beyond the wood, in the real world post-fairy-tale.
It is perhaps a fitting piece to see when such important changes are afoot for my taxi driver and his family, as indeed all of their children will be emigrating to Australia as well.
Bluebells In The Azured Wood
a tribute to A.E. Houseman
A memory of old England, perhaps
impossible to find on any maps
a sign of spring, less common now
with so much land beneath the plough.
With forests so much under threat
by developments not built as yet,
still they grow in fragrant splendor
in woods in which we still remember
the carpet of blue beneath spring green
as trees awake, and life is seen
to come upon the Winter's bough
and birdsong fills the silence now.
Previously published In the December 2011 issue of Care Talk Magazine and in my second collection, No Particular Order
Tuesday 20 March 2012
Pilgrimage Or Quest?
I really do think that sometimes the unconscious mind is working away behind the scenes and sorting things out.
The first time I really experienced this at work was when, sometime in my mid 20s, I just suddenly found the solution to a nightmare that I had on a recurring basis during my childhood.
Every night, I used to imagine that a Wolf would creep into my room, and lie at the end of my bed. Of course, meaning that I spent many nights only half asleep in fear of the creature at the end of my bed.
For apparently no reason, I suddenly realized one day what had been happening.
My mother, out of motherly concern for me, had been checking on me when she thought I was asleep, and during the winter had often placed a blanket folded at the end of my bed.
What she has never realized, because I never told her about my dream, is that she had unwittingly been the cause of this childhood nightmare.
When I realized what had been taking place, nothing magical happened. But I suddenly realized how powerful is the unconscious mind. And how easily suggestible it can be. Of course, I have not continued to have this nightmare into adulthood, but solving this mysterious and quite innocent (on my mother’s part) issue, has given me an insight into myself.
Just recently, something similar has happened. For some time, at the deeper recesses of my mind, I have had a rather hazy notion of something that I might have been asked to do. Almost commissioned to do.
Just last night, in my dreams I did some research, and looked up what this particular commission might mean, and even the name of it has now disappeared from my grasp.
But I have awoken remembering what I looked up. In other words, I know what this thing was that I might have been asked to complete, or commissioned to do.
It is to keep a kind of a diary, but more specifically, what in the dictionary or encyclopaedia that I found the definition in was described as an Ordinary Book Of Hours. One of my carers has just recently attended an exhibition in London of quite extraordinary manuscripts, some of the great treasures of the British Library. This included books of hours created by monks and illuminated in gold leaf and with the most extraordinary illustrations, of course all hand written on Vellum, prepared goatskin, in the days before paper had made its way from China to be manufactured in Britain.
And so, I feel as if I have had revealed to me, something that will be the framework for my blog writing for the future. I shall compile a Book Of Hours, an insight into my life, inner and outer, that may be an insight into the life I lead, restricted as it is by my disability. But a reminder if one is needed that restriction only gives greater purpose.
So that I can include within it some of the experiences that I have which may be of interest to people that do not know me, as well as a document of the way in which my creative life is progressing.
I do not know much about what a Book Of Hours might once have really consisted, except that they are almost always works of great beauty. Containing both spiritual and temporal entries, hence the title I have given to this piece.
And so another insight into myself, perhaps to give me more direction for my creativity, and more excuses for exploring the contacts that I make in the wider world, as I contribute the experience that I have as somebody in receipt of social care. And more than happy to talk about it.
This has meant speaking at conferences and often very much in public about my experiences, and because of my work before I became disabled, in the professional arts. I have no fear of speaking in public to large groups of people, and this perhaps makes me somewhat different to many people. And perhaps by compiling my Book Of Hours, I will have something to remind me of the person that I am and remain, as well as the person that I once was, and what I wish to become.
For what is certainly the case is that I still have ambitions, dreams, and desires. Perhaps the limitations placed upon them only make me more focused. To quote myself in one of the short articles that I have written, I may be damaged goods, but I am certainly not lost property.
The first time I really experienced this at work was when, sometime in my mid 20s, I just suddenly found the solution to a nightmare that I had on a recurring basis during my childhood.
Every night, I used to imagine that a Wolf would creep into my room, and lie at the end of my bed. Of course, meaning that I spent many nights only half asleep in fear of the creature at the end of my bed.
For apparently no reason, I suddenly realized one day what had been happening.
My mother, out of motherly concern for me, had been checking on me when she thought I was asleep, and during the winter had often placed a blanket folded at the end of my bed.
What she has never realized, because I never told her about my dream, is that she had unwittingly been the cause of this childhood nightmare.
When I realized what had been taking place, nothing magical happened. But I suddenly realized how powerful is the unconscious mind. And how easily suggestible it can be. Of course, I have not continued to have this nightmare into adulthood, but solving this mysterious and quite innocent (on my mother’s part) issue, has given me an insight into myself.
Just recently, something similar has happened. For some time, at the deeper recesses of my mind, I have had a rather hazy notion of something that I might have been asked to do. Almost commissioned to do.
Just last night, in my dreams I did some research, and looked up what this particular commission might mean, and even the name of it has now disappeared from my grasp.
But I have awoken remembering what I looked up. In other words, I know what this thing was that I might have been asked to complete, or commissioned to do.
It is to keep a kind of a diary, but more specifically, what in the dictionary or encyclopaedia that I found the definition in was described as an Ordinary Book Of Hours. One of my carers has just recently attended an exhibition in London of quite extraordinary manuscripts, some of the great treasures of the British Library. This included books of hours created by monks and illuminated in gold leaf and with the most extraordinary illustrations, of course all hand written on Vellum, prepared goatskin, in the days before paper had made its way from China to be manufactured in Britain.
And so, I feel as if I have had revealed to me, something that will be the framework for my blog writing for the future. I shall compile a Book Of Hours, an insight into my life, inner and outer, that may be an insight into the life I lead, restricted as it is by my disability. But a reminder if one is needed that restriction only gives greater purpose.
So that I can include within it some of the experiences that I have which may be of interest to people that do not know me, as well as a document of the way in which my creative life is progressing.
I do not know much about what a Book Of Hours might once have really consisted, except that they are almost always works of great beauty. Containing both spiritual and temporal entries, hence the title I have given to this piece.
And so another insight into myself, perhaps to give me more direction for my creativity, and more excuses for exploring the contacts that I make in the wider world, as I contribute the experience that I have as somebody in receipt of social care. And more than happy to talk about it.
This has meant speaking at conferences and often very much in public about my experiences, and because of my work before I became disabled, in the professional arts. I have no fear of speaking in public to large groups of people, and this perhaps makes me somewhat different to many people. And perhaps by compiling my Book Of Hours, I will have something to remind me of the person that I am and remain, as well as the person that I once was, and what I wish to become.
For what is certainly the case is that I still have ambitions, dreams, and desires. Perhaps the limitations placed upon them only make me more focused. To quote myself in one of the short articles that I have written, I may be damaged goods, but I am certainly not lost property.
Sunday 18 March 2012
Love And Hope
Not a great deal has happened today. Although I did keep a promise, and by doing so, gave myself a little more hope. Something important to someone like me, who doesn’t get out very often.
Because, you see, I am seriously disabled by multiple sclerosis. Although if you have been a regular reader of my blog you will already know that.
I sometimes have to remind myself, because as long as I can still speak clearly, I am still able to write poetry, to write articles in care talk magazine, and keep in touch through new technology with a network of people most of whom I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for being diagnosed with this condition in the year 2000.
It is mothers day in the UK, probably celebrated differently in different countries. But I am sure the same sentiments will be felt, that of love for the person that has been responsible for one’s upbringing. I am 51, and my mother is 92, but still alive and present in my life. Although she lives many miles from where I live on the south coast of England.
She lives in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge and Avebury. In a market town called Marlborough.
It is a beautiful place, reckoned to be the town with the widest street in England. This is because the street has been the home to a regular market every week for perhaps 1000 years. Therefore the street is wide enough to accommodate a market, and yet in modern times to still allow for road traffic each side of where the market takes place, in the middle of this wide thoroughfare.
I suppose that is one of the promises that I kept today, to ring my mother and to tell her how much she means to me. I didn’t send flowers this year, although my sister, that lives in the same town, or at least on the outskirts of it, did send an arrangement virtually identical to the one that I would have sent in any case. And so I simply sent my love, which I suppose in some ways, is far more important. And probably in the circumstances means more.
The other promise that I kept was made to my weekend carer, who is one of my greatest fans as far as my poetry is concerned.
He is not a native English speaker, but nevertheless is always extolling the virtues of my writing.
If any of you have read the blogs within which I have included poems, you can judge for yourselves as to the merits of my writing.
What Antonio had asked me to do was to look at the website of Faber and Faber, with a view to sending them some examples of my poetry.
This publisher was established in 1929, and is one of the most prestigious in the United Kingdom. They were the publisher of my favourite poet, TS Eliot, and it would be a great honour if I were able to have some work published by them.
We can all dream.
They are one of the few publishers that will still accept unsolicited poetry, albeit with some restrictions. You must send only a maximum of six poems, and they must be sent by post, not by e-mail or by fax.
If you don’t hear anything within eight weeks, quite simply they are not interested.
I have of course previously already sent some of my poems to them, and nothing has come of it.
But of course, if we have dreams, and we cannot expect them to be achieved at once, or easily.
And so, I have been thinking today about a selection of half a dozen of my poems that I could send to them, since it has probably been two or three years since I last sent some examples of my work to them. I just hope that I don’t send any that I have already sent, although I suppose it is quite likely that it might be a different person that would read whatever I send. I hope so.
And so, on this memorable day, I shall complete my selection from my main poetry archive, which these days stretches to over 200 poems.
I will include one here, that I am particularly fond of. It has been included in one of my self published collections, and so may well already be of no interest to such an esteemed publisher. Never mind.
Anyway, I have watched a film this afternoon that is all about hope, The Shawshank Redemption, so why not add Hope to my afternoon activities, and follow it up with a hopeful letter containing my hopeful poems. You never know.
Deadheading The Flowers
Careful in the garden, be circumspect
don't pull the weeds before you've checked
what's living lives, what's dead is dead.
The heat from these composted roots
will drive this season's coming fruits
when mother Sun will raise her head.
The Winter is a time of change, of resolution
after growing time. Seasonal motions
cannot maintain the flower-beds
without the cutting-off of heads.
Fragile beauty and a dying sun
how much we lose of what's begun
before new life establishes
among the brassicas and the radishes.
Be careful when you make a change
check there's nothing misarranged
before
you start
to dig.
Because, you see, I am seriously disabled by multiple sclerosis. Although if you have been a regular reader of my blog you will already know that.
I sometimes have to remind myself, because as long as I can still speak clearly, I am still able to write poetry, to write articles in care talk magazine, and keep in touch through new technology with a network of people most of whom I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for being diagnosed with this condition in the year 2000.
It is mothers day in the UK, probably celebrated differently in different countries. But I am sure the same sentiments will be felt, that of love for the person that has been responsible for one’s upbringing. I am 51, and my mother is 92, but still alive and present in my life. Although she lives many miles from where I live on the south coast of England.
She lives in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge and Avebury. In a market town called Marlborough.
It is a beautiful place, reckoned to be the town with the widest street in England. This is because the street has been the home to a regular market every week for perhaps 1000 years. Therefore the street is wide enough to accommodate a market, and yet in modern times to still allow for road traffic each side of where the market takes place, in the middle of this wide thoroughfare.
I suppose that is one of the promises that I kept today, to ring my mother and to tell her how much she means to me. I didn’t send flowers this year, although my sister, that lives in the same town, or at least on the outskirts of it, did send an arrangement virtually identical to the one that I would have sent in any case. And so I simply sent my love, which I suppose in some ways, is far more important. And probably in the circumstances means more.
The other promise that I kept was made to my weekend carer, who is one of my greatest fans as far as my poetry is concerned.
He is not a native English speaker, but nevertheless is always extolling the virtues of my writing.
If any of you have read the blogs within which I have included poems, you can judge for yourselves as to the merits of my writing.
What Antonio had asked me to do was to look at the website of Faber and Faber, with a view to sending them some examples of my poetry.
This publisher was established in 1929, and is one of the most prestigious in the United Kingdom. They were the publisher of my favourite poet, TS Eliot, and it would be a great honour if I were able to have some work published by them.
We can all dream.
They are one of the few publishers that will still accept unsolicited poetry, albeit with some restrictions. You must send only a maximum of six poems, and they must be sent by post, not by e-mail or by fax.
If you don’t hear anything within eight weeks, quite simply they are not interested.
I have of course previously already sent some of my poems to them, and nothing has come of it.
But of course, if we have dreams, and we cannot expect them to be achieved at once, or easily.
And so, I have been thinking today about a selection of half a dozen of my poems that I could send to them, since it has probably been two or three years since I last sent some examples of my work to them. I just hope that I don’t send any that I have already sent, although I suppose it is quite likely that it might be a different person that would read whatever I send. I hope so.
And so, on this memorable day, I shall complete my selection from my main poetry archive, which these days stretches to over 200 poems.
I will include one here, that I am particularly fond of. It has been included in one of my self published collections, and so may well already be of no interest to such an esteemed publisher. Never mind.
Anyway, I have watched a film this afternoon that is all about hope, The Shawshank Redemption, so why not add Hope to my afternoon activities, and follow it up with a hopeful letter containing my hopeful poems. You never know.
Deadheading The Flowers
Careful in the garden, be circumspect
don't pull the weeds before you've checked
what's living lives, what's dead is dead.
The heat from these composted roots
will drive this season's coming fruits
when mother Sun will raise her head.
The Winter is a time of change, of resolution
after growing time. Seasonal motions
cannot maintain the flower-beds
without the cutting-off of heads.
Fragile beauty and a dying sun
how much we lose of what's begun
before new life establishes
among the brassicas and the radishes.
Be careful when you make a change
check there's nothing misarranged
before
you start
to dig.
Friday 16 March 2012
Building My DVD Collection
I have just discovered that I can copy DVDs that I have recorded from broadcast television to my computer.
The trick seems to be the way in which the DVD files are read by the media player that I have recently installed to my Macintosh. This media player, available free on the Internet, reads the files that make up the recorded DVD in a way that my present DVD player, the one that comes as standard with my Mac, does not.
One consequence of this is that this new media player means that I can read DVDs from all regions. And the fact that I can copy DVDs recorded from broadcast (obviously not those that are copy protected and which I have purchased) means that I can begin to accumulate my collection without having to continually find somewhere to keep the DVDs.
And by using just if you rewritable DVDs, I don’t have to keep shelling out for blank DVDs, either.
The fact that I have recently purchased a surprisingly large yet inexpensive backup data drive, 1 TB for less than £70, means that I can easily store hundreds of films in the virtual space the drive offers. I still have around 300 GB available, and if this is not big enough, I could always purchase some more storage space.
Making it so much more interesting as a means of giving me instant access to the films that I have been recording for a couple of years now. I have about 700 films recorded from broadcast television, many of which I perhaps won’t be watching too many times again.
But many of which I will. And perhaps this new means of storage will encourage me to organise the way in which I keep my films, creating categories that stretch far beyond the technical categories of action films, war films and so forth.
One of my favorite categories is that of films that write or rewrite American history, such as Sahara, and the National Treasure films. Not to mention Night Time At The Museum.
We all have our favorite ways of organizing things, and I like to try to observe some kind of order amidst to the chaotic wealth of films, and sometimes perceive the links between films that I think of as almost genealogical.
So for example the way in which the Matrix series has affected the way in which certain films are made, stretching the boundaries of the way in which fast action can take place. This is evident in Equilibrium, and indeed is a close relation to the kind of action sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
It is endless, this pondering of film categories. And the fact that my new media player seems to show my films off with sharper colour and better contrast makes them all worth watching over again. Which I like to do anyway, just to make sure they really are the way I remember them.
The trick seems to be the way in which the DVD files are read by the media player that I have recently installed to my Macintosh. This media player, available free on the Internet, reads the files that make up the recorded DVD in a way that my present DVD player, the one that comes as standard with my Mac, does not.
One consequence of this is that this new media player means that I can read DVDs from all regions. And the fact that I can copy DVDs recorded from broadcast (obviously not those that are copy protected and which I have purchased) means that I can begin to accumulate my collection without having to continually find somewhere to keep the DVDs.
And by using just if you rewritable DVDs, I don’t have to keep shelling out for blank DVDs, either.
The fact that I have recently purchased a surprisingly large yet inexpensive backup data drive, 1 TB for less than £70, means that I can easily store hundreds of films in the virtual space the drive offers. I still have around 300 GB available, and if this is not big enough, I could always purchase some more storage space.
Making it so much more interesting as a means of giving me instant access to the films that I have been recording for a couple of years now. I have about 700 films recorded from broadcast television, many of which I perhaps won’t be watching too many times again.
But many of which I will. And perhaps this new means of storage will encourage me to organise the way in which I keep my films, creating categories that stretch far beyond the technical categories of action films, war films and so forth.
One of my favorite categories is that of films that write or rewrite American history, such as Sahara, and the National Treasure films. Not to mention Night Time At The Museum.
We all have our favorite ways of organizing things, and I like to try to observe some kind of order amidst to the chaotic wealth of films, and sometimes perceive the links between films that I think of as almost genealogical.
So for example the way in which the Matrix series has affected the way in which certain films are made, stretching the boundaries of the way in which fast action can take place. This is evident in Equilibrium, and indeed is a close relation to the kind of action sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
It is endless, this pondering of film categories. And the fact that my new media player seems to show my films off with sharper colour and better contrast makes them all worth watching over again. Which I like to do anyway, just to make sure they really are the way I remember them.
Thursday 15 March 2012
Uses For Lipstick
This poem won for me my first ever literary competition. Okay, so it was only a £20 book token, but it means the world to me. It was in a competition organised by my local lending library, to write a poem inspired by the movies.
As a consequence of drawing its inspiration from movies, I have created a short film, which can be viewed on my you tube site, using the poem as soundtrack to very short clips from some of the films that had inspired the poem.
I consider it to be one of my list poems, and I am always on the lookout for more list poems. I had an idea early yesterday, for another list poem, things that should not be forgotten. While that must not be forgotten. Like flowers in the buttonholes of smart suits, the values that have so often been forgotten these days. The list is endless, and I suppose that is the point. To come up with a short, emotive list of things that must not be forgotten.
I like the idea of using poems as the sound track to short films, and often this can be a good vehicle for using archive film that is copyright free, otherwise I am careful to adhere to what I consider to be fair use. I have led lot of friends that are professional artists and musicians, and even one that works in the film as an art director. I am very respectful of copyright and what it means to the livelihood of individual artists, not all of whom make a fortune from their work.
Uses For Lipstick
Seduction. A message on a mirror
or the name on a wooden grave-marker
in Ice Cold In Alex.
Triage
in Pearl Harbor,
marking those that would live
and those that will die.
Marlene Dietrich wore it smudged
in the mornings
so her nights might have seemed
more interesting.
James Cagney wore it too
because great actors know
how to use make-up,
and his films were just in black and white
it was another kind of seduction.
.
http://www.youtube.com/user/worthingsp?feature=mhee
As a consequence of drawing its inspiration from movies, I have created a short film, which can be viewed on my you tube site, using the poem as soundtrack to very short clips from some of the films that had inspired the poem.
I consider it to be one of my list poems, and I am always on the lookout for more list poems. I had an idea early yesterday, for another list poem, things that should not be forgotten. While that must not be forgotten. Like flowers in the buttonholes of smart suits, the values that have so often been forgotten these days. The list is endless, and I suppose that is the point. To come up with a short, emotive list of things that must not be forgotten.
I like the idea of using poems as the sound track to short films, and often this can be a good vehicle for using archive film that is copyright free, otherwise I am careful to adhere to what I consider to be fair use. I have led lot of friends that are professional artists and musicians, and even one that works in the film as an art director. I am very respectful of copyright and what it means to the livelihood of individual artists, not all of whom make a fortune from their work.
Uses For Lipstick
Seduction. A message on a mirror
or the name on a wooden grave-marker
in Ice Cold In Alex.
Triage
in Pearl Harbor,
marking those that would live
and those that will die.
Marlene Dietrich wore it smudged
in the mornings
so her nights might have seemed
more interesting.
James Cagney wore it too
because great actors know
how to use make-up,
and his films were just in black and white
it was another kind of seduction.
.
http://www.youtube.com/user/worthingsp?feature=mhee
Sunday 11 March 2012
The Pleasure Of Chocolate
I think I have had an epiphany, in that I have realized that what I would most like from these blogs, is to be able to road-test some of my most recent poems, and to see whether they will work for people perhaps whose language is not first and foremost English, but who have sufficient interest in English to have read my blogs to date.
This poem is one of my most recent, and is possibly one of a series that is formulating in my mind. What I am thinking of as List Poems. In other words, simple poems that grow from ideas around me.
I do have one or two more from this series already created, and so I may well test these out on my unsuspecting audience.
I sent this poem to a specialist chocolate Emporium in Brighton, but did not hear anything back from them, but perhaps unsurprisingly. It is hardly a great recommendation for eating chocolate.
If anyone should be inspired on reading this to suggest other ideas I might pursue, please let me know.
My next in this series will be entitled Uses For Lipstick.
The Pleasure Of Chocolate
Smooth taste, makes you want more
exotic, comforting, energy-giving, sexy.
All Gold, Black Magic, or just Plain
to give as a gift, receive as a love token
or simply indulge oneself, always a pleasure.
It grows on trees - no, really it does
a small bean in Africa, the cocoa bean
commodified, edible blood diamonds
traded for currency. Powerful stuff.
Hard to remember this, easy to eat
though sometimes our pleasures
may cost the earth, more than their worth
but please have another - just one more
before you stop eating, just to make sure
you remember the taste of chocolate.
This poem is one of my most recent, and is possibly one of a series that is formulating in my mind. What I am thinking of as List Poems. In other words, simple poems that grow from ideas around me.
I do have one or two more from this series already created, and so I may well test these out on my unsuspecting audience.
I sent this poem to a specialist chocolate Emporium in Brighton, but did not hear anything back from them, but perhaps unsurprisingly. It is hardly a great recommendation for eating chocolate.
If anyone should be inspired on reading this to suggest other ideas I might pursue, please let me know.
My next in this series will be entitled Uses For Lipstick.
The Pleasure Of Chocolate
Smooth taste, makes you want more
exotic, comforting, energy-giving, sexy.
All Gold, Black Magic, or just Plain
to give as a gift, receive as a love token
or simply indulge oneself, always a pleasure.
It grows on trees - no, really it does
a small bean in Africa, the cocoa bean
commodified, edible blood diamonds
traded for currency. Powerful stuff.
Hard to remember this, easy to eat
though sometimes our pleasures
may cost the earth, more than their worth
but please have another - just one more
before you stop eating, just to make sure
you remember the taste of chocolate.
Friday 9 March 2012
Articles About Articles
Next week, the County Council is sending a photographer.
To photograph the staff that take care of me, under this new scheme of SDS.
Self Directed Support. The subject of my latest article in Care Talk, about which the County Council will be writing an article for their County magazine, to go through every household letterbox.
It’s just the kind of thing that once would have been my aspiration, to write articles about which articles are written.
It is ironic that it now is happening, only the subject of this interest is how I can survive and keep my independence in spite of illness.
A reminder, if one were needed, that we will care for those that can’t, in spite of economic weakness, I am protected from something that in another country I might not survive.
This is the surreal part of my life, that my voice might be heard now when it is all that I have left to me.
I am not bitter about this, only starkly aware of it. That I have found my voice, a place to stand, something to be noticed for, that I can still speak in spite of everything.
I would rather have been noticed for my poetry, but it is apocryphal that words will not feed the hungry. And poets are perhaps the hungriest of writers. None can make a living from their work, certainly not in this country.
Cafe Society Relinquished
My senses fade with age
the way of all things. I do not read
the faces in a room
as once I did, and then
the glances of a youth
were seeking something.
Spectacles restore the sight
but nothing will improve the light -
and eyes that search with subtlety
see twice the personality.
Not Life As Expected
Since I have started to write this blog I have begun to see my life differently. As if before I saw it through a glass darkly.
And now that I write so many articles in magazines like Care Talk about aspects of my life and the way it is led, I am reminded of films in which everything that seems real is revealed to be nothing more than an appearance of reality.
It isn’t that my life is not reall. Perhaps surreal at times, more real than it might have been had I not been given the perspective that I have because of my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.
And the viewpoint from which I perceive the world, and perhaps have the opportunity to think more than I might have had, if I had continued to work full-time, and did not have the leisure enforced upon me by my condition.
The next article to appear in Care Talk is about me, written by one of the staff writers, on the subject of assistive technology. I had the opportunity to write the article, but I thought it would be much better written from someone outside of myself, and less likely for me to simply see it as an opportunity to grandstand my own use of assistive technology.
Particularly the way in which I can use voice activated software, with which I am writing this blog for example. And with which I have been able to create my two collections of poetry, and my short stories.
I have always written, and I used to pride myself on my capacity to type quickly and efficiently. But there is no doubt that with voice-activated software I can type so much quicker and easier using my voice these days than my fingers.
And now that I write so many articles in magazines like Care Talk about aspects of my life and the way it is led, I am reminded of films in which everything that seems real is revealed to be nothing more than an appearance of reality.
It isn’t that my life is not reall. Perhaps surreal at times, more real than it might have been had I not been given the perspective that I have because of my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.
And the viewpoint from which I perceive the world, and perhaps have the opportunity to think more than I might have had, if I had continued to work full-time, and did not have the leisure enforced upon me by my condition.
The next article to appear in Care Talk is about me, written by one of the staff writers, on the subject of assistive technology. I had the opportunity to write the article, but I thought it would be much better written from someone outside of myself, and less likely for me to simply see it as an opportunity to grandstand my own use of assistive technology.
Particularly the way in which I can use voice activated software, with which I am writing this blog for example. And with which I have been able to create my two collections of poetry, and my short stories.
I have always written, and I used to pride myself on my capacity to type quickly and efficiently. But there is no doubt that with voice-activated software I can type so much quicker and easier using my voice these days than my fingers.
Thursday 8 March 2012
Dangerous Waters
The English channel is one of the busiest waterways in the world. I am not a sailor in any sense, but I have once sailed across this sea, in a six-berth sailing yacht captained by someone that knew what they were doing.
We had been invited to spend a week with a good friend and his two children, aged 9 and 11, sailing from near Ipswich in East Anglia to Calais in France, a journey that would build upon the previous Summers' sailing experience gained in the Norfolk Broads.
Our friend Martin is a writer, and after many years of living on very little but always writing, his adaptation of a children's book for television had been sold to Canada, and his share of the royalties from the BBC were substantial enough for him to pursue something remarkable.
He was in effect following in the footsteps of Arthur Ransome, of swallows and Amazons fame, and after cutting his children's teeth in a sailing holiday on the Broads, over the space of two Summer holidays he gave them the adventure of their lives, by first sailing to Calais, a journey that we accompanied him on, and the following year sailing to the islands off the Dutch coast, just as in one of the later books by Ransome.
We were not able to go with them on the Dutch voyage, because I had then just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
My balance had been impaired, but we had already experienced the thrill of sailing across the Channel, three days for the return journey, two nights sleeping on the boat. Quite an experience.
The English Channel is a dangerous seaway for the unwary, but we had the services of a chartered captain, Captain John, and he was familiar with all of the hazards involved in crossing this busy stretch of water.
We would look in astonishment at the large container ship steaming past, rising six or seven storeys above our tiny yacht, but Captain John pointed to the horizon, and indicated a far off shape on the horizon, and explained that this was the danger.
The rules of the sea are clearly that power should give way to sail, but in reality a huge container ship travelling at 20 knots would in all likelihood never see a tiny sailing yacht before it had run it down.
It would be our task to sail swiftly enough between the brief intervals separating these Goliaths of the sea, travelling at our slow five or 6 knots.
Then we slept overnight at the berth where we joined the yacht, in order to catch the morning tide at about 4 AM. Berthed that night was an enormous three masted yacht, which Captain John said there was no official indication as to whom it belonged, but he hinted that it belonged to Richard Branson, from his conversations with the men he knew around his yachts berth. We never knew the truth.
We set off for the first leg of our journey, and I of course was the only one to experience seasickness. I would never make an adventurer.
We stayed overnight in Ramsgate Harbour, ready for the dash across the Channel. Whilst we slept in the harbour itself, the maroons were launched to signal the lifeboat being called, and the next day we discovered the reason for the dash of all those volunteers to the launching of the Ramsgate Lifeboat. On the news, it had been a substantial container ship, in some kind of distress requiring a lifeboat crew to rescue them. It reached the national news, which Captain John relayed to us between his catching of the weather forecast.
Never had the weather forecast taken on such a significance, but we were set fair for France, and the next day took the tide and commenced an extraordinary experience.
The sea was relatively calm, but there was sufficient wind to give us the speed we needed to dodge between the traffic on the Channel. I had never realised it would be like crossing a motorway on foot.
At one stage, we met a comparatively large fishing boat, sailing under power and retrieving its nets, and at one stage seeming to ignore us as it approached relatively quickly to retrieve some bouys close to the yacht.
For a moment, it seemed as if it would steam straight into us, but Captain John had obviously seen such things many times before, and remained calm as they retrieved what was theirs, and steamed away just as quickly.
The harbour at Calais is closed overnight, and so we had to wait whilst the boom opened. Then we could enter the protected calm of the harbour itself, where we could dock and use showers and facilities for boats just like ours.
We were able to walk into town, and practise our schoolroom French in one of the local restaurants. And feeling most superior that we had in fact just parked our yacht in the marina.
The next morning, we purchased a case of wine from a local French vintner, as if to prove that we had indeed made the journey.
And then we were once again out of the harbour, careful to avoid the Channel Ferries, and once again dodging the container ships on this busy shipping channel.
When we returned to the yachts' home berth, we felt had been blooded by the sea, windswept and fully adventured.
I have been to France many times, but never with such memories. This morning, I have just watched an extraordinary programme about the Queens of England, which has brought these memories back to the surface. It was that when William, King William the son of William The Conqueror, had sailed from Honfleur with his son and heir Henry following in another ship. Henry and the nobles abroad his ship were so filled with drink, but they didn't notice rocks approaching at the mouth of this harbour, at the time one of the most important French harbours.
The boat sank, and with it Williams's heir, creating something of a crisis for the English monarch, grandson of the Conqueror William.
Mathilde his daughter never became Queen of England, although at one stage she was announced in Westminster Hall to be the acknowledged heir to the King.
By the time the King had died, she had been already widowed herself from the Holy Roman Emperor, to whom she had been wedded, but lived to the grand age at the time of 80 years, not bad for the 12th century, to see her son become King of England as Henry I.
So, a timely reminder perhaps that the channel has always been a dangerous place for shipping, and not just in mediaeval times.
Wednesday 7 March 2012
Would Knowing Really Help?
I'm a great fan of film, and I love to find links between films, and between the themes of films and the general cultural goings-on in the world.
Recently, I was introduced to the film, Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't been a great fan of his, but recently I can't help but admit that he has appeared in some fantastic films.
In a City Of Angels, a remake of the Wim Wender's modern classic Wings Of Desire, he plays an Angel watching over the lives of contemporary Los Angeles residents, and he falls in love with Meg Ryan, a heart surgeon. Sufficiently so that the Angel he is decides to become a mortal, so that he can fully experience his love for the woman he is smitten with.
As a remake, it is fairly close to the original, in that all of the angels still hang around in the central reference library during the day. And they listen constantly to the worries and concerns of the human residents of the city.
It is definitely a Hollywood remake of a European film, but it is a good copy. I suppose it is one of the films that has begun to change my overall perspective on Nicolas Cage.
I was recently introduced to the film Knowing, in which Nicolas Cage is the bereaved father, the son of a Preacher that has no faith. His son has a strong sense of faith, and although not deaf, he has poor hearing because he hears the constant chatter of voices in his head.
His father is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and has little time for faith, especially after having lost his wife in a tragic hotel fire when she was away on business.
The plot revolves around the burial of a time capsule, and the coincidence of his own son receiving a 50 year old series of apparently random numbers, that very quickly the scientific minded Professor at MIT discovers to relate to every major disaster on the American continent during the past 50 years. Including the fire that killed his wife.
There are additional numbers that at first seem to have no meaning, but when he is present at an aeroplane crash in which 58 people die, right before his eyes, he realises that the unexplained numbers relate precisely to the GPS location of each incident of major death tolls.
Right from the outset, it is clear that the film is an exploration of the difference between randomness, and determinism. Whether or not there is some purpose to the world, and in the course of the film the father's sense of meaninglessness is thoroughly questioned, until finally he is reconciled with his Minister father.
It becomes an unravelling of a strange truth in the predictive nature of the little girl that placed the numbers in the Time capsule, and it suddenly becomes clear that she has foreseen the end of everything, to be caused by a sudden solar flare.
The destruction of the ozone layer by this solar storm will mean the end of the human race, if it were not for the strange rescue of a few young faithful, including as it turns out his own son.
Leaving aside whatever religious convictions anyone might have, it is a compelling story. A kind of ecological thriller, but one that I did not previously think much about in terms of truth and reality.
And then, today I have just seen a Horizon documentary about solar storms, and the genuine threat that they pose to the way of life that we lead in its dependence upon technology. Technology that is exceptionally vulnerable to the destructive effects of solar storms.
As we have become so dependent upon electricity and technology, so we have become vulnerable to the sudden removal of this by the unpredictable nature of solar storms.
Suddenly, a Hollywood end of the world film seems less of a fiction, and more of a warning.
Whether or not there might be a happy ending on another world through the intervention of a race of Angels, is almost beside the point.
The world in which we live is finely balanced on a Fulcrum, so little would have to change for life to have become impossible on this planet, and one wonders if perhaps we should not live as if the world is an unchanging, forever fact. That we are not beyond the possibility of being snuffed out.
Recently, I was introduced to the film, Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't been a great fan of his, but recently I can't help but admit that he has appeared in some fantastic films.
In a City Of Angels, a remake of the Wim Wender's modern classic Wings Of Desire, he plays an Angel watching over the lives of contemporary Los Angeles residents, and he falls in love with Meg Ryan, a heart surgeon. Sufficiently so that the Angel he is decides to become a mortal, so that he can fully experience his love for the woman he is smitten with.
As a remake, it is fairly close to the original, in that all of the angels still hang around in the central reference library during the day. And they listen constantly to the worries and concerns of the human residents of the city.
It is definitely a Hollywood remake of a European film, but it is a good copy. I suppose it is one of the films that has begun to change my overall perspective on Nicolas Cage.
I was recently introduced to the film Knowing, in which Nicolas Cage is the bereaved father, the son of a Preacher that has no faith. His son has a strong sense of faith, and although not deaf, he has poor hearing because he hears the constant chatter of voices in his head.
His father is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and has little time for faith, especially after having lost his wife in a tragic hotel fire when she was away on business.
The plot revolves around the burial of a time capsule, and the coincidence of his own son receiving a 50 year old series of apparently random numbers, that very quickly the scientific minded Professor at MIT discovers to relate to every major disaster on the American continent during the past 50 years. Including the fire that killed his wife.
There are additional numbers that at first seem to have no meaning, but when he is present at an aeroplane crash in which 58 people die, right before his eyes, he realises that the unexplained numbers relate precisely to the GPS location of each incident of major death tolls.
Right from the outset, it is clear that the film is an exploration of the difference between randomness, and determinism. Whether or not there is some purpose to the world, and in the course of the film the father's sense of meaninglessness is thoroughly questioned, until finally he is reconciled with his Minister father.
It becomes an unravelling of a strange truth in the predictive nature of the little girl that placed the numbers in the Time capsule, and it suddenly becomes clear that she has foreseen the end of everything, to be caused by a sudden solar flare.
The destruction of the ozone layer by this solar storm will mean the end of the human race, if it were not for the strange rescue of a few young faithful, including as it turns out his own son.
Leaving aside whatever religious convictions anyone might have, it is a compelling story. A kind of ecological thriller, but one that I did not previously think much about in terms of truth and reality.
And then, today I have just seen a Horizon documentary about solar storms, and the genuine threat that they pose to the way of life that we lead in its dependence upon technology. Technology that is exceptionally vulnerable to the destructive effects of solar storms.
As we have become so dependent upon electricity and technology, so we have become vulnerable to the sudden removal of this by the unpredictable nature of solar storms.
Suddenly, a Hollywood end of the world film seems less of a fiction, and more of a warning.
Whether or not there might be a happy ending on another world through the intervention of a race of Angels, is almost beside the point.
The world in which we live is finely balanced on a Fulcrum, so little would have to change for life to have become impossible on this planet, and one wonders if perhaps we should not live as if the world is an unchanging, forever fact. That we are not beyond the possibility of being snuffed out.
Tuesday 6 March 2012
Why Does Food Taste So Good In Films?
There is something visceral and powerful about the representation of food in films.
I have just watched Julie And Julia, starring the impressive Meryl Streep in yet another amazing role, this time as the woman that changed the way in which Americans feel about food.
It is strangely resonant for me, because a principal structural feature of the film is the way in which Julie in the present day (or close to it) sets herself the challenge of working her way through the entire contents of the cookbook written by Julia in the 1950s, and which introduces for the first time an American audience to the gastronomic joy of French cooking in English.
She sets out to do this within a calendar year, which is no mean feat since there are about 450 recipes to cook and eat.
As an aspiring writer herself, she decides to write a blog about her experience of working through this important book. At the same time as she is a government clerk.
There are few films which are solely about food, but many films in which food or eating play an important part. Sometimes surreal, but always interesting.
Perhaps one of the strangest is in one of my favourite modern films, The Lake House. Separated by two years, the protagonists arrange to meet in a restaurant that is so popular that you must book at least one year ahead.
The character in the present makes the booking, and says that she will meet the other character, two years behind her, at the restaurant on the following night. She turns up, and indeed the booking had been made, but the man she is in love with across time fails to show.
She enjoys the meal, and learns that something has prevented her time distorted lover from attending.
In Pretty Woman, Edward the millionaire businessman takes his street-walking employee as his date for an important business meeting, and Julia Roberts has to learn rather quickly how to identify the different types of cutlery she might be presented with. Slippery little suckers, snails, when eaten for the first time.
Babette's Feast is perhaps one of the few other films in which food plays a crucial central role. The plot is simple, but extraordinary. One of the finest French female chefs escapes revolutionary France by living as the servant to a couple of poor, highly religious sisters on a remote island just off the Danish coast.
The austere life of the sisters is suddenly transformed by the culinary capacities of their new cook, who has been trained in some of the most important kitchens in France.
When she suddenly wins a small fortune in some obscure late 18th century lottery, she repays the kindness that has been shown to her by her austere mistresses, by cooking the most tremendous feast.
It so happens that on this remote island at that time is a French officer that has dined in some of those extraordinary places in which the cook has learned her trade.
It is a dinner to remember, one that has never been seen the like of it in this remote and religiously austere place.
The other unusual feast that comes to mind is in a film that I saw when I was still a student in London, perhaps 30 years ago.
I recently tried to obtain a copy of the film, but it is no longer available, and even a second-hand copy from Amazon would cost around $60. A new copy would cost $140, so rare are copies of the DVD, which is no longer in stock by any retailers in this country or America.
I would like to obtain a copy of the film, the details of which I can only dimly remember.
Clearly it is a film connoisseurs product, if one can be obtained at all.
It is in Swedish and subtitled, and is entitled Montenegro.
It was the first time I ever heard Marianne Faithful sing The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, which features in the film. As it also features later of course in Thelma And Louise.
The director of the film is apparently rather well-known for having created a film that makes up the rules of film-making as the film progresses. Needless to say, it is a rarity worth watching, especially for the role that food plays in it. Which I will not reveal here. Just in case anyone should be lucky enough to see the film.
Another film starring Meryl Streep and some lobsters is The Hours, and sadly the buffet prepared in this part of the film is never eaten. Once again, a film well worth watching.
I'm sure we will all have our memories of moments in film when food plays a significant part. It is strange that food in films should always taste so good.
I have just watched Julie And Julia, starring the impressive Meryl Streep in yet another amazing role, this time as the woman that changed the way in which Americans feel about food.
It is strangely resonant for me, because a principal structural feature of the film is the way in which Julie in the present day (or close to it) sets herself the challenge of working her way through the entire contents of the cookbook written by Julia in the 1950s, and which introduces for the first time an American audience to the gastronomic joy of French cooking in English.
She sets out to do this within a calendar year, which is no mean feat since there are about 450 recipes to cook and eat.
As an aspiring writer herself, she decides to write a blog about her experience of working through this important book. At the same time as she is a government clerk.
There are few films which are solely about food, but many films in which food or eating play an important part. Sometimes surreal, but always interesting.
Perhaps one of the strangest is in one of my favourite modern films, The Lake House. Separated by two years, the protagonists arrange to meet in a restaurant that is so popular that you must book at least one year ahead.
The character in the present makes the booking, and says that she will meet the other character, two years behind her, at the restaurant on the following night. She turns up, and indeed the booking had been made, but the man she is in love with across time fails to show.
She enjoys the meal, and learns that something has prevented her time distorted lover from attending.
In Pretty Woman, Edward the millionaire businessman takes his street-walking employee as his date for an important business meeting, and Julia Roberts has to learn rather quickly how to identify the different types of cutlery she might be presented with. Slippery little suckers, snails, when eaten for the first time.
Babette's Feast is perhaps one of the few other films in which food plays a crucial central role. The plot is simple, but extraordinary. One of the finest French female chefs escapes revolutionary France by living as the servant to a couple of poor, highly religious sisters on a remote island just off the Danish coast.
The austere life of the sisters is suddenly transformed by the culinary capacities of their new cook, who has been trained in some of the most important kitchens in France.
When she suddenly wins a small fortune in some obscure late 18th century lottery, she repays the kindness that has been shown to her by her austere mistresses, by cooking the most tremendous feast.
It so happens that on this remote island at that time is a French officer that has dined in some of those extraordinary places in which the cook has learned her trade.
It is a dinner to remember, one that has never been seen the like of it in this remote and religiously austere place.
The other unusual feast that comes to mind is in a film that I saw when I was still a student in London, perhaps 30 years ago.
I recently tried to obtain a copy of the film, but it is no longer available, and even a second-hand copy from Amazon would cost around $60. A new copy would cost $140, so rare are copies of the DVD, which is no longer in stock by any retailers in this country or America.
I would like to obtain a copy of the film, the details of which I can only dimly remember.
Clearly it is a film connoisseurs product, if one can be obtained at all.
It is in Swedish and subtitled, and is entitled Montenegro.
It was the first time I ever heard Marianne Faithful sing The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, which features in the film. As it also features later of course in Thelma And Louise.
The director of the film is apparently rather well-known for having created a film that makes up the rules of film-making as the film progresses. Needless to say, it is a rarity worth watching, especially for the role that food plays in it. Which I will not reveal here. Just in case anyone should be lucky enough to see the film.
Another film starring Meryl Streep and some lobsters is The Hours, and sadly the buffet prepared in this part of the film is never eaten. Once again, a film well worth watching.
I'm sure we will all have our memories of moments in film when food plays a significant part. It is strange that food in films should always taste so good.
Sunday 4 March 2012
Diaghilev and Lady Ripon
I had a sudden thought this morning, early before I had even properly awakened.
I had a sudden sense of proximity to czarist Russia. A strange thought to have, perhaps, but then of course we all are the result of history, and so perhaps it is no surprise that sometimes we feel as if we are much closer to distant historic events or personages.
My sudden realisation this morning was that over the last couple of days, I don't quite remember where, I had heard it mentioned that Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe had been brought to London thanks to the patronage of someone that I had recently pause to come to know about. I hadn't quite realised that she was such an important patron of the arts, as I had come to know whom she was in a rather different context.
I remember reading about Diaghilev many years ago, and being fascinated at the way in which his company of dancers had been so radical in their approach to dance and choreography.
Modern ballet and dance still owes a great deal to the work of this company, which visited England very early in the 20th century. The Ballet Russes came to London in 1911, where I believe the patron behind that visit was Lady Ripon. This is supported by the existence in the library of Harvard University in the United States of scrapbooks created by Lady Ripon of dancers from the ballet.
Sadly, Lady Ripon died in 1917, many years before the death of Diaghilev in 1929. This was when the ballet was disbanded, although many of its artists, including perhaps the most famous male dancer of that century. Vasily Nijinsky, toured in America only briefly before Nijinsky stopped dancing in 1919, when he entered a sanatorium in Switzerland suffering from schizophrenia. Nijinsky died in 1950, and although initially buried in London, after three years he was reburied in Paris.
My connection with Diaghilev and his ballet is very slight, but it seems that Lady Ripon as a great patron of the arts was responsible for bringing that company to London in 1911. Lady Ripon is the person to whom my recent special edition of my first collection of poems is respectfully dedicated, since she had also been significantly involved with the Establishment in 1915 of the George V Hospital in London, which was the first point of rehabilitation and healing for thousands of wounded soldiers from the Great War.
A bust of Lady Ripon stands in one of the hallways of the present hospital, which relocated to Worthing where I live in 1933.
Although she died sadly in 1917, she is still respectfully remembered for her critical involvement in the foundation of this Hospital, and of the development of the policies by which it operated then, and no doubt still operates today.
My involvement is simply that my first collection of poems, 50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times - is to be sold in a special edition by the Hospital as a fundraising means.
This is a great honour indeed for me, as I am unable to earn any royalties from sales, and in any case it is likely that the sales of my poetry will be that much greater by its association with such a worthy cause.
The current hospital is an extraordinary model of quality care, and it is the home to servicemen aged between 22 and 100. As I live just across the road from the Hospital, I have attended the past two Summers open days, on doing it I have met with history by meeting with Dame Vera Lynn, who is a great supporter of the hospital.
It is this meeting which I think gave me the confidence to even consider offering my volume of poetry as a potential fundraising tool, because I included an essay about my meeting with Dame Vera Lynn in the hardback edition of my poems, a copy of which has been included within the County Council's prestigious Local History Collection thanks to the importance of the Hospital and of Dame Vera Lynn to the history of the County.
By being made part of that Local History Collection my poems are now rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Kipling, and Balzac.
Undoubtedly, it is reflected glory in which I am basking. But if sales of my poetry do as intended for the Hospital, and all proceeds from sales will be donated to the Hospital, it won't do my reputation any harm at all.
And so, since the dancers of Diaghilev's ballet came from the Russian czar's own patronage of ballet in Russia, it seems as if I have discovered that I am strangely intertwined in the threads of history.
Of course, anyone that subscribes to the idea that we are all inevitably connected in the great Chain Of Being will not find this at all surprising.
It is just rather wonderful to realise that without consciously realising it when I made the dedication in my special edition to be used by the hospital, I had absolutely no knowledge of the extent of Lady Ripon's engagement with the arts.
This feels particularly satisfactory to me, since when I was able to work, I worked within the professional arts, never as an artist, but rubbing shoulders with some of the finest musicians and composers of this and the last century.
I will include in this entry for my blog the link to where my special edition can be viewed online at no cost, and indeed from where it can be purchased, and thus support the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers in Worthing. A very worthy cause indeed.
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/50-x-50-useful-poetry-for-troubled-times-extended-edition--2/read-online
I had a sudden sense of proximity to czarist Russia. A strange thought to have, perhaps, but then of course we all are the result of history, and so perhaps it is no surprise that sometimes we feel as if we are much closer to distant historic events or personages.
My sudden realisation this morning was that over the last couple of days, I don't quite remember where, I had heard it mentioned that Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe had been brought to London thanks to the patronage of someone that I had recently pause to come to know about. I hadn't quite realised that she was such an important patron of the arts, as I had come to know whom she was in a rather different context.
I remember reading about Diaghilev many years ago, and being fascinated at the way in which his company of dancers had been so radical in their approach to dance and choreography.
Modern ballet and dance still owes a great deal to the work of this company, which visited England very early in the 20th century. The Ballet Russes came to London in 1911, where I believe the patron behind that visit was Lady Ripon. This is supported by the existence in the library of Harvard University in the United States of scrapbooks created by Lady Ripon of dancers from the ballet.
Sadly, Lady Ripon died in 1917, many years before the death of Diaghilev in 1929. This was when the ballet was disbanded, although many of its artists, including perhaps the most famous male dancer of that century. Vasily Nijinsky, toured in America only briefly before Nijinsky stopped dancing in 1919, when he entered a sanatorium in Switzerland suffering from schizophrenia. Nijinsky died in 1950, and although initially buried in London, after three years he was reburied in Paris.
My connection with Diaghilev and his ballet is very slight, but it seems that Lady Ripon as a great patron of the arts was responsible for bringing that company to London in 1911. Lady Ripon is the person to whom my recent special edition of my first collection of poems is respectfully dedicated, since she had also been significantly involved with the Establishment in 1915 of the George V Hospital in London, which was the first point of rehabilitation and healing for thousands of wounded soldiers from the Great War.
A bust of Lady Ripon stands in one of the hallways of the present hospital, which relocated to Worthing where I live in 1933.
Although she died sadly in 1917, she is still respectfully remembered for her critical involvement in the foundation of this Hospital, and of the development of the policies by which it operated then, and no doubt still operates today.
My involvement is simply that my first collection of poems, 50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times - is to be sold in a special edition by the Hospital as a fundraising means.
This is a great honour indeed for me, as I am unable to earn any royalties from sales, and in any case it is likely that the sales of my poetry will be that much greater by its association with such a worthy cause.
The current hospital is an extraordinary model of quality care, and it is the home to servicemen aged between 22 and 100. As I live just across the road from the Hospital, I have attended the past two Summers open days, on doing it I have met with history by meeting with Dame Vera Lynn, who is a great supporter of the hospital.
It is this meeting which I think gave me the confidence to even consider offering my volume of poetry as a potential fundraising tool, because I included an essay about my meeting with Dame Vera Lynn in the hardback edition of my poems, a copy of which has been included within the County Council's prestigious Local History Collection thanks to the importance of the Hospital and of Dame Vera Lynn to the history of the County.
By being made part of that Local History Collection my poems are now rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Kipling, and Balzac.
Undoubtedly, it is reflected glory in which I am basking. But if sales of my poetry do as intended for the Hospital, and all proceeds from sales will be donated to the Hospital, it won't do my reputation any harm at all.
And so, since the dancers of Diaghilev's ballet came from the Russian czar's own patronage of ballet in Russia, it seems as if I have discovered that I am strangely intertwined in the threads of history.
Of course, anyone that subscribes to the idea that we are all inevitably connected in the great Chain Of Being will not find this at all surprising.
It is just rather wonderful to realise that without consciously realising it when I made the dedication in my special edition to be used by the hospital, I had absolutely no knowledge of the extent of Lady Ripon's engagement with the arts.
This feels particularly satisfactory to me, since when I was able to work, I worked within the professional arts, never as an artist, but rubbing shoulders with some of the finest musicians and composers of this and the last century.
I will include in this entry for my blog the link to where my special edition can be viewed online at no cost, and indeed from where it can be purchased, and thus support the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers in Worthing. A very worthy cause indeed.
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/50-x-50-useful-poetry-for-troubled-times-extended-edition--2/read-online
Friday 2 March 2012
My Latest Article
I've just been checking out my latest contribution to the magazine Care Talk, which can be viewed free of charge online. Page 19 issue 10.
I'm impressed with the layout, as ever, and coincidentally I've just been interviewed today by one of the magazine's staff writers, for an article in a future issue about assistive technology.
Anyone that knows me will know that I am never short of something to say, and it is through the medium of voice assisted software that I am able to create not only this blog, but also the articles that I have written for Care Talk magazine.
Access to technology is such an important issue for everybody these days, and for someone like myself, severely disabled, it is essential to enable access to a world that has become much more difficult to access in ways that most people take for granted.
I think it was in a film somewhere that I remember first hearing about the notion of technology achieving a point where connectivity has reached a critical level, and I suspect what was once a science-fiction concept in a film, has become or is becoming a reality.
Take for example something I heard on the radio this week. There has been a report published about the skills that carers need to possess so that they can care appropriately for people, and a politician gave as an example (it is always a politician that gives examples) the fact that carers should have as an essential skill the capacity to be compassionate.
The example that was given was of the way in which people are called by their given name, rather than some shorthand like Dearie, Darling, or in a negative context, referred to as bed blockers in hospitals.
This reminded me instantly of a poem which has been included in my first selection, 50 x 50. It's worth reproducing here, to give some sense of the context about which I am talking.
My Given Name
I can't walk the walk and I won't talk the talk
but behind these tired eyes
still beats the same heart as that of
the woman that has raised her children
then their children, loved and been loved
in return. My memories
may be broken, but they are mine
please help me to keep them alive.
Don't call me Dearie, or Darling, or Ducks,
give me back what is mine
and what belongs just to me.
It's the name my fiancee proposed with
the one I married with
and the one that will be given to the registrar
one last time, all too soon.
Before then, keep me safe, keep me warm
in this place, use my name to my face
please protect me from harm
and to the end call me Grace.
It's my given name.
Like many of my poems, it is short and of course created using voice-activated software.
It suddenly struck me that the politician was virtually quoting unknowingly the first line of the second stanza, and this spurred me into action, so I sent a copy of the poem to my local authority contract with the suggestion that the local authority concerned might steal a march on what the government is talking about, if they were to produce my poem as a poster to be pasted to the wall in every staffroom in every care home in the County.
Blow me, if I don't get feedback by e-mail within a couple of hours to say that it was a moving way of communicating how everyone might wish to be treated as they become older, and that it will be raised at team meetings across the country over the next couple of weeks.
The speed of e-mail. And then I got to thinking about whether I had any other contacts that I could send the poem to, and I immediately thought of a friendly press officer that I had met in the context of a short documentary film about me being used for the launch of Social Care TV.
All of this, by the way, was happening before 6 AM in the morning, listening to the news. And so I sent something to my press contact friend, and as a consequence he asked in passing what I was up to these days.
Which meant I told him about this blog, and it turns out that the report that the politician was responding to had been written by the organisation for which the press person worked, so of course he knew exactly who to pass it on to. Small world.
And as a consequence, I may be able to have my blog hosted on some site I would never have thought about, and which would bring me to an audience that I would never have considered might be available to me. Magic.
And all of this through the medium of new technology, that makes communication instantaneous to all intents and purposes. So, I'm looking forward to the next time I can make some kind of connection between something I have written by way of a poem, and something I have heard someone talk about in the press.
Who knows how this thing might end. Hopefully, not in the way that TS Eliot said, not with a bang but a whimper, nor as at the end of Shakespeare in Love, with tears and a journey. My favourite cliched ending is that it will not end until the fat lady sings. Since I used to work in the world of opera, I feel as if I can wish for that one. And most of my friends that can sing would forgive me since they are anything but fat.
I'm impressed with the layout, as ever, and coincidentally I've just been interviewed today by one of the magazine's staff writers, for an article in a future issue about assistive technology.
Anyone that knows me will know that I am never short of something to say, and it is through the medium of voice assisted software that I am able to create not only this blog, but also the articles that I have written for Care Talk magazine.
Access to technology is such an important issue for everybody these days, and for someone like myself, severely disabled, it is essential to enable access to a world that has become much more difficult to access in ways that most people take for granted.
I think it was in a film somewhere that I remember first hearing about the notion of technology achieving a point where connectivity has reached a critical level, and I suspect what was once a science-fiction concept in a film, has become or is becoming a reality.
Take for example something I heard on the radio this week. There has been a report published about the skills that carers need to possess so that they can care appropriately for people, and a politician gave as an example (it is always a politician that gives examples) the fact that carers should have as an essential skill the capacity to be compassionate.
The example that was given was of the way in which people are called by their given name, rather than some shorthand like Dearie, Darling, or in a negative context, referred to as bed blockers in hospitals.
This reminded me instantly of a poem which has been included in my first selection, 50 x 50. It's worth reproducing here, to give some sense of the context about which I am talking.
My Given Name
I can't walk the walk and I won't talk the talk
but behind these tired eyes
still beats the same heart as that of
the woman that has raised her children
then their children, loved and been loved
in return. My memories
may be broken, but they are mine
please help me to keep them alive.
Don't call me Dearie, or Darling, or Ducks,
give me back what is mine
and what belongs just to me.
It's the name my fiancee proposed with
the one I married with
and the one that will be given to the registrar
one last time, all too soon.
Before then, keep me safe, keep me warm
in this place, use my name to my face
please protect me from harm
and to the end call me Grace.
It's my given name.
Like many of my poems, it is short and of course created using voice-activated software.
It suddenly struck me that the politician was virtually quoting unknowingly the first line of the second stanza, and this spurred me into action, so I sent a copy of the poem to my local authority contract with the suggestion that the local authority concerned might steal a march on what the government is talking about, if they were to produce my poem as a poster to be pasted to the wall in every staffroom in every care home in the County.
Blow me, if I don't get feedback by e-mail within a couple of hours to say that it was a moving way of communicating how everyone might wish to be treated as they become older, and that it will be raised at team meetings across the country over the next couple of weeks.
The speed of e-mail. And then I got to thinking about whether I had any other contacts that I could send the poem to, and I immediately thought of a friendly press officer that I had met in the context of a short documentary film about me being used for the launch of Social Care TV.
All of this, by the way, was happening before 6 AM in the morning, listening to the news. And so I sent something to my press contact friend, and as a consequence he asked in passing what I was up to these days.
Which meant I told him about this blog, and it turns out that the report that the politician was responding to had been written by the organisation for which the press person worked, so of course he knew exactly who to pass it on to. Small world.
And as a consequence, I may be able to have my blog hosted on some site I would never have thought about, and which would bring me to an audience that I would never have considered might be available to me. Magic.
And all of this through the medium of new technology, that makes communication instantaneous to all intents and purposes. So, I'm looking forward to the next time I can make some kind of connection between something I have written by way of a poem, and something I have heard someone talk about in the press.
Who knows how this thing might end. Hopefully, not in the way that TS Eliot said, not with a bang but a whimper, nor as at the end of Shakespeare in Love, with tears and a journey. My favourite cliched ending is that it will not end until the fat lady sings. Since I used to work in the world of opera, I feel as if I can wish for that one. And most of my friends that can sing would forgive me since they are anything but fat.
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