Spotify

Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship – Blows Against The Empire

I have to mention Spotify because I think it might be a glimpse of the future. Suddenly I can listen to almost anything I want to on demand. This last week I've listened to Merle Travis, John Prine, Emily Smith, Paul Kantner, Rosanne Cash, Miguel Poveda, Tomatito, Gerardo Nunez and Marcelo Mercadante. Oh yes, and Neutral Milk Hotel. The artists get some cash, though not a lot by the sound of it. Still - preferable to being downloaded for free. I guess it's a bit like being played on the radio. I can imagine a future where we don't need to own stacks of cds and videos any more, but can just download the stuff as we want it onto some portable device.

Anyway, a remark by Stuart, who's been cutting my hair for about 20 years now, has been bugging me for a while. He's a DJ in his spare time and has an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music. He was recommending Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. He said listening to it made him feel 'clean and optimistic'. It doesn't make me feel that way, although there are a lot of good tracks on there. But I was seriously puzzled by the reviewers who have said that Midlake's Trials of Van Occupanther reminded them of Fleetwood Mac. Stuart agreed with this, but I still can't see it. On the other hand I think that Midlake and to a lesser degree Neutral Milk Hotel owe a lot to Paul Kantner's early Jefferson Starship albums. I had almost forgotten Blows Against the Empire until Spotify let me listen to it again this week. All that sixties optimism is just starting to go wrong and Kantner and Slick are planning a journey across the galaxy. Probably best listened to in conjunction with a reading of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test!

Lest we forget...

I was idly looking through some of the slides I've been scanning and I came across this! I guess it was 1996. Bonfire night was approaching and I had a sudden inspiration for the Guy. I know that many people can no longer remember John Major. Some are too young, some are beginning to lose their marbles, and some never really knew who he was in the first place. Well, folks, this is what a Conservative Prime Minister looks like - and I assure you, it is a very good likeness. You really don't want David Cameron to be Prime Minister, do you?

Orford Ness

I've been intending to visit Orford Ness for years. Orford is one of my favourite places on the Suffolk coast. It has a fine castle and a planned Norman town with the original street plan, even though it is now only a village. And from the quay you can take a ferry to the Ness where secret experiments were carried out for years on radar and ballistics and on the atom bomb. Yet for some reason I never managed to visit the Ness until yesterday, when Kate and I took the National Trust ferry and spent the afternoon wandering around what must be one of the eeriest and most beautiful places in Britain.
Various buildings dot the shingle banks, many of them having once been put to uses that remain unknown. Others have been restored to provide viewing platforms and information. The strangest place of all was Laboratory Number 1 where research was carried out on the bomb. The walls are coated in green mould and peeling paint and the rusting roof members creak in the wind. Half of the floor is taken up with a tank of black water.
Waders, gulls and harriers fly over the site and on top of the Bomb Ballistics building the railings vibrate in the wind and make a strange howling sound.
There are more photos here.

Authors visiting schools

Chris Priestley raises issues in his blog about the new Independent Safeguarding Scheme and its application to children's authors visiting schools. As he says, we discussed it during a very enjoyable lunch, and I've been thinking about it since.

Everyone else who works in schools has to be checked, so why should authors be immune? Are they different in some mysterious way from other humans? We all know that most abuse of children takes place in the home and that therefore all the vast apparatus of CRB checking which already goes on is only going to stop a small proportion of this abuse, but I think we've accepted that such procedures are really the only way of preventing a repeat of an event like the Soham murders.

I know that writers are seldom alone with children on school visits. I know the chances of anything bad happening are small. But I think we should remember the case of William Mayne, one of the greatest children's writers of the twentieth century who thought it was OK to have his young fans to stay and romp naked with them in his garden. I'm surprised that no one seems to have mentioned him in this latest furore. I'm sure nothing untoward happened during school visits, and I know he had no record then which would have shown up on the new vetting - but he does now.

Like Philip Pullman, I am concerned at the steady increase in the monitoring of every aspect of our lives - the loyalty cards, the nunberplate recognition cameras, the databases - but I think that on this one authors should accept that they should put up with a little inconvenience for the sake of the children. If you think school visits are valuable and important, then keep visiting those children, because it's for them that we do all this writing and visiting and talking. Why make them pay the price of our indignation?

Anthony Browne puts it well in this piece from the Guardian, and if you didn't know about William Mayne there's another piece in the Guardian here. I've posted thoughts on school visits before, so take a look. We're off to France tomorrow for a relaxing week of sunshine, wine, gardens and sea.

Poetic babel

I noticed that the new Japanese edition of Green Fingers had attracted a five star review on Amazon,jp. (That's how sad authors are! Well, this one anyway.) So I translated it with Babelfish and out came this bizarre poetry. I think they understood what I was trying to do, and I was impressed that they noticed, as no other reviewer has done, that there are oblique references to 'The Secret Garden' of Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Among 5.0 five stars the garden which revives it brings, the story “of miracle”, 2009/7/2 By The free person east - you look at the review entirely Being delicate, the cover of the color tone which settles. The cutting picture which is used in you taste and are deep is. Thing “of the person who are skillful “the green finger” of title, according to the postscript of the translator to raise the plant,” it seems. If you mention “the garden”, “Hanazono of Burnett secret” and so on is famous, but the contents that your this story are the same the children and the old person recover the smiling face by the fact that “the garden” is loved. Simply, today there being just a work as expected, with ordinary means it does not go. The child who suffers from study obstacle. Sorrow of the old person who loses the destination. The parents and the heart which face to the catastrophe trouble of the children who can hurt…. The kind of part which even pathology of today's society is said being portrayed, rather harsh development continues. As for main characters elementary school student rank? Girl Kate, that younger brother microphone, and young younger sister [emiri]. Grandfather Walter of [ruizu] and [ruizu] of the friend of Kate's parents and Kate… with the place where you say. In the wind that, is conclusion of the “happy end”, “the garden which is lost” revives from interchange of the children and Walter, is released even from the suffering of each one, but as the word that “it changes “everyone… it cannot go backward the person””, displayed, “as for future thing you do not understand”, that you say, also circumstances of the children who keep accepting “actuality” keep being drawn,…. As a child book when “the conventional” story is expected, perhaps, surface saddle [u] one you are, but the spectacle of the garden which little by little displays the form and the smiling face of the children are attractive. Kate's age not to be written, because it is left to the imagination of the person who is read, remembering the familiar children, it is good reading, probably will be. It touched the everyday earth, the grass flower while passing the time of the [ru] with love, it was similar to old person Walter, the beautiful garden where the girl Kate's who keeps becoming the “green finger” story, it revived brings, importance of the thing which stands up with the foot of the self without escaping from harsh actuality through “miracle”, is made to realize. In very the children who are devoted to study and the game the story which would like to have reading. Of course, even in the adult who finishes to become tired with work and play recommendation.

A very short bicycle tour

I drove down to Wales last Thursday, left my car at my sister's house and biked off over the Black Mountains towards Hay-on-Wye. It was a lovely afternoon and I biked up narrow, tree-lined lanes by a river past Llantony Priory to the top of the Gospel Pass, where an elderly couple in a small white Romahome van offered me a hot drink.

Then I set off down a glorious descent in the evening sunlight, thinking about camping and cooking supper. I was most of the way down when I came round a bend and hit the special bike-dumping substance which had been laid in my path. The usual slow-motion effect followed as I decided I'd have to go into the hedge. I bounced off the hedge and hit the road with the bike on top of me. Anmazingly, no damage had occurred to the bike. I had a nose-bleed and various bumps and cuts on my leg, but I could stand up, and even ride the bike. So I rode to a campsite and the following day I carried on cycling towards Builth Wells.

At first I was feeling quite pleased with myself. My leg hurt every time I turned the pedals, but it was working. By the time I reached my destination it was becoming ever harder to move. By the time I'd eaten lunch (I recommend the cottage pie at the Strand Cafe!) I'd concluded that my cycle tour was over, and I had to phone my sister for rescue.

I think I am fated never to cycle up the Elan valley, which was my intention. I had to cancel a similar mission once before.

Shoals of Herring

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I'm perpetually gloomy. And good things still happen in the world of education. Here's an animated movie made by a bunch of eight-year -olds. They love singing sea songs, so we sang them in the middle of Lowestoft last Saturday. We drew a big crowd and had a lot of fun.