Bird Of Paradise.

                       No,It is not a deleted scene from Captain America The First Avenger, it is a wonderful piece by Daryl "Detective 1945" Shaw.                                              
                                                             Oh for shame, Howard.
                                                                  Duck and Cover!

Peg Plunkett Memoirs Of An Irish Whore.

                        Peg Plunkett; Courtesan or whore?Is it even a valid distinction when the voice making it echoes from a time where even a victim of abuse would be viewed socially as a fallen woman? Peg Plunkett lived through some hard times and even the best days of her time would have tested a person of today well past the breaking point. Strong, witty and necessarily devious peg survived against the odds and such cruel social distinctions. When all conspired to break her she warily shouldered the shame and she survived. Some people may say there is a difference between living and surviving (best said with a vaguely European world weary Bond villain-speak)God spare us all the life lessons it takes to absorb this questionable wisdom.
               Peg did travel about, spreading her love amongst those who could afford her. Dropping babies along the way. All of whom she loved and sadly lost. Child birth was a hazardous proposition for a woman and child rearing seemed a bothersome task for the men who sired them.Child support being a lifelong commitment the worldly and selfish seemed reluctant to adopt.In much the same way as in the age of celebrity culture a nine to five job serving our fellow human beings is viewed as a step down or beneath the dignity of the golden league.You cannot help but speculate that Peg Plunkett would thrive in the polluted media driven miasma of today.Although there is a degree of anachronism at play in such speculation for no amount of unwanted or unwarranted fame is worse than the notion of a homeless death in a filthy ditch or death whilst chained to a wall as a sexually transmitted pox shrivels your brain.
               Julie Peakman's account of the life of this woman is refreshingly free of judgementalism and carries the reader along as a witness without seeming purile or salacious. This is what this woman had to endure and no amount of post dated morality can change a written line of it. Nor does the author attempt to evoke sympathy for her horrendous plight or the randomly cruel events which at times overtake her.She trusts to the truth of the situation and the readers own ability to call a spade a spade whilst peering into a social abyss to carry us through to the conclusion of the book. She does not blow scarlet rose petals in our face or attempt to color the readers own judgement by imbuing Pegs character with infantile romanticism.Sexual relations, even those which are paid for(and few are not) are about so much more than just the exchange of bodily fluids and yet also so much less than the poets would lead us to believe. Peg Plunkett was a realist if nothing else and utterly pragmatic in the face of very masculine cruelty.Throughout her life she let her affections and strong feelings for certain men lead her to make decisions which were far from in her best interests but she survived as best she could in an age where few choices even existed for her gender, loving well if not wisely. Living long enough to see even this aspect of her character become a real threat to all the things she built, breathed life into and ultimately lost.
            The illustrious House of Plunkett played host to many people over the period of its owners life(as well as changing shape, size and location.) that to say she covered the waterfront would be something of an understatement. The force of Peg Plunketts, nee Mrs. Margaret Leeson's, personality combined with her wit and hard won determination not to be a victim helped her overcome the adversities that were such a component of her everyday life. It would be something indeed to pass a copy of this book onto Martyn Jacques, the man and mind behind the genius Tiger Lilies. It might inspire him to write an opera based on the life of this most notorious of bawdy historical figures. Perhaps only they could skew the perspective sufficient to tell her tale truthfully free of moral judgements and sing her life as it was.

             Peg is buried in an unmarked grave in St James Graveyard in Dublin.Yet for a brief moment, however long it takes the reader to finish her tale, She is recalled once again to laugh and toast the folly of men and the little weaknesses that combine to make us all so much more than the sum of our mistakes.

(The Castle Building area of Belfast City Center today. It was in this general area in 1770s/1780s that
                                       Peg came to visit.She came, she saw and she partied.)
                      Peg Plunkett Memoirs Of An Irish Whore is published by Quercus.

Flash Gordon.

                      Never cowardly, never cruel. Brave honest and always the first up on the dance floor.
                                                                   Hes a Starman.
                                                                     Hes a Hero.
                                                      And the world needs its Heroes now
                                                                  more than ever.

Tyburn Jig.

Doing the Tyburn jig.
                 A howling mob bay for entertainment, the final jittering of the Hanged Man, as he, or she, is kicked from this world on the end of a rope. A terrible way to die, even worse in those days. This was prior to use of a drop that led to a faster death.In those days a man had to rely on his friends jumping up to pull him down so that the combined body weight would lead to a hastier exit from this world.Thomas Hawkins, on his way to an appointment with the hangman, narrates his last confession and hopes still for a last minute reprieve. One promised to him but the timing off which is causing no small amount of terror and tension for him as he rumbles backwards on a cart to that infamous location and a beckoning gibbet. Thomas Hawkins tale is in itself perhaps a metaphor for this last desperate journey, a winding twisting path through the gin soaked alleyways of a London soured by the corruption of human desperation and his own determination to tread his own path whilst trying to survive being under the thumb of evil men and women.The stews of London are where he chooses to make his home and it is there he finds fellowship and love possessed of a mercurial morality that adjusts as needed to the situation.All life hangs by a thread here and innocence is a commodity to be bartered for.From the darkest filthy back street hovel to the court of the king Antonia Hodgson brings it all vividly to life.You are never really sure up to the very last if you are reading the last words of a dead man and yet is this not the conceit that lies at the heart of every historical novel be it comedy, horror show or a tragedy(in the case of the life of Thomas Hawkins it is all these things.As all our lives are.)Every line uttered,every action taken, is an echo,the shadow of the dead.
               It being a sort of last testament it has a frenetic energy one finds only in the most desperate of scenarios and it was an energetic roller coaster of a read..It felt like a one sitting read and that I was in the company of a very dangerous man who seemed destined one way or the other to die by the hand of another.He tells the story of his lewd life; the son of a country parson this was a man born to a life of opportunity and promise but driven by restless demons. For all that Thomas Hawkins knows where loves lies and he has rested his head in its bosom many a time.Yet he is a man who needs the spice of danger to feel worthy enough to rest there and his story is a collection of some very dark days. He navigates the stews of London like a toiler on the sea. It is a blood and shit splattered almost feral city where vice and virtue war with each in filthy corners never touched by the light of the sun. Antonia Hodgson never shies away from relating the nearness of every vice imaginable which hover with a proximity only ever accorded to rats. Depravity and a desire for the rum and uncanny are constant companions in this fast paced Penny Dreadful of a yarn that is also quite touching in its depiction of the lives of those who look for love and company in a world without mercy or pity.Despite the dirt,beneath the encrusted fitlth of the age, lie real people with real lives, real hopes and real dreams(not all of them good.) which the author brings alive for the time we spend in their company.
                 In the text we may not be supping with anything so exotic as panthers but we are guzzling ale with whores and gamblers and scoundrels.Kick back, drink a toast to them then get out of there as fast as your heels can carry you.
                 Me? I will be going looking for Antonia Hodsgson's first novel in this series The Devil In The Marshalsea.

Pretty In Pink.

              (From my sketchbook)The Lovely Amy Winehouse.Just one of the most lovely singers
                            and spirits.The world misses you more than it will ever know.

The Lion And His Cub.

                        (From my sketchbook)Elizabeth, Gloriana, And her crazy old bastard
                                           of a father.The line of the Tudors ended with
                                           Elizabeth.A line of beauty drawn or a line in
                                                      the sand.This far and no further.

mayhem.

Back we go, back to Whitechapel 1888 when London squirmed in fear of the bloody blade of a remorseless and seemingly unstoppable killer. Although there are many familiar elements at play in this dark story I would wager the killer in the story is not the one you most associate with this time and place.Spring heeled Jack still stalks this autumn of terror but so does someone or something else .This is the tale of the Torso Killer, a killer whose hideous work is overshadowed by the hysteria generated by the diabolical work of the more notorious Jack The Ripper but whom in sheer gory terms is actually worse and even more grimly disturbing(almost as disturbing as the rigid unyielding and utterly merciless Victorian class system as portrayed so brilliantly by the author) Sarah Pinborough really brings very vividly to life the era and how tough the times were for the poor and those without the benefit of means.There is horror between the pages of this book and terror making its vile way up from beneath the city streets and into the hearts and minds of men. As chilling as the supernatural elements of the  book are it is the real world poverty of the soul which is the real disturbing stalking beast. The poor of Whitechapel seem to drown their anguish in an endless fountain of gin and sell the only thing they own to fuel their thirst; their own bodies. There is no pretense of a dark romance or a poetic supping with panthers. This is a cannibal feast of flesh with appetites stoked to ravenous in the shadow of a beast. A beast that revels in cruelty, madness and mayhem.
                1888, what a year for dark thoughts.

We Will Always Have Paris.

A Bouquet, that is what it has. A beautiful bountiful ripe smelling bouquet quite unlike any other. That is what Paris has. Except after a heavy rainfall then it smells a bit like a drain. Unlike this adaption of Douglas Adams/David Fisher Doctor Who script the City of Death Which quite frankly comes up smelling of roses. Most writers would have felt daunted by the very notion of expanding on such a highly regarded and much cherished piece of work which all these years after its original transmission remains high on so many all time great lists. James Goss seems to have just embraced the terror of the notion and manfully revisited this diamond in the rough, paring at its surface, re-buffering the edges,creating a finish smooth enough to see our own grinning faces in . We are smiling as we read, reminded of halcyon days when two naughty time-lords traipsed through time and space armed only with their vast intelligence and wit and a sartorial eloquence that made their enemies almost expire under the weight of their own ennui. The Doctor and Romana, Tom and Lalla. Some people talk about the season this story took place in as something of a table wine at the feast, that old seventy nine. I would disagree, it tastes so much better than that, it being so much more play full on the palate, Impish but not sweet. I think if this wonderful season had ended as intended with the never completed story SHADA the whole era would be remembered with kinder eyes. It too resurfaced as a reworked novel version by Gareth Roberts(who by al accounts loved this period in Who history.) and a very wittily and fantastically performed reimagined version with Paul McGann and Lalla Ward for Big Finish.
               You know I can remember the days when the novelisations of episodes was the closest one could get to reliving adventures again and again( whilst the rest of the world seemed to be out in the sun playing football....ah, those were the days.Poor pale old me...)This book seems so much more as James Goss grasps that lovingly seat of the pants created script and runs giddily through the streets of 1979 Paris dragging all who read the novel with him. It is so well written that I know after a couple of rereads I will be remembering his version as the televised version I watched on our families old black and white set. We did eventually got a colour television and I can truthfully say I never saw a bluer blue than the solid blue of the Tardis. It is still the colour of home to me.
                Your bookshelf cheerily awaits a copy of this book.

Pit And The Pendulum.

(From my sketchbook.) A prisoner of The Inquisition lies in a rat infested dungeon passing from one grisly fate to another. A nightmare conjured from the fevered imagination of Edgar Allen Poe. It is like a poem scribbled on the cell of a wall in some forgotten purgatory.

Falling Out With The Future.

I enjoy Laurence Donaghy's book signings so much that at one of them I invited a future self to come back and share in a bit of Craic on the night. Mind you, I had a bit too much to drink and think I may have crossed the line and behaved inappropriately with myself. The future me is currently not speaking to the past me. I do hope in time I can forgive myself.
                It is so hard to be a time traveller and also a good Catholic.

Jackanapes.

(From my sketchbook.)I had been thinking of drawing a set of playing cards. A mix of playing cards and Tarot that I can use for games of my own devising. Although up til now my game design ideas have been a bit er, well not very good.. I once designed a snakes and ladders board where all the ladders had been burnt and the board was just full of snakes, scared the life out of myself.

The Fiery Queene.

(From my sketch book.) A drawing inspired by The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. The realm of Gloriana may exist only in the dreams of a sleeping Englande but if you wish to walk through a world peopled with chivalrous knights and beautiful maidens, sorcerers , witches, goblins and monstrous giants, heroism and romance then this is your map.
              We are such stuff as dreams are made of...