Tony Moore.

Met the artist Tony Moore the other day. What a fine fellow and what a fantastic artist. He did this lovely sketch for me and I felt the years fall away. Now that is the power of art. And Kindness.

Moby Dick (Classic Illustrated.)

Bit of a bold attempt this was. To adapt one of the most ambitiously arch novels in American history into a standard comic sized edition you could have rolled up and stick in your back pocket. Try doing that with the original book and you wont be able to sit down. It s been a while since I read the original but chunks of it still play ouy in my brain. It really haunted me for a long time after I read it. Parts off it are surely memories, experiences that its writer recunted in the narrative. Its a great adventure yarn, when a young man sets out on a life defining series of incidents and experiences, edures hardships and makes the best of friends before narrowly avoiding being dragged down into the abyss. It has a power and a resonance that feels really authentic. Actually so much literature that survives from as far back as Moby Dick has that quality. One that is so hard to pin down inmodern litrature. Authenticity seems to scare modern publishers. I get the impression it embarrasses modern publishers, that is untastefully naive. Modern confessionals feel so meta these days. Too aware of their possible connections to social media? Hmmm, this is what happens when I try to explain something that just feels right to me. Why explain at all.

Speeder-Biking.

"You know, my days working for the Empire were among the most fulfilling and job afirming experiences of my life. Sure there were the occasional genocidal moments but lets face it the universe is teeming with life. A good friend of mine recently shot a protocol robot, a basic gold model, you know the type, and it could speak over six million languages. Six million! No droid lives long enough to need to speak six million languages. At least they dont when my platoon are about,har,har. Yet people will insist on giving us a hard time, always pointing out the marginal things we get wrong and blatantly ignoring all the things we get right.But Oh, you destroy one peaceful planet which has no weapons (Ooops, my bad, "had" no weapoms. It is , after all, now just space dust.) and you get branded as The Evil Empire.Well, just you consider this; What you might call "evil" some one else might consider well ordered.And we can all use a little order. A New Order. Anytime now..." Corville Bampht. Speeder-Bike Pilot.Coruscant Imperial Division.

Anarchy In The UK (Well, The Part Of It My Bedroom Was In.)

I was in a store recently that had for back ground music bits and pieces from Movie sountracks and various computer games when suddenly the sound of The Sex Pistols Anarchy In The UK blared out like someone knocking over shelves in an old Blockbuster store. They sang for it all right. Anarchy in the streets, that is. And thankfully that did not happen. I was thirteen, or so, when I first heard that song and all though they were singing for anarchy I did hope it would not come to that. Even as a young boy I had seen how bad things could get when social unrest was unleashed upon the streets. I saw whole streets ablaze and grew up almost at the geographical center of Ardoyne and had witnessed what it was like to grow up in a war zone. Our childhood had been played out with the Troubles as a back drop, as the snarling, biting real thing. So I understood this was only a song and not a call to arms. Or was it more than that?

It surely was to me and many others. Like the faint stirrings caused by the creation of something in Mount Doom, the ring of power this time around was a circle of music. Round and round our heads it went, changing us at a deeper level than we thought possible by a rock band. The Sex Pistols were making Gollums of all of us. We forget the taste of bread, or at the very least how to earn it. As a boy I thought musicians, particularly pop stars, fell from the heavens, fully formed,a race apart, speaking their own language, not bound by the rules of earth bound mortals (Boy, did I get that one wrong. They lean towards being more messed up than any "real" peple I ever knew. Like actors they were driven by their own demons to escape the realities of their lives and replace certainties with promises wrote in smoke and glitter.The Sex Pistols were the first band I knew who owned what they were. Not the faux-posturing of many less than modern contempary artists clinging to the notion they are keeping it real. More a sense of them not being able to escape the reality of who and what they were. I,m losing the thread of what I am trying to say here.They had something about them that marked them out as well different and they sold it to futurity...A friend recently told me he thought I had always overated The Pistols, that they were a bunch of thieving magpies who ripped off a load of sixties rifts by better bands. Yes, I do allow my friends to talk to me like this. Its just words after all. Maybe he is right, I am a bit thinly read on sixties music.At the time of my maximum enjoyment of The Sex Pistols I was rather living in the moment. And memories are made of moments.. I'm away to look for that thread I lost.

Mrs Lowry And Son.

I have to mention an exceptional movie I saw this week; Mrs Lowry And Son. Starring Venessa Redgrage and Timothy Spall. What a good week it has been for Vanessa Redgrave, recognised by The Crown for a lifetime of dedication to acting. And she looked so pleased to be receiving such an award. Even a little bemused that she should be rewarded for doing something she so obviously loves. Quite touching to see. That great artistes such as her are also so modest. She and Timothy Spall play a blinding two hander n this lyrical portrait of the relationship between mother and son and the art that seperated them. We get to peep around the net curtains into the lives of what is left of the Lowry family as they float and bob about in a sea of troubles of their own makings. Socially crippled they exist in a fragile, but hardy enough life on the fringe of poverty following a fall from a genteel existance that mostly only existed in the mind of Mrs Lowry. One moment the viewer is smiling the next tearing up. Probably. The diector does not assume familiarity with Lowry's paintings. We are introduced to their lives before we see what he is up to in the attic. Although the inspiration for much of the work is put before our eyes, to extrapolate as we wish. Loved the sequence with the reclyning Lowry on the wall and especially the origins of the bearded lady. It affords a simple dignity and an almost heavenly grace which will forever enrich that particular painting for me. Things might have been grim up North but they could also be beguilingly funny. Poverty and back breaking work can make, break and shape the whole of us. Humour frees our souls for moments at a time and we can survive by stumbling from one to the other. The heart may well break at times but reparations are possible, even when we find we do not actually like the ones we love, exposing an aggregate of suffering and unrequited hopes. The bedrock of family where we daily flounder and yet carry on. Its a beautiful piece of work. which magically, if subtly gives us a glimpse of what a piece of art sees while we stare at it. You will know the framing sequence I mean when you see the film for yourself. Which you really should do. There is a particularly affecting scene where Lowry is brushing his mother's hair. He is describing his day to his house bound ma, and he recounts seeing a lady with a beard. And it is how he describes this to his mother. Verbalising a gentle humanity and even love for a singular human being who in all probability faced abuse and discourtesy in a hard old world in hard old days. He painted her in a picture and that expression of love is there. As it is in everything he choose to put on canvas.

The Scarf Artist

He came, he saw, he knitted. Doctor Martin presented me with this beautiful scarft which he knitted especially for me. It took him three days and is just about one of the nicest things anyone has ever given me. He really has a great imagination and magic knitting fingers.Old Madame Nostradamus would turn green. Some one mentioned to me thay had seen him on a park bence knitting away, the very picture of the artist he is.

1973.

Theres A Light On At Arkham Asylum.

Theres a light on at Arkham asylum that never goes out. Just as well really, the inmates might get out.

Image Of The Fendahl.

Finished listening to this superb adaption of a classic Fourth Doctor tale, an audio adaption of the novel as written by Terrance Dicks from an original script by Chris Boucher. I do mean this is quite literally a classic tale, not just that is a story from the classic era. Its as close as one can get to a Quatermass tale as Doctor Who ever got, although it has come close on a number of occasions. Sharing its DNA as much as rifting on a Kneale trope. Actually, I am being a bit lazy there. It shares some themes and even the atmosphere of a situation when Science is mistaken for occult activity. Modern science does not make much room for miracles or deus ex machina moments as they devalue resolution. But as a means of drawing the listener down a dark path with goblin creatures on all sides this tight bit of speculative fiction really gets us there; "Like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned 'round and turns no more his head, Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tred." Its spoke near the start of the first episode. Beautifully intoned by Tom Baker in the transmitted episode, with the equally beautiful Louise Jameson pulling narrative chores on this three discer. And the Fendahl is a frightful fiend. From its sibilant hissing and dragging to its giant alien tapeworm appearance it is one of the nastiest looking, and sounding, nightmare creatures ever to drag its way into the life of The Doctor and his companions. Its weird and almost Lovecraftian, so terrible a life form that the frightened Time-lords tried to eraze all knowledge of its existance from the universe, going as far as to timelock its homeworld. A tale too terrible to tell? Chris Boucher delivered a pretty taut horror thriller, amazing to think this reached a family audience of millions, given how truly horrible the Fendahl is. He must have felt on a creative high, writing this and some really exciting Blakes Seven stuff around the same time. The BBC produced some amazing and hugely influential stuff around this era. An era which predates social media, an era mostly without agendas outweighing the basic call to entertain.Sure, wedge issues could come in under the radar but never to the extent where it was crushingly obvious and drama killingly stifling. This story is literally a warning to the curious. Be ready and beware the answers one may find when digging deep. Like the greedy dwarves of Moria who dug too deep and sealed their own doom. The fluidity of the script is aided by a perfect reading by a wonderfully adaptive actress; Louise Jameson. It helps she played the main character Leela I suppose but she is a woman of many talents. A writer and a director as well. Her voice shifts from narrator to companion effortlessly, talented people like her make it sound easy, which I am quite sure it is not. I have heard her speak quite a bit now, among the many afterwards on the Big Finish CD extras. She is smart and witty and very generous with praise for those who have earned it. i had always hoped for a meeting at some point between her and a current Doctor, perhaps on Galifrey, in the very hell of The Time War. It has not happened yet but....