The Plot Thickens.

                                                         (From my Sketchbook.)

Grimley Fiendish.

                                                                (From my Sketchbook.)

                               So much loved a character The Damned even wrote a song about him.

Shakespearean.

In 1995 Robert McCrum suffered a severe stroke and decided to write a book about the experience, a well received and highly regarded insight into the trauma of such an experience and how best one can come to terms with it on the most personal of levels.  this humane memory play was entitled My Year Off with suitably self-deprecating aplomb. Dealing with trauma with the wit and humour of a natural writer, able to aim target the microcosm of personal setback with wit and even forward thinking. For during his recovery he discovered the only words that made sense to him were snatches of his beloved Shakespeare. The First Folio became the prism through which he viewed the world and tried to make sense of the seemingly increasingly senseless times we are all living through, these times of disruption. 

             He attempts to unravel why this should be so, why the words of William Shakespeare still resonate with us four hundred years after he wrote them for our entertainment of the London mob.  And entertain them and us he has for centuries, through good times and bad, over and over again in a way no other writer possibly could, given the cultural conditions which allowed him to saturate the shared zeitgeist. Serving as a mirror to the then and the now, a reminder to all that no matter where we go, there we are. For so much of Shakespeare's work is about confronting ourselves, looking into the hearts of darkness and finding light in the most unlikely places.

Robert McCrum writes with a comfortable authority on the subject. He shapes what for him must feel like quite personal and heart felt insights into the bard into a broader discussion, throwing his net wide. i suspect he would have made a good teacher should he have embraced the notion of passing on what he had learned. There is nothing dry or tonally academically dull about his style of writing and it comes invested with great affection for the subject matter. 

 

The Doctor and Davros sat Under A Tree.

Picture the scene. Following a harrowing interrogation The Doctor sits in Davros science bunker on the war ravaged planet of Skaro,  talking to his great nemesis, not as enemies but "as men of science." Its one of the great moments in a truly classic story. 

The Doctor; Davros, if you had created a virus in your laboratory, something contagious and infectious that killed on contact. A virus that would destroy all other forms of life...would you allow its use?

Davros; An interesting conjecture.

The Doctor; Would you do it?

Davros; Yes. yes, to hold in my hand a capsule that contained such power. To know that life and death on such a scale was my choice. To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything. Yes i would do it. That power would set me up above the Gods! And Through The Daleks I Will Have That Power!

The Doctor; Well in that case, Davros Old Sprout, no more jelly babies for you.

Well, all right, the last line was mine. Inspired by some new pics sent to me by the chameleon like Joanne Alexander, in her fourth Doctor costume. Just fantastique!You know what, Tom Baker himself would love these. They would remind him of the best days of his life..

              As they do for me.

 

Hudson In Baltimore.

 I was saddened to hear that Hudson Flanagan, that Prince among Boxer dogs, has passed away. After a long and eventful life Hudson will be much missed by all who had the good fortune to know him. Hudson was a well read dog and he was very kind to comment positively about the two issues of Noe the Savage Boy which I wrote for Atomic Diner in Dublin. " Grunff, fworth" was , I believe, how he put it. High praise indeed. This is a picture of Hudson in Baltimore, Cork where Noe's story began, when him and his family, along with all their fellow residents, were abducted and sold into slavery by Barbary Pirates. Hudson was more than a fireside reader and liked to extend his reading into his life, so he decided to make the long journey from Coalisland to Cork to get a sense of the terrain. He is pictured with his pal Connor, the comic book artist, who he convinced to make the trip to the bottom end of Ireland in search of adventure. Like all artists, he does not get out enough, was, I believe, Hudson's thinking.

             Hudson may have believed in living in the moment but he was very much a dog for all times.

             RIP friend. Finest Kind.

The Gunpowder Plot.

You think you know all the details of an event, a historical event that has been written about for literally hundreds of years, and then you discover that what you know is only the most visible part of a mass event whose true proportions remain out of view, tucked discreetly beneath the line of history. Especially given that the circumstances  of the Gunpowder Plot were historically foggy at best...

 

"Handles" with Care.

                                      A Timely Timey Whimey message from The Good Doctor....

                                     (Thank you , Joanne, all that regenerating must be exhausting.)