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Here Comes the Sun!

25/7/2012

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PictureNot a pretty sight!
So a big welcome back to our old friend, Monsieur Sun! Yes, a rare visitor to the UK so far this Summer. Who can ever forget the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, octo and nono-genarians respectively, standing stoically by for over two hours whilst barge after barge sailed past them in the freezing rain, peopled by hundreds of their loyal, bedraggled subjects, cheering, waving Union-Jacks and singing anthems of national pride? The occasion became quite surreal at times, almost a satyrical look at us British! On Diamond Jubilee Day, we wandered up the road to our local street party with a plate of cakes to offer round. Typically for us, we were a little late arriving and most of the children had by then consumed their jelly and ice-cream, undoubtedly fuelling-up on enough sugar to launch themselves into the stratosphere and had mostly disappeared indoors to play computer games - leaving the adults to stand around in the icy wind and rain! Actually, the occasion was very nice, well organised and it was great to meet people who live on our road. And being someone who actually quite likes their own species, I'm delighted to say I now have a few more people to say hello to whenever I nip down the road for a pint of milk.

The sun has a funny effect on us Brits, who immediately want to strip-off, exposing our lily-white bodies to its rays, and soak it up with a quite comical zeal. I recall being at a hotel in Dubrovnik (Croatia being a country that gets some serious sun!) a few years back during the month of August, where a couple from Newcastle (a place not widely know for sun) arrived mid-week and proceeded to spend every daylight hour of the next five days lying flat-out by the pool sun-bathing. Despite turning as red as the proverbial beetroot they remained 'happy as Larry', and I sincerely hope they didn't see my wife and I (who thought they should've been hospitalised in a severe burns unit) wince every time we dared venture out from the protection of our sun shade.

Being of Welsh origin, I am of course a special case when it comes to the sun. Coming from a land where it tends to rain about 300 days out of the annual allotted span of 365 (301 in leap years!) I don't think my epidermis ever really got acclimatised to sun. In bygone days, although my head appeared to boast chestnut coloured locks my hair actually had quite a lot of red in it - an unfortunate combo, pale white skin, reddish colouring and an upbringing in aforementioned rainy Wales. Brown is not a colour my skin has ever known. After exposure to the sun I tend to look like someone with extremely high blood pressure - this generally lasts about a week before I turn white again. I once worked in North Africa for several months and after arriving home was in danger of seeming invisible if I happened to be found standing in front of  a pillar-box!

However, I do love it. I got out of bed this morning, saw the glorious light streaming in through the bedroom window and thought, "Carpe diem!" I dug out a pair of shorts (first time this year!), carefully avoiding the glare from the whiteness of my legs for fear of being temporarily blinded, and happily set to work. As I type this blog my legs are dangling out from the hems of my shorts like a couple of uncooked pork sausages, but I remain unashamed! I am British, it's the summer, and I'll even wear socks with sandals if I want to!


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Scary?

18/7/2012

4 Comments

 
PictureVery Strange Creature
I have always had a bit of a penchant for a good horror movie. This week I went along with my son, another horror fan, to see Ridley Scott's new film Prometheus. I don't normally opt to see films in 3D, I find the glasses a bit annoying, and when I've been to see a 3D movie I find myself just waiting for the next hair-raising stunt to come along, which can get repetitive and a little boring. We had no option with Prometheus as this was the only format it was being shown in at our local cinema.

My verdict? It was okay. There's always plenty on the screen to watch. The spaceships look like they're actually present, not just CGI creations and I can honestly say I wasn't bored for an instant - but then neither was I enthralled!  I felt a degree of deja-vu: lots of gooey slimey stuff and phallic-like appendages that are intent on violently impregnating the human crew of the spaceship with nasty squiggly things that burst out of them with lots of blood and gore. At the very start of the film we're introduced to a race of ultra-smart beings who lent us their DNA and brought life to our little blue planet; which naturally blows apart the theory of evolution and makes Darwin look like the class dunce. Even our primitive ancestors it seems knew far more about our origins than he did, they even left us clues on cave walls all over the world, including (clever old troglodytes!) a star map to a far-away constellation in another galaxy. However, this premise is really just the outer wrapping - once we get inside, the main story we soon discover is something far more familiar.

Yep, I'd seen it all before and I came away from the cinema wondering whether the girl behind me was talking about the same film when she told her boyfriend, "I enjoyed it ... but it was just so scary!" Perhaps she hasn't seen Alien I surmised?

I have absolutely no objection to remakes, some have been very worthy creations in their own right, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Thing all found new ways of chilling us. However this film just seemed keen to re-package a tried and tested hugely successful franchise by pretending we were watching something else. We were tossed a few intriguing new morsels of background information whilst the movie appeared to raise the endlessly fascinating issue (at least Hollywood appears to think so!)of,  what is our place in the universe and what relationship do we have to whatever Deity may be out there?

What is most interesting I think is the question of scariness. For my money the original Alien was a far far more frightening film than Prometheus, and it achieves this by being considerably less graphic than its prequel/offspring. The story in Alien builds quite slowly and Ripley, who becomes the film's heroine, is a bit of a scaredy-cat initially as I recall. It is the strangeness of their barren environment and their isolation on a planet million of miles from home that makes it so squirmingly appealing. Perhaps it's just me, but I find the way the water changes colour in the shower  scene in Psycho (made in black and white), the nerve-jangling music like finger-nails clawing on glass, the indistinguishable figure behind the curtain and the sight of that blade thrusting again and again, together with the shots of Janet Leigh's surprised, then shocked, then blank and staring eyes, does it for me far better than the gallons of corn syrup and intestinal anatomy you're likely to see in a modern horror flick.

To my way of thinking, the horror in a situation is the idea that the writer/director wishes to communicate with the audience. The Japanese film Ringu (Ring - US version and not so good IMHO) understood the concept fully; after building nothing but tension for 120 minutes, when the final moment of appalling realisation arrived I was almost climbing up the back of the sofa. People who have read Niedermayer & Hart tell me that they found a few moments in the book very scary indeed (my wife, poor thing, who edited it, says she still has flashbacks to a scene in the story whenever she enters certain public buildings!) - I am of course delighted to hear this! However, despite N & H having an enormous body count the violence is almost invariably reported and therefore left to the reader's imagination to put flesh onto the bones as it were.

Horror stories are dark fairy-tales for grown-ups basically. Someone once told me that cat digestion is improved if they are a little nervous whilst eating because certain enzymes which aid their digestive processes are released through tension. Thank God we're not cats is all I can say, imagine going to a nice restaurant and having to ask the waiter to stand by brandishing an axe while you eat. However, like the cat, something in our nature requires us to be frightened from time to time. I fully expect  that our ancestors sat around camp fires telling each other scary stories. Perhaps one day Hollywood will find a cave painting in the remotest part of the Himalayas that shows our ancestors doing just this! Wow!


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Huge Caravaggio Stash

11/7/2012

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PictureThe Flagellation of Christ by Caravaggio
I don't know if you saw it reported in the media this week but Art historians in Italy have for the past two years been secretly working on a collection of paintings and sketches that were found in the workshop of Simone Peterzano that may be attributable to Caravaggio. The young Caravaggio is known to have worked as an apprentice to Peterzano between 1584 and 1588. The collection has apparently been housed in a castle in Milan, Castello Sforzesco, since 1924. If the find can be authenticated then the paintings could be worth an estimated 700 million euros (£560 million).

I met my artist son yesterday for a coffee and knowing him to be a huge Caravaggio fan, excitedly told him what I'd read. He immediately checked out the report on his iphone and commented, "That would be brilliant - if it's for real!"

Slightly crestfallen, I asked him what he meant.

He reminded me of the Van Meegren forgeries of the paintings of Jan Vermeer and how the art world, desperately wanting to believe, had hoodwinked itself. It made me think of other situations like the notorious 'Hitler Diaries' where serious historians, and the media themselves that time, were fooled into parting with lots of dosh.

Whatever the outcome, it's interesting stuff and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how things unfold. Caravaggio the man was, from what we know about him, quite a difficult individual, perhaps not someone you'd want at your summer barbecue with granny present. He had a fierce temper and was a renowned brawler. He had to get out of Rome pretty fast after killing someone and he is believed later to have wounded a Knight of Malta in a fight. His death in 1610 at the age of 38 has been put down to a variety of natural causes as well as there being a possibility he was murdered. When you look at his life there were, it seems, a number of people who may have been keen to 'do away with him'. If he hadn't been such a damn fine painter it's unlikely I reckon he'd have survived as long as he did!

PictureBlind Leading the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
A few years ago my wife Judy and I had the privilege of seeing his painting 'The Flagellation of Christ' (oil on canvas, 1607) at its home in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. We had caught an occasional glimpse of the great work as we slowly made our way along the long narrow gallery towards the enclosed room at the far end which is maintained at a constant temperature where the Caravaggio is housed. Our sense of excitement increased as we got closer and closer to the work and to be honest we didn't arrive too fast as our progress was constantly hampered by numerous other great works of art, like The Blind Leading the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (tempura on canvas, 1568). However, eventually we got there and despite being constantly hassled by a guard to move on from the moment we arrived, the experience can only be described as sublime. If the man's handiwork could move us so powerfully from the point where we stand in time, having grown up and lived in a world where we have been constantly bombarded by powerful images, great movie special effects, CGI et al, to be so deeply affected by what one difficult man achieved with a bit of paint on some canvas four hundred years ago is truly amazing, don't you think? Just imagine the effect such realistic painting would have had on a 16th century peasant filled with superstitious belief. It must have seemed like you were there - actually a witness at Christ's passion!

I have always been an art lover, but on this occasion, I was struck dumb by the painting's power. Believe me, the photograph just doesn't do it justice. Perhaps for the first time I was truly able to comprehend why the accolade of 'masterpiece' can only be attributed to a handful of great works.


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Just Purr-fect!

4/7/2012

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I had already done some research on social networking/online promotion tools before I published Niedermayer & Hart, which is absolutely essential in my view - I am a very great believer in the old adage, "Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!". However, I don't think anything can really get you totally ready for the shock (or joy!) of self-publishing. I started building a website and doing some background research last November but my advice to any aspiring author would be to start as soon as possible - before you've even started writing the novel preferably! Without a doubt get a blog going as soon as you possibly can, it provides a shop window for your efforts as a writer and encourages you to be disciplined about working to deadlines. I write a weekly blog, with an occasional update if I think it's relevant between posts.  Be sure to proof-read everything thoroughly - get a wife/husband/friend to help if possible - smelling mistakes (joke) look bad and are so easily made. After many hours of staring at text on a screen or page, a sort of word-blindness overtakes the mind. Independent authors are by no means the only people responsible for typos and errors but I think we become an easy target for the opprobrium of the big publishers when they are too numerous to be chalked-up to natural error.
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Anyway, I really wanted to write this blog about all the excellent help I've received. I've already mentioned in earlier posts about the many kind people I've come across through my efforts, via the marvel of the World Wide Web, to launch N & H onto the unsuspecting world. The help and continuing support of some people not only warms my heart but goes on surprising me. However, I am also enormously lucky to enjoy the backing and support of a wonderful family. If it hadn't been for my wife, Judith, my aspirations as a writer would probably have remained sunk like my self-esteem was when a major international publishing house who had shown a lot of positive interest in the book decided against doing it after five months of dangling and hopeful anticipation. Luckily for me too, she is also more accurate when it comes to spelling and punctuation than I am and has made a fantastic editor for my work. In fact, we are mutually beneficial to each other in this area - she edits me and I edit her. I have also recently helped her (using my newly learned skills courtesy of the many Indie authors who generously passed them on to me) to convert her local history book Southborough War Memorial (originally published and printed in 2009) into an e-book. It is a wonderful piece of research which she undertook in her spare moments over seven years. She writes great poetry too and is currently working on a book for children - she has an eclectic, very interesting blog and website  http://www.judithjohnson.co.uk and deserves a viewing.

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My son Tom has been marvellous too and always willing to help in any way possible. He did the camerawork on Niedermayer & Hart - The Prologue, designed the book's great cover and single handedly made the set, clay figures and did all the animation for the promo A Gripping Tail. He is currently busy on its sequel, delayed at one point by software problems and always under a great deal of pressure from his busy job. He has been fortunate on The Purr-fect Crime (the title of the sequel) to be assisted by his girlfriend Lou. I have seen the rushes without any sound, and all I can say is that the sets and characterisations are fantastic. And I hope to bring news very soon of its publication on You Tube. In the meantime, I'll post up the odd production-still on my Facebook author page. If you enjoyed A Gripping Tail - and I can't honestly think of anyone who didn't, then you will definitely enjoy watching A Purr-fect Crime.


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