Just caught a bit of Chicken Run, the cartoon film about the chickens plotting to escape from the farm they're on in a spoof of WW2 POW-escape type movies. Mel Gibson does the voice for the rooster, Rocky Roads, who's roped in to help the lady chickens learn how to fly. (Possibly Mel's best work on celluloid, I reckon.) Comic genius, the whole thing. Can't remember if I put it in the list of my top-ten favourite films of all time that I posted quite a while back - forgot when. But I should have done, and will do if I ever re-visit. Must get it on DVD.
It's by the same animators who do the Wallace and Gromit stuff, which means it's stop-motion (if that's what they call it) rather than an actual cartoon - and that makes me think I should get all their work available because it's all brilliant. The problem is finding the time to really watch, of course.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Monday, January 19, 2015
Deletions
My handphone remains happily primitive, but it does have a contact list and I've now developed the custom of annually reviewing the names therein and deleting those no longer applicable. No, I'm not eliminating enemies. It's just that every year I find myself adding the contacts of any of my students in that year who send text messages so that I, or rather my phone, will 'remember' who they are. This turns out to be a lot of names, and once they've graduated it's not terribly likely the majority will need to get in touch again. However, I do leave them in for a year, just in case they contact me with regard to references and the like. So the deleting exercise means getting rid of those names for whom there's been no sign of contact for a whole year, and no likelihood of such in future.
Now here's the odd thing. Each time I remove a name I find myself remembering vividly the person involved. This doesn't always mean I knew them terribly well, but almost all I did know will come flooding back. Occasionally this needs to be prompted by a quick glance at an old class list when I'm dealing with a fairly common name and I'm a bit confused as to which particular Esmeralda it is. (That's a joke example, by the way.) But generally remembrance is easy in that moment - though I may not have thought in any distinct way of the person for quite a while. However, once they're gone, they're very, very gone, usually. My memory seems to function that way, as if it closes down on the information completely.
I know this sounds awful in some ways, as if I just don't care about the person whom I'm forgetting, but it's really not like that. I suspect it's a pragmatic way of dealing with memory overload. And there's a curiously positive side to all this. When the name is deleted I remind myself that the person involved just isn't the same anymore as my mental image of them. They've grown, matured, become richer individuals. I really don't know them now in that positive sense, and that's a happy thought: they've escaped my narrow understanding of them.
I don't know about other teachers but somehow, for me, students I've taught remain exactly as they were when I knew them, in a kind of frozen memory (when I do remember them.) Suddenly, yesterday, I thought of two girls I taught very briefly on a teaching practice a long, long time ago. Their good humour and amused toleration of my shortcomings as a not very capable student-teacher came vividly to mind and I recalled exactly what each looked like, though I don't think I gave them a second thought after the teaching practice ending. In my mind they remain an eternal fourteen years of age. In reality, assuming they've lived and nothing awful has happened to them, they'll now be around fifty-one. Gosh! Strange.
Now here's the odd thing. Each time I remove a name I find myself remembering vividly the person involved. This doesn't always mean I knew them terribly well, but almost all I did know will come flooding back. Occasionally this needs to be prompted by a quick glance at an old class list when I'm dealing with a fairly common name and I'm a bit confused as to which particular Esmeralda it is. (That's a joke example, by the way.) But generally remembrance is easy in that moment - though I may not have thought in any distinct way of the person for quite a while. However, once they're gone, they're very, very gone, usually. My memory seems to function that way, as if it closes down on the information completely.
I know this sounds awful in some ways, as if I just don't care about the person whom I'm forgetting, but it's really not like that. I suspect it's a pragmatic way of dealing with memory overload. And there's a curiously positive side to all this. When the name is deleted I remind myself that the person involved just isn't the same anymore as my mental image of them. They've grown, matured, become richer individuals. I really don't know them now in that positive sense, and that's a happy thought: they've escaped my narrow understanding of them.
I don't know about other teachers but somehow, for me, students I've taught remain exactly as they were when I knew them, in a kind of frozen memory (when I do remember them.) Suddenly, yesterday, I thought of two girls I taught very briefly on a teaching practice a long, long time ago. Their good humour and amused toleration of my shortcomings as a not very capable student-teacher came vividly to mind and I recalled exactly what each looked like, though I don't think I gave them a second thought after the teaching practice ending. In my mind they remain an eternal fourteen years of age. In reality, assuming they've lived and nothing awful has happened to them, they'll now be around fifty-one. Gosh! Strange.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
A Question Of Quality
I'm still puzzling over what to make of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. Completing the novel did nothing to change my mind about it being in general terms a poor work, both in terms of Vonnegut's oeuvre and any reasonable assessment of the quality of novels in broader terms. There's a lacerating segment in Chapter 18 in which Vonnegut himself makes no bones about this, (if I'm reading the sequence correctly) at the point in the novel when the writer himself is established as an on-going presence in whatever plot is taking place:
'This is a very bad book you're writing,' I said to myself behind my leaks.
'I know,' I said.
'You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did,' I said.
'I know,' I said.
It's almost as if the writer can no longer be bothered to keep up the pretence of the fiction, and this sense of weariness, of end-of-one's-tetherness pervades the work. I had a strong sense that the writing was coming out of a deep and debilitating sense of depression. And this depression is corrosive in nature. The satire is entirely destructive in an almost lazy manner.
And yet moments (like the above) are done so well that something survives the wreckage. It's just that I'm not sure that that something can fairly be described as a novel.
Now I could be wrong. My diagnosis of depression might be amateur psychoanalysing of the worse sort and entirely misplaced. I do know that Vonnegut did suffer from depression - and attempted suicide - later in life, but that's no reason for me to read that back into his earlier fiction. It could be that what he's doing in Breakfast is deliberate and calculated - intended to move away from what he'd already achieved, the perfection of Slaughterhouse 5, into new territory, expanding the possibilities of the novel as a form. And some of the comments on the work you can read in places like amazon.com are remarkably positive, suggesting it works for some readers.
That's good, I suppose. I don't want to impose my negativity on others and spoil the book for them. But I still think it's pretty poor stuff and wonder whether the writer was just riding on his reputation at that point in his career.
'This is a very bad book you're writing,' I said to myself behind my leaks.
'I know,' I said.
'You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did,' I said.
'I know,' I said.
It's almost as if the writer can no longer be bothered to keep up the pretence of the fiction, and this sense of weariness, of end-of-one's-tetherness pervades the work. I had a strong sense that the writing was coming out of a deep and debilitating sense of depression. And this depression is corrosive in nature. The satire is entirely destructive in an almost lazy manner.
And yet moments (like the above) are done so well that something survives the wreckage. It's just that I'm not sure that that something can fairly be described as a novel.
Now I could be wrong. My diagnosis of depression might be amateur psychoanalysing of the worse sort and entirely misplaced. I do know that Vonnegut did suffer from depression - and attempted suicide - later in life, but that's no reason for me to read that back into his earlier fiction. It could be that what he's doing in Breakfast is deliberate and calculated - intended to move away from what he'd already achieved, the perfection of Slaughterhouse 5, into new territory, expanding the possibilities of the novel as a form. And some of the comments on the work you can read in places like amazon.com are remarkably positive, suggesting it works for some readers.
That's good, I suppose. I don't want to impose my negativity on others and spoil the book for them. But I still think it's pretty poor stuff and wonder whether the writer was just riding on his reputation at that point in his career.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
The Last Hurrah
A happy-sad afternoon with Ola and family around for tea and cakes for what is very likely indeed to be the last time. As usual, a cheerfully wide-ranging discussion covering everything from the nature of truth to how to bake chocolate muffins - and, not surprisingly in view of the circumstances, the vagaries of various nations' policies on immigration and how these affect real people.
If anyone can explain to me how a lovely, very intelligent young lady with an excellent school record who's completed eleven years of her education in a country, and who needs a student pass for just one year to be allowed to complete her final 'O' level year, and whose financial stability over that time is a hundred per cent guaranteed, can be rationally denied said pass I'd be interested to hear them.
Simple, but very painful, rule of life: bureaucracies are invariably unyielding. And a lesson not to take our right of abode here for granted - because we haven't got any.
If anyone can explain to me how a lovely, very intelligent young lady with an excellent school record who's completed eleven years of her education in a country, and who needs a student pass for just one year to be allowed to complete her final 'O' level year, and whose financial stability over that time is a hundred per cent guaranteed, can be rationally denied said pass I'd be interested to hear them.
Simple, but very painful, rule of life: bureaucracies are invariably unyielding. And a lesson not to take our right of abode here for granted - because we haven't got any.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Putting Away Childish Things
At an age when I've forgotten how to play, I found myself the other day making a list of toys and games I received as presents in childhood. I remember each of these vividly, and feel good doing so: a big red plastic tractor with black wheels; a Lego set in a partitioned wooden box; a Waddingtons' board game called Scoop; a Waddingtons' Battle of the Little Big Horn; a second hand Subbuteo, with 2D players (from several teams, some incomplete) rather than the 3D models that were more common; a reel to reel tape recorder. (I know the last one doesn't sound like a toy, but that's in effect what it was for a ten-year-old.)
Funnily enough I can't recall anything else, other than colouring sets and the like, though I've been mulling over this for a few days. Oh, and an incomplete Totopoly set, which wasn't a present but just seemed to have always been around. The rules had got lost so we made up our own.
I suppose some people might think the brevity of the list points to some degree of deprivation given the very privileged childhoods some youngsters enjoy these days, but it didn't feel like that at all. Entirely the opposite. Since you got to play with all your friends' toys there was always more than enough.
I haven't a clue what happened to any of the above, except for the tape recorder. Mum kept that in her bedroom for years and it was thrown away when she finally moved out of Gresham Street. I can only hope the rest went second hand (or third in at least one case) to some kids who could enjoy them somewhere. I know I did.
Funnily enough I can't recall anything else, other than colouring sets and the like, though I've been mulling over this for a few days. Oh, and an incomplete Totopoly set, which wasn't a present but just seemed to have always been around. The rules had got lost so we made up our own.
I suppose some people might think the brevity of the list points to some degree of deprivation given the very privileged childhoods some youngsters enjoy these days, but it didn't feel like that at all. Entirely the opposite. Since you got to play with all your friends' toys there was always more than enough.
I haven't a clue what happened to any of the above, except for the tape recorder. Mum kept that in her bedroom for years and it was thrown away when she finally moved out of Gresham Street. I can only hope the rest went second hand (or third in at least one case) to some kids who could enjoy them somewhere. I know I did.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Not Too Good
Coming towards the end of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and surprised at just how bad it is. But it's still readable for all its faults. What a strange writer Vonnegut was, and how astonishingly gifted!
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Another Glance Back
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Retribution
I paid the price, inevitably, for yesterday's complacent comments about how chipper I felt, and paid it at express speed. At 3.30 in the morning I was awakened by a good deal of discomfort manifesting itself in and around my stomach. Quick diagnosis: mild indigestion, not life-threatening, but enough to make it impossible to get back to much-needed sleep. The cause: greed, simple greed - the Missus had cooked up an exquisite plate of bangers & mash for dinner, of which one plateful was more than enough. I went for the 'afters' - as they used to say back home - wonder if they still do - and that little bit of extra potatoes and gravy made its presence unpleasantly felt as detailed above.
Which reminds me: I need to shed 3 kilos, and to do so soon.
Which reminds me: I need to shed 3 kilos, and to do so soon.
Monday, January 12, 2015
In Good Health
Noi's been suffering from a bit of back-strain the last few days, poor girl. Ironic, isn't it? I'm usually the one moaning about aches and pains in that area and I'm feeling entirely, blithely hunky dory in that respect and most others appertaining to health. Actually I suspect the heavy regime of prayers in Medinah and Makkah helped strengthen the muscles around my spine. I remember a bit of back ache initially - and a sore throat - and then all that wonderfully disappearing.
Now you may think I'm tempting fate by crowing about just how well I feel (except for the usual mild exhaustion from work) but this is quite the opposite. I'm not expecting this happy state of affairs to last - just being grateful and celebrating whilst it does.
Now you may think I'm tempting fate by crowing about just how well I feel (except for the usual mild exhaustion from work) but this is quite the opposite. I'm not expecting this happy state of affairs to last - just being grateful and celebrating whilst it does.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
No Small Matter
The Shrinking Man, which I finished earlier today, has a few particularly powerful scenes in it, at least three of which are very much in a Stephen King vein. I'm thinking of the two sequences in which the protagonist encounters distinctly unsettlingly menacing individuals when he is as small and vulnerable as any child, in the shape of the probably paedophilic guy who gives him a lift and the three neighbourhood bullies into whose hands he temporarily falls; and then there's the final, epic showdown with the spider that's been menacing him in the cellar throughout the novel, when he's just one-seventh of an inch tall.
But the most powerful sequence of all, for this reader, has no real equivalent in horror fiction and raises the novel beyond the confines of the genre. This is Scott's encounter with poor Clarice, the circus midget and the only character who understands his feelings. The instant rapport between the two is entirely believable and indicates a powerful imaginative sympathy on Matheson's part. Indeed, these pages are a worthy reminder of those poor souls who have to negotiate a forbiddingly large world due to an accident of birth.
As I mentioned the other day, it seems to me a bit of a stretch to classify Matheson's work as science fiction per se, but I have no hesitation in classifying it as a fine novel. Great ending, by the way, very much in the tradition of those surprise endings frequent in The Twilight Zone - for which Matheson wrote a number of episodes, if I'm not mistaken.
Must say, I wouldn't mind watching The Incredible Shrinking Man again, if I ever really did watch it back in the 60s. Before reading the novel I assumed I did once see it, on tv that is, but now I'm not so sure. It's such an iconic sort of movie that I might well have seen an excerpt or two and later in life assumed I'd once watched it. I say this because I thought the movie involved a straightforward chronology of the hero shrinking, and was startled at the clever 'double' time scheme of the novel which begins in the cellar with Scott already down to less than an inch and then amplifies on how he got there through a series of flash-backs. Does the film do the same?
But the most powerful sequence of all, for this reader, has no real equivalent in horror fiction and raises the novel beyond the confines of the genre. This is Scott's encounter with poor Clarice, the circus midget and the only character who understands his feelings. The instant rapport between the two is entirely believable and indicates a powerful imaginative sympathy on Matheson's part. Indeed, these pages are a worthy reminder of those poor souls who have to negotiate a forbiddingly large world due to an accident of birth.
As I mentioned the other day, it seems to me a bit of a stretch to classify Matheson's work as science fiction per se, but I have no hesitation in classifying it as a fine novel. Great ending, by the way, very much in the tradition of those surprise endings frequent in The Twilight Zone - for which Matheson wrote a number of episodes, if I'm not mistaken.
Must say, I wouldn't mind watching The Incredible Shrinking Man again, if I ever really did watch it back in the 60s. Before reading the novel I assumed I did once see it, on tv that is, but now I'm not so sure. It's such an iconic sort of movie that I might well have seen an excerpt or two and later in life assumed I'd once watched it. I say this because I thought the movie involved a straightforward chronology of the hero shrinking, and was startled at the clever 'double' time scheme of the novel which begins in the cellar with Scott already down to less than an inch and then amplifies on how he got there through a series of flash-backs. Does the film do the same?
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