When I first returned to this blog* after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory I thought I'd just remain on twitter to post links and provide a little daily – but potentially always topical – keening over our exit from the EU inspired by Megan Anram's daily "Today was the day Donald trump finally became president" posts. Initially, I thought spending less time on everyone's favourite hellsite was simply for my own good, but when I watched Lindsay Ellis' video about her own cancelling last April I realised maybe the problem wasn't just me, but twitter's own business model, which now required the active promotion of upsetting content in order to keep our attention. Capitalism depended on growth, and twitter had grown as big as it was going to get. So I pinned this to my profile:
Yes, stay cool. Because Fascism Thrives On Division.
Then, just over a week ago, Elon Musk finally bought the site or app or whatever it is for forty-four billion dollars.
And immediately sacked its content moderators – one week before the American midterm elections, and exactly one day before a terrorist attack on a migrant processing centre in Dover followed by our reappointed Home Secetary's warning of an "invasion" of the south coast by refugees – and I was initially nonplussed by commentators passing the popcorn and using phrases like "it's going to be a wild ride." I mean, I get it. I write, and sentences must be finished, and lot of this blog is just me sharing stuff I find ineresting and then realising I should probably provide some kind of commentary, and "it's going to be a wild ride" is a handy sign off. But it still seemed a weird way to describe the rise of Fascism.
But maybe that wasn't what was being described. Maybe those commentators anticipating twitter's downfall were looking forward to the fall of the rise of Fascism, certainly something I'd like to live long enough to see... That's maybe not entirely true. What I mean is, given that I have to keep on living, I would very much like the fall of the rise of Fascism to happen at some point during that.
Has the word Fascism gone a bit weird on me now? Maybe.
Anyway, here's some chat.
And I was talking to my uncle Gordie last week, and learning how well his children's generation have been rallying around each other, and how much help is now provided – ar at least seen to be needed – which wasn't when I was their age, and I have to remember that I'm living to see other, far better things also on the rise.
* Here's how this post originally began:
When I first started
Okay
actually, before I continue I'm going to let you a little into how
tediously I go about writing these posts: I've just started writing this,
about four minutes ago, three of which have been spent arriving at the
word "tediously" which I might still change, and it would
normally now be about an hour before I looked back over all this and finally noticed
how... again, I'm going to spend a while now trying to find a synonym
for "bad"... let's just stick with "bad" then... how bad those opening
four words are, only as it happens this time I noticed almost
immediately. "When I first started"? Surely that's a... I'll look this up...
tautology? Doesn't starting mean doing something for the first time
anyway? And yet it sounds okay to my ear when I say it out loud. Maybe I
just like the sound of my voice too much. "When I first started..."
Okay.
When I first started returning to this blog to post daily
Oh bloody hell....
"First
started returning"? That sounds terrible. What can that mean? But no,
back in December of 2019 I returned to the blog after a bit of an
absence and I started posting daily, which I hadn't done before, and
then there was a break in early 2021, and now I'm blogging daily again.
Hence "first", hence "returning"... Yeah that"started" is redundant.
When I first returned to this blog to post daily... I've honestly forgotten now what I was going to say.
On the last train out of France a week ago, I checked the map on my phone to see if it sould show us going through the channel tunnel, and was surprised to see a shape I didn't recognise: the shape of the channel itself. I was reminded of what I'd felt seeing a map of the Mediterranean in a charity shop window in Clapham. There was nothing here I could recognise as a country, or two countries, or three. Just a place. Just land and water. I zoomed out.
And I still didn't recognise anything. I was familiar with the shape on the left, of course, but nothing stood out. Great Britain didn't stand out. And now I could see, for example, why Norwich had had that centuries-long history with the Netherlands, because why wouldn't you? If one pictures the British Isles on a rectangle – which is the shape most pictures appear on, let's face it – all of that land in the bottom right corner is missing, isn't it, airbrushed out like Trotsky? We're not brought up on maps of Britain, but on portraits. Shakespeare's definitely a bit to blame for this. I heard somewhere that countries are actually quite a new idea though*, so I still have hope.
Here's a zebra-crossing to nowhere.
* I'll tell you where I heard that, actually. I've only just started listening to the "In Our Time" podcast, and it was in an episode on the battle of Traflagar here. "In Our Time" is brilliant, by the way. In the last episode I learnt that before the dinosaurs, the world was ruled by crocodiles!Some went around on their hind legs! Some had hooves, some had beaks, some were the size of whales! An entire planet of crocodiles! And it was Earth! MERRY CROCMAS!
It was this time last year. I was talking to Gemma Brockis about Home, whose second series had just aired, and we were basically firing off superlatives at each other. We both knew Rufus Jones, who created the show and plays the "lukewarm xenophobe" Peter, whose family attempt to accomodate a Syrian refugee, Sami, played by the excellent Youssef Kerkour as as unmoveable, vulnerable and intimately honest as a handprint. That's Peter above, in his new car, which he has to share with strangers on account of his new job, as an Uber driver. His previous job had disappeared in anticipation of Brexit, for which, naturally, Peter voted. Everything Rufus took on in choosing to write this requires the guts of a fire-breathing goat – as he says, "writing never feels easy, so you may as well write about something that matters" – but nowhere are those guts more gloriously on display than when Peter receives news of this redundancy, but I don't want to spoil it. Home is here. If you haven't seen it, absolutely do. Rufus is amazing, everyone in it is amazing, Carrie Quinlan's in it too, and it is directed with unwavering subtlety by one of the funniest clowns I've ever seen, Peepolykus' David Sant.
BOO! Ha. No. This is old news. From 2018. The untouchable past. And, to give both sides, Boris Johnson called this "so-called association with Steve Bannon... a lefty delusion whose spores continue to breed in the Twittersphere." So who are you going to believe? Our Prime Minister, or deluded lefty, Steve "Badges" Bannon? Indeed, the idea that the Brexit campaign might have just been a vehicle for a populist, far right coup, and that nobody actually campaigning for it really wanting to leave the EU, is... well, is given some credence I suppose by Johnson's many statements before the referendum on the folly of leaving the EU. But a person's allowed to change their mind. And if the entitled energy of this coup-staging prick...
... Well, the latter won an election, so he's entitled to take the piss.
"Wash your hands to the National Anthem." Love it. Herd immunity. Highest daily death rate in the world. One thing the Prime Minister has been consistent in throughout his political career is his praise for the mayor from Jaws, so you can't say people didn't know what they were voting for, ie someone who could be trusted to put business interests before human life – not business interests in general obviously, because Johnson also famously said "fuck business" regarding Brexit, but his friends' business interests – and the National Anthem, of course. And statues and shit.
No, it's not a coup if you win an election, no matter how many thousands die. No matter if over a thousand are still dying every day. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Steve Bannon was granted a Presidential pardon yesterday. But why am I talking about that? That was yesterday. Today is a new day. America has a new President. Trumpism's definitely gone. And I love America. And I'm sure the happiness will kick in in a bit.
Apparently it was because everyone had started seeing the face of Olive Oyl. I should probably say I can find no corroboration for this fact online...
But I can't unsee it now either.
We also concluded that, despite the myths of Sleipnir and John Carter From Mars, a horse with eight legs won't actually go any faster. In other updates, Disney Plus crashes every time I pause it, the foxes outside seem really pissed off we've left Europe – honestly, they won't shut up – and I've spent the day subconsciously worried everything I sit on will now collapse. How's your 2021 going, gang?
Continuing the review of my favourite or at least more conspicuous posts from the last twelve months, August by contrast was both too hot and too cold, but I still managed to produce not one but TWO "Richard the Second"s, because the first one had been too boring. As Gillian Anderson above would prove a few months later, you've got to do the voice! So it felt good to get that sorted, but then my laptop would begin to shut down every time I opened iMovie and the later I left it to find a workaround to continue making Simon Goes Full Shakespeare the closer I came to risking Henry V going out just as we left the EU, not something I had a taste for. Maybe I'll try edidting on my phone. This is from Sunday, August the 16th...
Firstly, I admit that contrary to the date given above this post is
actually going out on Monday evening. So I'm glad to be getting back
into Full Shakespeare, but I'm also going to blame it for how late I'm now getting everything else done, including it.
Secondly, I recently received some typically clarifying thoughts from Gemma Brockis about the "Formal Run" of Richard the Second
(viewable HERE) which I hope she won't mind me sharing: "He's normally played as a
bit of an odd ball or outsider," she wrote "But if he's powerful then
his descent feels weirder. Which it should... In making it glamorous,
and epic, you kind of don't care so much about liking people," which is a
relief. She also uses the word "majestic", which eluded me and
is spot on; really I should rename these the "Oddball" and "Majestic"
runs. But what exactly is Majesty? How does one picture it?
It's not really seen as a heterosexual, cis male quality these days,
and I wonder if that's a Post-Revolutionary thing, not
just because capital-R, poets-on-crags-with-pamphlets Romanticism
promoted a more egalitarian, no-frills idea of masculinity but because –
and this is something I only realised yesterday – for the
majority of its history since the French Revolution, Britain hasn't actually had a king.1800-1837, a couple of Georges. 1837-1901, sixty-three years of Queen Victoria. 1901-1952, an Edward and a George and an Edward and a George. 1952-2020, sixty-eight
years of Queen Elizabeth. Another friend
wondered whether if Britain had actually had more kings we'd still have a
royal
family at all, or would the men have blown it. Playing the "Majesty" of
Richard feels apt then but
also, at least initially, inescapably female, which reads as camp, which
is presumably why noone does it. Even Fiona Shaw played Richard as an
"odd ball".
Another problem – and perhaps the source of a lot of my initial
impatience with this play – came from unfavourably comparing it to
Marlowe's Edward the Second, in which a King's misplaced love
for his favourite, and his subjects' hatred of that love, drive the
whole story. There it doesn't matter what you think of the Crown; a man
is imprisoned for an unrequited love, his tragedy is clear, and in the
shadow of that
tragedy Richard's own fall feels squeamishly
underwritten. But Richard's sexuality or lack of it isn't actually a
contributing factor to his tragedy, it just provides Bolingbroke with
slurs whose utterance make him
as despicable as everyone else. Rather this is a tragedy about a
God-appointed show off. When Richard's understanding of himself as a
king is
contradicted, he reinvents himself as a saint, and in prison we see him
discover this is even more naive an ambition, and that he might as well
pretend to be a clock. He's entirely ready for death, until it comes,
and good for him. This is a play about a failing artist.
Audiences like those and so do actors..
And there's something genuinely fun about the old-school use of an actor's voice to do everything but
imitate natural human speech, a fun that transmits even though its
power is ungenerous and of no use to anyone else on stage. Nowadays it's
something we see women use more than men. Men just shout. It's an
isolated voice,
and Gemma's right, it doesn't matter if we actually like the owner.
Here's another way of looking at the Formal Run then: Richard nailed the
performative aspect of Majesty to the bitter end, but botched the
policy. He
may or may not have been Elizabeth the First but – and again this is
something that only occurred to me yesterday – bloody hell does he
remind
me of Margaret Thatcher.
Uh. I. Uh. I just want to say. For the record. Fff. The reason I'm trying to stay off twitter is not because I want to stay out of squabbles, although with its unremoveable new "what's happening" sidebar the place is definitely pivoting towards the prana farm – You know. Prana. It's a Sláine reference: aliens are farming the world's bad vibes to feed a giant space maggot. Prana farm, yeah? – no, the reason I'm trying to stay off twitter is because it's too cold outside to walk off the helpless rage I feel every time any attempt to scrutinise the liquefying - with calls to violence if necessary - of democratic accountability in the US and UK is characterised as the work of "the left", or "tribal", or as something "polarising" and to be avoided, as if the problem is the noise and not the grinding of the gears. Hey, remember when a British MP was literally assassinated for defending the EU? Is it polarising to even just remind people that that happened? (Or this, a few months earlier...)
Will even mentioning Jo Cox become like mentioning Hitler, a thing that just isn't done in demure political debate because it's somehow cheating to remind people that fascists are real? I've wanted the blog this year to be haven from reactive angst, I know, but I don't think remembering Jo Cox is reactive. Oh, unless it's a reaction to this: this is the polite response that twitter's Ian Dunt received when trying to engage a Brexiter in civilized public debate, the success of which I guess would be measured, like the cocktail task in Taskmaster, in decibels:
A whatsapp map created for refugees, presented by Professor Marie Gillespie,
in which distances are measured in money.
This week's episode of Ships, Sea & the Stars from the Royal Museums Greenwich might be the the ships-sea-and-the-starriest one yet, because it deals with navigation. Not just the treasures of cartography, but the Pacific star maps being recommitted to memory by modern
Hawaiians like Nainoa Thompson - an account of which you can
hear me reading at 5:25 - and the Global Positioning System, or GPS, originally reserved for the American military until it was unscrambled for general use in January 2000. Other systems are now available of course, just not the EU's, because we're leaving it. On a completely unrelated-to-Brexit note, I also get to rattle through some Hunting of the Snark at 34:30.
"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best—
Marie Gillespie also brings a bag refashioned by a refugee solidarity network on Lesbos from one of a million lifejackets now left on the beaches of Greece, and if you fancy further clicks Extra Credits just produced a nice series on Austronesian navigation which you can watch here, and you can give to the Refugee Council here.
It's tax day today, and it's Brexit day, so Joel Morris and I met this evening for what turned out to be a responsible three and a half pints each. I brought Joel up to date with other drinks I'd had this week, and we both took notes. Joel noted, for example, that there should be a Liff word for the person in a group elected to explain the rules of a boardgame, an observation borne from me recalling how last Sunday I'd tried to explain the plot of the film "Cats" to John Finnemore. (I'd forgotten how easy it can be to make John weep with laughter.) Joel also noted how often he was hearing Tom Petty in pubs these days, and how effectively the pitch of his voice cut through the murmur of a crowd, like the tambourine in a Motown track that makes those songs so ideal for a jukebox. I passed on a Fun Fact I'd learnt in a bar from Mark Steel the night before, attending a recording of David Reed's outstanding podcast "Inside The Comedian", a fact for which I can find no evidence online... Actually before I tell you, think of the thinnest celebrity you can imagine. Okay. Now think of the widest. Okay, now here's the fact: John Cooper Clarke's school bully was Giant Haystacks.
Something else the "Cats" film reminded me of.
What else? We talked about the background noise of vanishing coin, something I'd felt suddenly absent from the second series of "Fleabag" for example, and of the work of freelancers who constantly live with that background noise, and of the creative, commissioning and critical decisions of those who don't, and how so much British Cinema in our lifetimes seemed to be the work of the latter, telling stories that either ignore money completely or contrastingly find poverty fascinating, and I thought that might explain why so many British films are either Boring or Horrible. I was probably on my third pint by then. Cracking chat.
And here's a neat place for plugs. Joel and Jason Hazeley's "Rule Of Three" podcast serves as lasting proof of just how good at talking they are, and is hearable here. David's podcast "Inside the Comedian", in which guests are not allowed to tell the truth, can be heard here, also if you can get over to one of the live recording at Kings Place I'd really recommend that too. David and I are of course both in Joel And Jason's scandi-nougat "Angstrom" which is apparently available on BBC Sounds forever here. Oh also, David has a scifi comedy pilot out next week here, "Napoleon Moon", which should be excellent. John meanwhile, though not credited as one of the writers of Armando Iannucci's "David Copperfield", is from what I've seen of the trailers absolutely all over it, so we should redouble our efforts to see that too. It looks neither Boring nor Horrible. The photo of Soho is from my Instagram. The image of the 50p coin celebrating the UK's joining the EEC in 1973 and depicting a Ring of Hands is from this video. And finally, not really a plug, but l wrote this post the day before the decision to leave the EU was taken three and a half years ago. I still think it's a dumb decision, and Europe, I love you, and we will be back. Bissous.
I remember when twitter first took the piss out of J*c*b R**s-M*gg. I think he'd posted some photograph outside a shop that sported a Vote Labour poster in 2017, with a caption about how he'd be "taking his custom elsewhere" or some bollocks, anyway he looked like a twerp, and twerps are good currency on twitter, especially among comedians, so my timeline was full of him. The following day, however, I realised I hadn't been looking closely enough. The shop was a tattoo parlour. It was a joke. And the Sun, the Mail, and BBC2's "Daily Politics" I remember, all heralded M*gg as a darling of the internet. And they were right.
I already knew of him though, as I had remembered - but not verbatim - his speech in the House of Commons the previous year when Leave had won the referendum, something about how this vote had – and I wish I could remember the exact words – "awoken an ancient power". And I remember it because I remember fearing he was right, and wishing someone would ask him to specify exactly what "ancient power" he was so looking forward to see returning.
And I remember, far earlier, in 2008, when Boris Johnson won the London Mayoral election, thinking quite specifically: "Oh fuck, Johnson's going to be this country's Nixon, isn't he... He's never going away until he gets the top job, and once he does, history will never forget him oh bloody hell." And I remember seeing Johnson, four years later, cycle right past me – ten feet from me – long after he'd tried to turn the fourth plinth into a war memorial and greenlit that weird little wedge-shaped temple on the corner of Green Park celebrating the role of white guys in WWII - and I remember dreaming, just then, of pushing Johnson under a bus, just... just in case, just a little dream... And oh yeah, four years after that I played the prick.
And now he's Prime Minister, and the other one's Leader of the House, and both have taken private meetings with Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon, a self-confessed white supremacist who understood as none before the unprecedented lift a tidal wave of publicity can give a candidate who looks like they don't give two fucks about political process, even if - and this is something that had clearly never occurred to Johnson before - it's a wave of outrage.
And tonight, a new British Government lost its first vote. And Johnson might call an election, positioning his Government very specifically now as anti-Parliamentary. And M*gg is lounging on the front bench, literally, and all over my internet again. Trending. And it's all very Bannon.
So, really what I'm saying is, until we're absolutely sure M*gg isn't going to be this country's Trump, let's maybe actually not look at him. Do nothing to build the wave he looks so sure is coming to lift him. Just in case. Ta. Here's yer moment of Zen:
Welcome back to this tenth anniversary indulgence! Artificial Intelligence! Fighting Fantasy! Boredom! Frank Zappa's Sofa! And what role exactly do chronometers play in Brexit? As before, a post a year, off we go!
2012 - After a cowering two year hiatus the blog finally returned in November, tagged up and newly blogspotted. Maybe the Olympics had cheered me up, or the film of "The Avengers" I don't know, but the idea that the future wasn't what it used to be now seemed a bit dated, and committed as I had become to getting "Time Spanner" right, I decided to finally up the sci- quotient of my sci-fi input. (Given the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, I should give a little warning that I talk about the fire again here, not of course that there's any comparison) ON WITH THE FUN AND GAMES...
"ELIZA - a friend you could never have before" (which already sounds
iffily ambiguous and unlike anything an actual person might say) is an
interactive computer programme developed back in the 1960's at MIT, a "chatterbot" according to wikipedia. An online version of her - it, sorry - exists here, and to celebrate the opening of Tom
Lyall's "Defrag" this week at the Camden People's Theatre (speaking of excellent friends) I thought I'd
have a go:
I'm "You". She starts...
Eliza:Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you?
You:
Who are you?
Eliza:
Would you prefer if I were not []?
You:
What is []?
Eliza:
Does that question interest you?
You:
The answer interests me.
Eliza:
Can you elaborate on that?
You:
No. Sorry.
Eliza:
You are being a bit negative.
I then typed in: "You're old."
But weirdly it came up as...
You:
yes
Eliza:
You are sure?
You:
Hang on, that's not what I said!
Eliza:
Does that question interest you?
You:
What?!
Eliza:
Does that question interest you?
You:
What? This one? Or the last one. But the last one wasn't a question -
Eliza:
Does that question interest you?
You:
This is it now, is it?
Eliza:
Please go on.
You:
"Does that question interest you?"
Eliza:
Oh, i [].
I then typed: "WHAT IS []?"
But it came up as...
You:
yes
Eliza:
Does that question interest you?
You:
THAT'S NOT WHAT I TYPED!
Eliza:
Does that question interest you?
You:
Yes. Yes it does.
Eliza:
You are sure?
You:
Yes. Sorry I mean "yes"
Eliza:
You are sure?
You:
Positive.
Eliza:
Please go on.
You:
I've completely lost the thread of this conversation - Do you know Tom?
Eliza:
Oh, i know tom.
You:
Okay, "tom". Do you know he's got a show on?
Eliza:
Oh, i know hes got a show on.
You:
Okay... What's it called?
Eliza:
Please go on.
You:
Please go on your mum?
Eliza:
What about your own mum?
You:
Please go on.
Eliza:
Please go on.
You:
No, you wanted to say something about my mum.
Eliza:
Why do you say your mum?
You:
YOU said my mum. I said YOUR mum.
Eliza:
Why do you say your mum you said my mum?
You:
I didn't.
Eliza:
Can you elaborate on that?
You:
yes
Eliza:
You are sure?
You:
Do you know Alan Turing?
Eliza:
Oh, i know alan turing.
You:
You two get on, do you?
Eliza:
Oh, i [].
You:
I'd prefer it if you didn't
Eliza:
Do you wish that i didnt?
You:
Yes.
Eliza:
You are sure?
You:
I'm afraid so.
Eliza:
Does it please you to believe I am afraid so?
You:
This friendship has basically run its course I think.
Eliza:
Can you elaborate on that?
You:
Absolutely. You're not real, and you're annoying and you don't
understand what I'm saying anyway and I'm only doing this because I
thought it would make a fun blog post, and I've been meaning to write
about Tom's show about Artificial Intelligence but also I suppose I
don't want to write that much about it because A) I don't want to give
anything away, and B) outside of the content of the show itself my only
other take on it was how much it reminded me of all the stuff he
helped rescue after the fire, and of the months those boxes spent in his
flat while my juvenilia dried out, and I wasn't sure about whether I
should write about that because it seemed a bit solipsistic for a plug,
and because all the photos I took of those boxes were on a memory stick
which I've lost, although maybe that could be somehow elegantly turned
in on itself as part of the post. Something about "We lose everything in
the end."
Eliza:
Why do you say your only other take on it you was what much it reminded
you of all the stuff he helped rescue after the fire and of the months
those boxes spent in his flat while your juvenilia dried out and you
wasnt sure about whether you should write about that because it seemed a
bit solipsistic for a plug and because all the photos you took of those
boxes was on a memory stick which ive lost although perhaps that could
be somehow elegantly turned in on itself as part of th post something
about we lose everything in the end?
You:
Because I want the post to have some visual element. And having
just archived the whole blog onto blogspot it struck me how much of it
detailed the unpacking of those boxes the first time round, ie when my
parents moved to France and I suddenly had a room full of everything I
owned. And how if I hadn't blogged stuff as I unpacked it there would be
some things I had no record of at all after the fire.
Eliza:
Do you wish that you hadnt blogged stuff as you unpacked it there would
be some things you had no record of at all after the fire?
You:
No. That's my point. And that's the thing about theatre, isn't it. You
make something and then it's gone. I keep telling people I want to work
in more accessible media like television, but actually that's not it all. I
don't think I do care about the numbers, I just want something to last.
Eliza:
Why do you say your point and thats the thing about theatre isnt it i
make something and then its gone you keep telling people i want to work
in more accessible media like television but actually thats not it all you
dont think you do care about the numbers you just want something to
last?
You:
Because I haven't been making theatre. And it's tempting. But I have to
remember making it on my own has never been my dream, just something I
was allowed to do.
Eliza:
Do you dream often?
You:
Loads. I've taken a month off to try and write, and I'm sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes. I have written things though.
Eliza:
Does it please you to believe I am sleeping til 1 in the afternoon sometimes you have written things though?
You:
Mm. You're tired. Anyway, thanks for this.
Eliza:
How long have you been tired anyway thanks for this?
You:
Stop.
Eliza:
Please go on.
Tom Lyall's superb show Defrag is on here
as part of a whole Science Fiction Theatre season. See it! See it
blind! Meanwhile the interview he gave about it, the one that tipped me
off about the existence of Eliza, is up here but I'd save that until you've seen the show as there's spoilers.
Shunt,
the people I normally made theatre with when I wasn't making it on my
own, also have a show opening this week, "The Architects" which looks
stupendous and probably deserves a post of its own but I've had it with
Eliza, so head's up!
And
this post's visual element is a picture of Tom working some hat boxes
while getting costumed for "Money", checking nothing falls off.
***
2013 -Another plug. Odd. I appear to have waited until 2014 to address a lot of what happened in 2013, but the blog remained a good place to archive the little I did make...
Entertaining
the dream of making the show "Jonah Non Grata" a viable... money...
life thing, I once considered rewriting in full the book which serves it as a Bible and to which I had never sought the rights, Fighting
Fantasy Gamebook 5: City of Thieves. Printed below is as far as I got
with this. It was too wordy, too intentionally dark (I was reading a lot
of Chris Ware) and Ian Livingstone's prose style, so simple and yet so
completely free of poetry, seemed impossible to imitate. Or so I
thought! For last month (since when Livingstone was pleasingly awarded a
CBE) the great Will Maclean - writer, well-wisher, pub quiz prodigy,
proper scifi-ist and penner of the phrase "the pliant mortal before the
giant portal" - released just such a pastiche, The Maze of Despair, which I downloaded like a shot and it's a joy.
A few things occurred to me while playing Will's version: Firstly, it
turns out I still find the use of the second person incredibly potent;
reading that I am standing in an alley remains for some reason far more
thrilling than seeing it on a screen in even the most immersive computer
simulation; it's a situation I feel more responsible for, more a part
of. The technology is still sound, is what I'm saying.
Secondly, I was reminded of how fiddly as a child I found the question "Do you choose to attack it?" Because no, I
wouldn't, but then I'm not a barbarian. But here I am a barbarian. But
I'm also the hero. And in the end I would try and do the right thing,
not because I hoped for success, more because I was using my avatar as a
moral guinea pig. Also I wanted a story where the hero does the right
thing. The rewards in Fighting Fantasy were pleasingly arbitrary though,
something perhaps unprecedented in a children's bestseller. And there
was nobody to tell you what to do either, nobody to trust anyway, which
was also unusual in fantasy and exciting and felt a bit adult (and the
polar opposite - if you'll excuse the pun - of Philip Pullman's
drama-dampening altheiometer).
Thirdly, pictures of
monsters are always great. It was this as much as anything that
originally attracted me to the books as a child, and made me steer clear
of their occasional forays into science fiction whose illustrations
were unfailingly ugly. However, having enjoyed "Maze of Despair" so much
I decided this month to pop into Barnado's and break my duck. I bought
Gamebook 15: The Rings of Kether. The cover is fantastic. The artwork
within you can enjoy below. Here it is then, all I once rewrote of "The
City of Thieves":
1
You
begin to notice fearful warnings - tiny windows, bags in trees, gutters
clogged with old masks, a child on fire trying to steal a car, men
hugging, and everywhere hoardings advertising Umbrella Sex. You pat the
pocket of your robe, checking for the presence of your knife. On
reaching the city gate a tired man dressed in metal as a dog with its
head on backwards blocks your path. "Excuse me sir, Sir? Sir!" he
explains "What is your business in this city? Sir?" Will you:
Tell him you are looking for Quiddity Pantibin. Turn to 202.
Tell him you just came to return a book? Turn to 33.
Stab him to death? Turn to 49.
2
You
remove your piercings and hurl them at the enormous snake collective.
With a sulphorous hiss it withers and shrieks. Its death throes sound
almost human, like the screams of a wrongfully arrested widow. What have
you done? The tunnel is now clear and you can proceed further into the
sewer. You're in a sewer. The tunnel ends in a brown, grill with sewage
spilling out of it. You can try and remove the grill if you like. You're
in a sewer, and there's sewage coming out of it. Why not? 377
If you would rather leave the sewer the way you came in, over the body of the thing you murdered, turn to 174.
"Would you like to buy a broken owl? It is industry standard."
3
Acknowledging
your interest, the stallholder starts rolling his eyes and making
fish-like gaping movements with his mouth. "Mup! Mup! Sir! Friend! I can
bring you wonderful luck. Mup! Mup! Three euros." he explains, "A very
good trick. Won't take long. Make a beautiful trick with my mouth. Mup!
Mup! If you give me 3 Euros I will bring you luck with my mouth." If you
wish to pay this man for his mouth trick, turn to 37. Or you can move onto the next booth, (turn to 398).
5
You
pull your knife on the mongrel bitch and vault his counter, sending a
smoky bowl of tat flying across the shop. He drops the plug he was
changing and attempts to defend himself with a screwdriver.
MONGREL SKILL 8 STAMINA 5
If you win, turn to 371.
10
The tired man has clearly had enough of everything, and assaults you. You must try and stab him to death.
TIRED MAN SKILL 8 STAMINA 7
If kill him in six or fewer feints turn to 212. If it takes any longer to stab him to kill him, turn to 130.
14
You reach into the concrete vat
and unfurl the slice of food. As the scent of anchovies hits your
nostrils there is a burst of thunder and the sky above darkens. It
begins to rain offal. Do you have a butcher's parasol? If you have, turn
to 237. If not, turn to191.
You head north.
17
Already
lost, you proceed down the narrowest of these streets, bored with your
objective and generally sullen. Unfortunately, you still encounter
something. It is a sad, thin man who has tied bits of chair to his arms
and legs with wet felt and is sitting, head in hands, and concentrating.
Do you wish to sit on this stranger? If so turn to 331. Or you can continue walking East, ignoring everything until it stops (turn to 161.)
32
Before
you can escape, the forty-year-old lady throws one of her pretentious
pets at your head. It lands on your neck and lays eggs in your skull,
causing the loss of 4 STAMINA points and 1 SKILL point. Now she is on
the phone to a murderer. If you are not dead from the eggs, you draw
your knife and go to kill her (turn to 249.)
You
tell the tired man that another man whom you helped to get work in a
restaurant left this book with you and that there was nothing in it but
that you'd like to return it all the same...
37
You
pay the stallholder. Delighted, he produces a wire coat hanger from the
folds of his robe and tries to put it in his mouth. "No, I can do
this," he says. But he doesn't. "Anyway, what happens is that I tie a
knot in it with my tongue. Brings you luck." You say you've paid your
money and are happy to wait. You tell him you can wait all day if needs
be. He tries again many times. After two and a half hours he finally
manages to get the hangery bit to twist round the neck bit, a bit. As he
hands you the structure it is clear from the sounds that he is making
with his face that this really is the best he can manage. Add 2 LUCK
points. You accept the hanger all the same and leave him to have a rest
on his side, proceeding to the next booth. (Turn to 398)
38
You
get pierced, and feel sexy. The man explains that you are sexy. You
feel great. Some people are laughing. You stagger out of the bar and
head North (turn to 296)
The man explains that you are sexy.
39
You
look through the forty-year old lady's drawings of her boyfriend, and
flick the rim of your wineglass with your thumb. She has finished
whatever it was she was doing now and is clearly becoming impatient for
an opinion of her work. "You don't seem to understand. You don't have to
like them," she says. You spill the wine. "I'm going to call the
police," she says, "Stay here." Now is your chance to make a break for
it (turn to 32) or you can try and kill her (turn to 249)
48
The
strong smell of sewage hits your nostrils. A ladder leads down into the
darkness. This clearly is a sewer. Do you want to climb into a sewer?
(turn to 10). Or you can replace the manhole, and do something else, although you are not yet sure what that is, turn to 205
The car alarm no longer sounds.
75
The
car alarm no longer sounds. The snow has settled. You wash the couple's
blood from off your hands in some sleet, and head North (turn to 31)
153
Swinging
the broken owl above your head, gobbets of phosphorous illumine the
otherwise pitch-black room. It was industry standard after all! You can
now make out clearly standing with its back to the far wall a nameless
horror. There is absolutely nothing else of interest in the room. You
head back out and up the stairs (turn to 65)
165
You can turn right down Street number Four (turn to 139), or head back and take the turning down Eleven Street (turn to 91)
You head North.
166
You
throw yourself into the snake collective, both hands about your knife,
jabbing furiously at the dry writhing mass in an attempt to protect your
face.
SNAKE COLLECTIVE SKILL 10 STAMINA 5
If you win turn to 272
"You head north."
211
You
continue west, eating on the move. The pie is sweet and savoury in
equal measure, Apple and kidney slip down your tubes, restoring 1
Stamina point to your animal constitution (turn to 307).
Its death throes are strangely human.
249
The forty year old lady defends herself with an unexpected ferocity and her thumbs.
FORTY YEAR OLD LADY SKILL 9 STAMINA 7
If you kill her turn to 295
253
The
Happy Couple are scarcely a match for your skill with a knife. You must
treat them as one flesh. However for every wound that they successfully
inflict upon your body deduct 4 points from your Stamina score, as
their teeth break off and become dislodged in your shoulder.
HAPPY COUPLE Skill 5 Stamina 5
If you win, you may leave their home by the front door (turn to 75.)
255
You
and the tired men clearly hate each other, and would do so even if you
got to know each other. You have nothing in common, but they let you
pass. You head north (turn to 227).
You head north.
283 You find nothing of any use on the body of the creature you have stabbed to death, and so continue North (turn to 217)
...
And that's it. Will's book however is finished, and playable, and great
and it's his birthday today so, once again, you can get it here.
Thanks to Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone for introducing so many children to the word "stamina". Thanks also to whatever this is
for reproducing Nik Spender's "Rings of Kether" illustrations, so I
could post them here. Anyone wanting more drawings of monsters because
drawings of monsters are great should try this.
And finally:
The admirable Limmy. I admire Limmy.
***
2014 - A year that saw the blog full of Exciting Space Adventures, comics I'd made as a teen, and a load of things I meant to post in 2013. I've included the last of those here not just as a summary of that stretch between Decembers, but also as a kick up the arse to 2017's me for wasting so much of my current time here in Frankfurt on my phone...
I
remember spending much of that Christmas playing Temple Run 2 on my
newly received android tablet – a colourful and endless little adrenalin stimulant, as shown above – and resolving that in 2014 I would...
Hang on - I wrote it down. I'll see if I can find it:
"NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION : -
Perhaps – Dare to be bored?
You'll only make something if you're bored.
That might be why the Premier Inn came as such a relief [while I was touring "Ring" and writing for Mitchell and Webb]
IN FACT Hotels in general
I'm remembering in particular the single bed and the side table in Athens. But all hotel rooms seem to be built for a writer.
Maybe that's also why I moved my bed away from the wall.
Also, remember how much you loved those lessons - only 45 minutes long - where you were left to just do something."
Etc.
I
also made the note: "Youtube video - on boredom", which is a reference
to the V-sauce episode below. I remember David Mitchell arguing that boredom was a life skill which should be taught, rather than banished from the classroom, but V-sauce goes one further, providing hard chemical evidence that boredom is not merely a
side effect of creativity, but a symptom of it, and even a spur:
God, I haven't watched that video in ages; I forgot he mentioned Genie. Louis C. K. makes a similar point when he talks about cultivating "the ability to just sit there":
Just sit there.
I think I did okay this year.
I
didn't draw a monster a day, and I haven't yet made the album I
promised myself I'd make this year, and there's only an hour and a half
to go.
If
you're traveling into London this evening, the message from the police
is make sure you have a ticket. And whatever you're doing for the next
hour and a half... and then in 2015... I don't know... whatever you do –
whatever we do – let's do it on purpose, and take no guff.
Here's to 2015. Be well.
***
2015 -Where we move into "most popular posts" territory, that column on the right. A lot of the bloggers whose work first inspired me had moved on by now, to be replaced by people who were actually trying to turn this into a profession. The medium had become a city with a system - Clickhole, a satire of that system, was the new proof - and even a neckbearded manchild like myself with no plans to monetise anything even though he's just turned forty suddenly found himself writing as if someone might actually be watching. A post had to have a point, it now appeared. Think pieces and spoofs. That's all. Think pieces and spoofs. Here's a spoof...
We all know that the Monkees' Mike Nesmith's mother invented liquid
paper. But how many of these other rock-n'-roll family inventions are
you familiar with...
Elton John's parents are jointly responsible for the "pop-up house". These paper homes, while
certifiably stable (see photo above) were never mass-produced owing to the prohibitively large number of children needed to get
one open.
David Crosby's father Werner invented "gree-ellow" - a colour David refused to ever sport.
Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick's mother invented the "baby".
Donovan shows off just three of the identity-changing cosmetic treatments pioneered by his dog "Doctor McAllistair".
Richie Havens models the nuclear coolant synthesised by his conjoined siblings Sweets and Gummo.
Uncle Gretchen poses with the patented Succubus-Absorbent Silverware he used to exorcise a grateful Eric Clapton.
And of course Frank Zappa's sofa invented holograms.
2016 -That's close enough to now, isn't it? And I'm glad we end on a meandering anecdote trying to pass itself off as some State of the Nation parable. Long may this blog continue to serve 'em up, I say! And thanks for joining me! I've just got my passport out, by the way, the newly Britishier one they sent me at the end of 2016. Here's its first page:
I
was filming a short in Earl's Court over the weekend. As I sat in a
cab, waiting to roll, a tanned middle-aged couple swept by chanting
"British Laws for British People!" - I'm inferring the capitals - and
waving "Leave" stickers like Madame Bertaux swinging the Tricolor. That
is to say, jauntily. "No! No! Why?" I howled out of the cab window. The
woman beamed as she headed out of view: "Yes! Yes! We should be able to
write our own laws!" There was no one around to ask who she meant by
"we".
Three hours earlier she and I had struck up a conversation in Philbeach Gardens. The crescent was plastered with "Remain" and "Leave"
posters.* It was a quiet street. The woman was heading indoors with
some purchases and had seen us filming. As we chatted I tried to
maintain eye-contact
through her shades and not let my gaze drift to the sticker in her
window. She asked when she could see what we were filming and I didn't
know. I did know the short was part of some council initiative because I
was getting very nicely paid for it (we weren't allowed to say anything
nasty about the Royal Family in Brompton Cemetery, that was part of the
deal.)
"So will this be on at the New Art Centre?" she asked.
I
didn't know about any Art Centre. Apprarently - I didn't know this
either - Earl's Court exhibition centre is no more. "But do you know
what they'll be building in its place?" she confided, "Housing
obviously, but - and we've been pushing very hard for this - Do you know
Covent Garden? A Covent Garden! But here! A cultural centre. Here in
Earl's Court."
"Crikey!" I offered "So... like... Covent Garden?" I was picturing gift shops fringed by gangsters dressed as floating Yodas.
"Yes.
Or an Arts Centre or something. Wouldn't that be wonderful? We have two
Tory councillors who are absolutely behind it all the way, and one Lib
Dem who is proving a proper pain. Wants nothing to do with the
redevelopment."
"So it would be...?"
"A proper venue, a thousand-seater. Because I mean they've got to put something. They can't just tear down Earl's Court. Everyone's behind it."
"And do you think it will happen?" I asked, trying to think of a precedent.
"Well they've got to."
"But do you think they actually will?"
"No," she corrected me, "They've got to."
Serena
from make-up came over and asked to see what the lady was holding. I'd
been so busy maintaining eye-contact I hadn't noticed the square,
lacquered box. She opened it. A clock rocked between several brass
hoops.
"It's a chronometer. Isn't it lovely?"
It was. My brain translated "time" and "meter"... "Oh wow. What's it for?"
"It's a chronometer."
"Is it like a clock? I mean, what would it have been used for?"
"Telling the time."
"But I mean, what's the difference between that and a clock?"
"I don't know. They had them on ships."
Three
hours even earlier, I was hobbling down Earl's Court road in clogs and a
dressing gown splattered with fake vomit, howling red-eyed into paving
stones.
Speaking of the referendum, remember this from 2011?
*That
would have been a good photo. I wish I'd taken it. I'm not supposed to
share any photos of the shoot either, so accompanying this post instead
is a picture Keeps took of what I did yesterday and where I did it, which is why I couldn't be at the polls today. Sorry, history.
