cycling towards winter

I've pretty much switched into winter cycling mode now, although a couple of weeks of gap whilst up north means that I still have a way to go to reach this year's target of 4,000 miles.

Not only that, but I got one of those yow!! leg cramps after my last fifteen miles. Not at the time, but later in the evening. It's slightly annoying because its one of those things that I can just tell will come back until I get rid of the knots in my legs.

Maybe some stretching is required? More likely some electrolyte.

Anyhoo, I'll try to crank out another twenty or so miles this afternoon. And take some High 5 along.

a NaNoWriMo reason for being a bit quiet

Oops. I did accidentally succumb to the novel writing madness. A slightly late start and then some time spent underground didn't help, although I somehow seem to be on track at the moment.

Going to that Moon exhibition at the Baltic gave me the initial whimsical thought, around the idea of the second moon of Earth. I've also roped in Ganymede, which is the largest moon of Jupiter.

Now I just need 50,000 words, without resorting to space monsters and battle cruisers.

realistic hollywood haboob

My recent visit to the cinema got me thinking about the drama of dust storms.

They say that global warming will increase the propensity for dust storms. Cinematically, they look dramatic and can form part of dystopian (sorry about that) storylines.

The thing is, I can remember experiencing a real one that looked just about as spectacular as those in the movies.

It was only around three years ago, when we were in Scottsdale, Arizona and one blew up from the right side of my view and then tracked slowly as a wall of sand across the landscape. I took a photo of the newspaper story at the time.

Not a movie still. This is the real one from around Scottsdale.

We'd only just arrived in Scottsdale which is right next door to Phoenix in the Arizona desert. They both have that 'settled-in' look which dramatically stops at the city limits. It is similar at the outskirts of Palm Springs in California, where you drive past the last block and are suddenly back in desert. Holding back the environment with technology. Switch it off and the sand returns.

The Americans call these big dust storms Haboobs, which I'd heard before when I was in the deserts of Arabia. I think haboob is actually an Arabic word.

Wherever it's from, it's interesting that Hollywood's IMAX depiction of really big storms don't seem to be much larger than some of the real ones that already cut through parts of Arizona.

another year adds a bit more history

This year we celebrated my birthday in a castle.

Langley Castle was originally built in 1350 during the reign of Edward III, but then got caught up in a scuffle with Henry IV in 1405. He was not too happy with the Barons of Tynedale and in Henry's campaign against the Percys his troops set fire to it. Henry Percy lived to fight another rebellion, but his land had been confiscated and after the second rebellion failed Percy's head was put on a pole on London Bridge.

The castle was mainly a shell for the next few hundred years even when the the Earls of Derwentwater and Viscount Langley took over the estate. They sided with the Jacobite rising in 1715. It didn't do them much good either as they were carted off to the Tower of London where they were executed.

There's a large stone cross by the roadside nearby which says: In memory of James and Charles Viscounts Langley. Beheaded on Tower Hill 24th Feb 1716 and 8th Dec 1746. For Loyalty to their Lawful Sovereign.

They were trying to get James VII of Scotland back onto the British throne instead of Queen Mary II and that Dutchman, William of Orange.

After the executions, the Crown confiscated the estate and took away the titles. Curiously, the estate's administration passed to the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich, some 300 miles away. It may explain why the nearby pub is called the Anchor.

The castle remained a ruin until a local historian bought it in 1882. His name was Cadwalladar Bates and he decided to restore it to its original 14th Century look, admittedly with a Victorian twist. Because it had been left as a ruin for the previous 400 years, it didn't suffer from the kinds of modifications that affected many castles. Cadwalladar and his wife Josephine worked on the castle for many years, and after Cadwallader's death, his wife continued the restoration until her own death in 1933.

The building was then used as a barracks in World War II, then as a girls' school, before being bought by another local businessperson, who converted it to its current use as a rather desirable place to stay. I somehow managed to stay in the actual Cadwalladar room, complete with its 7 foot thick stone walls.

To keep things moving along, the castle as a business is now owned by MIT Professor Dr Stuart Madnick, who is a well-known computer scientist, and author or co-author of hundreds of computing books.

For us, it provided a very suitable place for a bit of a celebration, although I notice there's quite an updraft from the quantity of birthday candles.

No wonder the staff looked edgy, they didn't want a repeat of what happened in 1405.

interstellar transcendence

You can't go wrong having a corn field somewhere in a science fiction movie. Come to think of it, the big chord from the intro to Also Sprach Zarathustra is another goody.

Without giving anything away, the new Christopher Nolan movie manages both in the first minute or so of screen time.

Interstellar is more my kind of space movie than, say, the upcoming Jupiter Rising, which appears to have CGI overtly plastered throughout the film.

By contrast, Interstellar uses mainly practical filming, with real sets and real atmospherics, best viewed on the largest available screen.

And, although a space film, there's a clear grounded quality alongside the movie's big ideas, making something altogether more thought-provoking than the arcade shoot-em-ups of many comic book movies.

There's a few places where a character has to give a plausible-sounding science explanations, and Nolan uses one of his fascinations, expecting the audience to track various timelines (think of Memento and Inception).

Science folk will no doubt pick on some of the paradoxes and questions raised but I'll take that as a Nolan victory that people are puzzling it through.

But I don't really want to say too much about the story and characters, so I guess I'll just have to say it's a movie I'll see on a big screen again.

perfect pre interstellar advert from lurpak

I know, its been around since April, but it's a great commercial prior to watching Interstellar ;-)

NaNo Moon

I wasn't really planning to do NaNoWriMo this year. That's the thing where we try to bash out a draft novel in a month. 50,000 words or 1,666 words per day.

I've still got several previous attempts in various states of completion, but then somehow this time I've sort of fallen into it.

I think it was visiting that Moon exhibition a few days ago. That and the BFI current programming 'Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder.'

Now I've started writing something about a moon, but decided to look further afield than Earth's moon. I've picked Ganymede which orbits Jupiter. The people mining it are having a hard time. It all needs sorting out. But there's some Earth-based conspiracies to uncover.

I'm only up to 13,600 words so far. I may go a bit erratic for the rest of November.

I also sense the need for some big screen viewing:

Afrovibes Mamela

The Guy Fawkes fireworks echoing around this northern town faded as I arrived at Live Theatre and to a stage representing South Africa as part of the current Afrovibes season.

The show, called Mamela (“Listen”), shows lives of women born from across Southern Africa at the end of Apartheid or into the so named “Born Free” generation.

Presented as a series of interwoven testimonies from the participants, it has a rawness as they tell their stories around many highly personal aspects of their lives. Based upon edited verbatim transcripts, there is humour and warmth as well as tough and heartbreaking moments creating tears with some audience members.

The overarching tone was still upbeat showing a positive and defiant spirit. The women blended powerful singing and dance with their storytelling, combining to enhance theatricality.

The play was originally developed in 2011 and the intervening years have seen each woman’s story progress further. At the end, the actors described what further had happened to each character. In keeping with their strength, every one of these additions was positive.

Sage free thinking

I was in the Sage for a small part of the Free Thinking season a few days ago. Some it has already been broadcast on BBC radio, and other parts are yet to appear.

It was well attended by a broad spectrum of folk and covered a very wide range of topics, spread over three and a half days, although the broadcast version spans the whole of November.

The topics were often the ones not formally suited to the dinner table, politics, religion, that sort of thing, and included thought provoking subjects such as the human copying machine (do mirror neutrons really force us to mimic?), puzzles about where all the money went (dead cat bounces and all) and how happy do we all need to be - including what the government thinks about it all.

There’s often a small bunch of selected presenters for certain topics on BBC television, a few names that pop up repeatedly and sometimes stray across subjects that are on the edges of their normal field. Something to do with presentation skills and recognition. It’s good to see, at events like this, that there’s a wide selection of others that can be drawn into the debates.

meet me on the corner

The evening drink could've been a lyric from Lindisfarne. Meet me on the corner at nine, kinda thing.

Hey Mr Dreamseller, where have you been?
Tell me have you dreams I can see?
I came along, just to bring you this song,
Can you spare one dream for me?

When we arrived at the pub there were still vestiges of Halloweek sprinkled around. We all selected brews and adjourned into what was still a ghostly bar. Officially closed, there were cobwebs and spiders around the edges and what looked like the remnants of a previous evening's shindig.

Perfect for us to chatter at a round table overlooked by a svelte looking Confucius holding a dragon. Possibly after first meeting Lao Tzu? "Lao Tzu is a dragon, and I’ll never understand him."

You won't have met me, and you'll soon forget me,
So don't mind me tugging at your sleeve.
I'm asking you, if I can fix a rendezvous.
For your dreams are all I believe.

I should explain that some of the beers featured names in keeping with the recent zombie season. I couldn't spot any pullable beers with normal names except one from Sussex, which somehow seemed out of character for this far north.

So I chose the ale called Inception, which turned out to be a fine selection, worthy of taking to a few levels of depth, if you follow my line of thought.

Meet me on the corner when the lights are coming on,
And i'll be there, I promise i'll be there.
Down the empty streets we'll disappear until the dawn
If you have dreams enough to share.

Later that evening, after the doors of the pub had been resoundingly shut, I headed back across what was now a slightly more bendy bridge than it had appeared earlier in the evening. I'd certainly reached the third level of inception, although the water seemed to be staying in the proper place.

Lay down your bundles, of rags and reminders,
And spread your wares on the ground.
Well I've got time, if you deal in rhyme,
I'm just hanging around.

playing to the gallery (with smudges)

After Russell Brand, another Essex-lad book I've just read is Grayson Perry's reprise of his Reith Lectures.

It's an accessible discussion about fine art, which recognises the potential airs and graces of such discourse, but then avoids them to keep a broad audience.

I listened to the original lectures and can hear Perry's voice as he walks through the themes in this book. And yes, its a physical book rather than a Kindle; there's some delightful little sketches within to illuminate some of the topics.

In another of Perry's books and shows called 'The vanity of small differences' he reviews tribes and makes a point about the tribe of Romford car tuning enthusiasts' checking out their sub-woofers compared with weekenders browsing at a farm shop. Different tribes showing their allegiances.

He brings the thinking into the world of art and the multifarious needs of artists, agents, collectors, museums and the general public.

Each to their own part in the world of artistic appreciation.

I've looked at many Grayson Perry art pieces over the years, and they generally set me thinking. I'll consider this little book to be another one.

Somewhere, he makes the point (also relevant to blogging) about irony as a hipster response to a topic; a self protection usable for a flippant quick browse or as a way to demonstrate deep thought on a topic. Apparent elitism. Roll up to join the sniggering classes. The up and down side is that this mode doesn't give much away.

I applaud his small observations which flag criticisms of arty groups posturing as an elitist club.

Somewhere else, he makes the point about well-known artists who sign things thereby enhancing their value. Dollar bills spring to mind. Curiously, this little book has a very strange dust cover; the lower half, where Perry's signature is portrayed, is printed with some kind of smudging ink. The rest of the black print doesn't do it.

I wondered if this was a deliberate gesture, in keeping with Perry's sense of mischief? It's the closest I'll get to 'owning' anything by the man. I'll happily own the mischief.

they used to call it the moon

A trip to the moon today, at least in the form of a visit to the thought provoking exhibition 'They used to call it the moon'.

Just inside the main entrance is a large shiny satellite, gleaming and pristine, the stuff of dreams. Today, this is art not science. I must remember it's an installation, not a propellable device.

Onward to one of my favourites, it's part of a collection by Marko Tadić and comprises found postcards which support the earth's second moon theory.

Compared with the full series, this is a cut down version, with scenes from all around the world, sometimes showing two moons and sometimes just showing one or another.

The above view is from the larger show which is also here.
More recently, there's been the launch of the Russian satellite, which is almost the size of a small moon, so there's a maybe more truth that one might imagine.

And then there's Joseph Popper's space pod.


It's just like you'd expect from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Gravity or Interstellar. I remember visiting some of the space equipment in NASA and being amazed at the simplicity of some of the construction. Forget about semiconductors, part of the technology used electromechanical relays. Yet somehow it all worked.

This space pod is similar. A closer inspection reveals it's made of polystyrene blocks, the small black round precision controls are coffee cup lids and the press buttons are from sports water bottles. Look behind it (I'll have to go to this again and try to remember to take a picture) the panels are clipped together with bulldog clips.

There's Katie Paterson's moon bounce Morse-coded music score sent Earth:Moon:Earth and into a shiny black piano playing "Moonlight Sonata" with some missing notes detained in the craters. Appositely across the way is a selection of Kubrick's effects cards from the original 2001 movie.

Yesterday's Doctor Who episode echoed part of the Stanley Kubrick/Arthur C Clarke theme that behind every person alive stands ghosts, and in Clarke and Kubrick the ratio is thirty to one as the ratio by which dead outnumber the living.

It runs that since the dawn of time, a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. An interesting number, because there are around a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way.

So in the 2001 story-telling, for every man and woman who has ever lived, in this universe there shines a star.

But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And most of those alien suns have planets circling them.

So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first apeman, his own private world-sized heaven—or hell.

How many of those potential heavens and hells are inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest of them is a million times further away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of interstellar generations.

As the few trips to the moon signify, the barriers of distance diminish. Another part of this arty exhibition presents a one way space mission, mysteriously blueprinted for 2016.